begins a speech, B'Elanna sees a Klingon warrior rush in and slaughter the crew. Briefly knocked out, B'Elanna awakens on a creaking boat. A guard roughly tells her that "the dead ask no questions."
After some manhandling by guards, a fellow prisoner tells her they're on the mythical Barge of the Dead, which takes dishonored warriors to Gre'tlhor, or Klingon Hell.
B'Elanna meets the boat's ferryman, the mythical Kotar, sentenced to a gloomy afterlife for killing the Klingon gods. She says she doesn't believe in him and draws a weapon, but he knocks it away, calling her a "foolish girl" and cutting her hand in the process.
At which point, another soul arrives on the barge: B'Elanna's mother.
But then B'Elanna is back in the Voyager sick bay. "It's all right. You're safe," says the
finds her reading a sacred Klingon scroll. She says it's her fault her mother is en route to Gre'tlhor -- the mother is being punished for the daughter's secularism.
However, citing the precedent of the great warrior Kahless, B'Elanna believes she can go to the Barge of the Dead and rescue her mother personally.
To this end, B'Elanna requests that she be allowed to undergo a near-death experience in sick bay, recreating the conditions of the ion storm in order to revisit the Klingon netherworld. Janeway says no, but relents when B'Elanna flatters her by saying she wants her mother to be proud, to know B'Elanna in the way Janeway does.
In sick bay, the Doctor begins the procedure. B'Elanna is in a containment field with reduced oxygen and high ion levels. Her "neural activity is nominal," says Tom.
Back on the barge. B'Elanna's mother blames her for the pending damnation and scoffs at B'Elanna's plan to take her place and then be retrieved by Voyager. Kotar enters, aware of the planned deception, and B'Elanna agrees to truly take her mother's place -- not just a part of a controlled experiment sham, but the real thing -- and suffer forever in Gre'tlhor.
Mother objects but Kotar agrees, because soon B'Elanna is walking a gangplank outside the fiery gates of Klingon Hell.
Back in sick bay, B'Elanna's neural patterns are breaking down. They're losing her.
Hell looks like Voyager
Before the gates of Gre'tlhor, B'Elanna is knocked out -- weirdly enough, by Tuvok, appearing as a Klingon warrior. She awakens on Voyager -- but it's really Klingon Hell. The Doctor and Neelix, or demons that look like them, are there as well.
B'Elanna is told she'll spend eternity aboard (this version of ) Voyager because she was never happy on Voyager even while alive. Moreover, the crew on this phantom starship rebukes and disdains her. Tuvok's coming after her with a weapon again.
But then she's back on the barge. Her mother is there -- but dressed as Janeway, who has long been a maternal figure to B'Elanna. B'Elanna desperately asks what she's "supposed to do." Her mother says "You are the only one who can answer that question. Choose to live, B'Elanna."
In sick bay, attempts to revive B'Elanna continue.
B'Elanna sees the demonic Voyager crew jeering at her. She swings a weapon at them, then tosses it away, saying she's "tired of fighting." The crew says they are not her enemies.
Her mother says B'Elanna has taken "the first step of [her] journey." She says they will see each other again, in Sto'vo'qor (Klingon Heaven) -- or perhaps just "when you get home."
Revived in the sick bay, B'Elanna gives Janeway a hug.
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