|
Voyager receives a distress
call from a small vessel, piloted by a much older and weathered
Kes. Captain Janeway grants her permission to come aboard, but
she comes in much too fast and the vessel collides with Deck 9.
However, Kes beams herself aboard Voyager just before impact.
A cold and angry Kes uses her
psychokinetic abilities to disable the ship's systems, giving
off high levels of neurogenic energy that destroy everything in
her path. Even a forcefield and a phaser shot from a security
guard cannot stop her as she carves a path of destruction toward
Engineering. Torres and Seven of Nine, shocked to see that the
invader is Kes, train weapons on her, but the phasers ripple and
distort in their hands. Kes steps up to the warp core and places
her hands upon it. Just as Torres goes to shut down the core,
she is struck by a tendril of energy. Seven rushes over to
Torres' dead body, while Kes vanishes in a flash of light.
When Kes disappears, she travels backward in time to Voyager as
it was five years earlier, only a few weeks since being pulled
into the Delta Quadrant. Sneaking up behind the original Kes,
the undetected Kes from the future injects her with a hypospray,
rendering her unconscious.
The Janeway of this time period is concerned that another
conflict may soon ensue with the Vidiians since two more ships
have been detected on long-range sensors. On a secure channel,
Kes from the future makes contact with the Vidiian captain. She
tells him she will provide him with information necessary to
capture Voyager, in return for her safe passage home to Ocampa.
Meanwhile, Tuvok seems to be experiencing premonitions. Stepping
into a turbolift, he encounters a young girl who identifies
herself as Naomi Wildman. Tuvok follows the girl into the Cargo
Bay, and when the doors open he sees Seven of Nine and the Borg
children from the future regenerating in Borg alcoves.
The Doctor confirms for Captain Janeway that Ensign Wildman is
expecting a baby girl. Back in Engineering, Tuvok is once again
having visions of the future. This time he experiences a
fragmented replay of events when Torres is struck in the back
with an energy tendril as a much older Kes looks on. Tuvok is
brought to Sickbay where he begins to convulse upon the surgical
bed. Janeway views the proximity scan of Tuvok at the time he
collapsed in Engineering, and discovers there was a surge of
tachyon particles. Since tachyons are normally generated by
temporal distortions, Janeway concludes there's some form of
time travel involved.
When Janeway orders the bridge crew to scan for tachyon
particles, Voyager suddenly finds itself under attack by the
Vidiians. The crew realizes the Vidiians know more than they
should about Voyager, including when they would be coming out of
warp, their shield frequencies and which systems to target.
Chakotay detects a transmission originating in the Airponics
Bay, where he picks up two bio-readings that both read as Kes.
Janeway heads to Airponics with a Security team as the bridge
crew tries to break off the grappling hook that the Vidiian ship
has attached to Voyager's hull. Meanwhile the Vidiians have
started boarding Voyager, and Janeway must evade them in order
to enter the Airponics Bay.
She makes it, and confronts the Kes from the future. Kes tells
Janeway she wants to rescue her past self, that she was taken
from her home and made a prisoner on the ship, corrupted with
ideas of exploration and discovery. She accuses the Captain of
encouraging her to develop her mental abilities before she was
ready, and now she would not be able to return home to Ocampa
because her people would be frightened of her. Kes attacks
Janeway telekinetically, but meanwhile Voyager breaks free of
the Vidiian ship, and the resulting jolt leaves Kes off balance.
Eventually Janeway is able to blast the future Kes with a phaser
and kill her. When the Kes of the past recovers, Janeway asks
her help to prevent something terrible from happening in the
future.
When an older Kes hails Voyager again in the future, the crew is
already prepared. This time Captain Janeway orders the warp core
shut down completely. When Kes enters Engineering, the Kes from
the past appears in a message that she recorded to herself five
years earlier. She reminds the older Kes that she made her own
choices, and that the people she came back to harm care about
her. Janeway approaches and reminds her why she made that
recording. She urges her to stay on Voyager, but Kes says she
needs to be with her own people. Finally she remembers making
the holo-recording, and her anger dissipates. Realizing she can
go home after all, she transports back to her vessel after a
brief and awkward reunion with Neelix. |
 |
