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

"Beam them up," Janeway said. "Neelix, you're with me."

"Me? I'm with?" Neelix blinked. "You think they might be dangerous?" He hurried with her to the turbolift.

"No," Janeway said, casually. "But you're the only expert on Haakonians we have."

"What an honor," Neelix muttered as the tubrolift hummed and the door shut.


The door hissed and sparked as the laser cutters got to work. Neelix had his stunner in his hand, frowning as he considered his options. "I have an idea," he said, nodding slowly.

"If it's better than your last few..." Lindy muttered softly.

"The trick is to keep having ideas until you're dead," Neelix said, then pointed. "There's a power station there. Those laser cutters are emitting a lot of energy. We simply need to get the station and the emitters to intersect at the right moment - that will cause quite a distraction. We can stun them on the way out, make our way to the motor pool."

"I remind you, we are IN this room, right?" Lindy hissed.

"We simply take cover, before...the...no, right, that's a terrible idea," Neelix paused. Then he snapped his finger. "Ah! Ah! I know!" He said, then pulled out his stunner, then handed it to Lindy. "You cover me with the Stunners. Claim that you managed to apprehend me, after I stunned these lot." He gestured around himself. "We just need to get them to think that there's only one spy - sow confusion long enough- say, do you feel that?" He asked.

Lindy did. She could feel the tingling buzzing sensation growing around herself. Her brow furrowed. "What the?" She asked, while her skin started to glow and glimmer.

"Hold still!" Neelix barked, holding up his hand - preventing Lindy from diving to the side.

The energies around them locked, crackled, and then blazed with energetic light. There was a flare of energy and then, when it had faded, they were standing in a circular chamber, studded with hexagonal indentations on the floor beneath their feet. This was all arranged on a small plinth that rose in the corner, with the rest of the chamber dominated by a curved desk, where several men and women stood. One of them was a...Lindy's cheeks flushed slightly as she saw what...had to be some...nurse or doctor or something. She was tall, with auburn hair, with a strong jawline and steely eyes that made Lindy's heart leap and flutter. Her uniform, though, was just...

...incredible. A form fitting jumpsuit, with a triangular badge over her breast and red markings on the tunic.

Next to her was a strange looking man - muscular and middle aged, with bizarre tufts thrusting from his jaw and distinctly inhuman colorations to his face and eyes. He was dressed in a rather simple brown tunic and black jacket, with dark leggings and bare feet, which were themselves faintly furry. He was looking at her and Neelix with an intense focus that made Lindy feel a bit uncertain.

"Welcome aboard," the woman said. "I'm-"

"Uncle Neelix!?" Neelix exclaimed.

"What?" The other man said, shocked.

"It's you! I recognize you from the pictures!" Neelix said, stumping off the bizarre platform that they had found themselves on. He stepped up, and took the shocked man's hand, shaking it with a huge smile. "I know you've never met me - well, I mean, I thought it'd be hard for us to meet a dead man, but it seems the reports of your demise have been somewhat exaggerated! Or at the very least out of date, I know how life can be out here in space." He chuckled. "I'm...well...your nephew." He bowed low. "Neelix Jetrel Haaktrear, son of Admiral Jetrel Haaktrear and Juliz."

"...Juliz!?" The older man looked shocked. "What the hell happened?"

"I take it they met shortly after your posting to deep space patrols," Neelix said, smoothly as he stood. "It was a slightly tempestuous affair. Quite dramatic, from both sides." He chuckled, his smile growing a bit drawn. "But now I must ask, how in all the stars has the Talaxians gotten their hands on something like this?" He looked around himself. "This ship looks more advanced than our newest battlecruisers. And are those solid-state transporter buffers? We only have theories about how those might work from studying Borg at distance."

The woman blinked slowly. "...as I was saying," she said, firmly, looking faintly annoyed at the way Neelix had just casually taken over the conversation. "My name is Katheryn Janeway, and I am the Captain of this ship. Which is not Talaxian." She shot Neelix an annoyed look.

"Well, that's a relief," he said, cheerfully. "Might I ask your species?"

"Human, she's...obviously human, Neelix," Lindy said, stepping off the side of the platform. "I, uh...I'm Emilia. You can call me Lindy." She held her hand out to the Captain (a female captain! Lindy thought, trying to keep herself from looking too giddy with excitement.) "I guess you're from the future, like Khan is?"

"Even further," Captain Janeway said, taking her hand, firmly, shaking it. Man fashion. Lindy almost fainted.

She must think I'm such a fainting damsel, Lindy thought.

She's so cool! Janeway thought, her mental voice only heard by one person - her sister, who was trying to find the most polite way to tease her about this. She doesn't even look ruffled. Oh god. She must think I'm some...some...some...

Useless sapphic? Phoebe supplied, unhelpfully.

Janeway frowned, trying to look serious. Captainly. "We have some questions about your world, Miss Earhart-"

"Please, uh, call me Captain," Emilia said, her smirk playful. "They're talking about training civilian pilots like military ones, so might as well get the rank for it too, huh?" She asked, her eyes fierce and proud. She didn't want to be a miss, of course she didn't want to be a miss. Janeway nodded back and gave her her own smile. Friendly smile.

"Captain Earhart then," she said. "We have some questions about your world and how you came to be there with Mr. Haaktrear."

"Lord, actually," the diminutive half-Haakonian said, his voice chipper. "I inherited the Talaxian land that my mother has in her family line."

"YOU WHAT!?" Neelix exploded.

Janeway sighed, slightly. "While the politics of Haakonian/Talaxian gavelkind are quite interesting, can we table it until after we've learned what's going on with the duplicate Earth?"

"Agreed," Lord Haaktrear said as they emerged into the corridor. His eyes flicked along it, frowning. "Which deck is this?" He asked. "Ah, thirteenth. By the gravity..." He hummed, shifting himself on his knees, as if he was feeling the subtle changes between artificial gravity and real. "Big ship."

Janeway and Neelix exchanged a glance over his head.

"He's always like this," Captain Earhart said.


In the meeting room, Amy Strong and T'are stood before the projector. Amy started off first. "Our initial questioning of the Imperial Security soldiers we've captured has given us some interesting intelligence," she said. "Khan's strategic situation has completely reversed from how it was three years ago. Before then, it was 1996, according to their dates, and the United Nations were landing forces all along the coastline of India, and the Soviet Union's tank brigades were invading through the Pakistani boarder. Then, in one moment, there was a big flash of light - and everything outside of their boarders had shifted." She said, nodding. "The isolated elements of the invading forces had to either surrender, go guerrilla, or try and run. It seems like percentage wise, fifty of one, twenty five and twenty five of the other."

The gathered officers of the USS Voyager and the USS Val Jean all nodded. "Are any of those guerrilla elements still in effect?" Wacoche asked.

"Unknown," Amy said. "It's not like they're exactly eager to broadcast."

"What I want to know is why and how," Torres said, frowning. She was eying the man that everyone had, quietly, started taking to call Neelix Jr. He was sitting on a chair that had been elevated slightly, so his stature was harder to fully determine. "That seems the most important."

"No idea!" T'are said, cheerfully. "That in and of itself is actually pretty revealing - there's no signs of temporal modifications or spatial warps, the two easiest ways to explain this. But! I have several theories!"

"Actually," Neelix Jr. said, his voice growing sharp. "Is that actually that important? Maybe for the future - but in the immediate present, we have Khan, his empire, and what this world represents to the astropolitical landscape. It's a world with a large enough population to be useful for occupation, divided enough for invasion, technologically advanced enough to be put to industrial purpose almost immediately. It's a big fat 'start a galactic war over me' flag if I've ever seen one. Talax, Haakonia, even the Viidians and the Kazon are going to wake up for this." He thrust his finger down on the table. "We need to determine Khan's resources, the hold on his empire, because the biggest threat to Earth's stability and unity is, as is usual, the man who is claiming to bring both."

"...well, um...I've done some preliminary scans," T'are said, nodding slightly as she did so. "And, well, there's some strategic information I can get from the scan. "Khan looks like his major problem is power generation. He doesn't have access to the raw materials to solar his empire, and his fission and fusion power plants are running at maximum for the industrial efforts he has going, and he has no antimatter or enriched dilithium energy sources. And since he is trying to run a global empire, he needs to make more weapons, more tanks, more automation, more ships, which all take power and resources, which he lacks."

"The classic empire trap," Wacoche said.

"His ImpSec people also gave me some interesting bits of information!" Amy said, grinning. "Khan's main enemies are alliances between the survivors in Europe, which appear to be from right after the third World War, and the old Allies from World War 2 - the Soviets under Stalin, the United States under FDR." She crossed her arms over her chest. "After initial dislocation and shifting forces around, the Soviets went from losing on a western front to losing on a southern front. The United States is primarily landing supplies and troops in Africa, which appears to be from the Bronze Age - which is why it has become the main target of Khan's initial colonization efforts. That's where he's getting his raw supplies from. But since there's no infrastructure, those supplies...are being flown in with suborbital landers!"

"I see ..." Neelix Jr. murmured.

Neelix Sr. frowned at his nephew. His eyes narrowed slightly.

Janeway took a moment to sneak a peek at Captain Earhart, who was listening to all of this with a serious frown on her face. She seemed to be absorbing something far beyond what a 20th century pilot should be forced to accept - with aplomb and with grace, as far as Janeway could tell. Janeway forced down her flush, then said: "All right. We have the information. Now the question is what we do about it."

"Clearly, we need to topple Khan's empire," Neelix Jr. said. "Not merely for moral reasons, but so that this new Earth can be made, ahem, less inviting for invasion. I don't particularly want to see this region of space burst into a four way shoving match over this particular marble?"

"He's got a point," Wacoche said.


---
CURRENT MOMENTUM: 0
CURRENT TRUTH: "Time Amok!"


You've got some information! Now, what do you DO with them?
[ ] Go with Neelix Jr's Plan: TOPPLE KHAN!
-[ ] Use the initial scheme: Shoot down the orbital transfers, take out the orbital forces, and contact the United States and the Soviet Union.
-[ ] Write in your plans, if you have better ones.
[ ] Maybe try diplomacy? Contact Khan and see if we can end this war with words. We are the Federation, after all
[ ] Write In