Uninspired Voyages

A Star Trek: Voyager fanfiction by Andrew J. Talon

DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan based work of prose. Star Trek: Voyager, Deep Space Nine, The Next Generation et al are the property of CBS Television, Para creation of Gene Roddenberry. Please support the official release.

Lieutenant Shepherd, Starfleet Intelligence agent and now security chief of the lost USS Voyager, piled up his lunch plate with many goodies from the buffet and headed for his usual table. He skillfully navigated around the Ocampan children rushing by to the play area nearby, and caught a bouncy ball one of the little tykes threw too hard. He gave the child a grin, and tossed the ball back to her.

"Keep an eye out, Newra!" He admonished gently. The little Ocampan girl giggled and ran off. Shepherd sighed and sat down at his usual table, Tom Paris, B'Elanna Torres, and Harry Kim all sitting and eating already. Shepherd set his plate down and got down to eating, a bean with a windmill atop his head spinning in a non-existent breeze.

"You know," Paris began, breaking the slightly tense silence, "you're not quite what I imagined in a Starfleet spook."

"Yeah I get that a lot," Shepherd sighed, "I just wanted to be an intelligence analyst since I was always good at programming. But one, Intel tends to be a bit more laid back due to how unpredictable things can get. And two? I think I was cursed."

"How so?" Harry asked, raising an eyebrow over his soup du jour. Given it was made by Neelix, no one was brave enough to ask what kind of soup it was.

Shepherd meanwhile dug into his soup without any care as he continued.

"My mom was an astrometrics technician and my dad was a security officer..." He looked up at his shipmates, "aboard the Enterprise-D."

"Come on, it can't have been that bad-" Harry tried, but Tom Paris immediately winced in sympathy.

"When?" Paris asked.

"Oh... In between meeting Q and after Wolf 359," Shepherd said. B'Elanna scoffed.

"You were on the Enterprise-D during Wolf 359?! Seriously?"

"I swear, I was," Shepherd said with a nod. "Go ahead, check my service record if you don't believe me."

"I think I will!" B'Elanna said, picking up her PADD and scrolling through the database search engine. Harry gaped, then shrugged.

"Well... Still. It can't have been all bad, right? Being on the flagship of the fleet?"

Shepherd looked thoughtful... Then he smiled brightly.

"Well... I did have a best friend."

The year 2364...

Shepherd Junior sometimes really hated his life. He'd been perfectly happy living on Earth, running around in real grass and dealing with confusing feelings about girls like God and nature intended. But no: His mom had to get an assignment to the Enterprise-D to do astrometrics, and his dad had to impress some captain with his security prowess and assign him to the same ship, too!

Which left the fifteen year old boy sulking in the open air mall area of the ship, glaring up at the artificial lighting overhead as children and crewmembers passed him by as he reclined on his bench.

"The next seven years in this tub are going to suck," he grumbled.

"Oh, uh... Hey!" Said some annoying, reedy voice. Shepherd Junior looked up. Some gangly teenager in one of those stupid jumpsuits was smiling at him, looking awkward. Shepherd supposed he was a bit intimidating-After all, he was actually wearing pants made of denim and a shirt with the logo of the Vulcan Punk Band "Logical Fallacy" across it. To some goober who looked like he might snap if you breathed on him hard, he might look scary.

"Hey," Shepherd replied. The boy stepped closer, and held out his hand.

"I'm Wesley! Wesley Crusher!" He greeted. Shepherd Junior stared at the hand, and then slowly stood up. He extended his own hand, and shook the beanpole's.

"Shepherd Junior," he said. He smiled cheerfully, "call me Junior and I'll break your arms."

"O-Oh, uh, sorry," Wesley said quickly, snatching his hand back like he'd been burnt. This made Shepherd Junior feel a bit guilty. The poor kid was just trying to be nice, and he was being kind of a dick. His mother's words reached him, as if by intercom:

Try to make some friends, son! And don't be a dick!

"So, uh, are you related to... Doctor Crusher?" Shepherd asked awkwardly, the hot redheaded MILF doctor immediately coming to his adolescent mind. Wesley nodded, looking a little more relaxed.

"Yeah, she's my mom," Wesley said, "and you're the son of Mrs. and Chief Shepherd, right?"

"Yeah," Shepherd replied. Wesley frowned.

"Er... If you don't mind me asking, do you have a first name?"

"Yeah, but I'm not supposed to say it," Shepherd said with a shrug, "weird family superstition. So, do you... Like... The Enterprise?"

His awkward segueway was rewarded by Wesley grinning happily.

"Oh yeah! The technology is amazing! The ship is just incredible! Isn't it exciting, being on the edge of what's known? Going out to explore?"

"I guess?" Shepherd Junior managed, shrugging, "I've never been anywhere but Earth and Mars and a few other places for trips."

"Well," Wesley said with a grin, "don't you worry! I've been aboard lots of starships! I'll show you the ropes! Even if you don't know what those are!"

"I know what ropes are, my dad's from the 21st century," Shepherd replied, feeling a bit irritated. Great, was this his only chance for companionship over the next seven years? If it was... He was not going to be having a good time.

Still... Beggars can't be choosers. So he let Wesley lead him off to some science lab of his.

Shepherd Junior was kind of impressed with Wesley's smarts. All this technology was pretty 'cool', as his dad would say. But there was a distinct lack of any posters of hot Vulcan babes or fast starships on the walls, which made Shepherd feel like he was in a subspace sandbar of lameness.

At least until Wesley began to show off some of his inventions.

"Look, I made a device that makes you sound like anyone you want!" Wesley said cheerfully. "Like this: 'Mister Crusher, set course 240 mark 6!"

The voice sounded almost exactly like the Captain's. Shepherd hummed, and took it into his hands.

"Oh? Let me try. Make it sound like Troi."

"Uh, okay," Wesley said, typing in a few commands. Shepherd held the device up to his mouth.

"Spank me, I've been a bad girl," he crooned in Troi's smoky voice. Wesley went bright red.

"HEY! What are you doing?!"

"Oh, god. It's so big," Shepherd Junior went on in the ship's counselor's chocolatey tones. Wesley yanked it away, cheeks burning like red dwarves.

"You can't do that! I have to work with her on the bridge!"

Shepherd looked Wesley dead in the eyes.

"I sense... someone is horny," he said.

"STOP IT! You... Weirdo!" Wesley managed. Shepherd held his hands up in appeasement as he laughed.

"Okay fine. I get it, sorry. Switch it to Riker."

"Well..." Wesley considered, and then handed the device over. Shepherd cleared his throat.

"Why do I mount my chairs like horses? It's practice for riding you, ladies!"

Wesley yelped, and yanked the device away.

"SERIOUSLY?!" He cried. Shepherd hummed.

"This may be too much power for any one teenager to wield," he said. He grinned. "What else ya got?"

"If you'll stop trying to freak me out," Wesley grumbled, putting the voice changer into a cabinet and locking it, "then I do have something else."

He pulled up a boxy device with handles at the back, and held it out.

"This is a portable tractor beam emitter," Wesley said. Shepherd grinned.

"Oh! Like a gravity gun from the Half-Life hologame series?"

"I... Yeah, sure," Wesley said with a shrug. He demonstrated its use by projecting a blue beam at a couch, and lifted it up. He then set it back down again, carefully. Shepherd's eyes widened in genuine amazement.

"Wow... That is pretty awesome Wesley! You are pretty damn smart, I have to admit," he said. Wesley beamed, and looked modest.

"Hey, thanks!"

"I bet you could throw stuff with it really hard," Shepherd mused, "like in the Half-Life HoloGame!" He took hold of the tractor beam gun and grinned eagerly, "Man, I could mow down so many Combine with this."

"So... You play a lot of hologames?" Wesley asked. Shepherd nodded.

"Sure! My mom and dad program a lot of them for fun! And for a side business," he said. "Lots of them from my dad's time. You want to try one out?"

"Well," Wesley hesitated. Shepherd grinned.

"Hey! It would give you the perfect chance to try this thing out! What do you say?"

"It is just a prototype," Wesley pointed out. Shepherd laughed and clapped Wesley on the shoulder.

"Relax! It's the holodeck! What could possibly go wrong?"

Later, in the ship's high school, Shepherd had to write, "I will not throw baseballs at relativistic velocity inside the ship" 1000 times on an ancient device his mother knew of: A blackboard. Wesley has to write "I will not let my friend throw baseballs at relativistic velocity in the ship" the same number of times. Both of them are watched over by their disapproving mothers... Though Shepherd's mother at least looks somewhat amused.

Wesley has been glaring at him from the moment they were sentenced to their punishment. Shepherd shrugged.

"Come on, you have to admit," he said, "it was really cool."

"You nearly sent it through the hull!" Wesley countered. Shepherd nodded.

"Yeah! With a baseball and a tractor beam! Do you have any idea how awesome that is?!"

Wesley cringed at the glare his mother sent him... But couldn't help looking wistful.

"Yeah, that was pretty... Cool," he said. Shepherd grinned.

"Told ya!"

Beverly Crusher, ship's Chief Medical Officer, turned her glare over to Mrs. Shepherd.

"Your son is clearly a bad influence on mine!" She stated. "He's a reckless hooligan!"

Mrs. Shepherd had clearly wanted to have this conversation out of the hearing of the boys, but she had been pushed. So she turned to Doctor Crusher, adjusted her blue uniform, and looked her right in the eyes.

"I cannot dispute that my son is a bad influence on yours," she said.

"Hey!" Shepherd cried, sounding wounded. Mrs. Shepherd shook her head.

"However, he's also one of the minute handful of kids actually willing to give your weird child the time of day, so, y'know..." she shrugged, "take what you can get."

Beverly Crusher... Looked crushed. Shepherd snickered and looked over at Wesley.

"Oh man... You know what this makes us, Wesley?"

"What?" Wesley asked with a sigh.

"It makes us... Best Friends!" Shepherd announced, wrapping a comradery arm around the beanpole child. Wesley sighed and shut his eyes tightly.

"I don't want to be best friends!"

"Well I'll be best friends with you out of spite then!"

"Out of spite?! Seriously?!"

"As serious as I was shooting that baseball through the hull!"

"Are you going to do this all the time?"

"Yes! Because you hate it!"

"You weirdo!"

"Best friends forever!"

The year 2372

Torres looked far less skeptical, more pitying. She shook her head at Shepherd.

"... He was your best friend?"

"Well..." Shepherd shrugged, spinning his beanie hat, "It only seems sad and twisted if you say it out loud..."

Just some fun...