Dr Z bent over Kes, checking her vital signs, while Neelix hovered in the entrance to the intensive care area.

'Is she going to be okay?' Neelix asked, his voice uneven.

'I'm doing the best I can, but she can't hold up against this punishment for much longer.' The EMH addressed the roof. 'Sickbay to bridge.'

'Bridge here. How's Kes going, Doctor?'

'Not well, Commander. I would suggest that we either leave this area or destroy the anomaly. If we do neither, then it is my opinion that Kes will expire in approximately fifteen minutes. The pulses are too strong and too frequent for her to deal with them properly.'

'Understood, Doctor. Bridge out. Did you catch that, Ms Hick?'

'Sure did. I think that we may have little choice in collapsing the anomaly. Miss Kes' problems notwithstanding, my science department tells me that the bursts of energy from the anomaly are changing wavelength. Soon they're going to do more than wobble our ships about, if you catch my meaning.'

'Our sensors have detected no change, Chakotay,' B'Elanna said, running a quick check, just to be sure.

'No offence, Lieutenant Torres, but your sensors have gone two years without a major refit or starbase service. Ours have just been upgraded and we've forbidden Chaedy from even approaching the arrays and diagnostics equipment, so they're working at their optimum. The anomaly is changing phase. Even if we didn't have Kes to worry about, we have about twenty minutes before the anomaly becomes a full-fledged tear in sub-space.'

'Point taken, Lieutenant. What would you suggest we do?'

'Well, your Dr Z says we've got about fifteen minutes until those bursts kill Kes - the anomaly will go critical in twelve, so I think we should give the guys in there ten. I feel like crap having to do this, but I think we should collapse the thing.'

Chakotay looked about his bridge. The faces that watched him were sympathetic, but obviously happy it wasn't their choice. On the screen, Lieutenant Hick was getting the same looks, and had reached what Chakotay knew to be the right decision. He just couldn't think straight at the moment. He had made bad calls in the past, usually resulting in the deaths of fellow crewmembers.

There are times in every officer's life when he begins to doubt his suitability for command. However, when a sub-space anomaly is in the process of killing one of your crew, destroying your ship and quite possibly tearing the universe a new - as it were - asshole, is not the best of times to do so. Unfortunately, that is just what Chakotay was doing now. All his past failures had just ganged up on the Commander and he could see no clear way out of his predicament.

If they collapsed the anomaly, it would almost certainly destroy the asteroid, killing the crewmembers from the Compromise and three of his own crew, including his Captain and his Chief of Security. On the other hand, if they didn't destroy the anomaly, not only would it kill Kes, it would probably destroy a good portion of this sector. He just couldn't make that decision now.

'Can you give me a minute to talk it over with my crew?' he asked.

Although Colleen understood, she was also sure she was going to turn out the bad guy in this one no matter what happened, so her reply was almost uncharacteristically terse.

'I'll give you ten,' she said, and the Compromise half of the screen went dead.

Euan struggled to open his eyes and groaned. Stun settings always gave him a headache.

As he rolled over and tried to sit up, he saw, blurry and indistinct, the bizarre chiropteran woman who had been trying to screw up their lives for centuries. She was bent over the machinery which had previously caused all of the senior crew's deaths, and giggling just a bit.

'You're not going to get away with this, Chick,' said Euan, staggering to his feet. Around him, the various Compromise and Voyager crewmembers were coming to and rubbing their eyes.

Chick laughed at him, picking up her phaser. 'Don't be too sure, Bowen. I wanted to keep you alive so you could see my final triumph, but there's no reason why I have to keep it that way.' She grinned.

Captain Janeway struggled to her feet. 'I don't understand. Why are you so angry with these people that you have been chasing them for three hundred years?'

Chick smiled again, the smile becoming a little tense. 'Because they took her away from me. She was all mine, and that slut stole her!' She pointed the phaser at Ratbat. 'And then her other slutty friend stole her as well, and then she died and there's nothing anyone can ever do about it, and it's all her fault!' She fired a random blast with the phaser, which went over Ratbat's head.

'So...' Ruth looked around the surrounding area, trying to find a possible escape route. 'So what is all this going to accomplish? You've made it here, but it doesn't seem to have done much for you.'

A slight movement caught her eye. Behind Chick's peripheral vision, hiding in a hollow of the machinery, was Bobbi. Ruth stared; in the hustle, she hadn't noticed that Bobbi wasn't there. But she was there now, and she was between Chick and the Epicentre.

The barmy woman was talking again. 'It took me a while with that loser's research, but I worked it out. I am going to enter the Epicentre. It has the power to turn me into Me Squared, and then I'm going to show you all who's boss! I'll show you who's a loser!'

Ruth watched Bobbi turn and look at the Epicentre. Chick continued to rant, waving the phaser around at random.

Bobbi looked back at Ruth, and nodded slightly.

She waited until Chick had her back completely turned and stepped out of her hiding place. She first experimentally put her hand to it, then, squaring her shoulders bravely, she walked into the column of light.

Despite readings that were telling them all kinds of nasty things, the image on the viewer of the body that held the Epicentre was doing a marked lack of interesting things.

Terri snatched a glance at her watch. 'Only six minutes left, guys...if you're going to pull another one of your miracles out of your arses, ya'd better do it quick...'

'Oh, I don't think you can appreciate what this is all about,' Chick waved an arm towards the light that they now knew to be the Epicentre itself. Fortunately, she didn't turn all the way around, and never made out the slight silhouette of Bobbi, still inside it.

'We can't?' asked Harry. Damn, she would have to have looked at him for that one.

Dementia was actually starting to appear in Chick's eyes. 'We can't do anything in this universe. There's always something in the way. 'Nature, physics...things like that stop us becoming all we could be. If I use this, I can bypass all of that crap. I can grab the powers that I know I'm capable of. Then...then, you'll all suffer first.' Her gaze made it clear that Ratbat had been elected head of 'you all'.[49]

'Sounds to me like she's got a bit of a screw loose,' Harry muttered beneath his breath.

'Darling, this one's got an entire Meccano set loose,' Ratbat hissed back.

No, Chick had heard. 'What are you two talking about?' she demanded.

Graham shrugged. 'They were just reflecting. You are a bit fucking nuts, aren't you?'

'Oh, you think so?' she growled. She looked towards the doctor, her finger tensing over the button.

Then, suddenly, it was gone, plucked from her grasp by a purple-clad arm.

'Cruk!' spat Chick, and all eyes turned to the arm's owner.

It was Bobbi, or rather, it both was her and wasn't her. Her uniform had been transformed into a deep purple, flowing garment, embroidered in gold with Celtic patterns. Her hair was more bountiful, yet managed to be staying under control by some unknown force. She carried herself more like a newly-incarnated goddess than a single mother who worked with spaceship engines, and where once her eyes had looked slightly world-weary, they now shone like they rarely had before, alive with five centuries of wisdom and beyond.

'I'd really think about giving up now if I were you,' she told Chick. Again, the voice. Like singing without a specific tune.[50]

Chick laughed. 'Yeah. Of course. Just what I've been waiting for all my life, but since Scholes thinks it's a bit of a bad idea, I may as well just give up now! Dream on...' She turned to push Bobbi out of the way, but the Pirate Queen locked a hand around the other woman's wrist. Quite firmly.

As they started to struggle, Janeway hissed to Euan, 'What happened to Chief Scholes?'

Before Euan could answer,[51] Graham interjected, 'I think the Epicentre did that. That's Bobbi, living up to her inner strengths.'

'The ÜberBobbi,' added Euan.

Chick stared at Bobbi, and suddenly started to giggle. Shoving herself away from the purple-clad one, she waved her phaser at the group.

'See? You see? It works! And I'm going to go in and do the same thing she did, and then...' Chick jumped up and clicked her heels. 'And then! Then I'm really going to fuck you lot!'

Bobbi stepped in front of Chick. 'You can't go in there. It wasn't made for humans to mess with. We have to leave here and collapse the anomaly.' The harmonics in her voice continue to bounce around as echoes for a few seconds after she finished speaking.

Despite Bobbi's heightened state of Being, Chick did not seem to be particularly intimidated. 'You can't tell me what to do, you bitch!' she screamed. 'I want to go in there and I'm going to!'

As she advanced toward the anomaly, Bobbi once more put out her hand. 'You aren't going in there.' She gently placed her hand against Chick's chest and pushed her back.

'Fuck off! You can't stop me!'

The pair grappled with each other, the remaining crewmembers looking on, unable to step in for fear of upsetting the balance. Ruth, phaser rifle at the ready for a clear shot, was feeling even more frustrated with the situation than normal. It seemed a little irritating that Super-Bobbi shouldn't be able to whip this chick's butt with one arm tied up.[52]

Bobbi was gradually giving ground on Chick. Although the chiropteran was smaller than Bobbi, she had an insane intensity on her side, and was actually being quite effective.

Finally she seemed to snap. 'You can't stop me!' she howled, and twisted Bobbi's arm around to breaking point.

As the Meta-Bobbi yelped and jumped backward, Chick gave a final squeak of triumph and ran into the Epicentre.

'Shit!' yelled Euan. 'Now she'll be extra-beef as well!'

'No she won't,' said Ratbat, louder than was really necessary for Euan to hear her. He looked around, surprised. Ratbat winked at him.

Bobbi, somewhat quicker than her captain, agreed with Ratbat. 'I think this thing turns you into the ultimate of yourself. How good could the ultimate Chick be?'

'Not very,' said Ratbat. 'In fact, she's pretty crap when you come to think about it.'

'Wasting all these centuries on revenge and all,' Bobbi added.

'I mean, really, what's revenge worth anyway? It's not much.'

'In fact -' Bobbi's voice became rather pointed. 'I don't think that the Best of Chick Collette would be up to terribly much at all!'

The shimmering light of the Epicentre flickered slightly. A silhouetted figure began to emerge. The assembled crew held their breath.

Chick limped out of the light. Her eyes were sunken and blackened, her thick black hair reduced to wispy strands of grey. Instead of her crisp suit, she was wearing a tattered grey smock, ripped in so many places it was difficult to tell its shape.

'You,' she managed, pointing a withered claw at Ratbat. 'You did this.' Her voice was cracked and rasping, as though great age and strong vinegar had hit it both at the same time.

'No, Chick. I didn't do it. You did,' said Ratbat, eyeing her nemesis coldly.

Chick scowled. 'Everything I had in life, you had to do better. Everything I wanted, you got. Why? No reason. Just that life was unfair. So I hated you. I hated you all!' She cast her eyes around at the Compromise crewmembers. 'You took the one person I ever cared about, and then she died. So there was nothing left for me but revenge.' She raised the phaser that was still clutched in her shrunken paw. 'And I will have revenge...'

'Miss Chick,' said Tuvok. 'May I ask something?'

'What is it, you bloody annoying Vulcan git?'

Ignoring the insult, Tuvok carried on with the question. 'You wished to pursue a relationship with Lezanne, did you not? And it was the absence of this relationship which has triggered your centuries of hatred against these people?'

'What's your point?' She pointed the phaser at him.

'Well...' He paused. 'Why didn't you simply...ask her out?'

Chick stared at him for a full minute, while the other crewmembers held their breath.

She dropped the phaser and fell to her knees. Throwing back her head, she opened her mouth and let out a scream of inhuman anguish.

'Chakotay to Compromise,' came the voice through the speakers.

'On screen,' Colleen called and the tattooed face of Voyager's first officer appeared next to the rapidly expanding and contracting anomaly. 'Yes, Mr Chakotay?'

'How long does your science department give us?'

'About four minutes, which by my reckoning gives Kes about two. Have you made your decision?'

'Yes.'

'And...?'

'I will instruct my tactical officer to fire a spread of quantum torpedoes into the heart of the anomaly.'

'OK. We can do the same. Throw in some phasers and a tachyon beam, and that should do it.'

'On your mark, Lieutenant.'

'Aye, sir. Tactical, ready to fire in three... two... one. Mark!'

'Mark!'

The streams of energy from the Compromise and the torpedoes from the Voyager converged on the anomaly. As she watched them go, Colleen felt a sinking in her stomach.

'Fuck I hate this job,' she said to no-one in particular.

No-one had been expecting the first torpedo to hit. Certainly not Chick, who had been using the last of her strength to get back towards the Epicentre, only to be flung into it by the force of the detonation.

'What the smeg is that?!' squealed Ratbat as the ground started shaking around them.

Janeway shielded her face from the sparks of the machinery being battered around her. 'My guess is our crews have started firing at the Epicentre!'

'An effective way to disable it,' observed Tuvok. 'Unfortunately, not a very effective way to ensure our continued survival.'

'It's when you say things like that that I get really embarrassed about having the same job as you,' Ruth told him. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Chick, restored to her usual appearance, slinking towards the open TARDIS. 'No you don't,' she muttered, and raced towards the time machine, slipping in before Chick could even notice her.

Strange how similar so many TARDISes look, she reflected, noticing the similarity between this vehicle and Clifford's. No time for that, though. Better get rid of this thing before Chick tries to make off with it. Now, Clifford had never got around to showing her how to set co-ordinates, but she did recognise...

'Fast Return Switch,' she gasped, slamming down a large button on the console. As the time rotor started to shudder into action, she bound back out the door, tackling Chick to the ground as she did.

'Hey!' Chick noticed the TARDIS dematerialising. 'What the fuck did you do, midget?'

'Don't want you running around with Time Lord technology, do we? That thing's retracing its trip here, stage by stage. It'll probably end up back on Gallifrey eventually. Now, are you going to come quietly, or...No, you're not.

'Good.'

Harry and Leila were shifting Emma out of the machine she had been wired into, staggering wildly as another explosion hit.

'I don't think this place is going to last much longer!' called Harry.

'Dammit!' Euan cried. 'A Captain should go down with his ship!'

'Well, you've certainly gone down on yours enough times,' supplied Graham.

'Shit!' Everyone turned around to see where Ruth was grappling with empty air. 'How'd she do that?'

Wincing as sparks and debris flew around her, Bobbi instantly had a tricorder out. 'She beamed out! When that device around Emma copped it...'

'...so did the she's-been-reading-too-much-mythology-in-the-hospital field!' realised Leila. 'Does that mean that's enough to...'

'Voyager to Janeway.'

'Compromise to Bowen.'

'Colleen! What happened?'

'One of the fields around you just dropped out. If we get another couple of seconds for Noomy to get a lock on you...'

Euan saw the blue haze and heard the whine as the confinement beam started to envelop him.

Then the whole place exploded.

Janeway, Tuvok and Harry ran onto the bridge of their ship.

'Captain!' sighed Tom. 'You made it!'

'Barely, Mr Paris. If that had been any closer a shave, we wouldn't have any face left.'

'All the torpedoes have hit,' Chakotay told her. 'There's a chain reaction in progress. And that anomaly doesn't like it much.' He smiled, and added, 'It's good to see you again, Captain.'

'Thank you. Tuvok - is there any sign out there of Collette's ship?'

'No, Captain. Either it is cloaked, or has already left.'

'We never saw her, Captain,' supplied Tom. 'But we really should move back from the explosion. The Compromise is already making its way...'

'Agreed,' said Janeway emphatically. 'Mr Paris, bring her about, heading 180 mark 0, and—'

Then the anomaly collapsed, the asteroid was destroyed, and a large group of shockwaves burst forth and struck the two Starfleet ships.

Dominika Reed watched as Chick entered the flight deck of their ship. 'You don't look much like you found an Epicentre,' she observed.

'Found it all right,' Chick growled at her. 'Are those NSF morons following us?'

'That cloaking device you pinched is working fine. And we're way out of any blast range.'

'Blast range,' repeated Chick. 'It's the same crukking story, isn't it? Every time I find something I want...something I like...those pricks have go and take it away from me.'

'?'

'They blew it away. They take everything from me. Epicentres. TARDISes. Victories. Love.'

Reed scowled, bringing her matted hair down over her eyes. 'You want to go back?' she scowled.

Chick shook her head dejectedly. 'Not now, Dominika. They'll keep.

'Just not for very long, that's all.'

Graham peeled himself off the floor of the Compromise's bridge. 'Why omnipotent beings can never be bothered to do their own dirty work I'll never understand,' he moaned. 'Did you know that S even used to make me go and get the drinks, even when it was his round?'

'That's how the omnipotent stay omnipotent,' Euan told him.

Graham shook his head. 'That doesn't even mean anything.'

'No, it doesn't. Number Two? What kind of shape are we in?'

Colleen straightened her glasses and pulled herself into the ops chair. 'We're OK,' she said. 'We basically rode out the shockwave until we were out of range. Medical reports...same as the ship itself. Everyone's a bit shaken up, but basically they're fine.'

'And outside?'

'Hmm...there's some space/time distortions fading out...a lot of subspace interference, but that's dissipating too...I guess firing quantum torpedoes into a Q-thing inside an anomaly—'

'I was more thinking of Voyager. Are they out there?'

'There's a lot of interference,' repeated Colleen. 'But I definitely can't see any debris. No doubt they're intact.'

'Oh, good.' Euan sat back in his chair and smiled. So wherever they were, they couldn't be too far away.'