STAR TREK: A Long Road (Voyager Fix It Quest)

"Steady...steady...okay, you're good! You're good!" Petty Officer Third Class Jessie Gander called out, her hands moving to indicate the speed she wanted.

The hull plating - newly replicated by a set of five industrial replicators that had been shuttled out of the engineering bay of Voyager and into the clearing that had been earmarked for their construction and repair efforts - settled home and the engineering crew who were standing on the roof of the saucer section - firmly latched to contact points across the ship - got to work with their hand tools. Sparks flew and the Okampa who had been operating the cranes watched from their vantage point...as the ship that dwarfed most of their skyscrapers became ready, at last, for spaceflight.

The sunlight that streamed through the conference room window shone along the newly refurbished table, while the entire bridge crew conversed and shared their last night's adventuring. Well, everyone but Tuvok and Captain Katheryn Janeway.

"Do not...repeat...do not get into a drinking contest with Neelix," Tom Paris groaned, rubbing his temples slowly, a heavy cup of faint pink liquid sitting before him and smelling...absurdly foul. Harry, who was about to ask his new friend about that, instead faded off into silence as Tom picked up the cup, pinched his nose, and downed it all in one go. He shook his whole body, smacked his cheeks, and let out a 'wuuugh' noise. He smacked his lips, then nodded. "Okay. The room's not spinning anymore."

Harry chuckled. "You know, you can program alcohol to not do that, right?"

"It's not replicated," Tom said.

"It's...right," Harry said, shaking his head.

Across the table, Brian was using his napkin and a stylus to draw out the locations of the orbital defenses that the Okampa had been working on. "They've got full coverage over this entire hemisphere, and they have enough angles for cross-planet fire," he said.

"Cross...deck?" D-91 asked. "I've never had to deal with orbital defense before."

Brian used his stylus to scribble out a crude doodle of a disruptor turret - banks of heavy cannons that were capable of outgunning a heavy battleship, mounted by ranks in a swivel turret, and powered by an entire city's worth of fusion reactors transformed under his hand into a small half circle with two sticks poking out of it. "If you put them on a rise, like this, then they can depress their guns. Anyone who lands, say, over their firing radius and then advances on the ground can...have a really bad day. They're direct fire, not indirect weapons, so you'll have to wait for line of sight. But that's still...ehh...fifty clicks of radius around the city, with overlapping fields of fire, and citbuster damage."

"I don't like the fact we've armed these people," D-91 said.

"We hell, they can build their own disruptors...we just provided material," Brian said, snorting. "Besides, if you think this is scary, remember what we put on our Starbases."

Janeway let loose a low ahem.

Everyone quieted down.

"All right," she said. "I'm glad you're all refreshed from your shore leave. Hows the ship looking, Torres?"

"We're ready to fly," B'lanna Torres said. "I told you three thousand hours of labor, and we spread that over a few thousand helpful Okampa - we're good."

"The Okampan defenses, Wacoche ?" Her gaze slipped to Brian.

"They're good against everything short of a twenty ship strong fleet - that's the most number of ships you'd need to tank their orbital fire before return shots could take their shields down," he said, confidently. Then, pausing. "...or Borg. But disruptors aren't new or interesting technology. Borg have disruptors and think they're boring."

Janeway nodded, curtly. "Crew morale?" She looked to T'are.

Bian T'are sighed. "Better than expected. We've buried our dead, had our ceremonies. There are a few people who are still in denial about our situations - holodeck usage is up but that is to be expected."

Janeway frowned. "Communal or solitary?"

"Solitary," T'are said. "...obviously, uh, I don't know what people are doing in their holodeck time, like, but the psychological impacts of solitary holodeck time, especially if it's being used to compensate for unresolved trauma or issues...is...it's bad. People can reinforce unhealthy behaviors without oversight - or worse, get so used to no-consequence land that they have a hard time remembering that they're not on the holodeck anymore."

Janeway rubbed her chin. "Suggestions?"

"We earmark one of the holodecks for a communal environment - somewhere to blow off steam but...where you still need to keep others in mind." T'are smiled. "Those tend to get popular too."

"Put up a vote on what our first scenario will be," Janeway said, smiling. "We'll see what the crew wants."

She looked, then, to Tuvok.

"Astrometric report?"

Tuvok nodded. "We have located the local civilizations and have crosschecked them with what information provided by Mr. Neelix," he said. "However, I must remind you that Mr. Neelix, for all that he has assisted us on this planet, is a biased source. He is an intelligence operative for a military power that appears to be in the extractive capitalism stage of development. While it may be less overtly immoral than, for example, the Romulan Empire, it retains the biases of exploitation. This in mind..." He tapped his PADD and the screen at the rear of the room turned on, showing several boarders in hazy, hypothetical forms. "The nearest civilizations are known as the Haakonian Order, the enemies of Neelix's people. They are depicted by their information as brutal monsters but we can assume at least a measure of that is induced by wartime propaganda. The Talaxian Republic is the others - they proclaim themselves as defenders of peace, liberty, and free trade."

A quiet snort came from half the officers at the table.

"Quiet," Tuvok said. "The Kazon Sects control most of the territory here - but that control is nominal. The Kazon have no planets, their homeworld having been obliterated by the Borg when they invented what they describe as 'singularity technology' - I believe it to be, from the descriptions provided, a form of advanced artificial intelligence or cybernetic synthesis that was poised to take them into a higher stage of being. Instead, the Borg assimilated ninety percent of their population and the remainder, primarily made up of space based survivors, have taken it upon themselves into ensure this region of space is never targeted again."

Janeway nodded. "You say...nominally in control?"

"The Kazon appear to be split into dozens of tribal organizations," Tuvok said.

Brian frowned. "Is that the Talaxian description of them?" At Tuvok's nod, he sighed. "Tribal, as a term applied externally, tends to be a way to try and delegitimize power structures that are contrary to your own. It hints at primitivism and uncivilized." He shook his head. "I don't trust it - my people were called a tribe for centuries as an excuse to take their land and murder them."

"The Kazon do have weapons and tactics that are on par with the Talaxians," Tuvock said. "And more ships and better crews. The power imbalance may be less...striking than on Earth."

Brian inclined his head, conceding the point.

Janeway frowned, looking at the map. "All right..." she said, turning to face them. "This meeting isn't just a situation report. You've all heard - we're ready to launch. But the question has become: Where to launch too. Obviously, we're going home - but astrometrics has charted two plausible courses." She tapped at her own PADD and the boarders vanished and a set of three lines appeared. The first charted a smooth arc along the broad disk of the galaxy and then came to SOL.

"This course takes us seventy years," Janeway said. "And it is the safest-"

"Safest!?" Harry exclaimed. "Captain, that goes straight through Borg space!"

Janeway smiled at him, wryly. "And if the Borg were interested in assimilating a single starship, then we'd be in trouble. But Starfleet officers can walk around inside of Borg Cubes without drawing attention for hours, days, even longer if they're careful. Borg only notice ships when those ships cause damage. By simply keeping our heads down, we can travel through their space entirely unmolested. The main danger is time: Seventy years is a long mission...understatement of the year, I know. However, each lightyear we explore is another change to run into a wormhole, temporal distortion, unusual quasar, whatever it takes to get us home faster."

Nods all around.

"Second choice?" D-91 asked.

"Second choice is the highest risk," Janeway said. "But it will take us seven years to hit the Great Barrier and enter Sha'Ka'Ree."

"The what?" Harry asked.

"The planet where...wait the historical logs say that the entity living on Sha'Ka'Ree, godlike or not, was evil," Tom Paris said, sitting up in his chair.

"Also, suspectable to photon torpedoes," Janeway said, her voice dry. "The entity isn't why we'd be going. The Barrier is. The USS Enterprise under captain Kirk was able to get from the Barrier to Earth by taking advantage of the space distorting effects - the approach effects are what will let us get there so fast at all, but the leaving effects are even more pronounced, due to the effect of the Barrier's curvature."

"So, seven years of adventure then we kill god and go home," Harry said, slowly. "Sounds like a D&D campaign."

"What D&D games are you playing?" Tom asked.

"Fun ones," Harry said, shrugging.

"Third option is the middle road. We take a course to the Gamma Quadrant. The Gamma Quadrant has only been lightly explored, but the civilizations there have been mostly friendly - Wadi and their boardgames notwithstanding." Janeway said as the line appeared. "It'll take us, at minimum, twenty years - but then we reach the Wormhole and we get home. And, like with all the other paths, we will be looking for spatial anomolies to kickstart us faster." She smirked, slightly. "For all we know, we run into an Inverse Caretaker two weeks in and get home before people realize we're missing."

The crew considered.

"I've put this out to the whole crew," Janeway said. "We're all going to be voting on it. So...any questions?"

---
Vote vote vote vote vote!

[ ] The Long Way (aka the standard Voyager "Canon")
[ ] The Short Way (aka the "Fucking Seriously? Star Trek V?" Route)
[ ] The Middle Path (aka the "I too Like Babylon 5" route]