As Elite Force and the science team celebrated a successful mission, most everyone else of the other crew had already tuned into the Hunger Games feed. The bridge had switched the view screen to the show as soon as the dilithium extraction teams were back safe. "Curious…" Janeway breathed quietly, out loud as she watched the teens enter the tubular elevators that would bring them down to the arena. The concern she had quieted for a time resurfaced at what she saw. "What are those weapons for at the cornucopia?" many of the crew wondered inwardly. The entire ship had been so heavily focused on mission preparation that only a handful of crewmen had been left to monitor communications. This was the first time they had saw or heard anything violent from the people of Panem. The planet's security force had definitely been noted by observers, scattered among the people in certain areas, but there hadn't been much time to think on it really. Most cultures had some sort of military or police force, anyway.
"It appears that this society has holographic technology comparative, or possibly exceeding, our own holodeck technology." Seven of Nine offered Janeway. "Perhaps they will hunt animals." She speculated as she stood behind the captain's chair at a work station.
Chakotay had just arrived back, from checking on the away teams and passed Janeway a fluted glass of champagne. After they'd verified the crystals were viable, everyone had been set back to full rations, and back pay. Partly it was a reward for good soldiering, and the other was for morale's sake. They had enough crystals in the cargo bay now to last them until they reached the Alpha Quadrant, probably.
"Very interesting." Janeway tilted her head, staring at the view screen. Despite feeling more uneasy she joked to lighten her own mood. "It's almost tempting to try and acquire this holographic technology. It does appear very lifelike… Maybe it could add something to the Doctor's program."
"I heard that!" came the Doctor's reply over the comm. Janeway laughed softly. "No offense-" she began. "None taken." He smiled. He had opted to watch along from Sickbay, in case he was needed there, but had left an view of the bridge running. He was curious about the games, and could see the view screen, but also wanted to observe human behavior as they watched. He hoped perhaps, that he'd observe something he could add to his personality subroutine to make himself more natural. Part of him too wanted to 'hang out' with them, and so he'd found the view somehow comforting, even though he wasn't on the bridge. "Remember, just one," he mothered her.
"Aye sir." Janeway half teased sipping from her glass. The bubbles tickled her nose. Normally, this would definitely be off limits, but as they had just pulled a mission of great importance and the planet below still had no clue, and there weren't any ships within long-range sensors, there wasn't any danger, really. She would limit herself to one glass anyway, and just retire for the afternoon, if she did feel woozy. This kind of scenario would probably never happen again, where the ship seemed invulnerable, so it wasn't worth worrying about. The poor crewman pulling helm duty noticed he wasn't offered a drink, but didn't object.
Deep in the ship somewhere in the crew's quarters, Naomi Wildman watched the view screen in she and her mother's living room as Nelix brought her a bowl of popcorn. "It's good you get the rare opportunity of a sneak peek to see how children on a prewarp culture live," he smiled as he sat down beside her. Mrs. Wildman had been one of the away mission team, and was still helping prep dilithium samples for engineering, and Nelix had volunteered to watch Naomi for her while she was away. He had left the mess hall open for informal get togethers since it was large enough to host a Hunger Games party. "remember to take notes." Nelix said as he sat down. "Got it." Naomi raised her data pad as proof of her sincerity, and then quoted something she'd heard an adult say once, trying to appear more grown up. "I'm going to make visual observations first, and then record them." "Very good." Nelix grinned, humoring her.
A hush fell over the bridge, as well as the entire ship, as the timer counted down to zero and the tubes reached the bottom. Kess could feel it, all the pent up emotion-all of the anticipation of this moment. She felt the ship occupants and even could now feel the inhabitants of the planet below, which was unusual for her. Most times, the feeling was limited to nearby emotions only. Something was very wrong. It was adrenaline, and growing fear, and gleeful expectation, all at the same time, coming from many sources below that was disturbing.
One instant before it happened, Kess knew that one of the teens would step off prematurely. When he did he exploded! Most everyone on Voyager gasped, wondering over what exactly had just happened, unsure, assuming it was some kind of accident or pyrotechnic display. It all happened so fast, they didn't have any time to process before everything else started. Esteeming themselves a civilized society, they partly didn't want to believe what they had just witnessed.
Then, the teens sprinted out into the arena, rushing for the center and the carnage began. As Katniss and a boy struggled over a backpack of some sort they saw him spew blood, struck hard in the back by a knife. It was one of those painful events where when you see it, you instinctively feel it.
In the mess hall aboard Voyager several crewmen gasped, eyes grew wide with alarm, jaws dropped as the repetitive concussive sound from the cannon began to blare over the speakers. Kess happened to be there, at the time. She noticed another female crew member cover her mouth, a shade of green on her face.
All of this sensation, culminating in such graphic detail overwhelmed Kess. She began to dry heave as well, searching for any nearby waste basket within reaching distance. She was thoroughly embarrassed, unable to control herself, but thankfully managing to move her hair out of the way, somehow in time.
A mist of blood, sprayed from another victim, hung in the air for a moment where the teen had stood only seconds earlier. All the gory detail very clearly visible on screen in high definition as the almost adult sized humanoids massacred one another. It all happened within a matter of seconds, so fast in fact even if a skilled engineer in the teleport room had been ready it would have probably been impossible to beam out half of the now expired teens before they had died. Even the doctor stood mouth agape. It was difficult for him to process this "gratuitous display of violence" as he would later describe it, to Tom Paris, on medical duty, as he sorted equipment away.
Naomi Wildman watched wide eyed, captivated. This greatly disturbed Nelix. As a matter of fact she even almost looked intrigued by the show. As nelix gasped in horror. He quickly fumbled for a remote control, but gave up and yelled a little louder than he meant to, "computer: View screen off!"
"Heyyy." Naomi wined, unsure exactly why her show was being canceled.
He almost viewed her as his own child, so was upset that she'd been exposed to such a gruesome spectacle. "Absolutely not." Nelix thought out loud, still stumbling over his thoughts, in a stupor. Before either of them could say more the comm chimed. "yes?" Nelix asked.
"We've got a problem in the mess hall-well, it's really a mess right now for sure. A few people got sick. I think Kess is here," one of his mess hall crew informed him.
"On my way. Come with me, child." Nelix motioned for Naomi to follow, and she did pouting half the way there. "Eehw!" She exclaimed as the mess hall doors slid open.
On the bridge it was silent. Janeway's expression was that of shock and horror. It took her a moment to snap back into captain mode, and someone requesting to beam out the teens, to jog her. Everything within her screamed the opposite, but she almost surprised herself, "No." she ordered flatly, detached, "We can't interfere…" This was immediately followed up by a quieter admission to mostly herself. "As much as I'd like to," There wasn't any argument, for now, at least. It had been a token question only, and she had pretended to be strong, but wondered if she would have relented if Seven of Nine or someone had disobeyed orders.
They were further horrified to see the feed begin to show some of the more gory instant replays until her command of "View screen off!" spared the bridge crew, at least.
Once the shock of the opening scene had died down, and most of the other contestants had hid, the unlikely spectators aboard Voyager began to turn to each other as if to verify what they'd witnessed was really true. To some it seemed unbelievable, they were so shocked there hadn't been any time for emotional feeling in them yet to result. It was obvious from the shock in others faces that, in fact it was: The people of Panem really were being entertained by the deaths of children on the screen!
"What kind of a culture is this?" Janeway's second emotion welling up was anger, and indignation. By now, Tuvok was at his post, and didn't attempt to answer what he had learned over time with the captain was a rhetorical question, but Seven of Nine was still learning so bit, "It appears that this society still exhibits signs of being very barbarous." Janeway ignored the answer. She didn't know what to say-didn't have words to say, and just sighed and shook her head, over the senseless loss of life, snuffed out in a few heartbeats. The cannon blasts announcing the tally of dead rang in the air.
"We have to do something about this…" Janeway resolutely spoke out loud her thoughts. Rising from her chair she keyed up the comm and crisply ordered "Senior Staff: boardroom, immediately. Janeway out." With that she downed the rest of her champagne without thinking, and left the bridge.
Within moments they were gathered around the table again. The normal light hearted mood was replaced by a looming one, like family meeting together before a funeral. As Nelix sat down Janeway got to the point quickly, following up with another question before anyone had time to think, "What happened out there?-How didn't we know?" Heads turned quietly and eyes blinked. Seven of Nine looked around, a bit surprised, and unsure remembering her previous answer, so just observed this time.
"It appears to be some kind of ritual, or human sacrifice… We did not anticipate such barbarity,. Also, we were preoccupied primarily with mission preparations, and so could not anticipate-" Tuvok answered for everyone, it seemed, as Janeway nodded quietly.
"Captain, if I may?" Nelix began and continued as she looked towards him. "I imagine this kind of behavior is more common with prewarp societies, and so you… I mean being that we only interact usually with more civilized ones, it's understandable that this could come as a shock-er surprise."
"Shock is more like it." Harry Kim said under his breath.
"You have a point there. You both have very good points. We were wrong to expect them to behave any differently, really…" Janeway began with her soft husky voice. "But, allowing this to go on just seems…" She looked around the room to see if others felt as she felt. Now, Seven was really getting confused, but continued to just listen for the moment. She hadn't expected Janeway to question Starfleet regulations as she understood them.
"And violate the Prime directive?" Tuvok half asked half stated the obvious to get it out of the way. "Captain, we didn't ask to get involved." Paris began her thought, but his eyes seemed to pass the baton to her. "Right, but now we are anyway. It was justifiable, but now I can see why Starfleet would usually advise against this sort of thing."
"What if we were to just-beam out the remaining kids." Harry tried to get out his thoughts but shrugged as he struggled. "And everyone watch their champions disappear?" Janeway wondered out loud, but pressed him further. "Go on," she prodded.
"Not live while the broadcast is going… The 'people' of Panem would never have to know what happened." Torrez interjected, as harry took one second too long to follow up. Judging by Harry's reaction though, her idea was fine with him. "Yeah."
"And babysit a bunch of teens until they're grown?" Janeway was spit balling the possible repercussions of any suggestions now. "What about next year and the next crop?-I hope this is only once a year."
Everyone was stumped again. "We couldn't just setup our own government, could we?" She half lamented half wished.
"I do not suspect the children would be able to adjust well to their new environment aboard, or perhaps be integrated into our crew. They may be violent and it might be dangerous for them as well as the crew." Tuvok stated, actually pausing a moment to think more. "And, if we did interrupt their 'game-show' we would already be committed to some type of intervention, as well as having violated the prime directive."
"So how do we do that? Ideas?" Janeway seemed very keen to entertain the idea.
"Captain, what if we were to hold them only temporarily and deposit them on another class M planet?" Seven asked. Janeway nodded with approval but then asked "But then that brings us back to the problem of next year's crop."
Chakotay didn't particularly have his heart in it but asked, playing devil's advocate, to make sure it was covered, "This is their culture. What gives us the right to interfere with that?"
"Isn't it barbaric though, to pitt children against one another in mortal combat?" Tom immediately followed up.
"Personally, I think it'd be barbaric to allow it to go on without doing something about it." Harry blurted out, before he'd had time to think about how to put things in more diplomatic speak. It's probably a good thing he did though, or he may have never found the courage to say it.
The others around the table bristled at the crude presentation, but were still in general agreement. For a moment it was quiet. "Captain-" Harry began, trying to walk it back. "No Harry, it's fine. I think we all feel this way." Janeway reassured him.
"Captain, if I may?" The doctor began, and everyone listened. "Of course, I may be missing something here, but it seems that ethically, isn't this as much or more a dilemma-leaving this culture in such disarray, than it is to violate the Prime Directive? It's a longstanding tradition that Starfleet involves itself in scenarios where wrong doing is taking place, to try and remedy the situation. It seems, to me, that it would be worse to not get involved with this culture. Essentially, it's the lesser of two evils…"
Everyone was mute around the table, mostly glancing to each other wondering if they were really actually doing this, and considering something so different for them. "Doctor, please continue." Janeway asked him, the same way she'd ask any other crew member.
The emergency medical hologram continued elaborating. "As a doctor I have to triage during emergencies. It's understood that I cannot serve everyone at the same time, so I must prioritize. If I'm an accurate judge of human nature, I'd venture that the vast majority of the crew would be behind you, were you to get involved."
A further hush fell over the table, everyone clearly pleased with the doctors words, perhaps even a bit touched. "Out of the mouth of babes." Janeway quoted, smiling, breaking the long silence. She wasn't sure exactly where that quotation had come from, even herself, and later had to explain to the doctor that she meant no insult to him, but it seemed wholly appropriate for this occasion.
Now, in Janeway's mind they had crossed the threshold from decision to mission planning again. "Well then… I think we all need to break-to process all of this. Take some time for yourselves. Rest and please speak with the doctor if you feel the need to," she said as she glanced and motioned over towards him.
"If needed, I could provide a group therapy format, but individual attention is more than welcome," he excitedly reassured. Tom Paris managed to roll his eyes without being caught, and Bilana thumped his shin under the table with her foot.
Janeway paused a moment to steeple her fingers as she considered her orders carefully.
"I want each of you to turn in a very brief draft proposal on what we should do by tomorrow morning-Keep it shorter than one page. And, no collaborating. I want each of your unique suggestions on how we might best deal with this. I need them by 0700 tomorrow morning, and we'll meet again here at 0900 for mission planning. Understood?"
Half of the senior crewmen were already out of their seats when Seven interrupted the premature adjournment. "Captain, to clarify, for myself: You request that we give proposals on-"
"Yes Seven. On how we might best prevent future bloodletting."
Seven of Nine tilted her head in contemplation, after glancing around the room and making a guesstimate of what the other officer's proposals might be, as fast as her synapses would allow her. How to come up with a plan that differed from their's while complementing their plans yet still being helpfully different remained a mystery. The former drone stood, as the room cleared of everyone except she and Janeway. "You'll do fine. I appreciate your views, Seven." Janeway smiled at her.
