Year of Hell, Part 3

"Red alert! I'm launching the ship now!" Echo's voice rang through the room.

I was jolted awake, along with L'Naan, as we had been sleeping in the bedroom of Fae Dragon. There was only one thing that her call could mean, so we both hurried to get dressed. It had been four days since we crossed into Krenim space and a day since we reached the asteroid field. The distortion wave had yet to be seen and, if Echo was launching Fae Dragon, it meant that Annorax's ship was approaching.

"That's one big ass ship," I remarked as L'Naan and I entered the Bridge.

Out the main window, I could see a small ship on the edge of the asteroid field, but the sheer fact that I could see it despite the distance was proof of its incredible size. I did not get to marvel at it for long before the clear window changed to a viewscreen, showing Janeway and Annorax.

"State your identities," Annorax said.

"I'm Captain Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager," Janeway replied.

"Captain Cox of the Federation Starship Fae Dragon. We were wondering when you would make an appearance, Annorax," I retorted, crossing my arms.

Saying his name caused an eyebrow to raise and he asked, "Have we met before?"

I chuckled, "No, but you aren't the only person who has an affinity for Time. I know that your mission is to restore your home, your loved ones, your wife... I understand that feeling far more than you know as I have also lost someone dear to me and I will do anything to get her back when I can, so I'll do you a favor and tell you how to do exactly what you want. Simply, destroy your ship which will undo everything that you have done with it."

Janeway had been the one to suggest that I tell Annorax exactly how to restore his home. It was a reasonable idea as anyone who could create such a weapon as the ship should realize the truth of my words. It would be wonderful if things could really be that simple, but I knew that it would be impossible to reason with him; after all, where would the challenge be if he simply agreed and blew up his ship?

Just as I expected, Annorax's eyes narrowed and he said, arrogantly, "Do you really think I'm that stupid? This ship will see the domination of the Krenim race despite fools like you."

Communications from Annorax's ship were cut off, but the connection to Voyager remained. I sighed and looked at Janeway as I said, "I tried, Kathryn... Would you have said anything differently?"

Janeway frowned, but before she could say anything, Tuvok reported, "The Krenim ship is firing on the asteroid field."

I could tell that Janeway was gritting her teeth in anger, but she spoke in a neutral tone as she ordered, "Red Alert! All hands to battle stations!"

"Guess that's my cue," I remarked as the viewscreen returned to its window state.

"Be careful," Katye said.

I smirked and replied, "I'll do my best."

Before anyone could say anything else, I teleported myself outside of our ship and transformed into my Dragon form. Instead of heading straight for Annorax's ship, I flew towards the nearest asteroid and landed on it. I started rapidly infusing my mana into the rock, tapping into my Chaos energy to hasten the conversion to mage-steel. Before I left it, I ensured that my Chaos corruption had been fully removed, then I moved onto the next.

It took me less than a minute to convert an asteroid the size of the Fae Dragon, and something on the size of the Voyager would take about six minutes, one minute of it was devoted exclusively to reining back my Chaos, but it was still much faster than doing it the traditional way. Not only would these metal asteroids be harder for Annorax to destroy, but there were also still traces of my mana within them, so I could manipulate them to a certain extent. Once Annorax's ship closed in, I would be able to use these to both attack and defend, or at least that was my hope; I still wasn't sure whether or not I could actually attack the ship directly.

The minutes passed and Annorax slowly cleared a path for his ship to approach Voyager. While he could have simply erased the asteroids from the timeline, it would take time to calculate what effects that could have on the timeline, so the safer method was to simply destroy everything in his path. Of course, that did not mean that he would fear erasing Voyager and the rest of us since we were an anomaly in this region, so we would need to be careful once the ship was in range.

Fae Dragon was a large shuttle which took up over a third of Voyager's Shuttle Bay, so you can imagine just how large Voyager itself was. While transformed into Dragon form, I was about a fifth of the size of Voyager, yet Annorax's ship was at least six to seven times the size of Voyager. I could not help but feel small in comparison to the massive ship, but I would not back down just because of that.

Conjuring my Chaos Storm, I charged at the ship with a flap of my wings. I started off with a thin layer over my body, so as to minimize the drain on my mental strength, but I allowed it to grow at its own pace while closing the distance between me and Annorax's ship. From the episode, I knew where Janeway had crashed her ship into his, so I aimed myself straight at it.

Annorax did not simply let me approach at my leisure and fired a volley of chronitonic torpedoes at me. Gathering my storm, I sent the clouds ahead of me and used them to strip away the power of the torpedoes. The energy was quickly reaching the level where I could not control properly, so I converted over half of my storm into a crimson bolt of lightning, which I shot at the Krenim ship.

[Direct hit; minor damage. Fae projects anywhere from four to seven percent drain on their temporal shields.] Echo's thoughts transmitted directly to my mind.

I pushed her thoughts aside with annoyance, not directed at her, but rather the weakness of the attack. It was one of my strongest attacks, and I could only pull off a dozen or so before the drain on my Soul Power would put me at risk. In the next moment, my body slammed into the ship as I tried to dig my talons into the hull, but unlike when I was fighting the Vidiians, the shields kept them at bay.

Thankfully, I was not fighting alone. Voyager launched four pure-mana torpedoes at the front of the ship while Fae Dragon circled around and fired their phasers in rapid succession as it headed to the aft section of the ship.

[Phasers aren't effective, but the magic-filled torpedoes can deal a percent of damage to the shields!]

With anger, I lashed out at the ship with my talons while willing my storm to eat away at the shields. At the rate I was using my Soul Power, it was doubtful that I could last until we managed to whittle down Annorax's shields without pushing myself to my limit and then some. I knew that, that was the point of these conflicts, yet I also could not help but get infuriated at the thought of risking those closest to me, since I had lost people before... and I knew that I would lose more in the future.

I kept attacking as best as I could, including powerful bolts of lightning when my storm grew large enough, and even drawing in the metallic asteroids, though they were useless since I had retracted my Chaos from them. Voyager kept attacking with the Mark-Three torpedoes, since the others could not affect the timeship, but they depleted their stock rather quickly. Still, we managed to weaken their temporal shields down to twenty-five percent, but that was when I sensed that something happened.

Panic. Echo's mind was consumed by intense panic... and then the reason why reached me. Katye had vanished from Fae Dragon, and not by choice. In the episode, Annorax had been able to kidnap Chakotay and Tom before he even attacked Voyager directly, so it was not too hard to believe that he could penetrate Fae Dragon's shields. After all, this was Tori's universe, and he gave us our ship.

Unfortunately, 'reason' was not the dominant trait of any Dragon. Once I realized that Katye had been abducted by Annorax, rage consumed my mind. Obviously, I understood that the most likely place that she would have been was on his ship, but I also knew that Echo would constantly be searching for her to beam her back to the ship, if I managed to break their shields. I attacked Annorax's ship without regard to Voyager, its condition, or even my own state. 

I started hemorrhaging Soul Power without care as I relentlessly attacked the ship, no longer caring for the world around me. Echo was trying to reach me, part of me could tell, yet I was too far gone. I had already lost Raven, so how dare someone try to take Katye away from me?!? My fury and anger increased my strength, no longer caring about the danger that this could pose as scales turned aqua-green one at a time. Echo's mind was still chiming away at the shield level of Annorax's ship, but there was something that the two of us had forgotten due to our immediate problem of Katye having been taken...

Voyager was at the front of the ship, which was exactly where their main weapon was located. Unlike in the episode, there was no way for Voyager to escape a direct assault since we were in the middle of an asteroid field, so they could not jump to warp. I was too focused on dealing damage to the ship, so I did not notice that Annorax had put Voyager in its crosshairs and fired. I felt Echo's alarm, but when I finally realized what was happening, I was hit with a distortion wave...

Voyager had been erased. I had allowed the very reason why we were here to be erased from Time. My Soul Power was so weak at this point that I passed out when the distortion wave hit me, but this could not be the end... right?

~~~~~~~~~~~

"I believe that is cheating, my dear Mimic," Sancu remarked over their game of chess.

As Sancu was a few levels above her in terms of power, her innate power, Soul's Reflection, could not manifest itself, revealing her true appearance. If you did not look at her face, she would appear to be a very plain human female, neither beautiful nor ugly, completely unremarkable. Her face, though, had three eyes, two normal, and the third was vertical and placed in the center of her forehead. A quick glimpse would reveal nothing, but if you were to stare into her center eye, it would slowly seem to change into a galaxy of twinkling, multicolored lights.

"If any of them had the idea on their own, I would not have changed anything, but they were simply appeasing Janeway, who is not a member of their group. They expected their tactic would not work, they expected this fight, so why should we deny them their expectations?" she countered, moving one of her pieces.

"Perhaps because this is beyond their current level. Time is master's specialty, making it infinitely harder for the two of them to manipulate whatever enemy he conjures using it," he retorted then claimed one of her pawns.

"And? You tempt Fate enough, and Fate will deliver its justice in some form or fashion. Rebecca still has not taken a true loss; even the matter with Raven can't be counted, as she knows that there will be several chances to rescue her from the Borg."

"True, but you are acting out of annoyance rather than your duty. Master already told you that your Heart Demon Trials would not be very effective against Rebecca as Dystina's remnant will always intervene; failing literally means unleashing the Embodiment of Chaos. I am not countermanding your change, but you can't make the Game unwinnable by changing the rules," Sancu chided as he positioned his Queen, winning the game.

Mimic huffed with annoyance and flicked her King over, grumbling, "Then why do I bother playing with you?"

"Because I have not changed any rules," he retorted with a smirk as he reset the game board with a wave of his hand, "and the reward for winning is much too tempting. Take this matter with Rebecca and Katye... Rebecca needs a loss, sure, but this is also a chance to test Katye's conviction, if you play the move properly. Annorax's ship is the perfect power source for a Time Acceleration Formation far greater than anything that they will see before the unique world. If Katye is to have a chance at entering the special world, her magic needs to advance much faster than possible by the current rate of the universe, considering her current rate, but it won't be for free, and temptation must be present."

"You scold me for manipulating a single person while you directly manipulate Master's work; is that not like the pot calling the kettle black?" she questioned.

Yes, Mimic had manipulated Annorax's mind. If he was the character that the show had shown, there would have been a part of him that truly considered Rebecca's words, but she would not allow that because she wanted to see Rebecca struggle. As the youngest member of Istar's pantheon, she could not help but get angry when she looked at Rebecca. 

Rebecca was nothing special in terms of Mortals being elevated to the Immortal Path, lagging behind even Echo and Raven in potential, but her True Soul was so powerful that her master had gone to such lengths to nurture it... and for what? Some 'possible' danger that she could become the Embodiment of Chaos? Mimic could wipe out her Soul with a flick of her fingers... or could she? Why did her master think of this convoluted method of training when he could simply destroy her True Soul? Istar was no saint, yet he invested so much energy into nurturing these two, so there must be a reason yet it was outside her knowledge.

Sancu chuckled lightly, understanding her train of thought since she was so young, and moved his first pawn then retorted, "Master gave us these abilities to manipulate his Realm for a reason. I am simply acting out of my duty to train them, rather than my annoyance of being unable to 'see' their futures. You want to test them, push them, and that's fine, but my duty is to make sure that the Game is still winnable after the last one was lost, though neither of them remembers it."

Mimic sighed, sensing the changes that Sancu had caused with the smallest amount of effort, yet she could tell that there was nothing that she could do to undo them. He was careful and specific with his changes, countering her manipulations, so that if Katye could overcome his Challenge, everything that she had tried was nothing more than a stepping stone. She had known that when she had first accepted her master's contract, but she had not truly understood the impact that it would have on her mind. Someone who had not even lived a percentage of her life was closing the gap between her and them so quickly was beyond frightening. Could this truly be the power of being the Embodiment of Chaos? Her mind was filled with questions, but she also knew that answers would only come in the Future...