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Unofficial Literary Challenge #16: "A Future That Many Will Never See"
starswordc
Member Posts: 10,966 Arc User
Welcome to the sixteenth edition of the Unofficial Literary Challenge: "A Future That Many Will Never See"!
Prompt #1: "Aftermath" by @worffan101
Prompt #2: "In Session" by @ambassadormolari
Prompt #3: "The Obvious Weakness" by @red01999
As usual, no NSFW content.
The discussion thread is here.
Index of previous ULCs:
Prompt #1: "Aftermath" by @worffan101
It's been a while. Whether a five-year mission or an apocalyptic battle/war/other conflict, your crew just finished it successfully. Your ship is recalled to your faction's capital to be refit, repaired, and otherwise kept up, and your crew is being split up for well-earned leave with their families.
How do you handle it? Peeling potatoes in a Cajun restaurant in New Orleans? Fighting your jerk brother in a vineyard in France? Spending time with your significant other? 118,000,000 rounds of Call of Duty 215?
Inspired by the TNG episode "Family". Be daring.
How do you handle it? Peeling potatoes in a Cajun restaurant in New Orleans? Fighting your jerk brother in a vineyard in France? Spending time with your significant other? 118,000,000 rounds of Call of Duty 215?
Inspired by the TNG episode "Family". Be daring.
* * *
Prompt #2: "In Session" by @ambassadormolari
The weight of command carries a heavy burden on the soul-- men and women have died under your command, and every order you make affects the lives and safety of all who serve under you. Given the numerous threats to known space, almost every officer serving in the Federation/KDF/Republic has been exposed to the horrors of war in one way or another. Your captain has been scheduled for a session with your ship's counselor. What do your captain and counselor talk about?
* * *
Prompt #3: "The Obvious Weakness" by @red01999
Warp field physics makes most ships to known Alpha and Beta Quadrant races extend their warp nacelles. This carries a number of advantages such as efficiency and speed - and disadvantages such as battle damage. In a harrowing battle with the Borg you barely survived, one or more of your ship's nacelles were sheared off, rendering warp drive inoperative and damaging power systems throughout your ship. Omega Force reinforcements will arrive in 48 hours... and Borg reinforcements will arrive in 24. Does your crew try to effect repairs? If so, how? If not, how does your crew prepare for the battle ahead with a badly crippled ship?
As usual, no NSFW content.
The discussion thread is here.
Index of previous ULCs:
- The Kobayashi Maru
- Time After Time
- The Next Generation of Tribbles with Darkest Moments
- The Return of the Revenge of the Unofficial LC of DOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!
- Back from the Dead?
- Gods of Lower Decks in Wintry Timelines
- Skippy's List: Starfleet Edition
- Revisit to a Weird Game, One of One
- In Memory of Spock
- Redux 1
- Delta Recruit
- Someone to Remember Them By
- In A.D. 2410, War Was Beginning
- The Sound of Q-sic
- Stand for the Crew
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
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"Yes, but the you and..." Wren quickly checked her notes. "Commander Ttorkkinn from this time frame were killed."
"Yes. It was meant to be us that died, leaving everyone back at the start. Things didn't go to plan."
"You are aware you violated every Temporal Directive?"
Talaina looked at Wren. A haunted glaze came over her eyes and her anntena dipped. "Yes. Let me ask you this Doctor. Have you ever been responsible for a crew? A family?"
"Yes. I'm responsible for the mental health of many families."
"Then imagine seeing that family butchered and left to rot in front of you. Imagine a young girl kill herself because she just can't cope with living."
"I don't have to imagine that second one. One of my patients suffers from chronic depression. It's a struggle to keep her going on some days."
"Wouldn't you do something, anything, to ensure she was a happy, vibrant person?"
"That's a difficult question."
"No, it's really not. If you have a responsibility to that person, you do what you can for them. What we did have no consequences for anyone but our crew, and those three galaxies away. And those people will be better off without our presence."
"How can you be sure of that?"
"Because we got them killed. I made command decisions that proved wrong."
"You were in a difficult situation. You had to make split second decisions with no support. To be honest, I'm amazed you kept as sane as you have."
"I had some strong support. I know why Starfleet assigned me here. They want to make sure I'm of sound mind and judgement. Believe me Doctor, changing time was not a decision I came to lightly. It was discussed at length with my crew. At least... the survivors. We made the decision together. This was the action of a unified group, not one Captain going rogue. And I do not intend to change time again."
"But you've already changed time more than you thought. Whatever happens from that moment is different. Because people will be in situations they were not meant to be in. Because you and Ttorkkinn have an extra year of experience, you two will behave differently. We don't know how the universe will unfold differently because of this."
"Our fate is not set in stone. We each forge our own destinies with every decision we make. As I said, we were not meant to take the place of our 'local placements'. The universe was meant to unfold as it should."
Wren simply made a noise of agreement and wrote down some notes. When she finished, she looked back to Talaina. "So, what about Simba?"
"Excuse me?"
"Simba. Your cat there. You said you rescued him when you got back to Earth. That means in a year's time, that cat is going to be in an alley, getting attacked by a dog. And you won't be there to save him."
"Actually, I will. I've set a reminder to make sure I'm there at that specific time and place. I'll save him again."
"How can you be certain you'll be there?"
"Nothing is certain. All we can do is try."
"And if you fail, will you go back in time to save him?"
"No. That would be irresponsible. Obviously I will try, but if I fail, then that will be something I must live with. At least I can take comfort that one version of Simba is ok."
Talaina gently kissed the back of Simba's head which was met with happy purring.
"Well, I think that just about wraps things up. I want to see you again before I submit my reccomendations to Starfleet about assigning you back on active duty. Same time next week?"
Simba jumped to the floor as Talaina stood up and shook Wren's hand. "Next week Doctor."
A Romulan Strike Team, Missing Farmers and an ancient base on a Klingon Border world. But what connects them? Find out in my First Foundary mission: 'The Jeroan Farmer Escapade'
Part One of Two
— Samwise Gamgee, The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
Three weeks after the end of the Iconian War…
It was early spring, local, sunny but cool, about 14 degrees centigrade. Morgan t’Thavrau’s nostrils picked up familiar scents on the air: earth, khellid pheromones, a promise of rain in the afternoon.
She knelt down in the grass, touching a wild mushroom poking its head up, then looked up at her old farmhouse, the pale yellow painted stucco still bearing the blast marks of Tal’Shiar disruptor fire.
She heard footsteps behind her and got up, turning around. “Yes, Veril?”
The slim Havranha was clad in her usual dark leathers, with the addition of a hood and large sunglasses against the glare of the midmorning sun, too strong even in Virinat’s subtropics for the normally nocturnal race. “Thought I’d find you here, rekkhai,” she addressed her commander in her typical Havran pidgin, a blend of Hearthworld Rihan and the East Continenters’ own Vulcan-derived dialect.
“How’s the power station?”
“Well, the geothermal tap is shot to hell and I think something’s been living inside the turbine housing. This really isn’t my area of expertise, though. I do reactors and warp engines; I’m not a mechanical engineer.”
“I did warn you our setup was antiquated. But they didn’t have anything similar in your town?”
“We used a fusion generator on Crateris, not geothermal. Planet wasn’t geologically active enough where I lived.”
“Ah.” Morgan had lived through more than a few minor earthquakes in her twenty years in i’Haanikh: one of the nearby mountains was a dormant volcano.
Morgan’s eyes caught sight of movement by one of the cottages down the street. “Veril, out of the way.” She threw her cloak clear and slid a battered old disruptor pistol from its holster on her left leg. “Who’s out there?” she hollered.
“It’s only me, rekkhai!”
Morgan let out a breath and safed her weapon, sliding it back in as a stocky, ruddy-faced man came around the corner. “Sorry, Riov, thought it might have been a khellid soldier,” she told her executive officer.
“Ch’M’R Deihu just arrived in orbit with the construction convoy.”
“And you couldn’t have told us this on the comlink, Commander?” Veril said.
“I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. So far I’m not impressed,” he added, looking around.
Eight standard days earlier…
“Why Virinat, Khre’Riov?” D’Tan asked.
“Strategically it’s a good position for a forward operating base, llhai,” Morgan explained, inserting a data solid into the holoprojector on the round table in the center of the office of the Ehkifv Temjahaere of the Kreh’dhhokh Mol’Rihan; a starmap with several notations emerged. “We came off relatively lightly in the Ikonnssu War, but the Kliv—the Khe’lloann’nasu were decimated. They’re relying more heavily on their foreign levies and mercenaries than ever. It will take their regular fleet at least fifteen years to return to its pre-war strength. Likewise the Lloannen’galae: their losses were lighter by percentage but they had more to lose; the Tal’Diann report they’ve fallen below forty thousand battleworthy warbirds from a peak of seventy-two thousand in 2407.”
“If you’re going where I think you’re going with this, t’Thavrau…” D’Tan began in a worried tone.
“Forgive me, llhai,” Morgan said, ducking her head respectfully. “I realize what you’re thinking but I spoke not of conquest; I spoke of crime.”
“Crime?”
“Piracy and smuggling. The trinational border region has always been a hotbed: none of our three governments wished to provoke a confrontation with the other two by pursuing lawbreakers across borders. And with the losses we’ve all suffered the problem will only get worse. But put in a supply base near there and the T’varo-class warbirds that make up most of our fleet can dramatically increase their time in the field. And we are friendly with both sides so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get clearance to operate internationally.”
“And this is why you brought Erei’Riov tr’Khev?” Khre’Enriov tr’Kererek asked.
Tovan nodded. “Virinat’s a good location. We have a legit territorial claim and it’s within striking distance of Acamar, the Azure Nebula, Nimbus III, essentially all of the big underworld hotspots on our rimward border. It’s also close to Khitomer and not far from the Federation border. Not to mention the Tholinsu.”
“Ie, not to mention,” tr’Kererek agreed. The Tholinsu still had an inexplicable obsession with ch’Mol’Rihan and the Azure Nebula.
D’Tan tapped a datapad stylus on the table for a moment. “I’m… trying to put this as delicately as I can. Are you certain this isn’t a personal request, t’Thavrau? You are, after all, from Virinat.”
“I will not deny there is an element of my personal mnhei’sahe tied up in this,” Morgan assented. “Virinat is where I made my home for twenty years and I always wished to return. But this benefits the Unification government as well as the military and myself. We create jobs and homes for war refugees building the starbase and surface settlements, and Virinat’s ale and wine fetched considerable prices in the export markets. After the gateway incident and the war, respectfully I’d think you could use some good news.”
She waited patiently, sipping tea as her commander-in-chief mulled over the plan. “Very well,” he finally agreed. “I can use some of my discretionary funding to get you started, and I’ll begin arranging an address to the Deihuit.”
“Khlinae arhem, Ehkifv Temjahaere D’Tan.”
Morgan grunted dismissively at her executive officer’s remark, turning away and taking a deep breath of the air. She could still identify the scents of individual plants: blue stripeflower, t’Rehu’s lace, and of course the lehe’jhme vines it had taken her ten years to cultivate to full maturity. She was amazed those had survived. “You didn’t see i’Haanikh when people lived here instead of only khellids, tr’Sauringar.”
“Enhh, I’m a city boy, rekkhai. This really isn’t my thing.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I’m surprised tr’Khev didn’t come,” Veril remarked.
“I’m more surprised about where he went instead,” tr’Sauringar answered. “What is it about Terrha, anyway?”
“Personally, I don’t think it’s Earth specifically he’s interested in.”
Morgan ignored them, walking up to her porch to try the door. The TRIBBLE seemed rusted shut so she rammed it with a shoulder. Dust flew up and she waved a hand in front of her face, looking around. The food she’d set out on the table for herself and Tovan had long since rotted away and a layer of dust covered everything, but it seemed the Tal’Shiar and the local pirates had been uninterested in looting; most of her possessions were where she remembered leaving them.
She walked to the kitchen and threw open the window out onto a field once planted with kheh that had spent a year fallow. Already she could see the golden grain in her mind’s eye. It would be a long summer of hard work. In her head she was making a list of people to hire: laborers, a mechanic, a soil chemist, and a household manager to handle things while she was on patrol.
But the weather projections for the summer said it would be a good year for lehe’jhme. Her mouth watered at the thought of jams and jellies and her first batches of young wine.
I’m home.
Glossary:
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
"What in the name of Kirk thrusts is going on?" Jarell, first in command, sat up in his chair in shock.
Mika, the Science officer, walked over and observed a now almost perfect-looking Spacedock on the view screen. "Yeah, you can thank the exocomps for that. But, I wouldn't, considering how angry they are at us for enslaving them." She then turned to him. "Anyway, you should relax, Commander. The war's over and now it's time to deal with our personal issues."
"Yeah, I'll be in Sickbay under cryogenics. Wake me when it's 2411," he ordered as he left the Bridge.
---
Meanwhile, Captain Samya walked up the lush-covered steps to her sister's home at Shōren-in Temple in Kyoto, Japan. Upon approach of the doors, her 10-year-old niece, Yori, lept down from the roof with a loudly announced, deathly drop kick. "YEEEAAAGGHH!"
But Samya swiftly caught Yori by her protruding foot, meeting contact first and stopping the child, cold, in mid-flight and frozen stance. Yori calmly pushed off and back flipped to land on her feet, a few meters away from the Captain. "Is it true what mom says about you? That you're a lousy two-timing hh--"
"--Yes, yes; it's all true," Samya waved off. "Now go play highwayman somewhere else, and don't look up at the stars unless you really mean it."
As Yori ran off, Samya entered the family-owned temple and crossed the main area to the outdoor gardens at the centre of the complex. There, her sister, Tatsu, was sitting on a rock in the exquisite pond in concentrated meditation, wearing the traditional female kimono and hakama dress.
"So, Samya," she spoke first, maintaining her eyes closed, "You went mad fighting the Iconians and now you're here for me to look after you?"
The Captain rolled her eyes, annoyed. "Uh, I enjoyed fighting the Iconians, as sparsely as I was able, and now I'm here for a break. What's your excuse for wearing that ridiculous costume?"
"Hey, Keiko O'Brien was all over traditional garb at her wedding, despite her husband's offensive refusal to dress in-like. Besides, someone has to maintain the old ways, considering how our family took over after this place was nearly destroyed in the Third World War."
Samya walked over to the edge of the serene pond. "Stop exposition-ing every time I come to visit. It's getting repetitive, from my point of view. Sure, if someone were to happen upon us right now, it would seem like first-time information, but I digress."
"I don't take orders from you-- The 'you' who gives herself up to the modern world of replicated sushi and conveyer-belted starship corridors."
The Starfleet officer tilted her head, confused. "Actually, that second one is not a thing; but not a bad idea, either-- I mean, at least I'm no budo otaku who won't even look at other forms of martial arts-- like the anbo-jyutsu and that one space karate chop Kirk always did."
"Again with those? How dare you insult me by mentioning those absurd, cartoonish delusionary styles?? Ugggh! I hate them so much---" Tatsu stood, swiftly and charged in a direct, over-the-water, straight-line attack at Samya.
The Captain intercepted Tatsu's hard-forced, double-edged left fist and sharp knee attack by simply deflecting both human-weapons to the side and returning with her own otherly-styled side-kick. "The old ways are old, Tatsu. That's why Starfleet excitedly and unhesitently turned to Annorax's temporal universe-story-editing incursions to try and stop the massively over-used Iconians."
"Oh, please," Tatsu spun to expertly hook Samya's wide-open leg using both arms to throw the starship commander into an orbit around her and then slammed the inept officer into the shallow pond. "You believed in the exact opposite, which is why you went on a murderous old-school rampage and enjoyed every second of it. All Starfleet Captains in the 25th century pew-pew it, just like you and me, and it's become a DPS and specialization addiction."
Defeated and half-sunk into the shallow water, Samya gritted her teeth and swallowed in utter truth of her older sister. "Fine. I got a little blood-thirsty and now I have to see my counselor every half hour. It doesn't mean I need your help. You refuse to learn anything about the modern world-- in an almost Robert Picard sort of way, even."
On her back, Samya positioned both her feet into angles on both Tatsu's shins and collapsed the woman's stance. In Tatsu's unexpected, defenceless downward, mid-crumble, Samya sat up and forced-palmed her sister in the abdomen, sending the warrior back into a nearby temple-supporting pillar, outside the pond. "Tai chi?" Tatsu speculated, recovering quick.
"Klingon moQbara'," the Captain bragged.
Tatsu squinted, confused, unable to see much difference and comprehend her sister's indiscernible confidence. "Anyway, yes, I'm very much a Robert rip-off, in fact, I, like all people in this galaxy, am a complete rip-off of someone else. There are bound to be character-like copies, no matter what, because human range is so limited and there are so, so many of us."
"I was alluding to the fact that I believe you're a Changeling," Samya stood, in confrontation, her Odyssey uniform partially wet and dripping of old-versus-new conflict.
Tatsu transformed herself into a smooth-faced, male shapeshifter, with bland beige clothing. "If you're looking for your sister, you'll have to speak to the Solanae. I was looking for a cover on this planet when she was taken beyond my ability to stop it."
"And what are you doing here, on Earth?" Samya struck with hard-forced Starfleet-investigative drive.
The Changeling replied, "My name is Diggs, and I'm a lone traveler, belonging nowhere. Your sister's ways intrigued me and I took her place. Her maintaining of what you Humans call the 'old ways' appealed to me-- Perhaps I am in search of said ways in my own kind-- That, and any reason to not have slicked-back hair. I mean, it's a trait that's coded into my system for some reason?"
"Damn! That means I'm going to have to go through all this arguing again when I find Tatsu," Samya cursed. "Well, at least I'll be practiced. Not to mention your literal de-humanization disqualifies any point you have over me being anything like you."
Diggs squinted in the same way he did as Tatsu, unable to reconcile anti-logic through her logic. "Is it, though? I'm a literal non-Human, posing as a Human."
"Maybe. I don't know. Analogous aliens aren't what I was expecting to help me understand myself better, but I'll get what I can take."
Diggs then reached his arm out as Samya was about to head for the door. "One more thing! Can you take your niece with you? She knows what I am and won't let me leave this planet out of pure kid-powered-enthusiasm. What kind of ten year old girl has control over a Changeling??"
"No; you can deal with her. I'm fairly certain you'll be dead by her hand soon. You wanted to confront the old ways? Well, they're right in front of you, just like they were me."
Diggs watched in disappointment as the Captain left. In a darkened doorway, behind the Changeling, Diggs sensed, in his protoplasmic-sweat-dripped fear, the young and swift ninja glaring at him, somehow controlling him with exponential confidence and psychological force: A power seemingly passed down through Samya's family, generation after generation.
Dinner better be ready in exactly one hour, the young, Human creature force-thought, as if she were a telepath or something. One. Hour.
This story is in effect a response to Prompt 1: Aftermath, but it takes place well after Berat's career with Starfleet and the CDF has ended. It requires some lateral thinking to see it as a response to the topic...but I think you'll see what I was getting at as you get further in. It also serves as a sort of response for Prompt 2--though someone, as you will see, has sought most unconventional counsel.
Is this going to be our end?
I can feel the knife
Somewhere in the darkness
I'll follow you
I'll find you
I saw the sign of rust
And I breathed your name
Heard it fade into the past
Where I'll follow you
I'll find you
I'll follow you
I'll follow you
I'll follow you
(I'll follow you)
You showed me the way there
I can see the light
But I'm in the darkness
Where I'll follow you
I'll find you
I'll follow you
I'll follow you
I'll follow you
I'll follow you
I'll follow you
Into the past
I'll follow you
Into the past
I'll follow you
--Nero, "Into the Past (Reboot)"
Elders' master suite of the Berat Estates
Town of Prenkariy'ane, Curaga Colony
Cardassian Union, along the Federation border
During the final days of Tayben Berat
"...so sorry, Grandfather," a voice is saying as I drift back into waking. "She just appeared in the greatroom, and she isn't taking 'no' for an answer."
My head feels heavy as I turn it, even laying in my bed, where I've been for the past several weeks. I blink several times--it takes a while for my eyes to regain what focus they have left to them, but such are the accouterments of an esteemed old age as it comes to a close. My son, I realize--the only child I had after I finally declared my love...and that only because of my wife's foresight to have a few eggs frozen, and the amazing generosity of her younger sister's family. Though I am his father, he still uses the honorific 'grandfather' with me as the elder of the household. But recognizing him doesn't solve the mystery of who this visitor might be. I inquire.
"She's one of those Iconians," my son hisses. My eyes, just barely the better of my ears these twilight days, make the most sense of the words. I wonder for a moment if I have really wakened or not. "I thought you said they were in exile. Well, obviously they're lying."
"But you're alive." He still looks terrified. My voice is low and raspy compared to what it sounded like in my prime--but clear enough. And there is still enough left in me to want to do what I can for him, to set him at ease, or something like it. "Which at least tells me which of them it's not. Did she identify herself?"
"She says her name is L'Miren," he replies. "I would try to send her away if you wanted..."
"But that would be foolish," I counsel, "not to mention dangerous. You still have years ahead of you. Me...I have nothing to fear. Tell L'Miren...I will see her, but that if she still honors what I've done, she'll leave at a respectful time and leave me my last moments with you. With my family."
A loud bang fills the room, with the whoosh of displaced air over my face. Smoky tendrils dance in my peripheral vision, and a glow..."Those terms are acceptable," booms an imperious, multitoned, half-mechanical voice that reverberates through the furniture and into my old bones. For the love of Cardassia, she was listening from all the way downstairs? Then another bang and--
"What did you do with my son?"
"I placed him in the communal room of your estate," she replies as if transporting my boy with the flick of a finger were nothing. "I would never harm the Descendants of the Other. But this conversation I wish to have with you alone."
"You could've just asked nicely," I mumble. L'Miren responds to the remark with silence. "What do you want?"
"I simply wish to...speak with you, perhaps one last time."
I narrow my eyes at her. "Does your--" Lunatic. Psychopath. Bloodthirsty hound-TRIBBLE. "--sister know you're here? And what happens when she finds out? If you're putting my family in danger--"
The Iconian raises her arms in a quick, placating gesture. Strange to see that from her. "I have many eyes upon this world," she declares. "I shall not raise my hand against T'Ket. But if she so much sets a course for your Curaga, I will be alerted. And at that very instant, so too shall be every one of your people's warships."
I release a sharp sigh of irritation--'the Whole must be as One.' Right. Even prideful, stubborn old Eldex hadn't been so obsessive about the lives of those of his own people rendered too dangerous to live. I knew only one other such instance of pride and perceived godhead, and I reserved a cold chamber in my heart for that one. "Thanks." The word falls even drier than my typical speech these days. "Don't tell me that as soon as I die the deal is off." L'Miren...it's so hard to tell between my weakened eyes and her indistinct cerulean features, but is she actually flinching at my tone?
"My word is forever binding. Your Descendants need never fear the Ten." Interesting that. More division in the ranks than she's letting on, I suspect. I find myself hoping I'll live long enough to pass that tidbit along to the Intelligence Bureau.
"So why are you here, L'Miren?"
"Because I..." I have only heard her speech this hesitant once before, when I stood before her with the World Heart in my hands. "For us the moment comes only once, and it is gone. It was not so for you, M'Tayben Peacebringer, who had the means to try to rebuild those things in the past that were broken. I have let far too many such moments slip irretrievably through my fingers, and by the time I understood, it was far too late. This moment...and my questions...I do not wish to add to that list."
I blink with surprise at the iconization of my name, though I hold my tongue on that. Still, there is plenty left in her words to raise an eye ridge--and yes, my suspicion. "So...what, you just want to talk?"
"That is correct," L'Miren replies. "Even the first time I saw you during the war...I never knew you. I recognized your species, but not the uniform, not the...righteous anger that we created in you. I never thought the Other could have been involved in taking the life of my Sister."
Of course. I had beamed to Iconia in the past wearing not my Starfleet uniform, but a holonovel costume of a Hebitian space adventurer written in the days before the interplanetary era, a long blue coat a bit reminiscent of the Vaadwaur, but layered with armor. I had ordered my team not to beam down in uniform in hopes of keeping the Iconians from visiting a special vengeance upon our peoples should our mission fail...better that they not see me and my people as an official presence, if that were the case.
And as we had seen with Sela and even Kagran, in a way that decision had proven wise: unlike Romulus and Remus, Cardassia still stood intact. They had struck at Qo'noS early in force, but Earth had only faced the wrath of extinction late in the war. But it had also prevented M'Tara and L'Miren from recognizing me as their Other and turning away their wrath. Perhaps it had to be so. Perhaps there really was such a thing as a predestination paradox. Or perhaps the decision to have mercy would have created a parallel timeline. One where none of us suffered thus.
Close to a second century and still as impatient for answers as I ever was, I thought. Maybe I'll know them once and for all before the week is out.
"All I knew then was that you were bent on destroying us," I answer. "You created a cruel world for me to live in. If you had asked me then, I would only have been angry that my colleagues panicked and retreated. That we didn't end you as well. As the Vulcans would've said, where I stood, it would have been the only logical decision, and back then I would have been willing to take full responsibility for it."
"But now...it is different?" L'Miren sounds both melancholy and hopeful.
"Perhaps so," I allow, but no more than that. "You admitted that you were wrong to have opposed us in the first place, and you have kept the peace with us for almost a century. But you have never offered anything to help us rebuild, even after I gave you what you needed to rebuild your world. All that we've done to build a better world for my son and grandchildren, we've done in spite of you, L'Miren. And more than that, you have let T'Ket continue on her path of vengeance, knowing more of our blood would be spilled thanks to your complacence. Even with a few little helps along the way, you knew that would still be the result. I still have to think that after I die, one or more of my grandchildren, or their children, is going to be murdered by T'Ket. But I guess our lives aren't really important enough to mean that much to you. You have shown us peace in your inactions, but never in your actions."
I still can barely read any more emotion from L'Miren's alien features than I could from one of my Starfleet colleagues in those days, the time I witnessed him in his true form. I don't know what to make of another one of the Iconian's long silences and the stare from her six unblinking eyes. She offers no direct answer, but finally she speaks again. "What would you have requested, M'Tayben, if Sela had not betrayed us? If we had offered you a boon?"
I give her my own long pause of self-searching. The weight of the hard years of my military service--first at the hands of my own people, then the Dominion, again from my own species, and then the Iconians--presses down upon me, and for a moment my breathing shallows and I feel sleep trying, even now with this dread being hovering at my bedside, to steal over me. L'Miren reaches out a hand and despite the adrenaline of a moment's panic, I feel as though I would barely have the strength to push the covers off of me and bat it aside.
The Iconian stills herself, her hand lowering far slower than she raised it. I try once more to contemplate her question. Ultimately I give up. "It's hard to say how I would have answered you then, since you never did make the offer. You're asking the household elder who has had a lifetime to grow and several good decades of peace, not the middle-aged military commander I was then, who was grieving and angry from all of the suffering you were inflicting on us." L'Miren offers no objection. She never does, I've noticed by now. So I continue. "This is how I like to hope I would have answered. I would have asked you for a permanent guarantee of peace towards our peoples."
"What about material assistance? Technology? The labor of our Heralds?" L'Miren says.
I shake my head, not that the gesture looks like much with my head resting on my pillow. "Only very limited," I replied. "The personal assistance of you and your sisters...techniques to help us help ourselves...that I might have accepted if you'd asked me aboard your flagship. But I will not accept any work from the hands of slaves. Not then, not now."
"It seems you may misunderstand what the Heralds are to us," L'Miren softly rebuts, though the first objection she's voiced to anything I've said is awfully diffident for a mighty being in the face of an elderly, dying man.
"No, L'Miren, I don't think I do. Whatever you believed, you revealed your true attitude when you made your slaves into disposable weapons of war. You wouldn't have even contemplated that if your platitudes about your 'duty to care for them' had actually been sincere. If you had ever really cared about them as sentient beings in their own right, you never would have engineered them into obedience in the first place. You would have given them a choice. Including the choice to do wrong. Without that, anything done right is worthless trash. That's all you ever made for yourselves when you created them to be your slaves. In fact--" I interrupt myself to cough...a wintry, rattling sound that she endures in silence once more until I speak again. "Have you never considered that you may also be liable in part for what the Dominion did to their servants? What makes you think that time right before their war against us was the first time they ever found your technology, or heard legends of the new atrocities you started committing after the fall of your world? They're such a perfect reflection of you I can't help but think there was some influence somewhere."
"Sweet L'miren'bet," she...well, I don't think she's capable of a whisper, but close enough. "No more."
So there still is some lingering affection for one of the Heralds after all this time. Some form of regret for a creature abused. But I will not call it love. It is one thing with a riding hound, who without the mind of a man, still exercises the full extent of the determination nature gave it. We may chastise them for chewing their riding tack or whacking the tops of our feet with the club-end of their tails in their rambunctiousness...but the hound, at least, still can disobey our commands every so often. For what they are, at least, they are whole. The Herald slaves--they were never whole even in the days of peace.
L'Miren snaps out of whatever reverie she's lost herself in. "Perhaps a debt does remain," she decides. Then she bends her head down, those six burning eyes that much closer to mine. "M'Tayben, it is not fitting that a great one such as you should fade so soon like any other mortal. There is still so much you could say and do if you had the chance." She lowers her head, closing her eyes for a moment as she says, "There is an empty place. One that you created. But...it does not matter what my estranged Sister would say. And I find myself thinking more and more, as unbelievable as this sounds, that the Sister you took from me would have approved of this had she survived the day of your wrath long enough to learn the truth of you." She opens her eyes, taking in the sight of my frail body. "I can fix this, M'Tayben, and make sure you never have to endure it again."
I cannot recoil, laying prone before her. I do, however, break into another round of coughing as my breath catches and my heart jumps for an erratic moment. My hands and feet grow colder yet beneath the covers, and my stomach heaves for a second, though these days I find little interest in providing it much to fill it. "No, L'Miren. Absolutely not. Let me go in peace."
"I wish to free you," she intones, sounding...hurt. "That's all I want. You don't deserve this fate. I just...want to do the right thing this time."
"No, no, no, no. You're wrong, L'Miren. It's not the right thing." For a moment, my eyes focus on nothing. "It's hard at first," I whisper. "Dying." A faint smile traces across my face, a hint of a laugh. "But I've had time enough to get a little practice, and it's not as hard as it was. I'm getting better at it, and I think I'll pull it off shortly." Is it me, or do those six burning eyes grow wider at my little moment of levity? "What, L'Miren, am I scaring you?"
"I don't understand, M'Tayben. You fought so hard to survive. All of you did. You were ready to give up everything."
I shake my head. "Not everything. Or I would've helped Sela along. I wasn't willing to give up the right to look my future son and grandchildren in the eyes without having to think they'd see nothing but a merciless butcher in there."
"Indeed," L'Miren intones, "you made yourself defenseless to keep the gate running, for my sake. You could have fallen at the hands of anyone. The invaders, Sela. T'Ket. You could have died for us that terrible day, so easily."
"And I almost did. Then, and many times in my continuity, before that. And those could've been at your hands, for all you know. That's because there are some prices that aren't worth paying to survive."
"But I ask nothing from you now." The Iconian's voice takes on a hint of pleading. "Only your permission."
I stare hard into her eyes. "Which I refuse," I enunciate as clearly as I can. "And if you wait until I'm asleep or I'm dead and you do it anyway, I will not have any reservations like you do. I promise you, I will put all of you in a world of hurt." My body relaxes after the words are out--it doesn't like to maintain that kind of tension for long these days. "Please respect my wishes."
L'Miren shakes her head. "There is still so much I do not understand. You defend your death as vigorously as you defended your life. Please...at least tell me why, M'Tayben, when I offer this freely, with no conditions or obligations."
I laugh again, a single short, sharp sound this time. It probably sounds like death to her. Good. "Believe it or not, your presence here is making it easier, not harder." She draws back a few centimeters. "It's not just that the life you're trying to give me wouldn't be the one I've lived, with my people and my family. Not just that you would take away my kinship with them, that you would break my marriage and take away my ability to be a proper elder to my family, which is meant to be passed to my wife, and someday to my son. Not held on to forever.
"I've seen in you and your sisters what happens when you guard your life too jealously. You said it yourself. I was able to do what I did to save you not because I was desperate to live, but because I had accepted that I could die. You people have shown me what an extreme lifespan can do to corrupt a person. T'Ket most of all. She was already sick in the heart back on Iconia; did you ever consider that? True, maybe you all could have done with a bit more experience in self-defense so she didn't have to bear the full burden, but you heard what happened when I tried all of the rational reasons to get her moving. I look at her...and all of you, frankly...and it makes it easier to accept my death. Our minds and our souls have a half-life in this universe, so to speak, a point where they would be too decayed to go on as anything but a shadow of what they once were. That's something I learned from my wife when I accepted her traditions. We're mortal for a reason. We may be broken and subject to death's curse, but we're also subject to the curse of what happens if we live too long in this broken world, too. And I'm not keen on overstaying until I'm past my half-life and I become someone I would hate. You saw my old second-in-command. The Liberated Borg."
L'Miren nods. She couldn't have missed Commander Redmond, who had suffered almost the severest physical disfigurement of any of the Liberated, though miraculously her personality had escaped those fourteen hours of torture...not unscathed, but suffering in an entirely human way. She had already come to visit me the previous week, showing some sign of increasing age, but still looking as though she was only aging at a tenth of the speed normal for a 25th century human.
"She has enough of the curse as it is," I say. "About as much as an El-Aurian, we think. Who knows, maybe that's where the Borg stole the genetic modifications from. That seems to be about the upper limit for our peoples, and even the El-Aurians lose it in grand fashion once in a while. But anyway. There's a saying she taught me, that applies to my life as far as I'm concerned. I am ready to 'quit while I'm ahead.' While I'm still...not perfect, but fairly satisfied with the kind of person I've been."
This time the Iconian shakes her head. But there doesn't seem to be much energy in the protest. Or in her voice for that matter. "It still seems so...wrong to see you like this. I hear you saying you are ready for it. But...I am not."
And there it is. "L'Miren, it's all right to miss me. Or your sister." Her hand flies up and covers the light emanating from her core. "That's normal, and natural. It's all right to regret the things you'll never have the chance to say or do, or the things you wish you could have done differently. You created a great many of those regrets for yourself, L'Miren."
She lowers herself a few centimeters closer to the floor, her body sagging a bit as her head bows. "The Other brings us peace and speaks in truth."
It almost seems like she wants some of my unforgiveness. But it sounds like more than just a guilty conscience seeking the harsh medicine of confession. Her words sound almost like another one of those chants in the vein of the one from Kyana: an incantation--an invocation...perhaps even a ward against misfortune. Misfortune that somehow, much as it astounds me to even think it, that...I could bring upon her Whole if I took sufficient offense with me to my grave.
I deliver my instruction as I would to the youngest of my grandchildren. "If you're ever going to truly rebuild, L'Miren, you have to learn the right lessons from those regrets. Take my words today back to the Whole. That's what you can do for me personally. And think about what I've said about the other debts you owe."
"This will not be easy, M'Tayben." She still gazes down at me, the old man on his deathbed. "This will take a long time to ponder. And I fear learning the wrong thing again. I...do not wish to leave right now."
I regard the Iconian, contemplating all that passed in the dark days of her genocidal war against us. And all that has passed between us now. And I think...I hope...that almost two centuries has been enough to give me the wisdom to know what to say. "I know," I reply. "I realize it's hard. I'm not totally insensitive to that, you know. But please. Go now." I summon up a little of my old military command tone. "That is your first lesson."
The great metal-wreathed spectre in blue watches me for another several seconds, wondering, perhaps, how to reply.
Finally, in an explosion of air and darkness, L'Miren departs.
This story is written in honor of someone who played the role of the Other in a way to me. Praise be to God that in our case, it was not too late.
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I.K.S. Thot Trel; KDF commandeered Chel Grett warship
Location: Classified
Stardate: Unknown
La’ox wandered the silver/blue tunnels of her ship almost in a daze. What was it about death that courted her race so? We Klingons have an obsession with it, she thought, so eager to die and yet so, at the same time, so determined to avoid it. Twenty seven warriors dead in a skirmish lasting just under an hour two days ago.
Before the battle the crew had sat and drank in what passed for a mess hall in the Breen ship singing songs of Sto'Vo'Kor and reciting their opening songs for Kahless. Yet in the blood-haze and smoke of the battle all focus was on living, shields were repaired over weapons, warriors were more concerned with supplements from sickbay than engaging the boarding parties.
And now?
Now, after two days the ship laid almost silent, no songs of victory or tales of the deeds of the dead, simply quite mourning, this was not the Klingon way.
Worst of all, La’ox had no idea what to say to her crew.
She wasn’t meant for this, her father, Councillor Woldan, had intended for her to enter politics, the most despised of all professions. It was only under the suggestion of her father’s Gin'tak, Kriton, that she entered service as a Brigadier in the Klingon Defence Force, to her detriment it seemed that rapid promotion to General was her fate, rank without authority or respect.
So where was her first officer? He who stood for the crew? Where was K'Gan? He despised her. Any opportunity to undermine her to her crew he took, and worst of all, he wouldn’t directly challenge her for position of Captain of the Thot Trel, preferring instead to watch her fail her crew. His position was safe however, her second and K’Gans first, Ch'gren; was a drunk of the highest order and a welcome source of humour for the crew, he was no help either.
La’ox rounded out back towards the second arm of the ship; it was a maze with no turbolifts with internal gravity that often ran up the walls, no ship for a Klingon. She smiled to herself, she loved it, the lack of internal consistency and variable gravity, the twisting tunnel and the maze like layout, these were nothing to a mind trained in politics.
Here we are, she shook off her autopilot as she stood in front of an area designated ‘forward section B, second juncture, fourth aperture C’. A small plaque was affixed to the bulkhead; it read ‘Morgrin – Science Officer’. La’ox depressed the call button.
“Enter,” a rich, smooth voice called out, La’ox entered. The old white haired Klingon stood, “Captain”, he inclined his head to the side, “please, pull up a seat” he said, gesturing to an empty chair by a large freestanding musical instrument. “Warnog?” He looked back over his shoulder as he pulled two glasses from next to the replicator “I apologise for the replication, it is impossible to store the real drink correctly on this ship and I’ve rewritten these algorithms multiple times yet the Breen do not design their sustenance for taste.
“Thank you Morgrin” La’ox reached over and picked up both glasses grinning to Morgrin as she did.
He laughed as he pulled another two glasses from below. “It’s 00:30 hours and K’Gan is currently on duty on the bridge, shouldn’t you be resting? No captain, not even a Klingon can be awake all hours of the day.”
La’ox looked down; instead of answering she ran her fingers down the strings on the side of the long wooden instrument next to the door. To her surprise the sound was softer and lower than she was expecting.
“It’s a pa’tang” remarked Morgrin “It was a gift, from Chancellor Gorkon upon my appointment as Gin'tak, to his house. It is a Rigellian instrument tuned to resemble the sound of the tides on Rigel III.”
The two sat in silence for a while finishing off their drinks.
“Are you afraid of death Morgrin?”
“You are asking the wrong person captain. I hear its call every day now, I am in no battle or duel whereby I can evade it with warrior’s cunning, but I will not embrace it.
I am not afraid of death yet I have never sought to die honourably, I would rather fight it.”
“Fight death?”
“Yes, what greater battle is there? To wake every day, to survive every battle, to defeat death every single time. Is there not more honour in doing so than by falling to your enemy’s blade?”
“Should I be concerned for the crew? They spend our battles evading death but have no will to live when we finish. They spend their time making repairs or training, there are no songs, no poems, not fights or love. They talk of a glorious death yet continue to live this non-life.”
“They are not like you or I sir. They are Klingon warriors, not a politician reluctant to be here or an old man from a forgotten era. They have a mission, but they do not have a battle, they find no glory in the scanning of Breen satellites. Their blood thirsts for a fight, for a fight with meaning, not a fight to defend a few light years of recon territory.”
“But these are our orders; High Command transmitted them directly from the Chancellor himself. Is not our duty enough?”
“You are young captain but I know your father, and believe me, there were times the entire Empire thought as we three do now. But we are not soldiers any more, we are warriors and warriors fight, they do not build, they do not calculate, they do not think. They live for the battle then the next, then the war.”
“I see this, but how can I change them? I cannot disobey Command and go off picking fights to start my crew off singing again. I cannot make this into a war. I cannot create glory where there is none.”
“What do you think you should do? Do not think as a politician or as a captain, think as a Klingon Warrior.”
“I don’t know!” Snapped La’ox “I’m running out of options, I have Gorn on my crew, Cardassians, hell, I’ve got a Jem’Hadar, all of whom are content to fulfil our mission here. I can’t just send my Klingon crewmen out in a shuttle to go find their honour. I don’t have their respect; I don’t even know how to earn it.”
Her shoulders sagged and she exhaled “I’m a General, I’ve been in the military for 18 months, K'Gan has been in the military for eight years and is only a colonel, maybe I should just leave him to his crew.”
“His crew?” Morgrin stood up suddenly nocking the glasses to the ground as he rounded on his captian, “NO! YOUR CREW, YO…” He paused “…your crew” he finished, his voice returning to normal.
“You are a Klingon officer, you do not need to earn their respect, you can demand it, you do not need their loyalty, you need their obedience. Force the change you want to see, show how it pays… how it serves the Empire.”
He strode over to the window.
“Time grows short La’ox, if K’Gan will not show you respect, then wait no longer; you must press the Mauk-to 'Vor. Thraak would make a fine First Officer he…
“No.” La’ox interrupted him. “You’re correct, they are my crew, but I am their captain, I cannot accommodate them all so they must all accommodate to me.”
“Bridge to General La’ox,” interrupted a transmission from La’ox’s communicator.
“Go ahead B'Ellera,” she replied moving towards the door.
“I have a priority alpha call for aid from the I.K.S. Batlh in the Mariah Sector Sir. Sir it’s from Emperor Kahless…”
“…Sir?”
La’ox and Morgrin looked at each other, “A call to glory if ever I heard one La’ox?” said Morgrin.
La’ox turned to acknowledge him and tapped her arm “La’ox to bridge, understood, broadcast to all decks and all personnel ‘Kahless calls four our aid; to battlestations’.”
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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Part Two of Two
One thing Jaleh Khoroushi had forgotten about in the three years since she’d been on Earth was how ungodly hot it could be in Yazd Province in August. She was grateful for her hijab keeping the sun off, but 39 degrees was 39 degrees.
The Rihanha beside her voiced what she was thinking. “You should’ve warned me how hot it was going to be. I thought Virinat was bad in the summer. These osol twists are going to dry out.”
“Well, welcome to the Republic of Iran, Tovan,” she answered, laughing. “At least it’s a dry heat.”
“Can I ask you something? What are you wearing? I thought it was against the heat but I haven’t seen any men wearing it,” he said as they passed a group of local businessmen sheltering by a coffee house.
“It’s called hijab. It’s a religious thing, in homage to the wives of the Prophet.”
“‘Wives’? Plural?” he said in what sounded like unpleasant surprise.
“It was another time. My house is just up here.”
“So why don’t you wear it aboard ship?”
“The Qu’ran technically only says to ‘dress modestly’ and there was a ruling in about 2109 that a military uniform was sufficient. And here we are,” she finished, pointing to a townhouse on a side street. She caught sight of a tanned younger woman in a pink, flowered headscarf, who shrieked and came running out to her. “Oof!”
“Salaam, my sister! It’s so good to see you!” she said in rapid Farsi, kissing Jaleh on both cheeks.
“Firuzeh!”
“Are you going to introduce me?”
“Oh, right, sorry. This is Tovan tr’Khev. He’s the chief of security on my ship.”
“Salaam alaykum.”
Tovan froze for a moment. “Uh, wa alaykumu as-salaam. Did I pronounce that right, Jaleh?” he added in an aside.
“Close enough,” Firuzeh said in Federation Standard before switching back to Farsi. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing a Vulcan over.”
“I didn’t. He’s Romulan.”
“Romulan.” Firuzeh gave her a questioning look.
“Mama and Papa didn’t tell you I was an exchange officer on a Romulan Republic ship?”
“Oh, they must have, but I’ve been so busy with grad school,” she said, guiding them inside. “I’m done for the semester, though, Allah be praised.”
“Where’s the others?”
“Ehsan got held up in Jerusalem with the renovation of that old office park they’re using for the temporary Federation Council chambers. He’s bringing his kids, though.”
“I finally get to meet little Khorshid?!”
“Yes! Um, Shantia is upstairs with baby Minu, and Dariush—”
“How’s he doing?” Jaleh asked about their youngest sibling, though younger only by about eight minutes in Firuzeh’s case. “I heard Dari was at the Academy when the Iconian bomb went off.”
“He got out of the hospital yesterday. He’s upstairs, sleeping.”
Jaleh started to ask about their parents but then she heard the muted roar of an aircar setting down outside. She pushed the blinds aside and saw a graying woman in pale green scrubs and a matching hijab open the gull-wing door. Two dark-haired boys, five and three, piled out, followed closely by a lanky man with a neatly trimmed beard. Jaleh waved to her older brother Ehsan from the window as their mother Roxana deftly broke up a shoving match between the nephews. Finally a white-haired gentleman in a khaki seersucker suit stepped out of the driver’s side door. “And that’s my father, Ebrahim,” she finished pointing them out to Tovan.
“You said you had a big family, but that’s a lot of people,” Tovan remarked from close behind her. “Even back on ch’Rihan it was just me, my parents, Rinna, and the hru’hfe and a maid.”
Jaleh laughed. “Wait ‘til you meet my cousins. The extended family’s like a Rihan hfihar around here.”
“I need to go check on the joojeh kabab,” Firuzeh said.
“My favorite!”
“Adas polow and arugula salad, too,” Firuzeh told her. Jaleh’s mouth started watering. “It was nice to meet you, tr’Khev.” She swished off into the main part of the townhouse.
The next few minutes were a blur of introductions and coffee. Number three Khoroushi sibling Shantia had left her three-month-old daughter Minu upstairs, but Ehsan’s sons Davoud and Khorshid were hilariously excited to meet a Romulan. Jaleh hadn’t ever met Khorshid in person, either; she’d been on the USS Rachel Garrett out on the Breen border when he was born. “He looks like his mother, Ehsan. Speaking of which, is Yesfir—”
“My sainted wife is on Mars doing damage assessment, ” he answered.
“That’s still going on?” Tovan asked.
“Ch’Mol’Rihan got lucky, Tovan,” Jaleh told him grimly. “Mars doesn’t have an ocean for a deorbiting shipyard to hit.”
“Jaleh said you were her security chief, tr’Khev,” Ebrahim Khoroushi said. “What’s that like on a Romulan ship?”
“Well, we prefer ‘Rihan’, first off.”
“Oh, I apologize.”
“No harm; it’s not offensive so much as inaccurate, like, uh, pronouncing the Klingon capital ‘Kronos’ instead of ‘Kho-nosh’.” The confusion dated back to first contact with United Earth when neither side knew what to make of the other, and both misnomers, ‘Romulan’ and ‘Lloann’mhrahel’, had stuck beyond all ability to replace them. “Anyway, I’m mostly a cop, though the leih has me act as chief of intelligence sometimes…”
At which point Ehsan pulled Jaleh upstairs. “Ehsan, what are you—”
“I want you to clarify something for me: exactly what is your relationship with tr’Khev?”
“We’re friends, good friends. What are you—ay, beshoor!” She punched him lightly in the gut, just enough force to make him feel it. “My personal life is none of your damn business, but for your information, no, I am not sleeping with him!”
“All right, all right, I’m sorry! I’m just worried about my little sister.”
She indignantly snapped, “‘Little sister’? For heaven’s sake, I am thirty-seven years old, Ehsan! You want to worry about someone, worry about your wife and—”
“Could you keep it down?” a sleepy voice said from their right. Jaleh looked over as Ehsan said, “Sorry, Dariush.”
Dariush Khoroushi took after their father, with an aquiline nose and slightly deep-set eyes. And he was walking with a crutch, on account of his left leg was missing below the knee, a souvenir from the Iconian attack on San Francisco near the end of the war. He’d been a third-year cadet at the Academy, majoring in astrophysics, but now most of his classmates were dead. Jaleh broke away from Ehsan and stepped over to pull her little brother to her. Although ‘little’ was metaphorical at this point: he was almost a full head taller than her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Easy, big sister, I’m barely keeping my balance as it is! It’s all right,” he added, wrapping his free arm around her. “It’s all right. By FNN’s read they caught everyone from here to Gornar by surprise.”
“You shouldn’t have gone through that.”
“Really, I’m fine, Jaleh. I’m seeing a counselor, I’m taking my pain meds, I’m doing the therapy. They’re fitting me for a new leg on Friday.”
“Good.” She leaned her head back and kissed him on the cheek. “Want me to come get you when dinner’s ready?”
“Please.”
Dari started to dislodge himself from her arms, but then they heard a sound from outside. A very familiar sound, a far-off man’s voice magnified by microphone, chanting, “Allāhu akbar, Allāhu akbar.”
Jaleh was momentarily confused by the call to prayer. “That time already?”
“Um, yes.” Ehsan looked surprised at her.
“Oh, of course,” she realized, smacking herself in the forehead. “Sorry, I’m still used to doing it by ship time. Um, Dari, do you need help getting downstairs?”
“Yes, please, Jaleh.”
Afternoon prayers taken care of, Jaleh headed into the kitchen to see if Firuzeh needed any help. Jaleh wasn’t much of a cook but she could certainly chop vegetables and boil water for rice and lentils.
Tovan was staring into the transparent aluminum door of the stasis unit with a look of confusion on his face. “Looking for something to drink.”
“Well, there’s tea, milk, water, coffee, and I think—yes, that’s some apple cider.”
“Not what I meant.”
Jaleh shook her head, switching to Rihan. “There’s a reason I told you to bring osol twists as a hostess gift instead of a case of ale.”
“They don’t drink on Earth?”
“Not in Iran, no. Alcohol is considered haraam, forbidden in my family’s religion, which is still the dominant one in this part of the planet.”
“But you drink on the Aen’rhien.”
“Technically I’m not supposed to, but keeping the dietary laws on a starship is next to impossible anyway.” She chuckled. “The ayatollahs still haven’t decided whether replicators are halal.”
“What are you talking about?” Firuzeh asked over her shoulder. “Is that Romulan? I thought it’d sound more guttural, like Klingon.”
“We’re talking about food,” Jaleh told her in Farsi.
“Well, it’ll be ready in a couple of minutes. Can you set the table for me, Jaleh?”
Jaleh took down a stack of plates, then remembered something. “Oh, Tovan, something else I forgot to tell you: only use your right hand to eat.”
“Another religious thing?”
“Something like that.”
“Lot of rules.”
“Sorry. Suppose I should have warned you ahead of time.”
The family and Rihan guest were seated at the table. The Khoroushis thanked Allah for the food and their good fortune as Tovan looked on, Jaleh mentally adding thanks that they had all survived, and a prayer for those who hadn’t: their Sunni brothers and sisters who had lost their queen in Paris, and the million of others dead in France, and in America from Los Angeles to Victoria de Durango when Earth Spacedock had come crashing down. The dead all across the Utopia Planitia Basin on Mars, billions more throughout known space, and even the Iconians’ first victims, the dead of Hobus.
But it was all over now. Allāhu akbar. God is great.
“So what is this, exactly?” Tovan queried after swallowing a bite of chicken off a kebab. “I mean, it’s good—”
“You’re too kind,” Firuzeh said demurely.
“—but what is it?”
“It’s chicken. Kind of like a hlai-hwy, only smaller.” Jaleh looked around the table at her family and friend eagerly tucking into the meal.
I’m home.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
USS Proteus, 28 July 2412...
WE ARE THE BORG. LOWER YOUR SHIELDS AND SURRENDER YOUR SHIP. WE WILL ADD YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS TO OUR OWN. YOUR CULTURE WILL ADAPT TO SERVICE US. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.
"...Reading an energy spike!" Lieutenant Heidi Prentice shouted from ops.
"Evasive manoeuvres, lateral roll ninety degrees to port!" Captain Brandon Mayer ordered an instant before the scintillating white light of the cutting beam lanced from the tactical cube.
"Aye, Captain," Lieutenant Han Juon, responded immediately, his fingers flying over his console.
Under the Napean's expert touch, the Emissary-Class cruiser began to roll out of the path of the incoming beam, which began to bite into the primary hull. Thanks to forward momentum, after skipping off the back edge of the saucer, the cutting beam proceeded to slice cleanly through the starboard nacelle pylon. The Proteus lurched sickeningly as the sudden alteration of its configuration affected its flight dynamics.
"Damage report!" Brandon demanded from the deck, his gaze locked on the Borg vessel which loomed menacingly on the forward viewscreen.
"The starboard nacelle is gone, Captain," Heidi called out from ops, having hauled herself back to her station. "We have also hull breaches on decks three through eight, and shields are down to fifteen percent!"
Still thinking like an operations manager, a cacophony of options ran through Brandon's mind, and he took a deep breath. From the Deltan communications officer, Lieutenant Lyonn, he caught wafts of night blooming jasmine, tangerine, honeysuckle, amber and vanilla. The warm, deeply sensual smell of his pheromones bringing a calming clarity to not only Brandon, but every officer on the bridge. At such a low level, shields were effectively useless, and the energy maintaining them might as well be used offensively.
"Polarise the hull, and divert all power from shields to weapons," Brandon ordered. "Status of the cube?"
"We have inflicted heavy damage to its outer-hull, Captain," Lieutenant Commander Rynax reported from tactical. "I am reading some fluctuations in their power-grid."
"Target all weapons onto the following coordinates and fire at will," Mayer instructed, sending the information directly from his console to the Klingon's.
Multiple phaser beams lanced from the forward hull of the Proteus, boring through armor and ravaging the structures within.
"Enemy shields have failed!" Rynax declared. "Firing quantum torpedoes!"
"Han, back us off," Brandon said as the blue-white stars streaked toward the Borg ship, slamming into the areas of armor already weakened by the modulated phaser blasts.
On the viewscreen, stars shifted lazily as the cruiser began its turn, and a moment later, Rynax reported, "Cube destroyed, Captain."
"Stand down from red to yellow alert," Brandon said with a sigh, before reaching up to tap his comm-badge. "Mayer to engineering: What kind of condition're we in down there?"
"Not good, Captain," came the voice of Lieutenant Commander Kate Ellington. "Their first hits took out the transwarp coils, so the slipstream drive is offline, and the impulse manifolds blew giving you additional phaser power. We're going no-where for the forseeable future."
"Do what you can, Kate," Brandon said, rising from his command chair and moving to stand behind Lyonn. "Send to Starbase two eleven, Lieutenant. Explain that we've been incapacitated in an encounter with the Borg, and request rendezvous from the nearest ship to take over transfer of the vaccine to the Caldos colony."
The muscular Deltan nodded, and gave Brandon a wry, if weary smile, "Aye, Sir," he replied. "Transmitting now..."
"Captain," Commander Mol Rean called out from the science console. "Picking up another ship on sensors."
"Well, that's going to make things easier," Brandon said, turning to face his first officer.
"It's not a Federation signature, Captain," the Bolian clarified tensely. "It's another Borg ship..."
"What's our status?" Brandon asked as his senior officers gathered round the conference table. Normally, the surface would have been illuminated, but at present, it was dark, fractured and dusted with charred debris.
Lyonn was the first to speak. Regret and frustration were clear on his features, as he reported, "The nearest Starfleet ship, the Červená, is forty eight hours away. The IKS Hegh Da is thirty six hours away, and has offered their assistance, but based on current trajectory, another Borg tactical cube will be upon us in twenty four."
"What are our options? Is there anything we can turn to a tactical advantage?"
"Part of the Borg ship survived the detonation," Mol said. "It's possible that there may be a functioning transwarp coil which we could salvage."
"It's possible, but unlikely," Kate interjected firmly. "I already have three repair crews trying to stabilise the EPS regulators feeding the phaser arrays and replace the impulse manifolds. With respect, I'd rather not divert personnel from repairs to go on a scavenger hunt for a component which may or may not work, let alone exist, aboard the remnants."
"I agree," Brandon said. "The work here has to be our priority. Kate, do you have any revisions to your repair update?"
The Canadian engineer shook her head, "Everything's repairable, Captain," she sighed heavily. "Just not in the time we have."
"There was a time," Brandon began. "When I was aboard the Valkyrie, we were attacked by a Breen warship and lost our port nacelle, but thanks to a liberated drone we had rescued, we were able to create an asymmetric off-axis warp field by modifying the existing systems. Might that be a possibility now?"
"Yes, with a week to undertake the work," Kate pointed out. "There's no escaping that we're going back into combat when the cube intercepts us."
"We've beaten them once, we can do it again," Brandon said reassuringly.
"I'm sorry, Sir, but we can't" Kate replied. "We barely survived the first encounter with a tactical cube while the Proteus was in optimal condition. Realistically, it could take weeks in drydock before it's back to the same condition. In our current condition, we stand no chance in a fight against this incoming cube."
"I agree," Rynax said. "The ship is massively compromised, hampering our capability to mount either an offensive, or even defensive posture."
"I refuse to accept that there's no option, I refuse to abandon ho-" Brandon trailed off.
"Sir?" Kate prompted.
"Perhaps that's exactly what we need to do," Brandon mused, more to himself than the assembled officers.
The engineer frowned in confusion, "I'm sorry, Captain, but I don't understand," she admitted.
"In every encounter with a Borg vessel, while ships were often destroyed, there is no historical record of any escape pods being targeted, destroyed or assimilated," Brandon observed. "Rather than standing and fighting, we need to completely power down and abandon ship. Let the incoming cube scan what will appear to be wreckage, and then continue on its course, leaving us to transfer the vaccine to the Hegh Da when it arrives."
As the captain spoke, his executive officer stiffened in his chair.
"Captain, with all due respect, in escape pods, the crew would be incredibly vulnerable!"
"I agree," Rynax stated. "However, the captain's reasoning is sound. As a Klingon, it may chafe me to seek escape from combat, but, the Proteus cannot protect us. An active, if weakened ship would represent a resource worthy of assimilation. By presenting a less appealing target, we maximise our chance of survival."
"Precisely," Brandon said. "Thank you for your support, Commander." Rynax nodded in acknowledgement, his braided hair to rippling on his shoulders, as the captain continued. "Give the order to power-down all systems, and abandon ship."
Reports
Admiral Grunt, Starfleet Intelligence
Personal Log
Drake's charming turn of phrase is "come in from the cold." Not entirely sure of the provenance, but it seems appropriate. Now that the whole "rogue agent trying to kill us" thing is over with, and the Iconians have taken a direct hand, the crew has been recalled from the Latinum Princess (which I'm going to keep running as a merchantman, with a well-selected civilian crew) and returned to active duty. Our declassified records show we've been cleared of all charges, although my rank has supposedly been reduced to Captain. And of course we've been given a new ship. This one is, I think, a sign that someone in Starfleet has a sense of humor - the guys at Utopia Planitia have apparently been conferring with Ferengi design engineers, and come up with a variant on an old armed cargo hauler, a large, agile craft they're calling the Nandi-class. Guess what our ship is?
Since we're in the first group of captains trying this ship out, we get to name her. Rock's pushing for a reference from Terran classical music - he wants to call her the USS Mixalot. Whenever I ask about it, he grins and starts singing something about liking big butts...
Currently securing for transit. Our first assignment is to Starbase 234 - apparently intel indicates the Heralds are planning to hit there next.
Captain's log, USS Mixalot
Captain Grunt recording.
Been at this for three months now, and things are looking pretty bad. The enemy seem to be able to hit our territory at will, and half the time we get there too late to do anything except pick up the pieces. This isn't a war - it's a hunting expedition, and we're the prey.
Been some hints that the friends we've made in Krenim space might have some answers. I've never trusted temporal meddling, but at this point anything's worth a shot.
Captain's log, USS Mixalot
Captain Grunt recording.
Well, that was a proper mess. Good thing we were able to undo what the Krenim tried - a Romulus that's been wiped out by a channeled supernova explosion is far preferable to one that's been assimilated by the Borg. Something apparently went wrong when we returned, but according to sensor readings the temporal shielding failed and the new past became our past. We're still fighting the Iconians, which according to shielded records has been going pretty much as badly as we remember, but this particular avenue isn't for us - everything we tried just made things worse.
I gather the big brains here at Kyana are going to keep trying to figure out a way to use temporal technology in our favor, but we're headed back out to use good old high-energy particle beams.
Captain's log, USS Mixalot
Captain Grunt recording.
Been recalled to Kyana. There's something new they want to try - instead of making things cease existing in the past, they want to directly inject some of us into the past, specifically 200,000 years ago, so we can keep the last few Iconians from escaping the bombardment of their planet. This should prove interesting...
Captain's log, supplemental.
You know how it seemed for a long time that everything that went wrong was because of the Romulan empress Sela? Turned out we didn't know the half of it. Maybe it was a predestination paradox or something, but we found out the old Iconian "Empire" was really more of a protectorate, and the bombardment was from other races who were tired of being condescended to. (Wonder what they'd have made of the Q?) We had a chance to head off this war before it began, by preserving old Iconian records in a thing they call the "World Heart", but Sela just had to have her revenge. She killed the one holding the Heart, then kept it from the survivors until after the Gate they fled through collapsed. One of the survivors was a fellow, the closest they had to a warrior, named T'ket. Yes, that T'ket. He vowed his vengeance against Romulus, and against everyone else too. That's the entire root of this whole stupid war - bloodthirsty jerks vowing revenge for things that were, in a way, their own fault, and not having the good grace to shoot themselves.
We managed to bring the World Heart back forward in time with us, which secured the cooperation of most of the Iconians. T'ket's still pissed. Not surprised. At least the war as such is over with, for what good that does us. Now I just have to finish writing the one hundred seventy-three letters of condolence for the personnel lost in our last three battles, including the one to reach the temporal portal. Sometimes I wish I were still playing merchant captain, gathering intel for SI - didn't lose nearly so many crewmembers then.
"So since we're looking at a minimum of six weeks of refits and evaluations," Grunt concluded, addressing the gathered senior staff of the Mixalot, "it's going to be shore leave all around. We'll still need a skeleton crew aboard, so coordinate with your departments, but be generous - this hasn't been easy on anyone. Gydap, I presume you're headed home?"
"Yes, sir," the Andorian helmsman confirmed. "Millin's got this new hormone treatment she's been trying--"
Roclak held up a forestalling hand. "I already know more than I ever wished to about Andorian reproductive habits," the Klingon rumbled good-naturedly. "Please, for the brotherhood of combat we share, do not tell me more."
Gydap chuckled. "Okay, I'll spare you the grim details. What are you up to?"
"I believe I shall pay a visit to Vulcan," Roclak said. "There will be a symposium there in a few days on analysis of nonrotating neutron stars, and how to avoid their gravitic fields in starflight. I was merely going to read the abstracts in the Federation Journal of Astrophysics, but it may be interesting to attend in person."
"And even more interesting for the Vulcans, I gather," Shelana replied. The Andorian security chief shook her head. "And here I was going to enlist you as a native guide when I go to Qo'noS to brush up on mok'bara and bat'leth techniques."
Roclak shook his head. "I am still unwelcome on Qo'noS," he said regretfully. "One day, perhaps, I shall be able to make a case for my re-commendation before the Council, but for now..."
"I still don't understand that," Grunt interjected. "You helped save Qo'noS when the Undine attacked. You fought alongside Kahless against the Iconians, for profit's sake! Doesn't that cut you any slack?"
"I fought," the Klingon said quietly, "but I did not die. And I did not slaughter the enemy single-handed. I may have earned my place in Sto'vo'kor, but not on my homeworld." He shook his shaggy head. "It is well enough, though. I have spent more years in Federation territory, and in service to Starfleet, than I spent on Qo'noS before the decommendation. I no longer miss it there."
"How about you, Captain?" Gydap inquired. "Going back to Ferenginar?"
Grunt laughed. "No time. Sure, it's six weeks - but I'm going to be buried in paperwork. Starfleet evaluations of the new ship, Intelligence reports on everything we saw, and the Treasury alone knows how badly my cousin Barg bollixed up the corporate finances while we were busy with the war. I'm just going to take a room somewhere nice and moist - New Orleans, maybe, and see how the blackened gree-worms at Sisko's are - and get all this stuff out of the way. Maybe take in the sights afterward; most of the fighting here was around Spacedock, Earth herself went pretty well untouched." He stood. "Anyway, it's time for you all to go set up the leave schedules for your departments. See you next month!"
“I keep thinking I'm seeing something out of the corner of my eye...” Admiral Joanne Roslyn said, failing to suppress a shudder, and turned to focus on her mother, working a few metres away from her and Commander Corspa Eide. “It does take away from the experience a bit.”
For Dr Imberia Roslyn, unlike her daughter, this was all of course terribly exciting, if not shaping up to be the pinnacle of her career. She had brought her entire team aboard the Mutabor, fifteen of the best Federation researchers and specialists in their field, as well as their assistants, most of whom were on the holodeck with them, walking around and on the ziggurat, tapping away on their PADDs.
The structure itself seemed to be built of large rectangular blocks, as one would expect from an old monument, but gave no hint of its Borg relation until one looked much, much closer at the symbols engraved on the dark material. They were still a bit fuzzy around the edges, even though the overall definition of the simulation was improving continuously as new data came in over the subspace link. The Mutabor was still almost six hours out from the planet, the last ship to reach the fleet forming in orbit, but it hadn't even been a day since the initial discovery and already the seven ships and their probes scanning the planet were enough to construct a holoprogram for Dr Roslyn to work in.
“Fair enough,” Corspa said, giving Joanne an encouraging nudge with her elbow. “Look at it this way, you get to work with your mother!”
Joanne managed not to roll her eyes, barely. “Because I've always wanted to work with my mother, the Borg researcher, instead of, say, my mother the trade ambassador.”
She took a step back when the hologram updated with a ripple, and the grainy surface beneath her feet resolved into a network of tiny channels running away from the ziggurat and disappearing into the grass. Corspa knelt down to inspect them closer, while Joanne opted to tip her head back and look up towards the top. From orbit, it looked like any other burial monument on hundreds of other planets, but the underground scans, hazy as they were, had revealed it to be only the tip of a much larger structure, a massive terraced cuboctahedron with just one edge protruding from the ground. The sensors hadn't been able to penetrate inside, and the exploration teams were still waiting for Dr Roslyn's arrival before beaming down to to the planet.
“Also,” Joanne continued, “you know the only reason we're taking her instead of literally any other ship is because she wants me to make up for that research of hers I blew up last year.”
Corspa stood back up, looking doubtful. “You haven't seen each other since then, have you? I'm sure she saw this as a good opportunity for you to spend some time together.”
Joanne made a “I know you know better” face at Corspa, and then quickly schooled her expression into a more serious one when she spotted the ensign hovering awkwardly nearby with a PADD. She accepted it with a thanks and glanced over the contents, before waving it around to get her mother's attention. “Mum! We heard back from the Cooperative!”
“Good, finally!” Imberia handed her own PADD to an assistant and made her way down the pyramid towards her daughter, taking two steps at a time. “What did they say?”
“They're telling us to stay away,” Joanne said, holding out the PADD for her mother to take. “Which sounds like pretty solid advice to me.”
“Or a threat,” Corspa said, frowning.
Imberia shook her head. “No, I don't think it is. It's odd, I can't tell if they're holding back information, or if they don't have any...”
She grew quiet, staring at the transmission as if trying to read between the lines. Joanne was starting to grow impatient when her mother looked up sharply. “You do have a liberated Borg crew member, don't you? Have them report here.”
“Why?” Joanne asked, her whole body tensing up, but she did tap her communicator to contact Crewman Eco anyway. She felt Corspa shift closer, just enough for their shoulders to touch briefly as her first officer crossed her arms, and gratefully noted the way she was watching Imberia with suspicion.
“We've retrieved a lot of Borg data in the past decades, and in none of it we have found any mention of this place,” Imberia looked at them with raised eyebrows. “And yet the Cooperative seems to know about it.”
“You think it's some sort of whatever the Borg equivalent of a genetic memory is?” Corspa asked, nodding over to where Crewman Eco was entering the holodeck in just this moment. “And that he still has it?”
Joanne heard her mother answering, but couldn't make out the words. She'd gone cold the instant she'd looked up to see the holodeck doors opening for Eco, struck by how well he seemed to blend in – the door frame behind him, the researchers and officers walking around suddenly appeared wrong in the simulated environment. It was as if there'd been some profound shift caused by the entrance of the ex-Drone. He looked like he belonged, right there under the bright blue sky, standing not far from the tree line, his remaining implants, his posture, mirroring the patterns engraved on the monument.
He glanced over, acknowledging Imberia's greeting, before his eyes seemed to lose focus and his face twisted, surrendering his usual look of indifference and morphing into confusion, distress. Joanne took a step back with the same instinct that made Corspa reach for a phaser that wasn't there, although neither actions prepared them for the sound that emerged when Eco's mouth opened. It was too shrill, too inhuman, too scared to be called a scream, and it was over before anyone could fully process it. Eco's eyes rolled back in his head, the veins around his implants pulsing, and he collapsed.
It might have been the ringing in her ears, but Joanne thought she heard Corspa swear under her breath, and then everyone on the holodeck shouted for sickbay all at once.
While Corspa rushed to Eco's side, Joanne rounded on her mother, whose face was the only one not frozen in shock. “You expected this!”
Imberia tilted her head thoughtfully. “Something like it, yes.”
Anger washed over her and took the tremors out of Joanne's voice, her hands. Anger at her mother's complete disregard for her crew's well-being, and how she looked nowhere near as disturbed as Joanne felt. “Next time you plan on traumatising my crew, let me know beforehand so I can keep you off the ship!”
Imberia finally turned to face Joanne. “He's going to be fine,” she said slowly, “Borg are tough.”
Joanne had to ball her hands into fists to keep herself from throwing them up in exasperation. “That's not the point,” she hissed, trying to keep her voice down so she wouldn't embarrass herself in front of her mother's team again, let alone her own crew, “because he's not Borg anymore!”
“Then why do you act like he is,” Imberia said, challenge hardening her previously calm voice. “Don't think I didn't notice you almost having a panic attack the moment I said his name,” she added when she saw Joanne's disbelieving look.
And whose fault is that, Joanne nearly screamed. Instead, she took a deep breath, shutting out the condescending look her mother was giving her and putting two, three steps distance between them.
“I'm putting a security detail on you and your team, Doctor,” she said very delibaretely, “you're not doing anything or going anywhere without Commander Eide's explicit approval.” She turned away before she could catch the regret in her mother's eyes and left the holodeck.
x
Imberia had been right, much to Joanne's annoyance. Once crewman Eco regained consciousness, he was fine, and Doctor Siluur was pleased to attest that his rehabilitation had not been set back by months, as Joanne had feared. He even apologized to Joanne for his outburst, as he called it, and to Dr Roslyn herself for interrupting her work. Joanne had kind of hoped to make her mother apologize to him instead, which was getting increasingly less likely since Eco had also been able to provide them with some essential information regarding the monument.
“One of One?” Joanne asked, scrolling through the data sheet her mother had put together and handed out to everyone who would be going down to the planet. They were in orbit now, every single M.A.C.O. present on the surface, setting up security perimeters and signal enhancers, and Imberia sat in Joanne's office, itching to join them.
“Yes. There are a number of theories about the origin of the Borg, but I never imagined I'd have the chance to find out the truth!” Imberia said, struggling to contain her excitement. “Jonna, if the first Borg really is buried here... just think of what this could mean for the quadrant!”
Joanne shook her head. Surely nothing good could come of disturbing the resting place of the first Borg, if that was indeed what they had found. “We don't even know what's down there,” she said, aiming for a reasonable tone to avoid getting into yet another fight. “But judging by Eco's reaction, it can't be good.”
Imberia brushed Joanne's objections aside with a wave of her hand. “Sensory overload, that's all. It looks like nobody is meant to know of this place – not the Borg, not us,” she said, clearly not put off by that thought at all. “Which reminds me, I have a request to make of you. Admiral.”
Joanne sat up straighter. She could count the number of times her mother had addressed her by her title on one hand, and she'd never liked it. “Go ahead.”
“Like you said, I don't know what's down there, so I would like Commander Eide to be on my security escort,” Imberia said, holding Joanne's gaze.
Joanne's breath caught in her throat. She could see that her mother was serious, and while a part of her was glad that Imberia wasn't taking the danger of this expedition lightly, the rest of her recoiled at the thought of putting her closest friend at the same risk.
She must've hesitated too long, because Imberia leaned back in her chair, trying to hide her disappointment behind a sneer. “Nevermind. Forget I – “
“Mum, no,” Joanne interrupted, “I just didn't expect that.” She forced a reassuring smile, knowing that her mother could see right through her. “Of course you can take Corspa with you. I'll feel better knowing that she's looking out for you.”
Imberia nodded, but didn't look convinced. “But you'd rather we didn't go down at all, don't you.”
Joanne clenched her teeth. Why couldn't her mother just leave her be? She was so sick of the constant lack of understanding, of being treated like a child instead of the Vice Admiral she was, of the fact that Imberia refused to accept that Joanne would never be comfortable with her work, or the object of her research. It felt like they'd had this argument many, many times before, even though Joanne knew that this was a recent development, and it had never been this bad. It had also long gone past professional concern.
Of course, Joanne was perfectly aware that in theory, Admirals weren't supposed to be afraid of an enemy, much less show said fear, but in practice, the crew had learned to appreciate that Joanne tended to be overly cautious when it came to the Borg. Better to end as a Hirogen's hunting trophy or have one's head bitten off by a Voth Furiadon than to be assimilated, anyway.
“Does it matter?” Joanne realized she was gripping the edge of her desk and very carefully spread her hands flat on the top, staring at the bulging tendons to avoid Imberia's eyes.
“You're scared,” Imberia said, making it sound like an accusation, “and I don't understand wh –“
“I know!” Joanne exploded. “You don't understand that I'm still traumatized because I was almost assimilated because of your carelessness, because you don't care about anything that's not your precious Borg research!”
“That was over thirty years ago!” Imberia shouted back.
Joanne started up from her chair, throwing her hands up.
“So I should have gotten over it years ago, is that it?! No, don't answer that,” she added hastily when she noticed the hard look in her mother's eyes. She turned away, staring out the window at the rest of the fleet, who were blissfully unaware of their expedition leader and the Admiral fighting. She waited for Imberia to say something, anything, but the only sound was the hollow beating of her own heart, and finally the creaking of the chair, followed by the quiet swish of the doors opening and closing.
↓
Joanne waited until the last shuttle had left the Mutabor before returning to the bridge. It was bad enough that the entire bridge crew must have seen Dr Roslyn storming out of Joanne's ready room, she really didn't need to add to that by letting them see her so shaken before such a high-risk mission.
But with the away teams making their way into the ziggurat, nobody was paying much attention to Joanne. Everybody was tense, alternating between looking at the reports coming in from the planet's surface and checking long-range sensors for any hints of approaching Borg. Joanne had spent the first half hour pacing the bridge, checking sensor readouts over her officers' shoulders, and chatting with the other captains while the away team made last preparations.
Lieutenant Ji Eun Park had taken Corspa's place at the tactical station, and Joanne knew that behind her professional determination, she was just as afraid as Joanne was, except that in her, the reaction to it was a desire to fight, not to flee.
Lieutenant Elizabeth Parker was almost bouncing with nervous energy in her seat at the helm, calculating escape vectors and transwarp jumps by the dozen, and keeping an open comm channel to the pilots of the other ships, planning for a situation Joanne hoped would not arise.
Ensign Kamryn Banks, at the ops, and Commander Taallir, at the science station, were working together, trying to find a way for their scanners to penetrate deeper into the structure, both of them quiet and collected, and rather unappreciative of Joanne hovering around them.
Now, Joanne was sat in the captain's chair, watching the feed from the planet, unclenching her hands from the armrests every five minutes.
The away team entered the ziggurat through what Corspa said reminded her of an airlock, except that Imberia made a throw-away comment that the Borg didn't use airlocks. Joanne wondered briefly about the make-up of the Borg unimatrices, but that thought lost importance when the away team made it through into the interior of the monument.
It was perfectly dark, illuminated only by the flash lights and laser sights of the away team, the bright patches picking out shapes that looked at once familiar and alien. There was no small foyer, instead the entrance opened into an enormous cubical space, the ceiling and far walls only hinted at in the distance. The geometry, the empty vastness of a Borg construct was recognizable, but it was unmistakably ancient.
Pure, Imberia called it, and Joanne didn't know what frightened her more, the reverence in her mother's voice, or that she understood what she meant immediately. If this was really the resting place of the first Borg, then this was also the very first iteration of Borg technology, untouched, unaffected by any outside influence. No culture adapted to service it. No biological and technological distinctiveness added to it. Not yet.
Or maybe these were the remains of the very first civilization that had been assimilated, or some sort of evolutionary apex, or the remains of a purely synthetic civilization, or maybe this was the perfection that the Borg ever strove for, and time travel was involved. Imberia's speculations knew no bounds, and Joanne was almost relieved when an oncoming headache replaced some of the anxiety she was feeling.
They hadn't moved very far from the entrance, and already the signal was deteriorating, despite the enhancers both on the planet's surface and inside the ziggurat. The signal noise interrupting Dr Roslyn's voice grew ever more frequent, and it became harder and harder to make out the voices of the rest of the away team. There was hardly any echo, and the shouts of “clear!” and “Dr Roslyn please stay inside the shield cover” were easily lost in the cavernous space.
On the bridge of the Mutabor, nobody dared speak above a whisper in case they missed a word, or worse, a sound that didn't come from the away team. But all this technology seemed cold and dead, and although Joanne found herself leaning forward in her seat to better catch anything in the shadows, whatever was causing the interference remained invisible.
So the away team stayed in the first room. A few of the M.A.C.O.s had walked the perimeter, and discovered a number of bulkheads looking not much different from the one they had come in through, but didn't attempt to open them. Although Imberia was eager to press on, she was just as quickly satisfied to study everything in their immediate reach after Corspa gently reminded her of the security risk. An hour passed like this, then two.
When the Borg did finally come, it was almost a relief.
"Admiral, I have Borg signatures on long-range sensors," Ensign Banks said.
"How many?" Joanne asked, turning away from the main viewscreen, where the sensor grid display had replaced the feed from the planet.
"Twenty... twenty-five..." Banks was turning ashen under her dark skin, but her voice didn't waver. "Thirty, forty, I- I'm having trouble resolving the transwarp signatures, ma'am." She looked over to Taallir for confirmation, then said, "upwards of fifty, at least."
"ETA?" Not that it mattered. They had to be out of the system now.
It was Lieutenant Harper who answered. "Less than two hours, depending on where they come out. Admiral, the fleet is requesting orders."
Joanne took a deep breath. Of course they were. She had to get these people out of here. She stood up, the adrenaline coursing through her nearly audible when she spoke.
"Start evacuation immediately. Have the other ships beam up everyone they can, we will take the shuttles with my mother's team. As soon as they have everyone from the surface, warp out. They have to stay together," she said, watching the crew relay her orders.
"Admiral, the Baltimore is offering to stay behind," Lieutenant Park said.
"No." Joanne shook her head, walking over to the tactical station. "I'm hoping the Borg won't see a single ship as a threat, and will let us leave. We can't fight them, but even if they are pursued, the fleet can outrun them."
Park nodded, and then announced every ship as it warped out. Within five minutes, the Mutabor was the only ship left in orbit, waiting impatiently for Dr Roslyn's team to emerge from the ziggurat.
Corspa called in to let them know that they were boarding the shuttles at the same moment Ensign Banks said, "Admiral, there's a massive subspace distort---"
The rest of it was lost in the screaming of the proximity klaxon. The Mutabor skimmed the upper atmosphere with such violence that Joanne felt her bones rattle as they swerved hard to avoid collision with the tactical cube that had warped in on top of them. Lieutenant Harper was still fighting to stabilize the ship when the first torpedo hit.
"Do not return fire!" Joanne yelled. "All energy to the shields!" She nearly fell on the way to the helm when another torpedo hit. Harper was flying evasive manoeuvres too abrupt for the inertial dampeners to keep up, but the shields still flickered under the assault from the Borg weapons.
"Keep us between the shuttles and the cube, Lieutenant," Joanne said, one hand gripping the back rest of Harper's chair, the other on the console, following the shuttle's flight path.
"I'm trying," Harper said, her eyes not leaving her console, "but they're pushing us down into the atmosphere, and we can't make entry without full shields--!!" She swore and shouted a warning, and then steered the Mutabor straight into the flightpath of a torpedo salve aimed at the approaching shuttles.
The impact threw everyone not clinging onto a chair on the floor. Park pulled herself back up first, yelling "shields at 43%!" over the blare of the alerts.
"Shuttles are docki--" Ensign Banks was interrupted again when an explosion momentarily deafened everyone. The lights went out, and it felt like an eternity before the emergency power came on, quickly followed by the unexcited voice of the computer announcing that fires had broken out all over the ship.
"What happened?!" Joanne demanded, pulling herself into the captain's chair.
"We have lost the starboard warp nacelle," Commander Taallir said, when everybody else was too shocked or too busy to get the words out. "We have hull breaches on decks three, five, and eight through eleven. Force fields are holding."
He kept going, but the damage reports rapidly blurred into a single message of we're trapped, we're dead for Joanne. She heard herself tell Lieutenant Park to return fire, not that it would accomplish anything except to make they crew feel like they weren't just giving up. Hectically scrolling through the readouts on her personal terminal, she tried to ignore the rolling and shaking of the Mutabor, and didn't even notice when Corspa arrived on the bridge, Imberia trailing after her.
“Elizabeth!” Joanne shouted when she finally spotted a way out. “Take us through the atmosphere, full impulse, descent as steep as you can make it.” They were sufficiently high for the atmosphere to be no more than a whisper, but if they cut through it they would have the advantage of being more aerodynamic than the massive Borg cube, and maybe get out of its weapons range long enough to exploit their greater manoeuvrability and try to outrun it. And if they were lucky, they wouldn't lose too much of the hull doing it.
“No!”
Joanne's head jerked around to where her mother was standing next to Corspa and Park at the tactical station. Lieutenant Harper had already started to angle the ship down, and stared between Admiral Roslyn and Doctor Roslyn, blindly keeping a steady course.
“Take us under the cube, lieutenant,” Imberia said, not breaking eye contact with her daughter. “Centre us two kilometres underneath, closer if you can.”
Joanne cast a cursory glance at their shield levels. It was a miracle they hadn't been torn apart yet, and if whatever her mother was planning didn't work, they wouldn't have time for another escape attempt. Just as there was no time for an explanation.
“Do it, Elizabeth,” Joanne said. “Corspa, give Dr Roslyn full weapon access.” She was pushed back in her chair when Harper changed course without slowing down, and watched the cube as they approached it again, first looming large above them and finally blocking everything else from the viewscreen. “All power to upper shields!”
It got louder and louder when they were in position, the displays and lights on the bridge dimming and sparking out as the cube's plasma beams burned over the Mutabor's shields, a perfect bullseye, unmoving even without a tractor beam holding them in place. Imberia's fingers were flying over the weapon controls with a familiarity that would have given Joanne pause at any other time. Now however she only had eyes for the pattern of the Mutabor's tetryon beams on the cube's hull, hitting what seemed like random points all over the bottom face.
Checking her terminal, Joanne didn't recognize any of the targets, and saw with growing dread that their torpedoes were missing all major, well-established targets like torpedo ramps or primary power conduits. When Ensign Banks reported that the shields had fallen below fifteen percent, Joanne was ready to tell Corspa to take over, but Imberia had already stepped back from the console and called to Elizabeth to take them away from the cube.
“We need to get behind the planet,” Imberia shouted over the roar of Elizabeth forcing the Mutabor into the atmosphere. She stumbled over to Joanne, gripping her daughter's arm painfully to keep herself from falling. Holding onto each other, they watched the front hull starting to peel away as the shields failed sporadically even as the weapons fire hitting the rear of the ship became less frequent.
There was a cry of “warp core breach!” from somebody and for a second, Joanne thought this is it, tightening her grip on her mother's hand, before Ensign Banks brought up the view from the rear of the ship on the screen.
The Borg cube was breaking apart, imploding at a hundred points all over the hull, and as the exterior was torn away, more bright implosions became visible. Within a fraction of a second the screen dimmed to mask the subspace explosion ripping the cube apart.
It wasn't a warp core breach. It was the cube's transwarp coils, puncturing subspace, creating a rift that was expanding rapidly, until the shock wave reached the Mutabor and swept her along, driving her through the atmosphere. Joanne expected the ship to break apart at any moment, the hull groaning under the extreme stress, the shields long gone, but they were still alive –
And then they were through.
Drifting away from the planet, trailing plasma and atmosphere from a dozen hull breaches, missing a warp nacelle, but they were alive.
There was silence on the bridge as Joanne shut off the alarms to give everybody a moment to breathe, herself included. She watched the shock wave dissipate in the distance, leaving behind a solar system just a little too bright, too unstable for warp travel.
The cube was gone, but there were fifty more advancing on them, slower now but no less dangerous.
Joanne stood up, straightening her shoulders and making a point to meet every officer's eyes on the bridge.
“Good work, everyone. If you are injured, please go down to sickbay as quickly as possible. I want a full damage report in my ready room in five minutes, mission briefing in fifteen,” she said, waiting until everyone had acknowledged her orders before taking her mother down to sickbay herself.
→
Captain Samya and her chief science officer walked down their tight, limited, red striped corridors in a hard-pressed attempt at old-fashioned follow-along.
"A counseling session? You know I did all my post-Iconian-war trivialities on Earth, just a few days ago. There was a sibling-rivalry fight turned literal and everything," Samya interjected.
Mika maintained a furrowed brow of disapproval. "Except your sister turned out to be a Changeling. Not only do you have that to deal with, but all the holes your violent tendencies manufacture regularly, like your niece and those animal things, are interfering with Starfleet behavioral ethics."
"Ugh," Samya grunted as they passed the same corner for the fifth time. "Can we just enter, finally?" As the doors opened to the multi-purpose office Toji was occupying, Samya grabbed Mika's arm. "I'm going to prove to you how pointless this all is, and that acknowledging myself in Kyoto was all the ethic it or I ever needed. I'm referencing, of course, that time it produced all those Japanese Khan variants."
Toji, the Starfleet counselor already sitting, raised a finger in opposition. "Ma'am, Mika's presence is against regulations."
"A Captain's point supersedes the rules, Toji. You know that. I made you write a dissertation about it."
The Bajoran man cleared his throat. "Well, let's start with the Iconian War, and how you dealt with coming to terms with all the deaths, Delta recruiting and plot holes."
"Boring."
Toji checked his padd. "What about those animal things Qu brought back? Before their eternal existence, you hypothetically-murdered without hesitation."
"Pass."
He scrolled down. "You left your 10 year old niece with an alien you know nothing about, and Starfleet now reports they're both missing."
"It's like you're not even trying! She and that liquid mush are off having space adventures. She messaged me yesterday from the Orion slave trade."
Losing patience, Toji put down his padd. "Uggh. Fine. Then explain to me these: How is Shakespeare a viable life force? Or, why was Qu speaking French? And why do you never have a phaser?"
"It's out at the shop? I don't have all the answers, nor do I care that my methods excrete those questions. We're alive, and damn the consequences-- Shout out to Janeway. Aw yeah."
With no other ideas, Toji stood up; his voice changing with slight alien-resonance. "Then you, Captain Samya, side with a genocidal maniac! Your science officer was right in that you couldn't follow the rules even if you tried!"
"I may have said that to him," Mika confirmed. "I definitely said that to him. Also, my tricorder is reading a Bluegill inside of Toji, which explains why there was a pink tail sticking out of his mouth this whole time."
Samya took to her feet as well. "Oh, real original Toji's handler. You know the Changelings and Undine have the market on that, right? And I can follow Starfleet diplomatic regulations just as well as any other drone, drooling officer."
"Of course you would be an expert at falsification. We know all about your true plans, which the other Bluegills and I have drawn air-tight conclusions through from slimy, bug-like assumptions." Toji accompanied that remark with a leaping kick at her, to which Samya pushed his leg to the side to redirect. "Not to mention we're sick of your persistent bug hunts! We're not contained of mostly slime to be popped for your amusement!"
He then flung out fist after kick after fist, each one being deflected by her, courting no other response.
"Tell me, you Toji-worm," Samya talked, "What is it you think I'm doing? Let's chat. We'll hash this out, like bros."
Mika took a position behind her. "Captain, shouldn't we tap our commbadges in a classic Starfleet whine for security's light-weight aggression?"
"No. Clearly diplomacy is the answer to everything," Samya retorted just as the room filled with more Starfleet officers controlled by Bluegill. "It's your point. This is your doing."
An Ensign pointed at her. "Foolish rank-accelerated hack! We work for the Iconian T'Ket by extension over the Vaadwuar and will stop your attempts at accessing them, to what we can only phlegmingly conclude is to Sela-them-up!"
"Is that true? You really are Janeway-ing??" Mika's jaw dropped as she was over-taken by Ensigns.
Several more Ensigns began throwing punches and Samya dodged her head back, slightly, at each attempt, refusing to give in. "What?" she said, confused. "Yes, I may have set up a meeting with a Yridian information dealer, but only because he could help me find my sister who was abducted by Solanae."
"The Solanae also worked for the Iconians, in partnership with the Elachi!" Mika explained with a gaping Bluegill squirming all around her face. "Captain, forget what I said about behavioral ethics. The high-road is just a Starfleet drug we all take to inflate our egos."
Samya then kneed one of her Ensigns in the stomach and multi-punched all the other Ensigns surrounding her. "Dammit, who the Hell wasn't working for the Iconians?? Clearly, I need to temper my tactics."
"Ugh! Gah!" Each Ensign cringed and yelped in pain as Samya went around the room force-kneeing and force-palming broken limbs and shattered rib cages into each worm controlled flesh chunk until they hit the floor.
Seconds later they all got up, better than ever. "Oh yeah. They have super-strength," Samya remembered.
"Ladies." Commander Jarell entered the room. "Your phasers are back from the shop."
Both taking their weapons and setting them to kill, Samya and Mika took out each Ensign after Ensign until they all hit the floor, permanently. With Toji, the spawn mother, remaining, the two women laid constant phaser beams while dodging each of his lurching punches after punches.
"I'm sorry I just abandoned my ideals like some kind of Eddington wannabe, but I suppose your recklessness is more fitting than naught?" Mika said as Jarell watched Toji hit the floor in a hard thud. "And whatever's going on with our phasers is just going to have to wait to be explained in our next adventure."
Samya kicked Toji to make sure he wasn't moving. "Yeah, I need to be more careful about the holes I manufacture. Now, are you going to help me infiltrate the Solanae or are you going to sit around all day talking about your feelings?"
"No, ma'am; I'm ready for excessive, over-the-top violence that perpetuates morbid tendencies," Mika stood at attention.
The Captain sighed in relief. "Thank you. You were just misled by Picard-ism. It affects one in six Starfleet officers. You're fixed now. You're mostly fixed." She then turned to her first officer. "Commander Jarell, please see to it that Mika and I get medals. Good ones. None of that Palm Leaf of Axanar stuff."
"Yes, Captain." He bowed slightly before leaving.
Samya looked at all the bodies. "Let's drag these into the warp core reaction chamber so the other Bluegills don't find out about them. They sent out that message in 2364 and nothing came of it, but we can't take any chances."
Several non-taken-over Ensigns in the hallway stopped in shock and awe as the two ladies, hauling the Human meat bags, left sickening amounts of gunk and bug ooze in the carpets all the way to the engine room.
Prompt 2: "In Session"
Faulty Wiring - part 1 of 3
In which sinister brain experiments result in absolutely nothing, and we meet some monkeys.
"This is going nowhere, Nim," James Allison told the counsellor. "I don't need to sit here telling you my troubles."
Dr Nimmi Gan looked at him wryly, but said nothing. Some people said there was no point in lying to a Betazoid, since they'd know what you really meant. Allison's view, for exactly the same reason, was that there was no reason not to lie to one.
"All I need is for you to fix this phobia or whatever it is I've developed, so that the mission can go ahead. There's no earthly use in dropping a man into enemy territory if he's reduced to a nervous wreck by the shuttle ride. On the last practice run, I was in such a state by the time I landed that I was 'captured' within five minutes."
"Time is getting a little tight, true. All right, there is a trick that might be able to deal with the immediate problem."
Nim produced a gadget from a drawer. It looked like a cross between a crash helmet and a comms operator's headset; Allison recognised it as a standard neural stimulator - a fairly typical piece of medical kit in the 25th century.
"It's a refinement of simple exposure therapy. Phobias normally happen in reaction to a traumatic event involving the stimulus in question; on an unconscious level the brain then associates that stimulus with danger. When it next encounters it, it pre-emptively tries to get away. And the very fact that you panic and you run away only reinforces your brain's impression that it's dangerous. Circulus viciosus, vicious circle, as your people say. Exposure training works by repeatedly being exposed to whatever triggers the fear, and then staying there until the anxiety dies down by itself - thus demonstrating to your brain that nothing disastrous has happened. The trouble is that that can take an extremely long time. Exposure therapy alone usually takes many, many sessions, starting with something small, say a photograph, and working up slowly to the real thing. What I'm proposing to do here is to short-cut that, by using a neural stimulator to cancel out the anxiety response as soon as it appears - leading to the same result, that you experience facing the trigger without being afraid, only a great deal quicker."
"Sounds like a plan. Is this safe, or have you just invented it?"
"Far from it, it was invented on your planet before they even had working neural stimulators - to begin with they were doing it with tranquilliser drugs; dose the patient up with beta-blockers, I think it was, before starting the exposure training so there'd be less anxiety to start out with. Doctors had to be resourceful in those days! It's a wonderful technique," Dr Gan said thoughtfully, "but I wonder if it's not over-used in this part of Starfleet. People come in disturbed by the things they've seen, and what they've been doing, and headquarters call it a purely medical problem, train them to disregard it, and send them out again - even though it may be perfectly true that what's been happening is not right. They almost imply that it's irrational just to think there's anything wrong with killing. The things you've been telling me about your recent experiences... these things may be necessary but it's surely "rational" enough to say they're not good."
"I know damn fine they're not good, Nim, being able to ride a shuttle isn't going to change that. But I've decided to take on this mission, and I need to be able to do it."
"Fair enough, I suppose." Dr Gan fitted the device over Allison's head, and plugged the trailing end of the lead into his desk console. A set of lines scrolled across the display, wobbling up and down for a minute before settling into steady waves as the sensors sorted themselves out. Nim handed him a PADD showing a photograph of the inside of a shuttle.
"Let's try it on something small first. OK, will you take a good look at that and imagine that's you in the picture?"
After a minute Nim stopped him. "I'm not actually detecting any reaction to that. Try another."
Several photos later, there was still no response. Nim shook his head. "No point carrying on with this if you're not reacting anyway. Let's try something else. Mime exactly what you do when you board a shuttle, and describe what you're doing."
Allison looked at him in disbelief. "Are you just trying to - "
"It's a psychiatrist's privilege to make a monkey out of his patient."
"I've told you before, Nim, stop stealing my lines before I've said them."
Still trailing wires, Allison went stoically through the motions of climbing an imaginary ramp, sitting down, fastening a non-existent safety harness and bracing for takeoff, trying not to think about how silly he looked. Dr Gan winked. "Ready for blast-off?"
Allison rolled his eyes.
"No," Dr Gan added, looking back at his display, "even tactless jokes aren't getting anything. I don't quite understand this - given how dramatically you react to the real thing, I'd expect at least some measurable response to things like this. For that matter, when you were telling me about your recent experiences, I hardly ever picked up any anxiety from you then either. Anger, yes, but not fear. Some of your stories frightened me, but apparently not you!"
"I was angry? Wow, I'd never have guessed."
Dr Gan ignored the sarcasm. "We need something closer to the real situation. Shall I book the flight simulator for our next session?"
"OK."
"That will have to be the day after tomorrow, by the way, since I'm told there's to be another dry run for this mission of yours tomorrow. The commodore asked me to let you know that it's a different crew this time, not the ones who'll be flying the real mission with you; some whizz-kids from USS Magpie. Some gadget that I'm apparently not cleared to know any more about hasn't been working as expected, and she wants fresh pairs of eyes on it, see if they have any ideas for how to make it work."
"Anything to do with their agent not working as expected, either?"
"She didn't say that, but yes."
Next day
Lt Mirra Ylzanov seemed thoroughly put out by the whole thing.
"Does she think even Magpie's pilots are medical magicians? It makes no sense. Oh well. Crewman Jacobs, you are on Allison duty."
"I can at least keep note of what happens," agreed Perry. "Maybe it'll mean something to his doctor, at least."
"A soldier should be above being afraid," said Mirra, with Andorian-Academy piety.
Moomis, the third member of their team, made a small sound in his considerable throat. When Mirra looked down at him, he tapped a bony finger three times along his shoulder. Mirra frowned. "What does Moomis say?"
"I think what he's getting at," Perry translated, trying desperately not to smile, "is that Commander Allison has probably already thought of that".
Their job today was simple, fly the shuttle over a test course, drop Allison at a given location and return, while trying not to be spotted by any sensors on the ground. The new sensor-jamming device had only been tried a few times, and the regular crew were apparently having difficulty making it behave.
Their passenger seemed fine as they took off, and Perry's spirits rose; maybe he was getting over it, after all. But within a few minutes, she noticed him starting to look uneasy; he was shivering, and she saw him clench his fist tightly, as if he was literally trying to get a grip on himself.
"Who are we pretending to attack?" Perry asked, hoping to distract him. "Klingons? Tal Shiar? Or do I not get to know that?"
"No, need-to-know information. Sorry." Allison managed a smile. "The people standing in for them don't know, either, only that they've to try and stop me getting through. 'Try' being the operative word. Last exercise but one, one of the patrolling sentries turned left too soon in the dark
and walked straight into another sentry. Other sentry heard the noise, made a flying tackle and had her pinned to the ground with both hands behind her back before it came into his head that she wasn't me. And I know this," he added, "because I was lying thirty feet away all the time."
Perry and Moomis laughed, at least Perry assumed that that was what Moomis was doing.
"I don't feel scared, that's the crazy thing," Allison said. "I'm not thinking we'll crash or anything. I just feel b---- awful."
"I'm like that with dogs," said Perry. "My head's over it, but my knees wobble. Thing is, if half a ton of Labrador leaps at you wanting to be your best friend, that's not a good time for your knees to wobble. So there's me on my back if I'm not careful..." She turned back to the jamming device and pretended to make some notes about it's performance. Shivering, pale, appears distracted, she wrote, in the round childish handwriting of someone who'd been using voice recognition her whole life. Pupils contracted. The shuttle had a medical tricorder; she had it secretly trained on their passenger. Skin temp. 1.5°C below normal. heart rate on takeoff 62 bpm. Currently 105.
A voice suddenly came over the comms. "Ground station 2 to Helen Sharman, you're dead."
"You can see me?"
"I can see what looks like your tailfin. It only tripped the magnetic field sensors, not the radar."
"One moment," Mirra told the commlink. "Permission to try something..." A second later Perry was flung against the side of her seat, as the shuttle turned so sharply that they were leaning at 45 degrees. "Could you see me then?" Mirra was asking the commlink cheerfully.
"No."
"O.K., so not visible if we roll to one side. The jamming field must not be symmetrical, or something... Moomis, try and shift the field so it covers our tail fully, and turn it up a bit." The alien adjusted several numbers on the screen, one after the other.
"You've gone," reported the voice.
They flew on above a wide, forested valley. Even with the jamming field boosted, Mirra made two more of the hair-raising banking turns, to make sure of confusing any sensors - or possibly just because she was enjoying them. Moomis looked at Perry and clamped a bony hand over his mouth.
"So do I," said Perry, and thanked heaven she'd remembered to bring peppermints. Their passenger had been silent for a while. "Sorry Mr Allison, she's a maniac. Do you feel sick too?"
No answer. Allison was staring straight ahead, his eyes unfocused. He looked as if someone had hit him over the head. Was this even a panic attack? Perry had seen them once or twice - a science vessel like Magpie tended to have a high rate of weird things - and it hadn't looked like that. Perry touched his shoulder.
"Are you all right?" The traditional stupid question. Allison took a few seconds to respond.
"...Don't know."
Perry glanced at the tricorder readout again. temp now ↓3.5°. heart rate 125 bpm. Pupils contracted. breathing fast & shallow. H. r. now 131 bpm. Perry panicked. "Mirra?"
No response. "She's like this when she's flying," Perry muttered. "MIRRA! We need to land now! I don't like the look of this." After a moment, the shuttle began to descend, circling a few times before managing to find a gap in the trees large enough to land, while Perry reached across and switched off the jamming device. Allison stumbled out, white-faced. Perry followed him a few minutes later. "I've told HQ we've had to land owing to technical problems," was all she said.
"Which - we - have," Allison gasped. "Thanks. Never - been that bad - before."
Perry smiled. "Just the Magpie service. Take as long as you need to," she added.
"I'll be OK in a minute." And indeed Allison seemed to be recovering remarkably fast now he was out of the shuttle. An idea was forming in Perry's mind.
"Just going to check something with Moomis," she said, and disappeared into the cabin. A few minutes later she returned to Allison. "This is just an idea, but what about making another quick practice flight right now, before we return to the base? They say if you fall off the horse, get straight back on, and all that."
This time, for the first 15 minutes, their passenger seemed fine, said he had "got over it" and started to joke about it. But no sooner had he said that than he started to get worse again. Without being asked, Perry signalled Mirra to land.
"You didn't even give me a chance there," snapped Allison.
To his surprise, Perry only smiled, her expression that of someone with an ace up her sleeve.
"Well," said Perry. "It's going to jumble up Fighter Command's plans nicely, but at least we can clear you of the charge of being afraid of flying."
"Sorry, I didn't get that. You saying I can't help being afraid of flying? I know darn fine I can't, or I would."
"No, I'm saying you're not afraid of flying. Before we took off, I asked Moomis to leave the jamming field off, and switch it on again halfway through the flight - and you didn't start to unravel until then. Somehow, you're allergic to that jamming field."
Was that really all? Could it be?
"Can that happen?"
"I don't know if it can, but it has. I'm not sure why the field extends inside the cabin at all, really, it's not doing anyone any good in there," the young woman added, getting interested. The little alien pulled the universal engineers' face for "Because it's a heap of junk", and reached across and began sketching field lines on her PADD. She nodded with interest.
"Might work. Come on, let's go and break the news to HQ."
As they climbed back into the shuttle - this time without switching the device on - Allison heard the words, "Do you think we'll be in the Lancet?" If nothing else, he'd obviously made a little science ship very happy.
"So I've been wasting your time, I'm afraid," Allison told the counsellor. "Seems like I never needed to talk to you about all that rubbish after all."
The counsellor's response was a wry smile. "Oh, I think you did. But I know it would take dynamite to get you to admit that."
"Do counsellors do a special course in how to embarrass people?"
"It's the first lesson we do. Second lesson is how not to be embarrassed by Mr Allison." Dr Gan paused. "You're right in one way. Next time you're angry about something, don't just talk to a counsellor about it, talk to Starfleet Command."
"I'll bear that in mind."
"Until next time, then. Whenever that is."
"See you next time I start to crack up, Nim."
Allison walked out into the sunshine.
And now, the conclusion...
Nothing worse than waiting to see whether you live or die. And with the ship powered down and that Class Y death world in the way, it’s hard to even tell which is more likely. “Wiggin, is there any way to read through the moon?”
“Not under emissions protocol, ma’am.”
I expected that answer. I’m told a starship is a lot like the attack submarines Starfleet keeps in reserve for waterworlds, though I obviously never trained for those. Point is, without a cloaking device, the only way to be stealthy is to not make noise, so to speak, and the “noisiest” things on a ship are the radiators and, more to the point, the active scanners. And the passives can only do so much.
“Ai ya, TRIBBLE or get off the pot,” one of Biri’s blueshirt petty officers mutters.
“Hang on,” Wiggin says, just as I start to crane my head around to yell at her.
Damn it. “What do you see, Wiggin?”
“Outgoing transwarp, times nine.”
“Can you track the vectors?”
“They’re fanning out in a cone, I think. Little distorted through the interference; I’ll try and clean it up.” He throws the plot up on the main screen.
Wait a minute, the cone’s pointing at—
Prophets, they know where we are. “Power us back up. Gaarra, Bynam, I need everything you can give me, now!”
“Transwarp apertures opening all around us!” Wiggin bellows as green swirlies appear in space.
“You had to open your mouth, Ling!” Biri yells at the blueshirt from earlier.
“Me? I didn’t do anything!”
“You tempted the Prophets’ sense of—oh, never mind! Tess, shields and weapons, random remod!”
“Way ahead of you, Captain!” the Andorian confirms.
“Here they come!” Gaarra calls.
A huge cube, towering over us, phases into existence out of the transwarp conduit ahead of us and the comm fills with a deep electronic voice, distinctly female: “Surrender your vessel. Your technological and biological distinctiveness are immaterial. You will be assimilated into the whole and perfected. I am the Borg. Resistance is futile.”
“That’s not their usual spiel,” Esplin comments quietly.
“Noticed. Send the distress signal. Time to firing range?”
“Fifteen seconds to the nearest probe,” Wiggin answers.
Staring out into space at the dark green shapes in the blackness, I fight to keep focused. The Borg are just an enemy, El. You beat them once, you can do it again.
But the cold knot of fear in the pit of my stomach won’t budge. That small voice inside me is back: last time I went up against a cube I had five other ships with me, one of which didn’t make it out. The odds are reversed this time.
I hate that voice.
Then in front of me, I hear Park murmuring, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” He stuffs his medallion of Saint Joseph back down his collar.
The humans’ Bible, Psalm 23. I read it for a social sciences elective at the Academy.
He’s got his faith, I have mine: in the Prophets, and in my crew.
All right. Let’s do this. “Target the nearest probe, punch a hole and run.”
Park swings us hard to starboard and Tess hollers, “I have a lock! Firing!”
Searing orange beams limned in all colors of the rainbow snap out from the dorsal and nacelle arrays and batter against the black sausage-shaped ship; an answering stream of plasma skitters across our forward shields. “Get us past him, Park!”
“I’m trying! I’m trying! He’s playing chicken with us, trying to box us in!”
“Gaarra, divert engine power to phasers.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Three more probes, coming at us from behind—” Wiggin starts.
“HAH! GOT HIM!” Tess bellows as two phaser blasts suddenly punch straight through the shields of the one ahead. A huge secondary explosion belches a fireball out the side of the ship and it lists hard to port.
“Took out one of the impulse engines!” Wiggin crows as a couple of petty officers start cheering.
“That’s great, Tess; don’t get cocky!” I holler back. “Torpedoes!”
“Firing!” Blue projectiles shriek out of the forward tube and streak across the void as the probe struggles to turn. Another plasma stream hits our shields, then the salvo batters into the ship’s hull and it breaks in half amidships. Then the transwarp drive detonates and incinerates the rear half.
“Park, gun it!”
“Minimum safe distance, five seconds!”
“Captain!” Wiggin shouts. “Hard to starboard!”
“Park!” He follows without question as a blaze of green light erupts ahead of us. As Bajor swings back towards the moon, the cube emerges, corner-first, and gunfire and torpedoes slam into the port shield.
“Shields at seventy percent, returning fire!” Tess shouts.
“Sher hahr kosst,” I mutter, dumbfounded. “A tactical transwarp microjump?”
“And he came out facing a different direction than he was when he started!” Biri adds over the din of alarms.
TRIBBLE’s hitting us with guns on three sides. Come on, Eleya, think. “Park! Head for the moon!”
“How close?”
“Skim atmo if you have to, but I don’t want them following! Once we’re clear, make a blind jump and get us out of here! Gaarra, divert aux power to the SIF!” They acknowledge.
The roiling red clouds of the moon grow larger in the viewscreen as the ship shakes under the cube’s barrage. “Put everything on the rear shield but be ready to divert—”
“More transwarp signals!” Wiggin highlights them on the tactical hologram, circles them on the viewscreen. Damn it, they’re going to trap us against the moon. Galaxy-class isn’t built for atmospheric flight.
Phekk this: can’t run, so I’ll kill him. I start typing a macro into the controls on the arm of my chair. “Park, hard about.”
“What???”
“Hard about! Put all power on the forward shield!”
“Guess we’re finding out how this girl handles a cube after all,” Biri mutters as the stars spin past on the screen.
“More probes, coming in all sides! They’re trying to flank us!”
“Full power to dorsal array. One focused burst, fire!” Tess hammers her board and twin energy streams whip across the array, meeting in the middle and slamming out into space. “Park, roll ship one-eighty. Tess, ventral array, hit him again.”
The cube and starfield spin upside-down on the screen and I swallow against my inner ear’s complaint. The ventral phaser array and torpedo tube blaze fire, smashing into their shields for an answering blue glow bigger than our entire ship. Then a sickly green cone erupts from one face of the cube. “They’re trying to tractor us!” Tess shouts. “We’re losing our forward shields! Enemy cutting beam firing!” A pink ray snaps out and rakes across the saucer and port nacelle. A thunderous boom conducts through the hull and hull breach alarms howl.
But we’re finally close enough. “Park, ninety degree down, interpose dorsal shield, then cut engines and send everything to the phasers!”
The cube rockets upward out of the frame as we pass it at point-blank range; I snap, “All upper phasers, fire!” Five searing hot particle lances blaze out from all corners of our upper hull, smashing into a single point of shields barely two centimeters across and punching through. The macro I wrote triggers automatically and four quantum torpedoes vanish from our magazine in a swirl of blue sparks, the dorsal shield dropping just long enough to let the transmission past. “Park, full impulse!”
The cube, trying to turn to follow us, is suddenly shredded in a massive internal explosion that propels chunks no bigger than a brick every which way at a decent fraction of the speed of light, taking the nearest probe with it. “YES!” Tess whoops. “YES! That’s how we do it, people!”
“Don’t celebrate yet, there’s still half a dozen probes left!”
“Uh, Captain…” Wiggin starts, but trails off.
“What?”
“The remaining probes appear to be falling back. Repeat, the Borg are retreating.”
More un-Borg-like behavior but there’s no time to parse it. “Let’s take the opportunity and get out of here. Park, set course for—”
“That won’t be possible, Captain,” he quietly tells me. “Here’s the damage report.” A long list of damaged systems appears on the screen, but he scrolls to the middle and highlights an item; the cheering rapidly fades. “That cutting beam took out the port nacelle. Until it’s repaired…”
He doesn’t need to finish.
We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
The meatbag ship is formidable, and its commander bold. It will be a difficult prize to take, but it has suffered significant damage. Its FTL drive appears to be inoperable, or else it would have escaped.
In contrast, the ships created by the other AI appear to be underpowered for their size. Their mass makes them difficult to destroy, and this transwarp capability is quite useful. And it now appears to have adapted software countermeasures to my attacks: the ships have begun to resist efforts to suborn them to my use.
But as more and more of its ships arrive, I realize its weakness. Though the AI—the systems of my captures describe it as a “Queen”—uses auxiliaries like me, its design and tactics are clumsy and inferior. The ships are poorly armed, and it appears congenitally incapable of targeting more than one opponent at a time.
Clearly whatever AI has usurped my network is inferior. I will suborn it if possible, and destroy it if not.
I am Borg. Resistance is futile.
“Here’s the casualty list, Captain,” Tess says, somberly handing a PADD across the wardroom table.
I hate this part. I look over it, trying to match names to memories. One hundred eleven wounded, twenty seriously. Thirty-eight dead. Gunnery and Engineering took the worst of it, though somehow Bynam’s two-in-cee, Kerensky, made it out of a nacelle Jefferies tube with just a few minor burns and a cracked rib. Lieutenant Commander Sylok, Tess’s number two, wasn’t so lucky: piece of shrapnel disemboweled him. Bled out in seconds, thank the Prophets.
Can’t say the same for Crewman Recruit Imyre Pwon. She burned to death, trapped by a broken structural member on deck 6 when the fire suppression system failed. Her older brother was in my squad in boot camp, she was five weeks out of ‘A’ school, Jakir made me promise him I’d look after her, more fool me. What am I going to say? That she died horribly because I provoked the Borg?
Of course, that’s assuming any of us get out of this in the first place. “What’s our status, Bynam? Can you get us out of here?” The other Andorian on my senior staff looks away from me. “Come on, just get us to limping, that’s all I need.”
He turns back to me and slowly shakes his head. “We need a shipyard, ma’am. That cutting beam took out three coolant lines and sent shrapnel through half the relays and the field controller bus. Whole thing overloaded and depolarized the verterium cortenide in what coils didn’t get completely destroyed by the beam itself. We don’t have enough gel packs left to replace the ones that got cooked in plasma fires, either, and I lost three of my team to the coolant release.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Phekk. All right, Plan B. Rescue?”
Gaarra answers, “Onondaga and Taino will be here in twenty-eight hours, a hunting party from Clan Inogra fifteen minutes later.”
“That’s it? Two Dakota-class cruisers and a bunch of Hirogen?” Tess grumbles.
“That’s the first wave; the entire Klingon Seventh Fleet’s going to be here in thirty-one hours. And yes,” he adds before anyone else can complain, “I’m aware that’s not much help.”
“Okay, worst-case scenario,” I interject before an argument can start. “How many people can we evac in the shuttles and the runabout?”
In a rumbling voice, Dul’krah answers, “Perhaps one hundred fifty crew, if we modify the cargo shuttles with additional life support systems.”
“Bynam, get anybody you can spare on that.” He nods and jots down a note on his PADD.
“Who gets to leave?” Tess asks.
“Stable wounded, necessary medical staff, and any pregnant females first, cadets next. After that… lifeboat rules.” The others nod without a word, and I feel a flash of pride poke through my worries. I just told them to trust their lives to a random number generator, and they don’t say a thing. “Everyone else stays behind to draw the Borg away from the escape ships. The self-destruct will be armed: they won’t take my ship, or any of you.”
In answer Warragul raises his half-full mug of coffee and tells me, “She’s our ship, Cap’n.”
I mimic his gesture with my double espresso. “Bajor, and being alive.”
“Bajor and being alive,” the others echo.
“Look, there goes another one,” Gaarra says, gesturing at one of the viewports. Tess and I get up and join him.
“Tactical cube, judging by the size of that transwarp gate,” Tess observes. Beams of plasma and bolts of light glitter among the constant dots of stars thousands of kilometers away.
I reach quietly to my left and touch Gaarra’s hand, and he takes it, giving me a reassuring squeeze. I squeeze back, harder, a game we play sometimes that I always lose: even fourteen years of PT can’t compete with him being a man and a heavyworlder. Sure enough, he squeezes harder than I can and I relax, leaning my head onto his shoulder. “Weird, isn’t it,” I comment. “Borg fighting a civil war.”
“One of One must be hacking them, taking control,” Tess says, carefully not looking at us.
I give her a look. “Are you still uncomfortable with—”
“Look, Captain,” she bites out, “any minute those boltheads could decide to stop frakking each other and come back here to grab us, and I’d rather you two weren’t necking when it happened.”
In answer, Gaarra just puts his arm around me. “You grab your moments when you can, sir. This one goes by, there may not be another. More likely than I think any of us in this job care to admit.”
Tess makes an annoyed noise. I chuckle and whisper to Gaarra, “She’s just irritated ‘cause that thaan at DJC turned her down.”
Tess’s head whips around. “You heard about that?”
I laugh. “Turnabout is fair play, Number One.” Then something in the Borg fight catches my eye. I grab my PADD off the desk and link it to the sensor outputs with a few finger-swipes. “Phekk.” I drop the PADD and don’t even hear the screen shatter on the ground as I dislodge myself from Gaarra and run for the door to the bridge. “This is the captain! All hands return to battle stations!”
“Captain on deck!” Wiggin shouts.
“As you were!” I shout back as I make it to the center chair. Behind me I hear the turbolift cycle open as Bynam heads back to Engineering.
“Three spheres, seven probes, and a tac cube headed our way, fast!”
Damn it. “Get the evacuation started, nonessential crew and wounded first. We’ll have to hold them off as long as we can. Park, try and keep your distance unless I say so. Attack pattern Shran Six, go.”
The second fight goes much as the first: Badly. I bark orders as fast as I can think them up, and two more probes and a sphere die under our guns.
But there’s too many of them and not enough of us. Even a ship that’s practically a starbase has limits, and we’re short on food and sleep.
“We’re losing the deflector shield!” Tess cries out. Another cutting beam rakes across the ship’s neck, while yet another strikes the saucer just forward of the bridge.
Then Wiggin yells, “Underspace rupture off the starboard bow!”
Underspace. Can’t be the Turei, they’re on completely the other side of the sector block. Which means…
A golden portal swirls out of the blackness and a wing of dull brown specks emerges. I barely have time to recognize them as Vaad warships and scream a warning before they open fire.
On the Borg.
A cascade of polaron bolts from the spinal guns of three Astika-class artillery ships leads the way, catching the portside probes in the flank and tearing merrily through shields optimized for our phasers. Cluster munitions send clouds of microtorpedoes into the breach with surgical precision and both ships blow apart. Tess adds her fire and the last probe on that vector dies in an actinic flash as its main reactor goes.
“Captain, the Vaads are hailing us!” Esplin calls.
“Onscreen!”
Commander Darva appears in an inset as the stars whirl with Park’s maneuvers and an incoming sphere swivels into view. “Compliments of the Supreme Overseer, Captain Kanril. We detected your distress signal and are here to render aid.”
Prophets’ tears. I hit the microphone key on my armrest. “Thanks for coming, Commander! Our warp drive’s out; we’re gonna need a tow.”
An offscreen voice I don’t recognize concurs. “Sending help now. Squadron Gath, Squadron Arkeb, establish the perimeter!”
A wing of cruisers and assault ships flash past us, spraying cannonfire and dropping constriction anchors at the Borg. Two more probes die in seconds, the sphere is ensnared in a whirling dervish of force and set upon by Tess and two cruisers, and One of One falls back. “All units,” I send, “concentrate fire on the tac cube!”
“Locked! Firing!”
Tess and the artillery ships press the attack as the escorts play missile defense and keep the probes busy. Orange spears and pale blue bolts hammer into the cube’s armored flanks, sublimating armor plate and structural members. Tess empties the forward torpedo tube into the breach and an answering explosion, bigger than any three of our ships put together, belches out of the interior. Cracks rip across the outer hull faster than the eye can follow, ripping the armor asunder.
“Target is still active!” Wiggin calls. The horribly wounded cube fires back, plasma torpedoes blazing at the swarm of attack ships still plinking away at its flanks. Three are hit and vaporized as probes close in.
A signal comes in from Darva’s Revenge. “Overseer Harn to Bajor and Squadron Gath! We need cover!”
“Conn!”
“On it!” Park comes hard about and Tess hits the cube with another broadside as we withdraw to attack the Borg. Seems a half-dozen probes and a sphere bypassed the Vaad artillery ships’ defense screen and forward batteries to hit their vulnerable flanks.
On one level, the soldier in me is impressed with One of One’s military acumen. But how the phekk do you fight something that can jump anywhere it wants?
“Overseer Harn, was it? This is Captain Kanril! We need to bug out!”
“Pardon?”
“Retreat!”
“I agree, but we can’t open a gate to underspace with the Borg hitting us like this—”
Wiggin interrupts, “Captain, additional transwarp signatures! More Borg, one of their big ones!”
A cigar-shaped unimatrix command vessel, a hexagonal tube the size of a small moon, phases into existence, flanked by a pair of tactical cubes. The comms fill with a signal, a chorus of thousands of voices in a reverberating bass: “We are the Borg. Surrender your vessel. You will escort us to your homeworld, where we will begin assimilating your culture and technology. Resistance is futile.”
The wounded tactical cube and One of One’s other ships break off their attack, turning to face this new threat as a plasma lance as wide as my ship erupts from one end of the unimatrix, skewering one of the rogue spheres; two Manasa-class assault ships are caught in the explosion and sent tumbling. “Overseer Harn,” one of them, a female voice, radios, “go now!”
“I will leave no soldier behind, Commander Farla!”
“Our underspace engines are damaged; we cannot withdraw! Honor our names!” They turn towards the unimatrix and their afterburners come alight.
No. No one else dies today, not if I can help it. I grab the comm. “Negative! Negative! This is Captain Kanril Eleya! Drop your rear shields! We’ll beam you off!” I put my palm over the mike. “Tell me you can do it, Gaarra.”
He reaches for his own intercom. “Petty Officer Anusu, I need you to beam around 300 people directly to Cargo Bay One. Can you do it?”
“Yes, sir!” a female voice confirms over the comm.
“Then we entrust our lives to you, Starfleet! Engaging autopilot; transport us now!”
“Transport commencing,” Gaarra reports. “Transport complete.”
“Harn, we’ve got them!” I radio. “Tractor us and let’s get out of here!”
“I wholeheartedly agree!” Blue-glowing streams of force snap out from two of the artillery ships as they come about. Park’s hands race across his console to configure the ship for transit as another golden portal swirls into existence.
“Jesus Christ, Kanril!” Admiral Reynolds yells at me in an exasperated tone. I make a studious effort at pretending to study the painting hanging behind her office chair. “I send you to do one thing, and you start a goddamn war!”
“Sir, I—”
“Shut up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you have no idea if this ‘One of One’ escaped?”
“No, sir.”
“Perfect.”
I lower my head so I can make eye contact. “Respectfully, sir, I did actually achieve my original mission objective.”
She closes her eyes tiredly, sighs, and nods. “You did, at that. Overseer Eldex says he’s interested in getting a formal armistice in place, at least, so we’re kicking this upstairs to the Diplomatic Corps. I’m told Ambassador zh’Thane is going to appoint a special envoy to meet with the Vaadwaur foreign minister.”
“Not me, I hope.”
Reynolds sputters and bursts out laughing. “No, no! No, uh, it’ll be somebody from the Exterior Department, maybe Bill Ross. No, uh, you’re going home. Engineers say they’ll have to replace your entire port nacelle, and we don’t have the facilities to do that kind of work on a battleship Bajor’s size.”
“Thank you, sir.” Some shore leave sounds good, though I have to deal with my dead first: I’m up to fifty crew members.
She shakes her head and hands me a PADD. “Don’t thank me just yet. If this intel digest is accurate, well… frying pan, fire.”
I give it a quick once-over. Seems like the usual stuff: another power struggle in the Klingon High Council, Talarian election news, the Romulan Republic Senate formally ratified the Khitomer Peace Treaty with the Star Empire, and… Son of a wraith… “Another Dyson sphere?”
“That’s right. We’re expecting a full-scale invasion of home space within weeks.”
I hand her back the PADD and clasp my hands. “Understood, sir. We’ll ship out ASAP.”
“Very good, Captain Kanril. Dismissed.” I turn smartly on my heel and head for the door. “Oh, and Kanril?” she adds as I reach the TRIBBLE.
“Sir?”
“Well done.”
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
The turbolifts were blessedly still working. Joanne waited until the doors had closed before she leant against the wall, burying her face in her hands. Next to her, Imberia had a look of elation on her face that Joanne could relate to, but still found highly inappropriate.
"So. What did you do?" she asked when she had regained her composure.
"It's called the Roslyn Manoeuvre," Imberia said with a grin.
"No it's not!" Joanne said, surprising herself by laughing.
Imberia shrugged. "It will be, now that I've proven that it works."
Joanne wished she had the luxury to be able to say that she'd heard that wrong. "You're telling me you've never actually done... whatever it was?"
Imberia's smile started to fade at Joanne's tone. "I've personally run over a hundred simulations. Omega Force has just refused to run any tests in the field," she said, sounding faintly annoyed, "because apparently the risk is too high."
Joanne just shook her head, speechless. At this point she probably shouldn't be surprised anymore, and instead simply be grateful that they were still alive. She made a "go on" motion.
"I overloaded the network of transwarp coils. Usually that's not possible, since all energy is distributed equally throughout each coil, and they self-destruct if you try to manipulate the network, but I found a way. You just have to know the threshold at which the coils self-destruct and account for the rate of shield adaptation in real-time. Everything has to be done manually, which Omega calls 'unreliable' and 'not doable', but that's only a matter of training. I've known about this tactic for years, it's good to see that I was right," Imberia explained, not without pride.
Joanne sighed. "So we were lucky."
Imberia frowned. "We didn't have to be, Jonna."
"Oh? Because it's my fault I haven't been reading all your obscure papers over the years and should've known about what is quite frankly a suicide manoeuvre?" Joanne tried to remain calm, and failed. Back on the bridge, fighting with her mother had been the last thing on her mind, but now that they were in relative safety, Joanne could feel her emotional needs be replaced by rational ones again, and the urge she had felt, to reach out to her mother, was waning.
"No. It's your fault because you didn't leave with the rest of the fleet and instead put your ship at risk by engaging the cube," Imberia said.
Joanne didn't know what to say for a moment. Then she quickly stopped the turbolift so that nobody could walk in on them arguing.
"Listen, mum, you didn't go to the Academy, so you might not know this, but we Starfleet captains never leave anyone behind, especially not in enemy territory," she said, quite happy with the venom in her voice. She realized that she'd never given it much thought, but for someone who'd spent her entire professional career working for Starfleet, her mother's indifference towards the mentality on Federation starships was truly astonishing.
"It would have been fine!" Imberia said, again missing Joanne's point completely. "The Borg weren't going to set a foot on that planet, much less fire at it, and they still aren't!"
It was frightening to Joanne, the conviction with which her mother spoke, and even more so that Imberia honestly thought her capable of abandoning her, not to mention Corspa, on a Borg-infested planet.
"You can't know that!" Joanne was pacing, which in the cramped space of the turbolift didn't help much.
"Yes, I can," Imberia said forcefully, stepping into Joanne's path so that her daughter had to look at her when she continued, "because that's my job. You saw how your ex-Drone reacted to the place. The Borg are predictable, and very few know them better than I do. If you could just trust my judgement on this - "
"That's not what this is about," Joanne interjected quickly before the conversational ice got too thin. "It's my job to keep my crew safe. I'm responsible for them, and I need to make informed decisions." She was starting to feel the adrenaline ebbing off, leaving her drained and unwilling to argue the point further.
"And anyway, what would you have done, stuck on that planet? Waited for Starfleet to send a fleet large enough to punch through a Borg blockade to recover one away team?"
Imberia didn't reply to that, not that Joanne had expected her to. It was becoming increasingly clear that her mother lacked any kind of foresight, so the rest of the way to sickbay passed in silence.
x
Considering the circumstances, their situation could have been worse, Joanne concluded when she had skimmed the damage report.
The starboard warp nacelle had been taken clean off, and large parts of the plasma conduits in the immediate vicinity were burnt out. The warp core itself was fine.
There were hull breaches on six decks, but the emergency forcefields had all held until the surrounding sections could be sealed. The front saucer section had received the worst damage. Large pieces of the outer hull had peeled off during the entry into the atmosphere, and the underlying layers were badly burnt. The forward sensor array was half-blind. Some of the tetryon banks as well as a dozen other things had been damaged, but as Lt. Commander Ojhyni had said when he had personally delivered the report, it was nothing that couldn't be fixed by an extended stay at a starbase.
They had lost a lot of warp plasma and atmosphere to space, but as if to make up for the damage to the ship, nobody had died from decompression or plasma fires.
They were alive. Now they only had to find a way to stay alive.
The mood in the briefing room was a strange mix of relief and tension, of fearful and hectic planning. The officers were discussing amongst themselves after Imberia had given a short overview of what she'd done to take out the Borg cube, giving Joanne the chance to check how her crew was holding up.
Corspa was sat at her left hand, as always, leaning over the table slightly to point out details on the holomap over the table. The Andorian tactical officer was still in her combat suit. She had kept her wits about her throughout the confusion of the attack and had gotten everyone off the planet safely, and even now projected a resoluteness that Joanne found very comforting.
Next to her, Taallir was staying out of the discussion concerning the Borg, and instead quietly conferring with Ensign Banks next to him over the state of subspace in the region. He had braved the whole ordeal with the usual Vulcan cool-headedness, and some of that must have rubbed off on Ensign Banks. Kamryn was having a harder time hiding how shaken she was than the more senior officers, but despite that she had gotten right back to work, funnelling all nervous energy into something productive.
Opposite her, Lt. Harper was talking animatedly to Corspa and Imberia, who was sitting next to the lieutenant and only occasionally commenting on something Elizabeth said. The young pilot shone in situations like this, relishing the opportunity to show off her flying skills and the ability to think on her feet. Joanne's mother had seemingly taken at least some of what Joanne had said to heart, keeping in the background, and had presented her tactic so matter-of-factly that Joanne almost felt guilty.
On Joanne's right, between her and her mother, Lt. Commander Hrin Ojhyni was leaning back in his chair, fingers tapping impatiently on the tabletop. Joanne knew he'd rather be down in engineering, coordinating repairs, yelling at his staff and gluing the Mutabor back together.
At a sign from Joanne, he changed the holographic display to a depiction of the Mutabor and the surrounding space, and gave a list of the damage the ship had taken.
When he had finished, Joanne said, "Our priority is getting out of the system, and fast. The subspace rift extends far enough to buy us some time by forcing the Borg to travel at impulse, but that also means that the fleet has no way to reach us before them." She looked around the table expectantly. "Ideas?"
"We need to be able to generate a stable warp field," Ojhyni said immediately.
"What good is a warp nacelle if we can't use it?" Elizabeth replied, zooming out on the holo display to show the full extent of the subspace rift. "We should see if we can modify the impulse engine to get us closer to c. We have some headway on the Borg now, we only need to be a bit faster to outrun them."
Ojhyni shook his head. "The engines were already pushed far out of their safety envelope when you took us into the atmosphere at full impulse, Lieutenant."
"On top of that, the Borg will be able to go to warp long before we are in range of the fleet again," Taallir said, pulling up some calculations to show just how far away the fleet had managed to escape.
"And that is assuming they even received our distress call," Corspa added, "which I highly doubt. What we need to do, and I have to agree with Lt. Ojhyni on that, is to somehow replace the warp nacelle, so that we can go to warp as soon as we leave the area of unstable subspace."
Joanne turned to look at Ojhyni, who was trying hard not to look like he was surprised to receive Corspa's support. "Can you repair the starboard nacelle?"
"If we can recover it, possibly, Admiral. There are several problems with that, however," Ojhyni answered. "In the case that it wasn't destroyed, it is probably severely damaged, and located on the other side of the planet. There is also the possibility that it was on a trajectory towards the planet and has either crashed on the surface or broken up during atmospheric entry."
"I could find it," Ensign Banks said, eager to get back to work, "sir, ma’am."
"Even if we did," Elizabeth said, "we'd have to push to warp 6 or 7 immediately, and the acceleration would probably rip it off again straightaway."
Ojhyni nodded. "Warp 2 or 3 would be sustainable at low acceleration, but I can't guarantee it."
Joanne thought it over. They couldn't fight, they couldn't hold out until reinforcements arrived, if they were even coming for them, taking shelter on the planet was out of the question, let alone getting down there in one piece...
"It's our best shot," she decided, ready to assign tasks to everyone.
"I have a better idea."
All heads turned towards Imberia. She changed the holodisplay to show the Mutabor with a stable warp field, but one not originating from the warp nacelles, but from a point behind the deflector dish.
"We use a Borg transwarp coil," Imberia said, zooming in on the holo, "and connect it to the deflector to shape the transwarp conduit in front of the ship. We won't need a nacelle, and can bypass the majority of burnt out plasma conduits."
Joanne frowned. Her instinct told her not to get too close to the Borg again, even if her mother's idea was sound. Ojhyni however looked impressed and immediately started to manipulate the holo to show the adjustments he would have to make to the plasma grid and the deflector, while the rest of the officers were murmuring assent.
Only Corspa wasn't so easy to convince. "You said yourself you destroyed all coils on the cube," she said, stopping everyone's planning in their tracks. "Even assuming some survived, we do not have the time to search the wreckage."
Imberia was shaking her head, apparently having expected Corspa's objection. "I'm not talking about salvaging coils from the cube," she said, zooming out on the image of the Mutabor and instead magnifying the planet's surface until the monument loomed above the table, huge and threatening. "We'll take a coil from the ziggurat."
Joanne had a moment of, what is she thinking now?, and judging by the faces of her officers, they were as confused as their Admiral.
"I... didn't see any transwarp coils while we were down there," Corspa said slowly into the silence.
"I know," Imberia replied easily, ignoring Corspa's irritated look, "because they don't look much like you would expect." She called up an image she had taken inside the ziggurat, showing a square meter of the wall not too far off the ground. "Here."
Most of the picture fell away until only something remained, a piece of technology nestled into the wall between other, equally unidentifiable components, almost indistinguishable from everything else. Everybody around the table was squinting at it, trying to find something they recognized.
Imberia started to point out bits and pieces that she called power conduits, plasma injectors, field generators and a number of things Joanne knew featured in Borg technology but tended to have a hard time identifying even on present-day Borg ships.
It looked nothing like the transwarp coils they were all familiar with, and even with Imberia highlighting different parts, it was difficult to find analogues to things they understood. But already Ojhyni was making notes on his PADD, running through options for adapters and compensators, Elizabeth was trying to figure out the shape of the warp field by gesturing over the table at Kamryn, who gestured back with deflector dish alignments, and Corspa was trying to map the positions of the coils nearest to the entrance of the ziggurat.
"Doctor Roslyn," Joanne cut through the chatter, "can you guarantee that this will work? We can't verify that these are warp coils, much less that they will be compatible with our technology."
Kamryn spoke before Imberia could answer. "Maybe Eco can help with that, ma'am," she said, but Imberia just shook her head at the same time as Taallir said, "Crewman Eco is in no state to be assisting with any work on the ziggurat."
Joanne clenched her teeth. Not what she had wanted to hear. She leant towards her mother. "I have to know that this will work."
Imberia met Joanne's eyes without hesitation. "It won't work for long, but it will get us out of here. You will have to take my word for it."
Not good enough, Joanne thought, and knew that her doubts had shown on her face when Imberia looked away impatiently. "I can't imagine that the Borg will just let us leave if we take something from the ziggurat," Joanne said, "especially if we use what we take."
"We only have to reach the fleet," Elizabeth broke in, "and then they can escort us."
"And the Borg might not even follow us very far," Corspa added.
Taallir said, "Once we are in transwarp, the Borg won't be able to intercept us anymore."
"Or detect us, if we calibrate the deflector accordingly," Kamryn suggested.
"It is our best option, Admiral," Ojhyni said, calling up a schematic of the coil integrated into the Mutabor's systems.
"Alright," Joanne said. The longer they waited and discussed, the closer the Borg came. She hadn't bothered to calculate their probability of survival, knowing intuitively how low it was, so anything that raised it, however uncertain, was worth a shot. "Let's do it."
↓
Whereas the first trip down to the planet had been cautious and slow, it was all about speed now. Imberia had taken Corspa and her team with her again, and Lt. Commander Ojhyni was following them in a second shuttle packed with engineers and all the tools he thought could possibly be useful.
The waiting, however, was just as bad as it had been the first time, with the threat of the approaching Borg putting a pressure on them that made it impossible for Joanne not to pace around the bridge.
Crewman Eco, who had expressed an interest in going to the ziggurat with Imberia but also confessed to a complete inability to even look at the planet through a window, was leading the team working on the deflector to prepare it for the coil. Lieutenant Harper was with him, to ensure the stability of the transwarp conduit and that she would be able to actually fly the Mutabor through it. Ensign Patel had replaced her at the helm, and likewise Lieutenant Park had taken Corspa's place at the tactical station again, while Lieutenant Richter was supervising repairs in Ojhyni’s absence. He was calling the bridge regularly to let Joanne know of their progress, which was much appreciated by everyone.
Unfortunately, the updates from the planet were less optimistic. Imberia and Ojhyni couldn't decide on which coil to remove, since they were all connected differently to the surrounding systems and in non-repeating configurations. Ojhyni had difficulties determining which one of them could be installed safely on the Mutabor, while Imberia was advocating just taking a whole bunch and worry about which one to use later, which Corspa was categorically against. It was dangerous to take even one, so they should make that one count.
Meanwhile, Commander Taallir and Ensign Banks were trying to use the ship's scanners to isolate the coil network to help the away team find a suitable one. Joanne hoped that in doing so they would also find an answer to why there were transwarp coils down there in the first place. There was of course still the possibility that her mother was wrong, but Joanne tried not to think about that too much. She had made Kamryn do a cursory scan for their lost warp nacelle, just in case, but the Ensign had come up empty, and now had their remaining sensors trained on the planet instead.
"Admiral!" Ensign Banks called out now, and Joanne hurried over to the ops station, where Taallir was already waiting for her as well.
"I have managed to isolate the energy signature of the transwarp coils, ma’am," she said, "it's not too different from that of the coils we know."
Joanne felt a cold fear crawl down her spine and settle heavily in her stomach at those words. "Energy signature?" she asked.
"It's likely residual," Taallir said, showing Joanne the sensor readouts. "Only a few eV per hour, but it seems to be the source of the low-frequency field that had been obstructing our sensors up to now."
It should all be dead, Joanne wanted to yell. It had been dead, and she had been content to chalk the problems with the sensors up to something in the planetary material, or the strange alloy of the ziggurat, but for there to be anything down there that was still generating power, even if it was only an extremely long-lived battery...
"Do we have an estimate on the age of the monument?" Joanne asked, looking between Taallir and Ensign Banks. She couldn't remember her mother mentioning anything, but she found her fears confirmed when Kamryn said, "We're thinking anywhere above several hundreds of thousands of years, judging by the records we have of this region of space, but it's hard to get an accurate measurement."
Joanne shook her head. "Then it cannot be residual." She caught herself anxiously scratching the spots on her temples, and quickly busied her hands by scrolling through the data on the ziggurat herself. "Either there is a very long-lived power source down there, or our presence has triggered systems that were dormant for ages. In any case, we have just lost our chance at using a coil from there," she said.
"Not necessarily," Taallir cut in. "We have found a selection of coils that should be safe to remove and use on the Mutabor. There is something else, however." He stepped aside and nodded at Ensign Banks.
Kamryn took a deep breath, and Joanne saw with worry that the young ensign's hands were shaking slightly as she called up a new set of data.
"Once I could isolate the frequency of the interference field, I was able to extrapolate the rest of the transwarp coil network beyond the first room." She showed Joanne a schematic of said room, the planet's surface showing as a section of a blue sphere around it, with the coils as bright green dots arranged in a cubed lattice around it, all connected by bright green lines, and zoomed out. It diminished in size, but more like it were added on its faces, and then on the faces of those other cubic rooms in an accelerating progression, until the outline they had already predicted for the monument became clear. "And from that, I can infer the shape and size of the complete, ah, vessel. Admiral."
And a vessel it was, Joanne saw with horror. The green network had stopped growing, but not before it had traversed the entire planet. It seemed denser at the planetary core, and thinned out towards the surface, like a fungus, or a circulatory system. There was no monument, there was only a corner of an unimaginably huge cuboctahedron breaking through the ground at one point. They had assumed it to be large, yes, maybe the size of a Borg sphere, but this was beyond comprehension.
It was not possible. The sensors were giving them conflicting information, showing both an ordinary, small class-M planet and an artificial object with a faint power reading at its centre. It was only surrounded by a rocky crust to make it look like a planet. But the Borg didn’t build habitats, artificial planets. The Borg didn't build in these dimensions. The Iconians once had, maybe, but not the Borg. The Borg didn't build graves, or memorials, and they certainly didn't hide. Even the few planets that Starfleet knew of that were a hundred percent Borg were not assimilated to the core. Nothing else in the star system showed any signs of artificiality or manipulation, all the other planets were where they should be, in perfectly predictable orbits, with perfectly ordinary compositions.
Joanne realized Taallir and Kamryn were staring at her, waiting for a reaction, for orders, but she found herself unable to look away from the ops display.
"Do you want me to inform the away team?" Kamryn asked tentatively.
"No!" Joanne blurted, recoiling from the console as if burned. "No," she said again, more calmly this time. "It would only distract them. On that note, don't tell the rest of the crew either," she said forcefully, making sure both officers understood the importance of keeping this information to themselves for the time being.
"Alright. Kamryn, please let Commander Ojhyni know which coils to take. Taallir." Joanne joined the Vulcan commander at his science station once Kamryn had acknowledged her order.
"I need you to encrypt all the data on this Borg... vessel. Let Starfleet Command decide what to do about it," she said. The last thing they needed was panic. There was nothing to be done about the Cooperative knowing of the planet, or the Borg on the way here, but people didn't need to know that the Borg had once been capable of similar technological feats as the Iconians.
"Understood." Taallir looked at her curiously. "You do not wish your mother to know?"
Joanne shook her head. "You know what she's like," she said, "if I told her now, Corspa would have to drag her out of there at gunpoint."
Taallir just raised his eyebrows and got to work.
x
Within an hour, the away team had returned with two transwarp coils (in case one didn't work and left enough of the ship to try a second one), and the Mutabor was moving away from the planet at full impulse.
Within another hour, Lt. Commander Ojhyni, Lieutenant Harper and Doctor Roslyn had successfully completed installation of one coil.
Lieutenant Harper returned to the bridge, while Ojhyni and Imberia stayed in deflector control, monitoring the systems.
"Fifteen minutes until we reach stable space," Elizabeth announced as soon as she had relieved Ensign Patel at the helm. "Inputting the last known coordinates of the U.S.S. Baltimore now."
"ETA of the Borg fleet?" Joanne asked.
"Thirty minutes, tops," Elizabeth answered, quickly turning around to give the rest of the bridge crew an optimistic grin. "They won't get us."
Joanne wasn't so sure of that. She had finally sat down in the captain's chair, and was trying to keep her anxious shifting to a minimum, but they could see the Borg ships approaching from the other side of the planet now without any significant magnification. They were spread out, a wide front of over sixty cubes and spheres advancing fast. Lieutenant Park had been dropping transphasic mines behind them as they retreated from the planet, but those effort seemed futile in the face of such an enemy.
Ten minutes.
"Powering up the coil," Elizabeth said.
"Power levels are nominal," Kamryn said, "all couplings performing within parameters."
Five minutes.
"The Borg fleet is splitting up," Corspa said, magnifying the picture on the viewscreen. "They seem to be establishing a perimeter around the planet."
Joanne nodded curtly. About half of the fleet was still following them.
"We are leaving the subspace rift behind in thirty seconds," Taallir said after what seemed like another eternity of waiting.
"Coil is charged and ready," Elizabeth announced, "on your mark, Admiral."
Joanne took a deep breath. She watched the countdown on her terminal, hoping that her mother was right. If not, her next order would be to activate the self-destruct.
Zero.
"Lieutenant Harper," Joanne said, marvelling at the steadiness of her voice, "engage transwarp."
"Aye aye."
Immediately, the image on the viewscreen changed. The stars lit up and stretched, stretched towards them, and then the light broke up into a pattern that was entirely unfamiliar and looked nothing like the transwarp conduits Joanne was used to. A deep hum went through the Mutabor once, twice, until the ship was vibrating under their feet and Joanne thought she could feel the deflector dish forcing space to bend around them.
"Conduit is stable," Elizabeth laughed.
"I'm having trouble resolving the sensor picture," Corspa said, "but the Borg seem to be falling behind."
Joanne nodded. They could outrun them. The shields were holding. They could make it.
The vibration noise had gotten louder, and Kamryn had to raise her voice to be heard over it. "Admiral, the coil is deteriorating. Deflector efficiency is falling rapidly."
"Bridge to Ojhyni," Joanne called, getting up and walking towards the helm. "What's going on down there?"
"Admiral - the coil is diverting power to some internal process - I'm compensating - just a moment - "
"Admiral." Elizabeth quietly got Joanne's attention and pointed to a readout on her console. Impossible, Joanne thought, gripping the back of Elizabeth's chair, nothing and nobody should move this fast. If her mother was wrong, if the Borg got a hold of this technology...
Over the open comm channel, Ojhyni and Imberia could be heard arguing, and then Ojhyni said, "Admiral, I have identified the problem. The coil, it is assimilating the ship."
"Take it offline!" Corspa yelled before Joanne could even react.
"We are not out of range yet!" Taallir countered immediately.
"Jonna, the coil is adapting your systems to its own," Imberia's voice came over the comm, "this isn't bad, I can slow down the assimilation rate and then -"
She was interrupted by Kamryn's warning. "Admiral, response time on major systems is dropping -"
Joanne ignored them. Her eyes were glued to Elizabeth's console, watching the blur of coordinates as they sped through space. "Stay on course," she told the pilot, repeating it over and over.
Less than a lightyear...
"Dropping out of transwarp!" Elizabeth shouted over the noise on the bridge. There was a fraction of a second in which Joanne saw her lose control of the ship, in which the conduit didn't dissolve in perfect symmetry but leapt forward to swallow the Mutabor -
and then they emerged into normal, empty space.
"Borg signatures?" Joanne snapped.
Corspa managed a tight smile. "None."
"The fleet?"
"I have them on sensors. The Baltimore is moving in position to escort us," Kamryn answered.
"Commander Ojhyni, Doctor Roslyn, please leave deflector control. Ojhyni, I want you to cut the power supply and eject the deflector," Joanne said, gesturing to Corspa to prime a torpedo as she sank into her seat with boneless relief. "The secondary dish will have to do for the trip home."
fin
The wind crossing the bridge was strong enough to have pulled Kathryn’s hair bun apart. Long burgundy hair flowed from the invisible currents. A burst of air forced her to pull the satchel back over her shoulder while also tightening the grip on the long coat’s collar. Kathryn noticed that the guard wall, though solid, did not seem to block any of the San Franciscan wind gusting through the Bay Area. Her uniform boots clicked sharply against the ferro-steel of the walkway and seemed not to blend with the occasional roar from the transit tube five meters away. Wincing from the cold Kathryn kept her pace strong to ensure she was at the meeting spot on time. The closer she got to the apex of the bridge the more she could see the Orion invited to the ceremony. Staza Murai also wore a thick long coat in the style of the Klingon Empire colored black with grey highlights. Her verdant hair moved with the wind like Kathryn’s, yet the shorter style made it easier to fall back into place when the air calmed. Staza’s eyes were closed and she clearly did not want to stand on the Golden Gate Bridge longer than she needed to, if at all.
Smiling, Kathryn said, “thank you for being here.” She placed the metallic satchel between them. It landed with a metallic crunch and was clearly heavy.
Staza spoke through her teeth, “my pleasure, Captain. I have not waited long. Your message was a bit cryptic though, so I am very curious about this ceremony we are to attend. Especially here.” Staza looked around until another gust of wind pierced her discomfort, forcing a shiver and withdrawing into the coat as best she could.
A tube-tram zoomed past before Kathryn replied. “It’s just something I do when Solaris is in dry dock here at Earth.” She bent down and opened the satchel. Staza leaned over Kathryn’s shoulder to see the contents. Standing, Kathryn pulled out small silver metal rectangular slates approximately twelve by two by one centimeter. She placed the slates to the left hand, yet held one with the right. She turned it over until words faced her.
Kathryn looked to Staza, and then to the Bay River below. “Cameron Umbebu.” She threw the slate over-hand. It sparkled as it tumbled toward the water far below. After a few seconds she held another slate and read the name aloud before she threw it over the side.
Staza looked into the satchel again. “Forgive me, Captain, but there must be over one hundred of those plates.”
“You’re right, two-hundred-forty-seven to be exact.” She looked at another plate. “Tuomas Kernig”. The slate was thrown.
“This is a funeral ceremony?” Staza shivered from the wind again.
Kathryn looked to Staza, nodded and smiled. “It’s not much to look at, but I’ve already written the letters and visited families where I could. This is my personal way to say good-bye to the crew of my ship.”
“Why here?”
“All Starfleet crew start their formal career in the Academy, as you know.” Kathryn nodded in the direction of the campus to the south. “I think it is fitting they end their career here, instead of the unforgiving deep, silent, complete black.”
Another tube-tram sped past them before Staza said, “that’s very poetic. But why here, on this bridge?”
Kathryn reached for a few more slates. “Privacy.” She held the slates in both hands and looked at them for a few seconds. “I couldn’t do something like this on Academy grounds. Yet, I wanted to do something more for these crewpersons more than what regulations or traditions demanded. So, I made my own tradition. Their names on these plates, left in the waters near the Academy, make me feel like they will live forever, even when I’m gone.”
Staza nodded and looked down to her feet. “You really care for your crew. I’m … impressed.”
After a few seconds, Kathryn moved plates to prepare for another throwing and continued, “I chose to accept my rank, even though I may not have been the most qualified. It has been my decision to keep Solaris, even though I earned other commissions. My crew joined Starfleet by choice, knowing their lives could be cut short from conflict or accident. And some are on these plates because of my decisions. They gave up everything … for Starfleet. For me.” Kathryn looked at the name in her hand. “Regig Zthar”, and she threw the slate.
Looking away, Staza took a step to the side giving Kathryn command of the rail where she stood. “I knew Regig. He was kind to me when I first arrived to your ship.”
Kathryn looked over her shoulder. “For a Tellarite, that means something.”
“Captain, why did you invite me?”
“We’ve had our differences. But we’ve also worked through them.” Kathryn shrugged. “I’d like to think I’ve earned your trust, because you have earned mine. So, I wanted to share this moment with you.”
Staza smirked mischievously. “Now tell me why I’m really here.”
Kathryn turned to face the Orion. The wind swirled around them, blowing their hair wildly. Once calm, Kathryn said, “If the time comes, I’m hoping you will stand here and throw my name.”