No infringement intended, not making money out of it. Star Trek belongs to its owners.
Not betad, trying my best though
Re-uploaded with proper dividers
Characters:
NERO
OCs:
Umes - Sub-Commander, Captain of Starship Uriak - Romulan Warbird
Sellu - Centurion, Second in Command
Patik - Chief Security Officer, Lt
Thelo - Communications Officer, Sub Lt
Kelim - Science Officer, Sub Lt
Mirrat - Navigator, Lt
Bunsak - Chief Medical Officer, Centurion
Jones - Starfleet liaison, science advisor, Lieutenant Commander
Various others
"It is logical to watch this sector," he replied for what was maybe the thousandth time.
"This and any number of other sectors," the navigator grumbled clearly unimpressed with his Captain's reasoning.
"Yes and there are other ships out there patrolling every possible exit point. You know this as well as I do."
"Boring," the tactical officer put to the rest of the bridge crew's warm approval.
"That it is. Although I will remind everybody that the… What was it you called him, Jones?"
"Dumb Fuck, sir," Lcdr Jones answered without missing a beat.
"Yes, yes. The Dumb Fuck is ours and it is only logical that we should be dealing with him. Should he put in an appearance."
"He should," Thelo spat, "and let us move on with our lives."
"He won't."
"20 says he will - within the next hour too, Patik."
"Anyone else?"
As was their custom, the bridge crew split neatly in two groups with half of the officers betting the Dumb Fuck will fall into their proverbial lap and half that he won't. The next time around they were going to take the opposing view and the money will again change hands - as it was fair, even if somewhat illogical.
Jones did not bet because she was still a member of Starfleet, even though she served a one month rotation as science advisor and liaison aboard the Warbird.
"Electrical storm detected, sir," Jones' voice cut through the low din of machinery. There was a moment of perfect silence and then everybody started to push console buttons and mutter under their breaths in a frenzy of activity. Even if it proved to be another false alarm, this was the most that happened since almost fifty years ago - the last reported sighting.
"Sellu, report. Patik move us to red."
"Yes, sir."
"We have a ship within sensor range, sir," Centurion Sellu said and took a deep breath to compose herself.
"I want readings."
"Sir."
"It's not quite Narada, although it could be."
"Kelim?"
"A few moments and I'll have the results in."
Sub-Commander Umes would have very much desired to pace the bridge and bark orders, but that, he knew, would be illogical. It would not speed sensor reading, nor would it fasten the data analysis.
"Forwarding now."
"Good job, Kelim," he remembered to say. This particular science officer was a pain, a completely illogical woman, but she was competent and he should make allowances for her youth.
"Thelo, forward everything on secure channels - to everybody. How far is the closest sister ship?"
"Aye, sir."
"3 hours at warp 3."
"Sir, we are being scanned," Lieutenant Commander Jones couldn't quite hide her disbelief.
"Patik, battle stations. Mirrat, increase power to the shields thirty percent, stand by. Sellu, what do we have?"
"It is part of Narada. Everything that can be identified matches the records."
"Jones?"
"My opinion too, sir."
"There is an extra layer of 'padding' in some parts of the ship. The padding also has its own bio-signature."
"Did we scan through it?"
"Aye, sir" both Jones and Kelim answered.
"How many crew?"
"Twenty Romulan and eight distinct padding areas."
"Go on, Sellu."
"There's not much else to say. We do not know if the bio-structures are sentient or not. But as far as I can tell from the readings, they are slightly different from each other. Although clearly of the same species, if you will."
"Kalim?"
"We need tissue for a more detailed analysis, although it is definitely alive."
"It breathes," Jones added.
"And it's part of the ship's structure."
"Thelo, hail them. Keep your head down, Jones, your ears are all wrong."
"Opening channel, sir. We have visual."
"Let's see it."
Sub Lt Thelo had the other ship on the screen in no time and sure enough a most familiar face was staring back at them - Nero.
"Foreign ship identify yourself," Captain Umes called. "You are in an off limits area."
"We are lost, our ship is damaged, we do not know where we are."
"You can always get your position relative to the solar system you are in. Once you stop scanning us," Lt Mirrat pointed out.
Lcdr Jones sighed in the back. Peaceful Romulans were interesting to work with - even live with, as her grandfather and then her father proved beyond doubt. But this loose attitude towards discipline and following the chain of command grated on her nerves. On what bloody 'fleet ship would a bloody pilot open his bloody mouth during bloody negotiations with bloody hostiles? And she had the wrong ears?! Spock be damned!
"This seems to be the Sol system."
"It is," Sellu replied curtly, followed by another request that the newly arrived ship identify themselves with some speed.
"One of our Empire's starships so close to Terra?" Nero asked hardly daring to hope that all his dreams came true.
Captain Umes speared the imposter with his most imperious look, while pondering the correct answer to Nero's bait. Yes, telling lies was illogical - for Vulcans. Prevarication, misdirection, and honest to goodness refusal to answer were not illogical, however - even for Vulcans. And while he strove to be the best he could be and a worthy example to follow for his crew, he would do a piss poor job of it if he let Nero escape on a technicality.
"We are patrolling our sector," he answered with some impatience, like he was giving away too much info in exchange for nothing.
"Would you be willing to lend assistance to your brothers?"
"Who are you, foreign ship?"
"I am Captain Jaran, I have a crew of twenty and our ship has been damaged by a singularity. Or so I think. We do not know how we arrived to be here."
Umes made a show of exchanging a few hushed words with Sellu.
"We can take you to the nearest base." It was no lie. As a matter of fact, the crew would have been gratified to take Nero on a grand tour of all the allied spaceports.
"You will have to hire your own transporter to tow your ship into docks," Sellu added.
"I accept," was heard from Nero and even Jones couldn't suppress a snort.
"Of course you do, Captain Jaran, of course you do," Mirrat sneered. "Do you have transporter capabilities?"
"We do."
"Sir?"
Umes made a vague gesture and Sellu busied herself commanding the engineering to stand by to receive twenty people. "No weapons," she added, "or I will personally come down to deal with you."
"We are your brothers! We -"
"No weapons. Brothers."
After furious whisperings between Nero and one of his men, he finally accepted Sellu's terms.
Just as planned, Nero was made confident by the Romulan warbird patrolling uncloaked near Terra. He was further emboldened that his gambit will work by having to deal with the second in command - the captain was too busy to concern himself with a handful of stranded survivors on a damaged ship.
Although, to own the truth, he would have judged his chances to be good enough even on a Vulcan battlecruiser. The space sponge did indeed help them to repair their ship and made possible multiple black holes jumps, but every once in a while yet another one of his men was called to commune or partake.
The Fuck was not so dumb after all. He sent first six men, then eight more and he came in with the last group. And all of them had concealed weapons. That was dumb.
Lt Patik escorted them to sickbay - Captain's orders - were they were inoculated against the latest strain of HHV-4, a terrible cross species virus originating from Terra.
Once asleep - these vaccines, one never knew what's in them - they were relieved of their weapons and clothing and fitted with clean pants and straightjackets. All but Nero were chained to chairs and placed in individual cells in quarantine.
"Medbay, report."
"They are healthy; or healthy enough. Their readings are peculiar, to say the least. Two of them exhibit tumors, although I doubt this is what they really are. The one in an advanced stage should not be able to even breathe if it was indeed a tumor."
"How long can we keep them?"
"Unclear. We are not equipped for this type of cargo."
"Nero?"
"You wish to interrogate him, sir?"
"Merely to chat. To pass the time."
Both Patik and Bunsak snorted.
"My medical advice is to have him in a quarantined brig behind a force field and a bio-hazard protective enclosure level 5."
"And the rest?"
"They'll be asleep for at least six hours. The two affected ones are already placed in level 8 secure cells, the rest can be moved just as easily should they exhibit signs of… stress."
"Make arrangements for my chat with Nero, doctor. Patik, you are to assist Bunsak as needed."
"Aye, sir."
"Fifteen minutes enough for you, doctor?"
"He'll be ready, sir."
"Have a report with your findings sent to Sellu ASAP."
"Aye," the doctor answered and switched off the communicator. "Nurse Cheras?"
"Doctor?"
"Have the prisoner ready."
"Why am I a prisoner?"
"All of you carried weapons when you were ordered not to. Did you not think that you will be scanned? It was quite an illogical decision."
Nero felt he should argue further, but the way this Captain spoke confused him.
"Although not an unexpected occurrence," the Captain continued. "My chief of security is an able man, who can be counted on in any contingency. I was not unduly concerned."
The Captain, Nero still didn't know his name, was clearly high on spice. He needed almost a minute to translate his words, which, as many and as well-crafted as they were, amounted to Gotcha.
"The real reason is that you all carry an as of yet unknown disease and you and your crew constitute a bio-hazard."
With that Nero relaxed. He could still turn this to his advantage.
"At least two of your men are extremely affected. We are waiting for a decision on what to do about them."
"I see."
"Logic dictates that the good of the many weighs heavier than the good of the few."
There was no answer Nero could make in response to such statement.
"Although we are following the teachings of Spock, -"
"What?!"
"Is your hearing impaired by the disease?"
"No! Who the hell are you? What Spock?"
"I am Sub-Commander Umes of the Romulan Empire in command of Uriak, now serving a rotation with the Allied Commandment for Galactic Rogue Actors and Interplanetary Terrorism." He paused for a moment, then continued: "Who are you?"
"I am Captain Jaran -"
"You are in my brig, behind a forcefield and a quarantine enclosure; it is highly illogical, even for you, to continue to lie."
"I am Nero."
"I know." Nero gaped at him. Quite like a Micropterus salmoides, Umes thought. "All the scans from the original Enterprise's database have been kept and all debris that were positively identified as belonging to the Narada have been extensively researched."
"We are heroes of the Empire! We wiped the heretics from history!" Being a hero was a nice feeling, knowing that you did what nobody else dared to for the glory of your people. Being acknowledged as one was nicer still. And now that he had his revenge, Nero craved acknowledgement. He would have continued to boast about the destruction of Vulcan when he remembered: "You said something about Spock."
"Indeed. We, the Romulans, are following the teachings of Spock."
"Of Spock?"
"Not Ambassador Spock; he died a few years after the Treachery."
"Treachery?" Nero felt faint.
"Your genocide against the Vulcans goes by many names; there is a word for it in every language, I am sure. For us it is simply the Treachery and you are the Traitor. Your name, your real name I mean to say, is never mentioned by us. Indeed, very few of those born after the event have ever heard it - the historians and those of us looking for you." Umes took a breath and then continued on a lighter tone: "You should know, however, that this is your official moniker; the general population refers to you simply as The Idiot."
"I don't understand." He wanted to rail at the man who imprisoned him, he wanted to hurl insults and demand the respect he was entitled to, but it was all too damn confusing. He was in the right universe, he was talking to one of the people who reaped the rewards of his masterful plan and his bravery, yet he was the one insulted.
"Of course you do not," Umes agreed. "Even a child of five has better reasoning skills than you have shown. What would you like to know?"
Many things, but one question was pressing: "Why?"
"That is simple: once you had Ambassador Spock and the red matter you could have come to warn us about the disaster looming in our future and then go back to your own timeline, to a point in time which could give you enough room to maneuver to help the Vulcan save Romulus. You did neither, of course, hence you are a Traitor. You would have had us destroyed again and again just so you could get your revenge on Ambassador Spock. Is that not so?"
Nero felt he should say something in his defense, although what that something was he did not know.
"It is useless to consider employing deception at this stage as I have watched the records from the Enterprise. They have offered to help you and your crew and you yourself declared that you would take the destruction of Romulus a thousand times over, rather than accept any help. A traitor to your people you are. And an idiot."
"You do not understand! None of you do! The Vulcans left our people be consumed by the dying star! I was the one who paid them in kind!"
"I see. Explain something to me then: why were the Vulcans responsible for our Empire? If we were so great in your timeline, why did we not research the red matter ourselves? And if we were too stupid for research, why did we not move to another star system altogether?"
"The Vulcans! They -"
"They what? Shot down our ships? What is even worse is that you not only refused to warn us or even provide us with the red matter, but in our timeline you have destroyed exactly the people who had the ability to conduct research and obtain results. Highly illogical, do you not think so?"
"So Spock gave it to you and now you worship him," Nero sneered.
"We do not worship him, that would be illogical. We have embraced his teachings. Neither did he give us the red matter, because he was not in possession of the manufacturing process, although he did know enough that his information was valuable. We chose to relocate to a different star system and the Federation helped us." He let Nero try to make sense of all that he has heard, then continued. "Surak was a narrow-minded man who did not understand that we are, at heart, warriors. Spock does understand that and he has shown us the way to follow the path of logic while remaining true to our passions and spirit. He gave us the greatest gift of all: a system that ensures none of us will become another you. You can see how the red matter is utterly unimportant in this context. What we have achieved will serve us for millennia into the future. Besides, as far as we know, nobody in this universe has any drop of red matter. Do you?"
"No!" Nero snapped. By all the stars, the man liked to hear himself talk.
Umes said nothing in reply, just inclined his head in acknowledgement, which in turn made Nero suspicious.
"You, bastard! You tricked me!"
"I did not."
"I should've let you and your sorry crew get on that ship 'n look for it. I should've let you be called upon to join the sponge and become my new aft shielding."
"I would not have done anything so illogical, I assure you." His communicator beeped just then.
"USS Ozathi will be the first to reach us, sir, and they will be relieving us of all the prisoners. USS Cousteau will take over patrolling this sector and we are then to make our way to the Callisto base unless Commander Sh'Vhaarar of Ozathi determines that we are not fit to be in contact with anybody else."
"Relay a copy of my conversation with the prisoner to the relevant parties, Lieutenant."
"Aye, sir."
"You are taking orders from a Klingon now! This is the gift of Spock!"
Umes looked at him with something like amusement. Ah, yes, there it was: Backpfeifengesicht. His daughter's obsession with obscure Terran languages and her insistence to teach him new words finally yielded results. "Backpfeifengesicht - this notion applies to you like to no other."
"Huh?"
"Backpfeifengesicht - a face in need of a fist. My daughter T'Sela lives on Terra. She enjoys studying their old languages."
"T'Sela?"
"My wife was a surrogate mother for a Vulcan baby. We are still genetically compatible, even after more than three millennia we of divergent evolution. T'Sela is that baby - the daughter of my heart."
"A Vulcan child?"
"Of course. A lot of us did the same. There were some fifteen thousands left after Vulcan was destroyed. There are now just over one hundred thousand of them due to Romulan women offering to incubate embryos to speed up the recovery of their numbers. There have been a lot of inter-cultural marriages too. One of my sons took a Vulcan wife and a lovely woman she is," Umes gushed to Nero's horror.
"Ozathi was the first ship not built by Terrans which joined Starfleet after you destroyed so many. It was commissioned at the request of the Andorian ruling family and built on Andor. Like all the Federation ships it has a mixed species crew, although in this case they heavily recruited from the ranks of those comfortable with cold. It is quite an old ship now and has been retrofitted as a research vessel. We are lucky to have such a respected biologist helping us handle this sponge safely."
"You allowed your wife to carry a Vulcan spawn?"
Umes straightened and glared at the prisoner. "I did not allow her to do anything. Of course she consulted me, but it was her decision entirely," he said and glared some more. "The sponge protects you right now, otherwise I would verify that your looks are indeed improved by being beaten to a pulp. Backpfeifengesicht." Hmm, that was the third time he repeated that word aloud - completely illogical. He needed to control himself.
"What? You would beat a prisoner? Isn't it illogical? Didn't Spock teach you to swallow the insults and go home like a good little boy? Complain to your fire pot!"
"No indeed. Spock taught us to value our feelings and to make the most of them, as long as we do not stray from the path of logic. For example it was normal for you to want to blame somebody when your homeworld was destroyed. It was illogical to blame the Vulcans, however. In my case it is logical to want to exert a carefully controlled amount of violence towards one who proved and continues to prove that he cannot understand other means of communication."
"Communing with the sponge would be a better fate than seeing my people cater to Vulcans and Terrans."
It was clearly not the insult Nero hoped it to be since Umes merely shrugged.
"I am sure something can be arranged for you - for all of you. Where I to be afflicted by a sudden madness, my crew would know better than to obey unlawful orders. I imagine you will be paraded here and there so the crowds can see for themselves that you are well and truly caught and then you'll end your sorry lives in a top hush-hush extra super guarded bio-hazard enhanced laboratory somewhere. You'll make generations of biologists happy beyond their dreams."
"No. As it is the ship might search for us anyway."
"Why did you not commune with your sponge anyway, if you love it so much?"
"I was not called." Nero visibly shuddered at the thought.
"It seems to me that life in your current form, even as a prisoner, is preferable to you than the sponge. Why did you not get rid of it?"
"I cannot. None of us can. We agreed to host their young in exchange for protection. We didn't know we'll become sponge ourselves."
"Just as I thought. You are an idiot. And you have no honor. You are only interested in making arrangements for yourself without a care for anybody else. You came back into our universe to unleash this menace on the Terrans, did you not? You thought our Empire was already burnt to dust and came to finish what you have started. And even though you could see who we are you had no qualms handing your own people to the sponge."
"Thelo, relay this last bit as well, would you?"
"Of course, sir."
"Sellu, report."
"We are to organize ourselves into groups of twenty and transport aboard Ozathi to be scanned for sponge and decontaminated if need be. Commander Sh'Vhaarar will then come aboard herself with a team to help Dr Bunsak scan and decontaminate our ship. If all goes well we'll be good to go in maybe ten hours; fourteen at most. Once Cousteau reaches us we are to disable all weapons and lower shields. Onsara and Kata will be arriving shortly as well to ensure we are as secure as we can be made to be until we are cleared for duty."
"Well, I do believe we are done for now, Nero."
"We are, sir," Sub Lt Thelo's voice floated over the comm. "Admiral Kirk himself sent his appreciation over how you handled the preliminary interrogation of the suspect. It is very likely that he and Admiral Uhura will be here to give us our new orders, sir."
"Truly? Quite the day, Thelo, quite the day."
"Aye."
"Nero, my man, thanks to you we will become heroes. Real heroes, mind you. No need to relay this last bit, Thelo."
"Got it, boss."
"How does it feel to lick the Terrans' boots, Captain Umes?"
"Ah, Nero, you are still trying, are you not? Listen to Surak: there is no offense where none is taken. Now listen to Spock's corollary: but I would be content to allow you to experience a one on one lesson in manners. It might be somewhat apocryphal, but then it might not. I'll follow Spock's teachings and you follow your sponge.
Guess who is sitting in my brig, though? And who gave up every last bit of info he had after barely an hour's conversation? And who donated his body to science even while still alive?
You are too easy, barely a child in mind. For the next tour I'm thinking Khan."