Neelix Electrocutes a Lock and Stuns Janeway to Escape Fury Prison
Star Trek: Voyager - Invasion #4: The Final Fury
By Dafydd ab Hugh
ISBN 0671541811
Previous: Neelix Meets the Fury Autocrat on the Red-Walled Planet
Next: Chakotay’s Bridge Crisis and the Trip Into the Sun
Chapter 9 is the prison-break chapter, and it belongs to Neelix more than anyone else. The bars will not bend. The walls will not burn. Brute force is dead. So the away team has to get clever with whatever the cell actually gives them.
Phaser-proof everything
Tuvok examines the bars and concludes they share properties with the metal Kim scanned on the Fury moon. All-purpose shielding. Phasers cannot phase them out. Cutting beams probably would not work either. Freezing might make the metal brittle, but they have no way to freeze anything. Bending requires roughly three times the tensile strength of steel. They have no tools.
Neelix suggests waiting for guards, stunning them, and stealing key-cards. Tuvok shoots that down with surgical politeness. Wrong keys, guards out of reach, return fire, violence drawing more violence. Neelix’s feelings get bruised. He was trying to help.
The weak point, Tuvok decides, is the lock itself. Maybe they can trigger it without the intended key. Pick it, in plain language. With what? Nobody has an answer yet.
Janeway stares at the tiny black lock box and wishes she could fire a photon torpedo into its keyhole. Neelix suggests shooting the lock with a phaser to short it out, then immediately talks himself out of it. Fusing the mechanism would make things worse. He tunes out the captain and Vulcan bickering and scans the room for something primitive.
The light panel idea
He lies back on the hard bunk, stares at the ceiling, and finally sees it. The light panel. That is your power source, he tells them. Use it to blow the lock. Janeway is actually impressed. Neelix files that away with satisfaction.
Problem two: the light is four and a half meters from the door. You cannot carry electricity in a bucket. They pop the panel cover after rocking it loose while more tourist Furies stare in. Inside is an old excited-gas tube system with a four-pronged plug. Janeway recognizes museum-grade tech. Shatter the tube, connect to the leads, overload the lock.
With what? Fingers? Janeway says that is the best suggestion Neelix has made all day. His ears flare. Oh no. She is not sending him alone. Tuvok will touch the leads. Neelix will hold Tuvok’s hand. She will hold Neelix’s hand. Human chain, Fury prison edition.
Neelix tries to dodge with a Talaxian electricity resistance lie. Tuvok notes they need current flow, not resistance, which might be Vulcan humor or might not. Neelix is too nervous to ask. He volunteers anyway. Talaxians understand duty. These Furies are tyrants and slavers. That is close enough to the people who wrecked his homeworld.
Electrocution, a stuck arm, and one phaser shot
Janeway threads her arm through the bars as far as she can. Tuvok squeezes her muscle to push farther. She jams a hairpin into the card slot with numb fingers. Neelix shatters the tube, licks his fingers, and grabs the leads.
The shock rips through all three of them. He cannot let go. He smells roasting meat. Then it stops. Neelix wakes up on the far side of the cell. The door is ajar. The lock is fried. Janeway’s arm is wedged white and useless between the bars.
Tuvok tries compression. She screams. Muscle spasm, no relaxant, no oil. Neelix usually carries machine oil but used it in the kitchen today. Tuvok makes a joke about culinary use. Nobody laughs.
Neelix gets the idea to stun her. A phaser stun relaxes the whole body. He does not warn them. He cranks the setting and fires. Janeway collapses rubbery and slippery. They work the arm free. She wakes up furious, then approves. Good thinking. Neelix smirks. He just leveled up in the crew’s eyes.
They grab the hairpin on the way out. Let them wonder. Footsteps approach. Time to run.
Why this chapter works
This is ridiculous and tense at the same time, which is basically the Neelix formula in this book. The light socket escape is the kind of solution you get when phasers fail and nobody is coming to beam you out. It is not elegant. It is desperate engineering with body parts.
I love that Janeway gets her arm stuck because of course she does. She is the captain who will wedge herself into a problem until it breaks or she does. Neelix shooting her without permission is a bold move. It works because the alternative is getting caught with the door open.
The chapter also keeps reminding us how alien Fury tech feels. They have warp drive and energy weapons, but prison locks run on old gas tubes and card slots. That mix of advanced and crude makes the world feel real instead of generic sci-fi evil empire.
Neelix’s lie about electricity resistance is funny, but his real reason for volunteering lands harder. He sees the Furies as the same category of enemy that took his planet. That gives the silly escape plan actual emotional weight.
Next up, the story splits. Chakotay has to save the ship while the away team is still underground. The parallel action is about to get wild.
Previous: Neelix Meets the Fury Autocrat on the Red-Walled Planet
Next: Chakotay’s Bridge Crisis and the Trip Into the Sun