Protocols Unknown: A Decision of The Stars

Missing in the Stars

One of them stepped forward. Tall. Unreadable. His gaze moved from Naomi to the crib. Then back.

Naomi dropped the phaser, ran to the crib, and scooped Astrea into her arms. The baby clung to her, silent, but alert.

The Vaadwaur surrounded her, but they didn't fire. The leader stepped forward, eyes scanning Naomi and the baby in her arms with something disturbingly close to curiosity.

"You are brave," he said, his voice disturbingly calm.

Naomi stood frozen, breathing hard, her tears carving silent trails down her cheeks. Her grip on Astrea tightened as she lifted her chin. "I am Naomi Wildman, Captain's Assistant to Captain Janeway of the USS Starship Voyager. You will leave us alone!"

The lead Vaadwaur tilted his head. "You protect her. You were willing to fight. That is... interesting. For a humanoid as small as yourself."

He looked to the others and gave a nod.

Without a word, they moved. Naomi felt the air shift before she saw them phase. She opened her mouth to scream, to run—but the shimmer had already swallowed her.

In a blink, Naomi and Astrea vanished.

The room went still, the silence deafening.

Samantha didn't move.

—-

"They're inside."

Harry Kim's voice snapped through the tense silence of the bridge. He was already standing at his console, brows furrowed as he pulled up the readings. "Deck Three just registered phaser fire—short burst, concentrated. But the signal's scrambled. It bounced across four junction relays before it even hit the main system."

Janeway was out of her chair in an instant. "What do you mean scrambled?"

"I mean someone's rerouting internal sensor data," Harry said, tapping furiously. "Our readings are fragmented. I can't tell what's real and what's a looped feed."

Before Janeway could respond, the comm crackled again.

"Seven of Nine to the bridge." Her voice was clipped and urgent. "We are under attack. Internal scans are failing across multiple decks. Security feeds have been overridden. I've lost contact with Astrometrics—every system I access reroutes me three sublevels away."

Tuvok turned from Tactical. "Confirmed. Phaser discharge detected on Deck Three, but no active life forms appear on sensors. Weapons are being discharged... but we cannot identify who is firing."

Janeway's jaw clenched. "They're using phased cloaking. Like the last time. They're avoiding detection and they're controlling what we see."

She turned to Harry. "Can we restore sensor integrity?"

"I've already started recalibrating, but they've buried false signals in our sensor grid. Every time I isolate one, two more pop up." His voice dropped a bit, tense. "Captain, I think they've been in the system longer than we realized."

Janeway inhaled slowly, then tapped her combadge. "Seven, pull all available power into environmental controls and route it through a tertiary feedback loop. If they're moving through bulkheads, we flush their signal with heat variances."

"Understood. Beginning reroute." A short pause. "But I must warn you, doing so may disable localized life support in non-essential areas."

Janeway didn't blink. "Do it."

She turned sharply back to the bridge. "Tuvok, activate rotating shield harmonics on interior sections. If they try to phase, I want them to hit something solid."