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Notes : Voyagers continuing journey back from the Delta Quadrant has brought them into contact with many alien cultures. In 2373 they encountered the mysterious race which they nicknamed "the Swarm". These beings controlled a large area of space across Voyagers path, blocking the ships direct route home. The Swarm are notorious in the region for being extremely reluctant to allow anybody to tresspass into their space; there are stories of ships vanishing, or being found with the crew dead. Despite this, Captain Janeway decided to cross swarm space under camoflage rather than accept a fifteen month detour.

Once into Swarm space, Voyager detected a massive cloud of ships - many thousands of them - floating apparently inert in space. The ships were generating a resonant particle wave which reduced the efficiency of Voyagers warp drive, but Janeway chose to proceed regardless. Shortly afterward Voyager encountered a derelict ship; a survivor reported that the Swarm had attacked his vessel with thousands of ships, latching onto the hull and draining energy from the systems. Unfortunately a Swarm vessel left behind during the attack detected the Starship and attacked, closely followed by the rest of the swarm.

The Swarm vessels are unarmed, but they are linked together by an inteferometric pulse. The power of these pulses linked together is capable of bringing down shields or reflecting energy weapons back at the attacking vessel. The Swarm uses this system to disable ships before clamping onto the hull in large numbers to drain the energy reserves.

Fortunately, Voyagers crew was able to modify the ships phasers to defeat the Swarms defence. Once one vessel was destroyed the pulse which linked them carried the damage over to the other vessels, forcing them to disperse and allowing Voyager to escape.