A small shuttle sped through the black of space, its boxy, angular
front offset by the gentle curves of the drive section at its rear,
almost as if it were cobbled together from two completely different
spacecraft. Without warning, there was a flash of light as weapons
fire impacted against the small craft's shielding.

Inside the shuttle, the impacts of the weapons fire against the
shields rock its lone occupant, seated at the helm. Her hands raced
across the control panels in front of her, but she managed to
maintain her cool despite her situation. She had mottled, purplish
skin, and the concaves along the side of her hairless skull flowed
into the utilitarian jumpsuit she wore.

"Tam'vit," the woman called to the computer. "Prey'a mist'a."

"Mist'a te'untae selva," the computer's monotone male voice replied.

The woman kept manipulating the controls. An image of the attacking
ship appeared on the tactical monitor in front of her, and she
targeted her small vessel's weapons on a vulnerable location.

"Seyo tey van'sweill," she said. The tactical view of the ship
closed on her target, and she continued, "Be'ta."

The shuttle shuddered as two torpedoes launched. They sped toward
her pursuer, striking with deadly accuracy. Wounded, the ship broke
off its pursuit as the shuttle sped away. Inside, the woman at the
helm breathed a sigh of relief.

"Tam'vit," she called to the computer. "Meyo san'taya Voyager."

An image of Voyager appeared on her screen. She pressed another
sequence of buttons.

"Federation Starship Voyager," she began in English, "if you can
hear me, please respond."

* * *

"Sir, we're being hailed," Ensign Marla Gilmore announced from her
position at the Operations station at the aft of Voyager's bridge.

"By whom?" Captain Chakotay asked, turning in his seat at the heart
of the bridge.

"Unknown," Gilmore replied, "but whoever it is, their ship isn't in
our database, and they're calling us by name."

"Once again, our reputation preceeds us," Chakotay muttered. "Put it
on."

"Come on, Voyager, I know you're there," a woman's voice issued from
the bridge speakers.

"Put me through," Chakotay ordered, rising from his seat.

"Hailing frequencies open," Gilmore said.

"This is Captain Chakotay of the Federation Starship Voyager," the
Native American man said, facing the viewscreen. A moment later, the
screen blinked from a view of the stars ahead of them to the interior
of a small, cramped shuttle, a hairless, purple-skinned woman at the
controls.

"Sounds like someone got promoted," the woman quipped. "Glad to see
you made it home, too."

"You seem to have us at a disadvantage," Chakotay said, turning back
to the viewscreen after taking in the confused looks of his bridge
crew, "but do we know you?"

"I'm Ensign Lyndsay Ballard," the woman said. "I was a member of
your crew." Harsh and dubious glares stared back at the woman. "Of
course, I'm not surprised you don't recognize me."

"I don't know who you are," Chakotay began, "but I'm not amused.
Ensign Ballard died over two--"

"It was on Stardate 212563," the woman interrupted. "I can't blame
you for being skeptical,sir, but if you'll let me come aboard, I can
explain everything."

"We'll beam you to sickbay," Chakotay said flatly.

"I'm sure you'll want me behind a Level Ten forcefield," the woman
replied, chuckling mildly.

"No offense," Chakotay said.

"None taken," she said. "I'm just glad to be home."

A moment later, the channel closed and the decidedly nonhuman-
looking woman's image vanished from the screen. Commander Everett
Dyson, Chakotay's first officer, rose from his seat and walked over
to Chakotay.

"Captain," Dyson began, "what do you think?"

"She seems to know us pretty well," Chakotay admitted. "I think we
should find out who she is... and if she's telling the truth."

"Captain," Gilmore offered from the Ops station, "her ship doesn't
match anything in our database, but I've traced its trajectory, and
it does indicate that she was on a course straight out of the Delta
Quadrant."

Chakotay pondered this new information for a moment, then nodded and
made his way to the turbolift. "Mr. Dyson," he said as he stepped
into the lift, "you have the bridge."

* * *

The woman who claimed to be the resurrected Lyndsay Ballard sat on
the main biobed in sickbay as Dr. Kenneth Zimmerman -- formerly known
as the Emergency Medical Hologram, or more simply, the Doctor --
passed a scanning device over her body.

"Harry and I," the woman was saying, "were on our way to a Class-M
planet in the Ventadi Expanse to recover dilithium ore we'd picked up
a few days earlier. But when we landed, we realized it was a trap,
set by a Hirogen hunting party. They'd reconfigured a power cell to
give off false dilithium readings."

Zimmerman stepped through a forcefield that surrounded the main
surgical chamber of sickbay and made his way next to Chakotay at the
freestanding computer console nearby.

"Go on," Chakotay prompted.

"Harry and I went back to the shuttle," the woman continued. "We
were three meters away when I was hit by a neural disruptor. Harry
said my injury wasn't that bad." She paused, chuckling softly, then
added, "He always was a terrible liar."

"Please," Chakotay said, obviously interested in her tale, "continue."

"I woke up on a ship," she said, "in a stasis chamber, surrounded by
aliens. They told me they used their technology to reanimate me... I
didn't believe them when they said I'd died. But they showed me
visual scans of my own corpse lying in the torpedo casing I'd been
buried in. The Kobali said I'd been drifting for weeks."

"Kobali?" Chakotay asked.

"If you'd ever met them, you'd remember," the woman replied, then
pointed to her face. "They look just like this. After the reanimation
process, they spent months altering my DNA. They were constantly
scanning me, injecting me..."

"To make you look like one of them?" Chakotay asked.

"That's how they procreate," the woman said. "They salvage the dead
of other races, but the changes are more than cosmetic. I was given a
Kobali name and placed with a family to help me acclimate."

"You were a prisoner," Chakotay concluded.

"At first," the woman confirmed. "I wanted to contact you. To tell
you I was safe. But the Kobali wouldn't let me. They said you were
part of my kin'stika -- my... my past life, and that I needed to
forget you. All of you. So I spent two years letting my new family
think I'd accepted them. When I finally earned their trust, I stole a
shuttle and started looking for Voyager. That was over a year ago.
They've been chasing me ever since."

"In spite of her appearance," Zimmerman announced, looking up from
the computer console, "I'm detecting traces of human DNA. I've
compared them with genetic samples from the ensign's file. They
match."

"It's certainly a convincing story," Chakotay said evenly.

"But your training is telling you to consider all the
possibilities," the woman -- Lyndsay Ballard, it would seem -- said.
"Maybe I'm some sort of hybrid clone, or a telepath who accessed
Ensign Ballard's memories somehow. Believe me, I was suspicious at
first, myself. But I am Lyndsay Ballard."

"Until we find evidence to the contrary," Chakotay began, accessing
the control panel in front of him, dropping the shield, "welcome
home."

* * *

Chakotay stood near the table at the heart of the briefing room,
where his senior staff was assembled, as well as the resurrected
Lyndsay Ballard.

"I know we're all eager to welcome Ensign Ballard back," Chakotay
was saying as he walked around the seated officers. "She's shown a
lot of courage and determination; we're lucky to have her with us
again, so let's do everything we can to make her feel at home once
more." He stopped in front of his traditional chair at the head of
the table. "We'll be heading back to Earth soon to personally reunite
her with her family and friends."

"If you'll be staying aboard," began Joe Carey, Voyager's chief
engineer, "you'll find your old shift waiting for you in engineering."

"Thank you, sir," Ballard replied.

"Before we get ahead of ourselves," Dyson interrupted, "let's not
forget the Kobali are still out there."

"It would seem," Chakotay said, "they want her back as much as we
do. We'll need to take precautions in case they track her to Voyager
while we're still on our own."

"I've run a few scans on the shuttle," Lieutenant Francis Mulcahey,
Voyager's chief of security, began. "We should be able to adapt our
systems to counter an attack without much difficulty."

"Good," Chakotay said. "If there's no further business..." Taking
their captain's cue, the officers rose and filed out and onto the
bridge to resume their posts.

* * *

"My scans identified a genetic pathogen in your bloodstream,"
Zimmerman said as he and Ballard stood near the main biobed in
sickbay. "It appears to have converted most of your human DNA into a
Kobali protein structure."

"Can you reverse it?" Ballard asked.

"The biochemical changes," Zimmerman replied, "have affected every
part of your body. There's so little of your original DNA left, I
can't affect much more than cosmetic changes with these facilities."

"Are you saying," Ballard asked, "you could make me look like me
again?"

"Yes," Zimmerman replied happily. "The alterations would literally
be skin deep, and it may take several treatments, but I've devised an
inaprovaline compound which should do the trick." He loaded a vial
into a hypospray, then turned and addressed Ballard once more. "Once
we get back to Earth, I believe you'll have a very good chance of
having your old DNA fully restored."

"I've lived with this face for long enough," Ballard said. "When can
we get started?"

"Have a seat," Zimmerman replied, indicating the main biobed. After
she had settled herself onto the bed, he raised the hypospray to her
neck. "You may experience some dizziness," he warned before
proceeding with the injection. There was a telltale hiss from the
device, then a moment later, her features began to soften, and her
skin pigmentation became a more "normal" shade of pink.

"Well?" she asked.

Zimmerman turned to a passing nurse, who handed him a mirror. He in
turn handed it to Ballard. "See for yourself," he said. She looked
into the mirror, and smiled.

* * *

"Captain," Mulcahey called from the Tactical station at the rear of
the bridge the next day, "picking up a Kobali vessel on an intercept
course."

"They're hailing us," Gilmore called.

"On screen," Chakotay ordered. The starfield at warp was quickly
replaced with the image of an older Kobali man.

"I've come for J'Hetlaya," he announced.

"If you're referring to Ensign Ballard," Chakotay began, "she's made
it clear that she doesn't want to go with you."

"She's my daughter," the Kobali man replied. "Please, I've come a
very long way. I only want to speak with her."

* * *

The Kobali man stood near the windows of the briefing room, his ship
visible as a large, irregular point of light in the distance.
Mulcahey, a phaser at his hip, stood near the room's main viewer,
while another armed security officer stood close to the man. Chakotay
stood behind his chair at the head of the table that dominated the
room.

"I appreciate this, captain," the man said.

"I'm glad to oblige," Chakotay replied diplomatically, "but I want
it understood thatœMÔ
P¿Ã