Janeway Lambda Two | Glowfic Constellation

"Deck 5"

The turbolift doors close and a whirring noise briefly fills the air before the doors open again on a different hallway.

"You're not a prisoner. I would say you're therefore a free man, but as I said we're a long way from home. I'll put you off the ship, if that's what you want, but frankly I doubt there will be anywhere you'd like to go. If you rescued someone from a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean, and treated them with every courtesy you could, would you call them a free man?"

This, he regretfully understands. "I see. I am acquainted with such situations from my own time at sea." And in such situations, men were pressed into service whether they liked it or no, out of sheer necessity. "When do you next expect to make port? And where?"

"We'll likely make port within a month or two, to stock up on necessary supplies. But as to where, the short answer is we don't know."

She's going to be forced to explain aliens at some point, but she's hoping to defer that shock for as long as possible.

"We're not lost, exactly. We know where we are and where we're going. If you'll permit a metaphor, we know our longitude and latitude exactly, so we know which way and how far to go. But we don't know anything about the lands we'll pass along the way. And we expect the journey to take 70 years."

That statement is incomprehensible. He gropes at understanding. "Seventy years? But how... Surely some of the crew must disembark before then. Do none of them have wives on shore? Er, families?" he amends, glancing at Janeway.

Being at sea is one thing, but traversing uncharted territory like Captain Cook is another entirely. Laurence is beginning to be concerned for his fate even if these people have the friendliest of intentions.

"You're quite right. In the normal course of events a starship would spend less than a year between visits to a federation world."

"Unfortunately, two weeks ago Voyager was pulled from Federation space by a powerful entity called the Caretaker, which then died, stranding us here. To my knowledge, no Federation vessel has ever been this far from home."

"Captain," he says, finally using her title because it seems important now. "You were stranded two weeks ago? On a journey you expect to take seventy years? And you have no idea if or when you will next make port, or even find supplies?"

He pauses, realizing that he expects no answer to any of these questions. Then he says, "I hope an additional man will not strain your stores. I have been on short commons before, at need, and will not complain of rationing. Nor of labor, if there is any-- I am certain there must be, in such a precarious situation as you find yourselves."

"Rationing? Oh no, Captain, there won't be any need for that. Voyager can make food and water out of just about anything. The supplies we'll need are to maintain the ship itself."

Laurence grimaces faintly at her amused use of his title. She's right: clearly he's no captain here, qualified though he might be to command a ship in his own time and place. "Mr. Laurence will do for the moment, Captain," he says quietly. "I have no desire to pretend to a rank I no longer possess."

Janeway feels a keen stab of empathy for Laurence. The hell of it is that he's right: he's not a captain here. Of course, he has no ship, but far worse: even if he had one, he wouldn't be qualified to captain it.

"Mr. Laurence, then."

"As for labor... Voyager is rather different from the Reliant. If you want to help, I certainly won't turn you away. Our situation is, as you say, precarious. But we'll need to think carefully on how best you could contribute."
They reach sickbay, and the doors whoosh open, revealing a room full of equipment and beds. A man in a blue uniform with horrific burns across his face is asleep in one of them, but it's otherwise unoccupied.

Janeway addresses the room, ignoring them sleeping man:
"Activate Emergency Medical Hologram."

A man shimmers into existence, looking faintly annoyed.
"Please state the nature of the medical emergency."

Laurence nearly jumps out of his skin at the man's appearance, then glances at Janeway, who seems unfazed. He quickly tries to calm himself. A man appearing from nowhere is not, strictly speaking, the most alarming thing that's happened to him today.

"This man was created from a holodeck program by Q. I'd like you to make sure he's in good health."

And biological at all for that matter, but she doesn't say that part aloud. No need to bring up the possibility if it's not going to be a problem.

The doctor shows a flicker of emotion at that.

"That's possible?"

"Apparently so."

If Janeway picks up on the doctor's personal interest here, she gives no sign of it.

"Fascinating."

He grabs a medical tricorder from a nearby wall and waves it up and down in front of Laurence.

"Indeed, there's no sign he's anything but human. If you hadn't told me I'd never have suspected anything was odd... Except..."

"He has the common cold, actually. We'll need to vaccinate the entire crew before we next interact with anybody outside the ship. If we were on a planet this would be a disaster."

He walks off into a back room, then returns a minute later holding a hypospray.

"If I may?"

"Vaccinate everyone? Over a cold?" He doesn't want to second-guess the doctor here, who is, if the march of progress has continued unabated, must have much greater knowledge than medical men in his own time... But then, ship's surgeons are often not the best the profession has to offer. "I would hope not to put the whole crew to such a great inconvenience-- how many are in it, by the by?"

Laurence has never received the vaccination for smallpox himself, but he's heard it can be very uncomfortable.

He has no idea what the device is that the doctor is holding, but nods stiffly, bracing himself for... whatever is about to happen. A vaccine, presumably.

Vaccination!

It's entirely painless.