Captain's log, supplemental: While attempting to escape unnoticed from the first battle in the Dalek invasion of Borg space, Voyager has been attacked by a Dalek ship. The Doctor stopped the attack by making his presence on Voyager known - but has now surrendered Voyager to the enemy.
"YOU-WILL-POWER-DOWN-YOUR-WEAPONS-AND-DROP-YOUR-SHIELDS-TO-PERMIT- A-DALEK-BOARDING-PARTY-TO-BEAM-ABOARD."
"Very well," said the Doctor.
"Doctor!" Janeway hissed.
"Do it!" commanded the Doctor, turning back toward her.
At the same time he made an odd motion with his hands, hidden from the Dalek, as if he was stretching taffy.
Janeway looked at Chakotay; yes, he'd gotten the message too. "Do as he says, Tuvok. If you can."
Tuvok had understood. "Ship's damage has made the shield controls unresponsive."
And they say Vulcans don't lie, Janeway thought. Thirty seconds ago it was all Tuvok could do to keep the shields up.
"DO-NOT-DELAY!" demanded the Dalek.
"Let's help our friends out, Tom," said the Doctor casually. "Turn the ship to face them, so they won't have the thickest of the structural integrity field to beam through."
"Aye aye," said Paris at Janeway's nod, but letting some confusion through in his tone. The S.I.F. was for holding the ship together under warpspeed stress - but it was designed to be no barrier to matter-energy teleportation. Besides, it was thickest in front.
The aft view on the main viewscreen began to slide to the right, taking with it the saucer-shaped Dalek ship and the trail of plasma it was leaking from its battle-damaged engines.
"No success," Tuvok reported. "I am attempting to reroute control."
"YOU-HAVE-FIFTEEN-SECONDS-OR-WE-WILL-RESUME-FIRE."
The main viewscreen switched to forward view. The Dalek ship edged into view from the left.
"The navigational deflectors are still on, aren't they?" the Doctor asked Paris.
"Sure."
The Dalek realized the Doctor's plan at the same moment as Janeway. "CEASE-YOUR-SHIP'S-TURN-MANEUVER-OR-"
Perhaps only because she knew it was coming, Janeway thought she saw the plasma trail ignite under the bombardment of the navigational deflector field particles, an instant before the Dalek ship exploded while still just left of center on the main viewscreen.
"The Dalek ship is destroyed," Tuvok confirmed.
The Doctor shook his head. "They will use protomatter in their engine matrices," he tsked. "What can you do?"
"How much longer to your hiding place, Tom?" Janeway asked.
"Thirteen minutes with available power."
The thirteen minutes passed without further incident. When Voyager was safely ensconced in the magnetic blind spot of the gas giant, Janeway ordered, "Department heads to the conference room. Doctor, please join us."
-----
"What do we do now?" Janeway asked her officers. "Suggestions."
"I still say you should seize this opportunity to take the Federation's battle with the Borg home to them," said the Doctor earnestly.
The suggestion was met with incredulity by those who hadn't already heard it when the Doctor first made the proposal on the bridge. "Are you insane?" Torres blurted.
"We barely survived an alliance with them," Kim observed.
"As morale officer," said Neelix grimly, "I can assure you that the crew wouldn't exactly take a shine to the idea just now."
"Particularly factoring in the advent of the Dalek invasion," Tuvok agreed.
"I'm only one hologram," objected the doctor.
For her part Janeway was both amazed and frustrated that the Doctor was still harping on the subject, after the concern and agitation he'd displayed on the bridge when the Borg-Dalek conflict was developing. "Your proposal constitutes attempted genocide, Doctor, and in any case is beyond the physical capability of this ship. It's immoral and impractical and I will not entertain it."
"As immoral as self-defense," insisted the Doctor. "It's your bloody Prime Directive again, isn't it? Keep your hands sparkling clean until you can prove the other fellow started it!"
Janeway counted to ten while recalling that this was the person who called James T. Kirk a stuffed shirt. "In Starfleet we do hesitate to wipe out whole races from the face of the universe, yes. What about you?" she said tightly, knowing from his Starfleet file that by his own admission his people the Time Lords had once tried him for genocide. But to her surprise the Doctor didn't answer at once.
"I did hesitate," said the Doctor.
He stood and began to circle the table, all eyes on him. "I once had the chance to destroy the Daleks in their very pre-history. I hesitated to do it just long enough to lose the chance.
"Oh, I did something while I was there-and-then which watered them down - I don't know what. Their history now consists as much or more of faction wars as of conquest of others. But I regret that hesitation, and shall to my dying day."
He had now circled back to the chair he had left. He sat again, placed his elbows on the table and folded his hands, and looked at Janeway with the universe's sorrow. "But you see it is, after all, the choice of the individual that makes history."
"And my choice is," said Janeway firmly, "that this ship is going home."
The Doctor sighed and leant back in his chair, his eyes shut.
"And how," Tuvok asked after a moment, "do the Borg figure in Dalek history?"
"The Borg-Dalek war starts now, in 2374," said the Doctor, seeming to let go his private demon and rejoin the discussion, "and continues, with an occasional hiatus of not more than a thousand years, through the balance of history as the Time Lords know it."
"'Bio-ships' was the clue that told you the Dalek invasion was imminent," said Chakotay. "What does Species 8472 have to do with it?"
"Well, the Daleks really are very clever megalomaniacs," said the Doctor. "The Borg collective are in a state of relative instability, having a new Queen just now -"
"Queen?" said Janeway.
"How do you know that?" Tuvok asked.
The Doctor waved the questions off. "I probably shouldn't have told you that much. It's not that simple anyway. But the Daleks decided to take advantage of the situation ... after the Borg had been softened up a little first."
"Softened up?" Kim asked.
"Species 8472?" Janeway said.
The Doctor nodded. "The Daleks knew of the dimension of fluidic space. They allowed a Dalek with the knowledge to be assimiliated. This is what precipitated the Borg attack on Species 8472 that in turn flushed them into this dimension. Needless to say, the assimilated Dalek was ignorant of the greater plan - the invasion of Borg space after they or Species 8472 were exhausted from wiping the other out."
"It was all a game," Paris burst out angrily. "All that death and destruction, and it was just someone else's opening move!"
"Is there a 'hiatus' any time soon?" Chakotay asked.
"I shouldn't tell you at all, but - no," said the Doctor.
After a moment Janeway realized that her staff were all waiting for someone else to add something. Tuvok was the first to realize that there wouldn't be anything.
"It seems the only logical course open to us is to proceed as we had been proceeding - as quickly as possible through Borg space, while attempting to avoid hostile contact."
"Except there's so much more hostility to avoid now," said Paris.
END OF CHAPTER 3