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

Kat sighed, slowly. She unclenched her hands. "Okay," she said, softly. "I think...part of it might also be..." She bit her lip. "You were always...my...sister. Not..." She trailed off. Just trying to say what she felt felt both stupid, trite, and impossible. Phoebe stood up, then put her hand on her shoulder with a smile.

"Lets go to the medical bay," she said, cheerfully. Maybe it was forced. Maybe it wasn't.

Kat wasn't about to call her on it.

The two of them stepped from the room and started down the corridor - coming to the turbolift just as Neelix bustled towards it, carrying a huge bushel of plants and other hydroponic products from the forward crew section gardens. While technically more energy efficient than replication, growing plants aboard the ship was more about moral than practicality, and the proof was in the pudding: Neelix looked delighted at the tubers and alien vegetables that he had gathered up. Seeing Phoebe, he beamed. "Ah, Captain! The club's going just perfectly - even if the..." He trailed off, seeing Kat. "The..." He blinked.

"Duplication from local anomaly," Kat explained.

"Of a sorts," Phoebe said.

"Ahhh!" Neelix said. "You know, this actually happened to me on my third tour with the TDF - we were patrolling the old boarder between us and the Haakonians and we flew through a cloud of charged quantons, and before you know it, there's another me, trying to strangle me and take my place!"

"See?" Kat asked.

"And you wonder why I never front outside of the holodeck!" Phoebe hissed.

"...front?" Neelix asked, as the two women stepped into the turbolift.

"Long story," Kat said, as the door shut.

Neelix frowned.

Then he scowled. "They stole my turbolift...so much for post-scarcity communism..."

The Doctor looked between the two Janeways. "You're a median plural system with minimal cross-talk and no shared experiences between fronting," he said. "Possibly traumatic in origin and stable for the past fifteen years? And none of this was in your file?"

Kat shuffled in her stance. "...not...many doctors in Starfleet-"

"Not many doctors in Starfleet have access to every medical file known to humanity in their databases," the Doctor said, his voice prim as he started to attach monitoring devices to Phoebe and Kat - assisted by a goggle-eyed Okampan nurse who was learning from him. "I do. Now, these files are woefully out of date, plurality is terribly underresearched by 24th century doctors. Too many alien species to study, not enough people interested in their own psychological makeups." He brightened. "I could write a paper!"

"No thank you," Phoebe said, her voice firm, glancing at her sister nervously - Kat rankled, actually, at that look. She's looking worried for me? I'm worried for HER! "We prefer to remain private."

"Of course, I would immediately blab your names to every newsfeed in the galaxy," The Doctor said, his voice sarcastic. "I'm only programmed with six redundant ethical subroutines..."

Phoebe frowned at him, while the Doctor stepped over to his console and began to run the devices. "Now," he said. "Your neural patterns are showing signs of linkages - quantum signatures that mean that...yes, okay...I see...ahh...fascinating."

"What is it?" Kat asked.

"Phoebe Janeway is remote piloting that body," the Doctor said, tapping at his console to bring the brain scans up on the wall. He pointed. "See, this is the brainwave pattern of your plural system - two minds, running on the same hardware, to to speak. But there is no similar pattern on Phoebe - her body is merely receiving the signals from some as of yet undetermined source."

"So, we're still a system!" Kat said, perking up.

"Yes," the Doctor said. "Now, it does mean that if anything were to happen to you, Captain, your sister would die, despite having her own body at the moment. Assuming whatever technology is facilitating this - I am going to assume it is the psychic megastructure that we're parked beside - doesn't then copy the system over to the new body. But when it comes to death and recovery from its negative effects, I wouldn't-

The sudden trill and darkening of the lights from a red alert cut the Doctor off. He frowned. "Oh goodie. Some horrible space monster or high powered warship is on its way."

Kat tapped her badge. "Report," she said.

"The away team has experimented with finding more information about the dark matter construct," Tuvok said. "Kes hit upon the idea of creating a manual for using it out of thin air. However, several minuets afterwards, our long range scans detected several ships on an approaching vector - warp factor six. The percussion bow-waves of their hulls and their com-net signatures all read...as Kazon."

"...shit," Kat hissed. "Stay here." She said to Phoebe. "Help the Doctor, we may be having wounded soon."

Brian Wacohe was enjoying his coffee when the alert signal came from R'lash's console. The Romulan expat was, at that moment, fiddling with the sensors and muttering in Romulan that her universal translator was politely not translating to Seska, who sat ramrod stiff at the tactical console.

"Did you break the-" Wacoche started.

"No, subcommander" R'lash said, forgetting her current posting in her excitement. "We read seven ships - repeat, seven ships, IFF confirms they are hostiles."

"Cloak us right now," Wacoche said, sitting up in his seat. "All hands, red alert!"

The screen shimmered - and then a moment later, the first of the eerie, sudden snap of ships arriving from warp flashed out - the blunt nosed Kazon ship appeared, only to then have the stretched out light of its arrival come afterwards. With a series of other snaps, the seven other ships came, four of them looking like light attack craft, two sitting closer to medium cruisers, and the largest being almost as big as a Constitution class, and just...bristling with forward mounted, aggressively positioned heavy particle cannons.

The coms crackled.

"Attention, Starfleet ship Voyager and Starfleet ship Val Jean," the female voice that came through. "This is Fleet Commander of KDF-Mostral Attack Squadron Six, speaking to you from the KDF-BC Righteous Path. You have encountered a class two Borg attractor and thus pose a potential existential threat to this sector of space and the Kazon people. Retreat immediately or be destroyed. You have sixteen minutes to comply."

"...who are these guys again?" R'lash whispered to Seska, who frowned.

"Captain, that battlecruiser has two air wings prepped and ready to launch."

---
TRUTHS: "Dark Matter Nebula!"
MOMENTUM: 0

Oh those pesky Kazons, what with their...eminently rational response to living within a few hundred light years of Borg space...what do you do?

[ ] Attempt to negotiate limited access to the nebula - it has enough resources and potential value to be worth the risk
[ ] Withdraw - and take the risk that something bad happens to Phoebe.
[ ] Delay so you can find a way to safely disentangle Phoebe and Kat from the nebula
[ ] Write In