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An assault on a shuttlecraft
manned by Tuvok and Chakotay leaves both men injured and
Chakotay apparently brain-dead. The Doctor explains that
something has drained all the bio-neural energy from the first
officer's brain. The prognosis looks grim, but Torres places a
Native American medical wheel near Chakotay's bed, in the hopes
that it will help her friend "find his way home" from his
illness.
After Tuvok recovers, he
reveals that they were attacked by an unidentified ship that
emerged from a dark matter nebula. Janeway orders Voyager to
head back to the nebula to investigate, but before they reach
it, the ship changes course. The navigational computer
implicates Paris, but he denies having made the change. A short
time later, Torres initiates a warp core shutdown, but like
Paris, she can't remember instigating the actions. When the
Doctor examines the pair, he discovers that a strange brainwave
pattern was superimposed on them during the tampering incidents
— which could mean that an alien entity momentarily seized
control of their minds. As a precaution, Janeway transfers the
ship's command codes to a non-organic source: the Doctor.
When Kes tells Janeway that she has been "sensing" an alien
presence on the ship, Tuvok suggests that he perform a mind-meld
with the Ocampan to help her focus her telepathic abilities. But
a short time later, the two are found unconscious, the result of
an energy discharge similar to the one that hit the shuttle,
according to Tuvok. A short time later, someone disables the
Doctor's program. With him out of the picture, the command codes
revert to Janeway, who decides to divide them between herself
and Tuvok. The unseen force tries to take over Janeway, but the
crew incapacitates her. It jumps to Kim, and then Lieutenant
Durst, before Tuvok finally stuns everyone on the bridge.
A series of clues turns up in quick succession, all of which
imply that Tuvok has been lying to the crew. There was no ship
in the nebula, and Kes' injury now appears to have been the
result of a Vulcan nerve pinch. Under increasing suspicion,
Tuvok takes over command of the ship and orders it into the
nebula, where he says the Komar — others of his kind — await.
But before they can get there, something makes Torres eject the
ship's warp core. Since they now know that Tuvok, under the
control of the Komar, has been trying to bring them all to the
nebula all along, who has been acting against him, trying to
keep Voyager out? All signs seem to indicate that it is Chakotay.
Realizing that the Komar want to extract their collective neural
energy, the crew manages to overpower the Vulcan at last. The
lifeform leaves his body to join the others of its kind in the
nebula. Voyager's crew needs to leave the area, but since the
possessed Tuvok plotted the course in, they are uncertain how to
get out of the nebula.
Down in Sickbay, Neelix is suddenly compelled to rearrange the
markers on Chakotay's medicine wheel. Janeway realizes that it
is a message from her first officer, a map showing them the
correct course. They escape from the nebula just in time. Later,
the Doctor finds a way to reintegrate Chakotay's displaced
neural energy with his body and he revives at last, pleased that
he was able to help protect the crew, despite his disembodied
condition.
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