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Neelix thinks he may be at the end
of his usefulness to the crew when the U.S.S. Voyager comes upon
the Nekrit Expanse, a vast region of space that he knows little
about. Since he is their supposed expert on the Delta Quadrant,
Neelix is determined to find a detailed map of the area. He
suggests they stop at a space station located near the edge of
the Expanse, where Janeway, Chakotay and Paris negotiate for
supplies. At the same time, Neelix reunites with Wixiban, an old
Talaxian friend who went to prison for a crime that he and
Neelix participated in years earlier.
Wix offers to help Neelix
secure a map and pergium, a rare commodity required by
Engineering. The items can be attained by trading some supplies
that Wix has access to. Neelix borrows one of Voyager's shuttles
to deliver Wix's supplies, but when they arrive at the exchange
site, a fight breaks out, and Wix kills his contact, Sutok, with
a Starfleet phaser from the shuttle.
Fleeing, Neelix realizes that Wix used him to carry out a
narcotics deal. But because he feels he "owes" Wix for the
prison time his friend did, Neelix agrees to keep quiet about
the murder. When Bahrat, the station manager, tells Janeway that
a Federation weapon was involved in the slaying, an
investigation is launched. Neelix's troubles deepen when Wix
insists Neelix must steal warp plasma from Voyager to pay off
the drug dealers, whose narcotics were stolen by Sutok's gang
during the fight.
Later, Neelix meets with Wix and admits that he couldn't bring
himself to steal from Voyager. At the same time, Bahrat arrests
Paris and Chakotay for Sutok's murder. Unwilling to see his
friends pay the price for a crime they didn't commit, Neelix
convinces Wix to come clean with Bahrat. After hearing the
confession, Bahrat allows Wix and Neelix to set a trap for the
top narcotics dealer, Tosin. The ploy works and Tosin is
arrested. Although Janeway is furious with Neelix for getting
the crew involved in illicit activities, she understands that he
was motivated by a misguided attempt to help them. Rather than
putting him off the ship, she sentences him to two weeks
scrubbing the exhaust manifolds. |
