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

Janeway stepped over to Lindy. She slid her arm around her shoulder. "You're not. That's why this is happening. You, and everyone on Earth-2 are your own people and I swear to you, I will make certain you have every chance to live out a life that belongs only to you."

Lindy blinked, then ducked her head forward. She didn't show her face. But she leaned into Janeway and made a soft, soft noise that was for Janeway only. Janeway lifted her head, frowning. "Torres," she said. "We're going to fix this."

Torres tapped her knuckles against her chin. Considering. She frowned. Then she blinked. "Wait, this is just a memory cache error. Why don't you fabricate more memory?"

"Well, the quantum duplicates have to use the biological matter that they're based on," the help hologram said. "It's for authenti-"

"Screw authenticity, what if we gave them...say...isolinear storage crystals in a parallel cortex for, say, twenty ZBs?"

"W-well, uh..." The holo paused, considering. "That would delay any crash to the end of their natural lifespan, which could be simulated."

Torres turned back to Janeway. "Easy," she said. "We fabricate those processors at a rate of, uhh..." She did some mental math. "So, they're one molecule wide, mostly carbon...uh...industrial fabricator can spit out a seventy K wafer in a second..." She nodded. "Yeah, we can make four billion arrays in...eh...six months. Seven, at tops. Can your systems then interface them with the humans? Then, we just leave behind the production outlines, Khan could make them, though, a lot slower. You can then just wait until there's enough ISCs then you can have a child. Free contraception, slightly slower than natural birthrate, offset by the only diseases being computer viruses and...yeah..." Torres nodded, her eyes showing the glassy, far away look of someone doing back the napkin math. "Yeah, yeah." She focused more now. "We can do it, easy."

Everyone gaped at her.

"Well, not easy," Torres said, correcting. "We'll need a lot of carbon."

"Like...oil?" Lindy asked, sniffing.

"No, those are hydrocarbons!" Torres said, horrified. "God no!"

"The captain spends thirty seconds blowing a quarter of the moon into the sky and we have to spend how many weeks picking up junk?" Seska grumbled while she watched the tractor hum and whirr, capturing another part of the orbital debris that she was fairly sure was originally Mimas. Or at least. She hoped it was. "And what does she do?"

"She's handling the saving of an entire planet," R'lash said, putting her feet up on the console. "That's way harder, believe you me."

Seska huffed. "The Haakonians couldn't have stuck around to help. Or the Talaxians? Or the Kazon! Or the Viidians?"

"The Viidians stuck around," R'lash said.

"If you call putting into drydock for months to get their entire computer architecture built from the ground up helping," Seska lapsed into muttering.

R'lash, who had been listening to her Cardassian counterpart complain for what felt like six years, not two weeks, pulled out a food tab and yanked it open, warming the meal up. It was a replicated version of a Romulan MRE - and eating it felt deeply nostalgic. She sniffed the scent, then grinned, and knew exactly how to put a Ceti Eel up Seska's ear.

"Yeah. Good thing Tom Paris is helping," she said. "Isn't it nice having him around."

"Oh yeah, it's- NO IT'S NOT!"

R'lash snickered.

Lindy sighed, as she laid back in her bed and watched Janeway sit and brood. She rubbed her thighs together, marveling in the silky smoothness of thigh on thigh and sheet on sheet. The glittering lights of Shri Lanka were a lot more inviting when you were there as a guest, not as a saboteur in a global war. The glittering stars of Haakonian trade ships in orbit streaked overhead, heading to the equatorial settlements established in the pre-human era South and Central American regions - something that Janeway had muttered darkly about when she had heard about them. Terra Nullius - as if that was a bad thing. Lindy would have been more upset if there wasn't still a Mexico and Brazil and Argentina and such, all back on Earth-1.

Since there was, she didn't mind having dinosaurs.

"Kat, are you okay?" Lindy asked.

Janeway blinked, and Kat looked over from the window - shifting from captain to Katheryn with the flicker-smoothness of one of those new color televisions. She looked rueful.

"Yeah," she said, softly. "I'm just...torn."

"What about?" Lindy asked, laying on her side.

It was Janeway who looked out at the window. "It's another, sixty, seventy years home. That's a quarter of our lives. But here? Earth-2 needs us. There's no garuntee that the...treaty will hold. That..."

Lindy slid from the bed. Her shadowed form slipped up behind Kat, holding her in place, kissing her protean neck. She had never met a girl who could be three women at once - but she had to admit. She rather liked that complexity. She slid her hands around and squeezed onto every part of Kat she could hold, kissing up to her ear.

"Aren't you a big democratic society?" she asked, softly. "You can vote."

"...I'm the Captain, I..." Kat paused. "Oh god, Lindy, what if they vote to leave? And...then..."

Lindy blinked, then laughed. "Then what? You leave me behind?" She swung herself around. Her legs scissored around the chair, and she cuddled so close that there was no place where Kat and her didn't touch. Her forehead pressed in, and her lips whispered, so soft that if they had not been close, Kat would never have heard. "You can't get rid of me that easily."

"...oh."

Kat relaxed, like strings had been cut.

Beyond, the fireworks started as the last batch of computer cores were printed and integrated. The glittering flare announced celebrations across Earth-2.

Kat reached out. Slapped at her PADD. Sent the communique she had written days before, and had not had the heart to send. But she did not vote, not at first.

It took twelve hours and quite a few orgasms before she remembered to even think about voting.


ROLL CREDITS


[ ] Voyager votes to stay at Earth-2! (Fuck canon! [agressive])
[ ] Voyager votes to continue the voyage home! (Fuck canon! [romantic])