Hope and Fear

Paris and Neelix return with Arturis, an alien with a gift for languages, who helps decode the Starfleet message received months earlier. It points the way to the USS Dauntless, an experimental ship with a quantum slipstream drive that could get the crew home in three months. Seven, uneasy about life on Earth, is reluctant, and Janeway grows suspicious as details fail to add up. She discovers that Arturis faked much of the message. The Dauntless is his own ship in disguise, and his people were assimilated by the Borg after Janeway's alliance with them against Species 8472. He traps Janeway and Seven aboard and sets course to deliver them to the Borg. Using slipstream technology adapted from the Dauntless, Voyager follows. Janeway and Seven sabotage the drive and are rescued, leaving Arturis surrounded by Borg cubes. The flight has carried Voyager about 300 light years closer to home.