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Returning from a trade
mission with the Tak Tak, Janeway and Neelix are perplexed to
find Voyager adrift in space. After landing their craft in the
Shuttlebay, the pair notes there are no crewmembers in sight and
that many of the ship's systems are off-line. While
investigating the seemingly empty ship, their turbolift is
halted by several lifeforms, one of which pokes a hole in the
door with a large stinger. The stinger sprays Neelix with slime,
but the pair is able to escape. Not long after, Neelix falls ill
and Janeway goes to find an emergency kit. When she returns,
he's gone.
Now on her own, Janeway arms
herself with weapons and goes to the Bridge, where she is stung
by one of the bizarre lifeforms. In the Mess Hall, she discovers
unresponsive, ailing crewmembers and a giant flying creature,
which tries to attack Janeway.
Fleeing to Sickbay, Janeway finds the Doctor holed up with a
phaser. He reports that the ship is infected by a strange alien
macrovirus. He explains that while Janeway and Neelix were away
from the ship, Voyager responded to a medical distress call from
a mining colony stricken by a virus. A few of the "bugs"
migrated back to the ship when the Doctor returned, and since
then, they've spread throughout the ship's systems, and
ultimately to the crew. The Doctor has come up with an antigen
but he hasn't had the chance to test it, since the huge, mature
versions of the virus — such as the one that came after Janeway
— have prevented him from leaving Sickbay. Now infected herself,
Janeway volunteers to test the antigen and is cured. But there's
still the problem of distributing the antigen to the ailing
crew.
Janeway comes up with the idea of distributing the cure in
gaseous form through the ship's environmental system. Using her
arsenal, she blasts her way through the ship until she reaches
the controls. But before she can disperse the antigen, Voyager
is fired upon by the Tak Tak, who want to exterminate the virus
by destroying the ship. Janeway tells them about the cure and
asks them to stop shooting long enough for her to treat the
crew. They give her an hour. Unfortunately, the environmental
controls have been damaged, but Janeway figures out how to put
together an antigen bomb, which destroys the virulent invaders.
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