as quickly as I assume that Starfleet had hundreds of deep space vessels penetrating the Delta and gamma quadrant from different avenues with different agendas and priorities, I wondered how many had been recalled for the war, but it seems that no matter what course Voyager had plotted, or what shortcut pushed them as diagonally offside as forward, those ship represent a line in space creeping toward Voyager demarcating the difference between known and unknown space that it would have been almost impossible to avoid Starfleet deep space ships after the 45 thousand light years mark.
