Delta Flyer

The Delta Flyer was a unique Starfleet shuttlecraft constructed by the crew of the USS Voyager in the Delta Quadrant in 2375. The vessel was designed to handle environments that would be too hazardous for a standard shuttlecraft, the crew having acknowledged that standard shuttles were of little use in the increasingly hostile and unexplored Delta Quadrant. The vessel was a blend of Starfleet and Borg technology, designed in collaboration between B'Elanna Torres, Tom Paris, Tuvok, Harry Kim and Seven of Nine. It featured an ultra-aerodynamic tetraburnium alloy hull, retractable warp nacelles, parametallic hull plating, unimatrix shielding, and a Borg-inspired weapon system, including photonic missiles, most of which were Paris' conceptions. For aesthetic reasons, Paris designed the flight controls to resemble those of 20th-century aircraft. But to Paris' disappointment, the addition of dynametric tailfins was denied by Tuvok. 


 * The existence of the retractable warp nacelles has been stated on screen, and they were shown in as the Delta Flyer dropped out of warp while heading to the site of survey mission.

Delta Flyer - first mission
In 2375, plans for a new shuttlecraft, called the Delta Flyer, were devised by Tom Paris. Captain Janeway authorized construction, which was led by Paris, in order to retrieve a multispatial probe that was lost in the atmosphere of a gas giant and in danger of being stolen by the Malon. The Malon began work on a shuttlecraft also, and finished theirs before the Flyer was complete. When the Malon sent out their shuttle, the Flyer was deployed early; despite a flaw with the vessel's structural integrity. The Flyer was successful in retrieving the probe, but a hull breach started to occur. B'Elanna Torres designed a makeshift device that deployed a temporary forcefield, successfully containing the breach. 

Delta Flyer - 2375 missions
The Delta Flyer's second mission was to infiltrate a Species 8472 terrasphere. Paris, Kim and Chakotay took the Flyer out to investigate the terrasphere. When the undercover Chakotay was revealed, Voyager rendezvoused with the Delta Flyer. 

The Delta Flyer encountered near-destruction in its third mission when it got caught in an ion storm and crash landed three kilometers under rock on a Class M planet. Life support began to fail and Paris, Samantha Wildman and Tuvok did not believe they could be rescued. The Voyager crew was able to dig through the rock and locate the Delta Flyer. The crew and the Flyer were beamed aboard. 

In early 2375, Voyager was equipped with a quantum slipstream drive and used it in an attempt to return to the Alpha Quadrant. The Flyer, piloted by Chakotay and Kim, rode the slipstream ahead of Voyager in order to chart the slipstream and send appropriate phase corrections to Voyager. Unfortunately, the drive proved unstable and nearly caused Voyager to lose structural integrity. Fortunately, a Harry Kim from an alternate timeline was able to transmit a phase correction directly to Seven of Nine's Borg implants which shut the drive down. Use of the drive was then abandoned until it could be better understood.

In the previously mentioned alternate timeline, the Delta Flyer remained in the slipstream on course to the Federation while Voyager'' crash-landed on a planet. Fifteen years later, Chakotay, Kim and Tessa Omond stole the Delta Flyer from a shipyard and used it to locate the remains of Voyager. After retrieving Seven of Nine's corpse- by analysing her cranial implant they intended to determine when it had shut down and thus when Voyager was destroyed, allowing them to transmit their message accordingly- and the Doctor- the only person who could determine the necessary temporal coordinates-, they used a temporal transmitter to transmit the proper phase corrections to Seven via the implant, which would allow Voyager to remain safe in the slipstream. However, Kim's corrections did not work, and he was forced to send another message, this time with the corrections which would collapse the slipstream. Just as he transmitted the drive shutdown sequence, the Delta Flyer was destroyed by a warp core breach induced by attacks from the USS Challenger (NCC-71099).''

A few months later, the Delta Flyer was used to go underwater on the Waters of the Moneans. The Flyer was able to take large amounts of stress, entering great depths of water. It was even able to reach the core of the ocean which was quite deep underwater. This core was actually a large containment field generator. 

During a mission where Voyager crew stole a Borg Transwarp coil, Seven of Nine was captured by the Borg. The coil was installed onboard the Delta Flyer, for which it was used to proceed to the unicomplex to retrieve Seven. When Kathryn Janeway beamed into the complex, she was stuck there with Seven when the Borg Queen activated a dispersal field. Janeway was able to disable the Queen's interface to the collective and the field was deactivated. With Janeway and Seven retrieved, the Flyer proceeded back to transwarp and returned to Voyager, pursued by the Queen's diamond; they were briefly forced to transfer power from life support to the shields during the pursuit to give themselves the necessary shield strength to reach the exit point before they were captured. 

Delta Flyer - 2376 missions
When Voyager encountered a graviton ellipse, the Delta Flyer was sent in to locate the Ares IV command module, which was lost in the ellipse in 2032. The crew of Tom Paris, Chakotay, and Seven of Nine examined several artifacts trapped in the ellipse before finding the command module. While the Flyer attempted to tractor the module out of the ellipse, the ellipse was hit by a dark matter asteroid. The Delta Flyer became severely damaged and Chakotay was injured. Aboard Voyager, B'Elanna Torres devised a method to use an ion distributor from the Ares IV to repair vital components of the Flyer. Seven beamed to the Ares IV module where she located the distributor and downloaded the sensor data and logs of the Ares IV commander, John Kelly. She returned to the Flyer, with the distributor and Kelly's body. The distributor was connected to the Flyer power systems and the shuttle was able to escape before the ellipse returned to subspace. 

During a period of shore leave on Voyager, Janeway took the Flyer to a nearby planet in the Norcadian star system. When Seven and Tuvok were kidnapped by Penk, Voyager engaged in battle with his vessel. Penk was able to disable Voyager, but Janeway arrived in the Flyer and was able to disable Penk's signal antenna, forcing Penk to lower power to his ship's force fields. This allowed Seven and Tuvok, along with several other competitors held hostage aboard the ship, to be rescued. Janeway and the Flyer returned to Voyager. 

Chakotay, Neelix, Harry Kim, and Tom Paris returned from a mission aboard the Delta Flyer and were abducted by a damaged Borg cube run by adolescent Borg. The Flyer was locked in a Borg hanger while the Voyager crew were attempting to negotiate for the return of the shuttle and its crew. Before the Borg cube was destroyed due to a feedback pulse after the Borg attempted to remove Voyager's deflector dish, the Delta Flyer escaped the ship. 

Later that year, Janeway decided to take the Flyer on an astrological survey, crewed by Voyager crewmembers who were not working to the best of their abilities. The mission became dire when the Flyer was attacked, disabling its warp drive. Janeway plotted a course for a nearby planet and ordered the crewmen to abandon the Flyer. They refused to leave her, although one crewmember, Mortimer Harren, abandoned the Flyer aboard a escape pod and used it to distract the dark matter object. Harren inadvertently discovered how to deter the object using phasers, which the Delta Flyer used to escape. Soon after Harren was returned to the Flyer, an explosion occurred, disabling it. Voyager picked up the distress signal and retrieved the damaged shuttle. 

The Delta Flyer was impersonated by a vessel piloted by several con artists attempting to use the reputations of the Voyager crew for criminal purposes. In order to track their hiding spot, Voyager captured one of the criminals, Dala, and allowed her to escape aboard the Delta Flyer. Tom Paris and the Doctor stowed away in the aft compartment, apprehended Dala, and retook the Flyer after she flew it to the hiding spot of the criminals. 

While on an exploration mission, the Delta Flyer crashed on a planet with a pre-warp society. Harry Kim was able to evacuate, but B'Elanna Torres remained aboard and survived the impact. A poet on the planet, named Kelis, found the Flyer and figured out how to access its database, using Voyager's experiences in the Delta Quadrant as a basis for his plays. Torres attempted to repair the Flyer with Kelis's help, but the ship was damaged beyond her means. Kim eventually located the Flyer and brought an emergency transmitter from the escape pod, which was used to send a distress signal to Voyager. The Flyer was transported aboard and needed major repairs. Near the end of 2376, Captain Janeway, Commander Tuvok, and Lieutenant Torres flew the Delta Flyer to a Borg tactical cube, with the goal of infiltrating the vessel and assisting the drones of Unimatrix Zero. While approaching the Cube, the Borg Queen located the Flyer. The away team beamed onto the Cube just as the Flyer was destroyed. 

The destroyed Flyer was replaced by the Delta Flyer II, of similar design and specification, albeit with fewer "Captain Proton"-inspired embellishments. The Delta Flyer II was a reconstruction of the original Delta Flyer that was in service aboard the USS Voyager in the 2370s. Its predecessor had been destroyed during a mission to infiltrate a Borg cube the previous year. 

This version of the Delta Flyer sported pop-out impulse thrusters, which gave the ship greater sublight speeds. The interior was slightly redesigned with an emphasis on comfort, the dark tones of the original Delta Flyer were replaced with a more colorful environment.

The Delta Flyer II was equipped with pulse phased weapons and a duranium-enforced hull. 

Missions
The Delta Flyer II first saw action when Seven of Nine's cortical implant began to malfunction, infiltrating a damaged Borg ship to steal an implant from one of the many Borg corpses. Although the attempt itself proved pointless, since Seven needed a 'transplant' from a living Borg, the endeavor was still an impressive demonstration. 

The Delta Flyer II took part in the first Trans-Stellar Rally, where it was rigged by another competitor to explode. Its destruction was averted after the warp core was ejected into a class J nebula, containing the antimatter explosion. It was also on this flight that Tom Paris proposed to B'Elanna Torres, and they subsequently went away on the Flyer for their honeymoon. 

On a later mission, while crewed by Harry Kim, Seven of Nine and the Doctor, the Delta Flyer II was captured by a race at war with their holograms, or 'photonics', who nearly destabilized The Doctor's holographic matrix. To save him, Seven transferred The Doctor into her Borg implants to keep him safe until they were able to send a message to Voyager, allowing him to control her body and experience real sensations for the first time. 

It was on a mission in the Delta Flyer II that Harry Kim, Seven of Nine and Neelix encountered a damaged ship that requested Kim become its captain until they reached their destination. The experience did not go as well as Kim had hoped (mainly because the crew turned out to be lying about the contents of their cargo), but it still taught him some valuable lessons about command. 

The Delta Flyer II was used by Chakotay, Tuvok and Paris to pursue a vessel crewed by Hirogen created Holograms into the atmosphere of a Class Y Planet. They disabled the vessels shields to beam B'Elanna Torres to safety, then rescue The Doctor and surviving Hirogen Hunters.

The Delta Flyer II also proved useful, albeit indirectly, as a means of rescuing the crew after they were nearly all abducted and brainwashed by a group of aliens called the Quarren. At the time of the abduction, Chakotay, Harry Kim and Neelix were using the Flyer II on a diplomatic mission to another planet, and were thus spared the attack. Following the mission, they were able to recover Voyager and The Doctor, who had remained behind and activated the newly-created Emergency Command Hologram protocols to repair the ship. With this minuscule crew, Voyager tracked down its missing crewmen and was eventually able to effect a rescue. 

A mission in the Delta Flyer II also proved vital in another regard; teaching Q's son, Q (Junior), how to take responsibility for his actions. When Q Junior stole the Delta Flyer II and tried to run away from Voyager to escape his father, accompanied by Icheb, it was Icheb becoming injured that convinced Q Junior to make up for what he had done. As a result, Q Junior was able to return to the Continuum. 

The Flyer II also saw use on Voyager ' s first official Starfleet mission for seven years; find the lost Friendship 1 probe, launched centuries ago as a means of telling other civilizations how to build a warp drive in order to make contact prior to the existence of the Federation. Unfortunately, the probe was discovered to have poisoned the natives of the planet where it landed due to the radiation it emitted, causing them to believe Earth intended to conquer them. After providing medical care for a sick infant, the away team were able to convince the natives that no harm had been intended, although Joseph Carey was shot and killed before matters could be straightened out. 

One of the more humorous occasions where the Delta Flyer II saw use was when Paris, much to his chagrin, was forced to take piloting lessons after violating a local rule of a planet the crew were visiting for shore leave. However, due to the need to provide aid for a people with a unique way of life, Paris was forced to leave before the lesson was finished, and consequently received an automatic fail. 

Fighting alongside Neelix's ship, the Baxial, the Flyer II proved pivotal in the defense of a Talaxian colony against the miners who wished to force the colonists out, buying Neelix enough time to plant force field emitters to protect the colonists. 

The Flyer II ' s last use prior to Voyager ' s return to the Alpha Quadrant occurred when The Doctor was forced to steal the Flyer II and the warp core to bargain for Captain Kathryn Janeway's life after she was abducted by an alien race. With the aid of Paris and Tuvok in a shuttlecraft, The Doctor and Janeway were able to escape with the warp core. 

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