Chapter Text
Running through the corridors of Voyager reminded the Doctor of running virtually everywhere. He lived for the adventure even if meant there would be running involved. Never bored, always running.
At this point the Doctor was immune to the wails of the Voyager crew who littered the corridor. It was very rare that the Doctor ignored someone’s cries for help. But there wasn’t anything he could do for the apparitions, and he was in a rush to get to Engineering.
Thankfully Engineering was empty. He looked around, but couldn’t find Seven of Nine. He quickly scanned the gangway the circled the upper part of the core.
Something wasn’t right. “Doctor to Seven, please respond!” Nothing. But he did hear her combadge somewhere in the room. She must have fallen behind one of their consoles. The Doctor headed to a corner and worked his way toward the door, occasionally trying her combadge.
“Seven,” he exclaimed when he found her. He cradled her head in his lap and scanned her with his Sonic Screwdriver. There didn’t seem to be anything alarming wrong, thankfully.
She slowly came to. For a moment she startled in the Time Lord’s lap, unsure of her surroundings. But then it all came flooding back. “Did it work?”
“As far as I know. Nothing weird happened at the TARDIS at least. Are you okay?”
Seven flexed her muscles before deciding that she had spent enough time on the floor. Without much assistance from the Doctor she heaved herself to a mostly standing, slightly leaning on the console, position.
“The transfer appears to have put enough power over to the propulsion system. But it does not appear engine efficiency or speed have been affected.”
The Doctor paused before it dawned on it. “We can’t travel any faster, and I don’t think the TARDIS can pull Voyager as a ship. Not enough pilots…”
“Computer, how long until Voyager clears the nebula?” Seven had lost track of time from 18 hours ago between passing out and Trajis and the drone showing up.
“Nine hours and eleven minutes.”
“Half the time, that’s good, right?”
Seven studied the console, “We already transferred weapons, sensors and environmental controls to the engines.We could selectively transfer life support from decks that do not have stasis pods, eleven decks… Computer how much more energy would be transferred?”
“Voyager’s time in the nebula would be reduced by three hours.”
“But does that justify it? If anything were to catastrophically go wrong on one of those decks, we wouldn’t be able to fix it. Do you really need to do this Seven?”
Half the subroutine was inputted before Seven stopped to ask herself what she was doing. Her hand hovered over the console. Finally she cancelled everything. “I will decide at a later time.”
“Warning power to stasis units on deck 8 has failed.”
“One thing after another!” the Doctor groaned as they left engineering. As they neared the cargo bay entrance they found the senior staff milling about in the corridor.
“Come to watch us die?” Chakotay asked as the others laughed.
“That is not a friendly laugh,” the Doctor blurted out.
Once Seven and the Doctor entered the cargo bay, the senior staff followed.
Seven ignored her crewmates, darting to the nearest console. They were so busy building and placing everyone into stasis, Seven didn’t know how long the pods’ backup power lasted. And now that was a mistake that might kill some of her crewmates.
“It’s your fault!” a chant started up between Harry and Tom. Soon Chakotay and B’Elanna were following along.
“It’s your fault!” Janeway joined in. Only Tuvok paced behind them, silent. But he did glare at Seven. She couldn’t hold his stare for very long before focusing on the console. They were usually on good terms.
The Doctor hovered close, because the senior staff heckled incessantly. It was hard to block out in such close quarters, even for him.
“We have a problem,” Seven of Nine said simply. She shifted slightly so the Doctor could catch a glimpse of the stasis pod readout. They were in trouble.
“We’ve got almost nine hours left and the pods have… seven hours and change as backup. So we’re two hours short ...wait two hours short! Seven! You just need to do the life support transfer! As long as we stay on the decks with pods we’ll be good, right? We’d get three hours, the computer said. Come on, you can do it!”
“Is it worth it? The gel packs are unpredictable, we would not be able to repair any ones that failed.”
“But it’s only for seven hours if that! Maybe even six! An engineering team can get the gel packs after we clear the nebula. We just need to worry about the pods being on charge power now. And us.”
If the Doctor knew Seven better, he would stand beside her and guide her hand to the console, willing her to complete the transfer subroutine. But he kept his hands to himself, afraid to upset Seven. The days alone with only the Time Lord and plenty of hallucinations was starting to finally take its toll.
Seven stayed absolutely still. It was difficult for her to not see the catastrophic results of transferring life support. But if the Doctor was right they’d leave the nebula that much sooner and fix whatever damage they had not been able to get to. And Trajis would finally be gone. The crew would stop nagging them with their wails and their complaints.
She forced herself to start the subroutine, and with a chirp the computer acknowledged that it was transferring life support to the power systems.
“Computer, how long until Voyager is out of the nebula?” the Doctor asked before Seven had a chance too. The answer was 6 hours and 47 minutes.
“Two point four hours,” Seven said under breath, “not quite three hours.” If she weren’t so exhausted by this ordeal she’d be more annoyed.
“But it’s enough!” the Doctor exclaimed. “The end is in sight ...Now what do we do?”
With limited power, they were restricted in what they could do. Luckily Sickbay was on a deck that still had life support so they made the journey there. With all the running around the past couple of days, they had not managed to attempt to resurrect the EMH’s programming.
Sickbay was quiet without the EMH. Everything was in low power mode. Seven found the mobile emitter on the floor in the EMH’s office next to his desk. She quickly set up a diagnostic to see if anything could be salvaged. She also quickly scanned the EPS relays in a vain hope that his program would be there, stuck in limbo. For good measure the Doctor scanned his counterpart's emitter with his sonic screwdriver.
“Anything?” the Doctor asked as he had finished his scan. There wasn’t much unique data that he could parse from his screwdriver.
Seven looked at a couple more screens before shaking her head. “However he disappeared, his program did not leave any fragments of code.” She moved to the computer console on the EMH’s desk. “It appears the Doctor managed to set up an auto save program in case of catastrophes. There’s a version here, waiting for someone to activate it.”
“Please state the nature of the medical emergency,” The Doctor said as he came online.
The Time Lord grinned one of his big smiles. “Welcome back Doctor!”
“How much do you remember?”
“I was stuck in Sickbay after my emitter malfunctioned. I found it was possible to patch my program into the EPS relays and made it to the bridge, where the relays failed. After that it gets hazy, then dark. How long do we have until we’re out of the nebula?”
“Hours. Less than seven, maybe six.” the Doctor replied.
“Thank you for reactivating me so quickly! I didn’t lose a lot of time it seems. What’s our status?”
“In order to decrease the time left in the nebula I did cut life support from all decks except this one and the decks with the crew. We discovered the pods are on charge now. But we should be able to leave the nebula and wake the crew before they run down.” Seven answered.
Behind her the Doctor crossed his fingers behind his back. Even the Time Lord had had enough adventure for now. He wasn’t sure if anything happened on the other decks if he’d be able to survive long enough on his bypass to fix the problem. Or if the EMH could venture out exposed after so recently coming back online.
With the restricted life support, they just stayed in Sickbay. But they tried to talk about other things than their current predicament. The EMH and Seven discussed ship matters that were happening before the Doctor was rescued. The hologram even started to plan his next opera showcase. The Time Lord could tell Seven feigned interest for the EMH. He smiled.
With only an hour to go, they felt the deck lurch. The Doctor nearly jostled out of his seat. It felt like the longest respite they had in a few days. “Once more into the breach,” he muttered. Seven and the EMH were at a wall console, already trying to get to the bottom of this. “Computer, how long do we have left?”
“Forty Seven Minutes.”
“If we split up then there’s one group of pods left unsupervised.” The EMH spitballed. From Sickbay it appeared everyone's vitals were normal.
The deck lurched and bounced unpredictably. “We must be on the edge of the nebula.”
“Some turbulence!” The Doctor yelped as he fell onto the EMH’s desk. He was much better at TARDIS surfing. “Is there anything we can do?”
Seven looked at him. “We can’t access the power transfer protocols. We’d need to go to Engineering which is off limits for now.” The deck rocked underneath them, gentler this time.
“So we wait?” Even in the midst of this chaos, the Doctor didn’t enjoy being forced onto the sidelines.
The EMH brought up the crew’s vitals. “We could go and monitor the crew directly... Seven is there life support to get between the cargo bays and holodeck?”
Seven had to check on the console as she brought up a few schematics. “Yes there is.”
The turbulence continued as they made their way to the nearest cargo bay.
As chaotic as everything around them was, inside the cargo bay was silent, relative calm. The Doctor left Seven and the EMH to check on the stasis pods while he headed to the back to his TARDIS. Everything seemed fine, she was riding out the turbulence well. He was about to duck inside and check on Amy and Rory when the EMH told him they were heading out. First thing he would do as soon as they were clear of the nebula was rescue Amy and Rory from the TARDIS.
They found more of the same in the next couple bays. It only took a few moments for Seven to scan the bays and confirm that everything was normal. The Doctor wished they could eat up more time.
The last of the group was a holodeck that was the furthest from Sickbay. It was not calm, unlike the cargo bays. A few of the pods near the front were completely offline. The EMH raced to those while Seven checked the status of the other pods. And on the floor was Tom Paris, who had managed to escape without triggering the alarm.
The Time Lord reached down and heaved Tom Paris back into his pod and squared him away for the next half hour. Of all the crew he escaped the most. Perhaps he was claustrophobic.
The Doctor helped the EMH stabilize the pods which had gone off line. It appeared they had arrived in time to fix it without many repercussions for the crew. Technically the pods had at least a half hour more left in their charge. Seven would have to find out what went wrong later.
The deck rocked, but more gentle than before. The pods had more than enough charge to get through the end of the nebula. All the three of them could do was wait.
Finally not with a bang but with a whimper and a gentle rock of the ship they were clear of the nebula.