Surely for a reaction drive (I presume you are not suggesting reactionless interstellar drives in the 1990's?)
One would probably be more likely than a rocket, yes - these folks know how to directly manipulate gravity, after all.
Neither the physical model nor the CGI has rocket nozzles in evidence, but that of course is neither here nor there: even if the ship had classic bell nozzles, she might also have shutters for those. And the ships of Starfleet sometimes hide their impulse engines very well indeed.
But would an impulse drive (no matter how primitive) be likely here? We lack references to when that tech was introduced, beyond it not having changed much since the 2160s as in "Relics". The one known quality of impulse drive is that it can burn fuel quickly, though, leaving the heroes little leeway in maneuvering in "Doomsday Machine". But that applies to certain combat maneuvers centuries after the DY-100 fact.
the duration of the burn is immaterial to the final speed, given that the total fuel was exhausted 200 years ago.
Says who? I mean, the engines were either off or then putting out insignificantly small amounts of whatever (be it thrust or waste heat), but nothing indicates
when this happened.
100 days at 1G thrust achieves the same final speed as 1 day at 100G thrust.
And the former is much preferable to the latter if we want interplanetary trips to last "years" as quoted, yet with interstellar ultimate results. Although thrust way below 1 gee would further be preferable for the scenario at hand. Still better than solar sails and most "ion engine" concepts of today, and possibly also similarly more plausible than the use of classic rocketry.
And the BB must still only have a got a light year or two beyond Sol in 200 years.
Nothing there to give us such figures. Or any figures at all.
I imagine after they made planetfall, Marla filled the days and nights with many stories of Starfleet and the Federation. She reminds me of Scheherazade, with a thousand and one tales to fill Khan's head lest he grow displeased with her.
I figure it would be pretty difficult to
displease a man who's happy with betrayal that cost him a future as a prince of billions!
Timo Saloniemi