Regroup, Replan, Recycle

Yushan Mountain Range, Shanxi. March 14, 2157 AD

When they had first met, Kevin thought Michael was an odd character but generally an alright guy. Sure, Michael thought every government agency was out to get him and refused to use the vast majority of Borg tech but so long as you didn't set him off he was easy to get along with. Kevin had known that Michael kept a lot of weapons in his truck, the man was convinced that the System Alliance (or the Borg, or possibly both) would invade Shanxi and institute martial law just because they felt like it and Michael wanted to be able to fight back. That being said, Kevin hadn't realized just how many weapons Michael had.

"Here Kevin, looks like my Uzi is still in good condition," Michael said from his location in the cab of his truck.

Kevin reached up to the truck and grabbed the gun and put it in the 'keep' pile of weapons which was, unfortunately, much smaller than the 'useless' pile of weapons. In fact, calling the first one a pile was being generous, other than the Uzi there was a wicked looking knife and police-style riot shotgun and that was it.

"AH HA! I was wondering where this had gotten to," Michael said triumphantly as he stuck his head and arm out of the rear window (OK the rear hole, the window was gone) of the cab. He waved his arm around to show whatever it was he had found. "I knew I had some C4 in here somewhere. Good thing the shuttle explosion didn't trigger it or I wouldn't be here talking to you."

"C4?" Kevin asked incredulously. "I understand the guns but why do you have C4 in your truck?"

Michael shrugged, which wasn't easy to do with since most of his body was still in the truck. "C4 is a lot like a condom, it's better to have and not need it than need it and not have it."

"I. . I suppose I can see the logic in that," Kevin said. "So anything else worthwhile in there?"

"Most of my ammunition mod blocks look fine," Michael said as he disappeared back into the cab. "There's the rest of the C4. . .and the detonator! Certainly need that if I want to use the C4. Looks like the only other thing worthwhile in here is the food rations."

"My knowledge of ammo mods comes from video games and movies so you're gonna have to explain how they actually work to me at some point. I'll start grabbing stuff and take it into the Observatory."

"I was really hoping more stuff would have survived the explosion," Michael sighed. "Well come on in, the food and ammunition is easy enough to identity."

"Considering how much damage this thing took," Kevin said as he climbed up into the cab. "I'm impressed you're even alive, let alone that two of your guns are still functional." Kevin slid across the driver seat and half-walked half-crawled into the back section of the cab where Michael was.

"That's the food," Michael gestured at a stack of tightly wrapped boxes as he sorted through a giant box of something or other. "As for the ammo blocks, they're the little cubes you see everywhere."

Kevin glanced down and, sure enough, saw at least a dozen inch-sized cubes on the floor. Based on what Kevin had learned from watching movies he figured each block was a different type of ammunition, be it phasic, tungsten, incendiary, or whatever. Whether that was actually true or not, Kevin had no idea, but he hoped it was the case, it would make learning how to use a real weapon at least a little bit easier if his 'fake' knowledge had some basis in fact. Kevin grabbed some of the ammo blocks and placed them atop the food stack before grabbing the whole pile and slowly making his way out of the truck.

As he passed by the two piles of weapons outside Kevin paused and looked more closely at the Uzi, he had thought something was odd about it when Michael had handed it to him but hadn't given it much thought. Kevin put down his armful of food and ammo to look at the gun, it was clearly an older model, but even so, something was still odd. As Kevin examined the Uzi and compared it to the shotgun he finally realized what it was.

"Yo Michael!"

"What?"

"I get that you own a lot of guns, I get that some of the guns predate the discovery of mass effect. What I don't get is why, out of all the guns that you carry with you, is the sub-machine gun, i.e. the gun that uses a lot of ammo, the one without eezo while the heavy duty shotgun uses ammo blocks?"

"That's just bad luck. I had several pre and post discovery weapons in the truck. Don't want to put too much reliance on element zero in case someone finds a way to render it inert or something during a fight."

"I hope that means you have ammo for your Uzi somewhere in the truck because otherwise you only have one working gun."

"Why do you think I'm still in here? I'm sorting through all the ammunition that got knocked loose when I blew up the shuttle looking for any 9 millimeters, course loose rounds don't do me any good if I don't have any undamaged clips to put them in. . ." Michael's voice trailed off as he muttered to himself.

Kevin reached down and grabbed the stack of food and ammo and continued on his way into one of the side buildings of the Observatory that he and Fred used as living quarters. As he opened the door, Kevin saw Fred seated on the lone couch reading something on his wrist computer.

"Whatcha reading Fred?" Kevin asked as he placed his burden down in the corner.

"The instruction manual for our phasers. Did you know if you cranked them up high enough they could disintegrate a target?"

"Really?" Kevin asked in surprise. "Our dinky little one-handed phasers can do that much damage?"

"It burns through their power supply but if we really needed to blast our way through something, we could do it," Fred said without looking away from his computer. "Our's are primarily sold for their uses as tools so they are designed for a lot of low power usage, shooting to kill is possible but we will need to conserve our shots if we get in a firefight."

"So if something happens to Michael we aren't completely helpless, that's something I suppose. Though honestly, what are the chances that the aliens are going to come here. We're out in the middle of nowhere, what gain could they possibly have for attacking us?"

Fred shrugged and finally looked up as Kevin sat down in a chair next to the couch. "We don't even know why they attacked us in the first place, let alone what their strategy is for taking over the planet. Maybe their religion defines us as heathens in need of eradication, maybe they are like locusts and travel from planet to planet draining them of resources, maybe they are parasites looking for host bodies to inhabit to prolong their own lives, or maybe they are just trigger happy cops that think we broke some interstellar law. My point being that we don't have enough information to know anything about them so we can't make assumptions on what they might do or not do."

Kevin sighed and leaned his head back to stare at the ceiling. "I can't even figure out why anyone would build a planet based observatory so I don't really expect to understand why aliens are invading. I just needed to complain a bit and get that off my chest. This isn't an everyday occurrence after all, how are we supposed to deal with this?"

Fred smirked as he looked at Kevin. "We're being invaded by aliens and you can't help but wonder about the observatory. I was wondering when it would dawn on you."

Kevin's brow furrowed in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"Kevin, explain to me why you don't understand why anyone would build a planet based observatory."

Kevin finally leaned forward in the chair to get a clear look at Fred, he wasn't sure where Fred was going with all this but he wanted to be able to watch his face for any changes in expression. "Because it's so limiting. We have spaceships that can travel between solar systems, an observatory is stuck on a planet with a limited field of vision. Plus there's the additional problem of interference due to weather and such. Now I understand there's an issue of cost but if you've got the money to build a big ass observatory you've got the money to buy a spaceship and strap a camera to its hull."

Fred's smirked turned into a full grin. "So if this observatory is a waste of time and money when it comes to looking at stars, why was it built?"

"Because. . .it's. . .hiding something?" Kevin asked, having no idea what it was Fred was hinting at.

"Bingo. The Observatory is hiding something." Kevin tried to hide his shock at having guessed correctly. "Now, who do you know that has enough money to build this entire complex just to hide something?"

"Well, wasn't this place set up by the University of Hawai'i back on Earth?"

"That would be the cover, one they put a lot of effort into. The telescopes actually do collect data and send it back to Earth but no, that wasn't who funded this place."

"It would have to be some big organization, only they would have enough money," Kevin reasoned. "A corporation or a college or maybe a government."

"Or maybe something that qualifies as all three. . ." Fred trailed off, letting the thought hang in the air.

"The Borg?" As soon as the words left his mouth Kevin quickly glanced at the door to make sure Michael wasn't coming in. "The Borg paid for this place to be built?" When Fred nodded all Kevin could say was, "Why?"

"The Borg wanted something called a vinculum stationed here. I'm told they have one on every populated planet, not sure what they do though."

"The Borg spent millions of dollars to construct an obsolete observatory, as well as go to all the trouble to avoid having themselves connected with it, just to hide some device here? What makes this vinculum so important that they would go through all that?"

"Like I said, I don't know what it does nor do I know why they decided to store it here," Fred said with a dismissive wave of his hand "I just know I was hired is to perform daily checks on it and fix it should anything go wrong. Not really sure why since it's covered in nanites that can do a way better job fixing it than I ever could but hey, I'm just an individual, not a drone."

"Why wasn't I ever told any of this?" Kevin angrily asked.

"Having you in the dark about why we're here helps support the cover story that we are two nobodies that were hired to keep an automated system running. You got paid to fix a bunch of legitimate star observing equipment. You genuinely didn't know the purpose behind the Observatory so you didn't have to lie about what you did. When the fellow working for the Borg hired me he made a comment along the lines of 'the best fabrications are altered truths rather than outright lies' but I think he was slightly off the mark. See, in your case the fabrication actually was true. It wouldn't have matter who questioned you or how, because as far as you knew, you were just a gear monkey."

"Yea well, now I feel like a patsy," Kevin said, rather depressed at Fred's revelation of why they were here.

"Aw hell Kevin, don't take it personally. It was need-to-know information and you didn't need to know, heck, you still don't. Now that I think about it, I'm probably violating my contract by telling you this." Fred paused for a moment. "Then again I could probably argue that you figured some of it out on your own so I had to tell you in order to maintain secrecy, pretty sure that was one of the provisions under which I was allowed to tell you about everything."

"Wait, if you aren't even sure that you're allowed to be telling me all this, why are you?"

"Because I don't expect us to survive all this and I want to die with a clear conscience."

"Oh, well that's. . .nice of you, I think," Kevin said. "You really don't think anyone is going to come rescue us?"

"Are you kidding, who would come? The Borg? There's just you, me, and the vinculum here, hardly worth the justification of sending ships to repel the invasion. The Borg don't care about the same things we care about which is fine if you're an employee or customer of theirs, not so much if you're depending on them to save your life."

"What about the Systems Alliance? Wasn't this sort of thing the whole reason they were created?" Kevin asked, gesturing with his arms for emphasis.

"First of all, they're a governmental agency so don't expect them to do anything in a timely or efficient manner," Fred said with a shake of his finger. "Second, who knows why they were really created. Supposedly it was because the United Nations was too poorly organized to do anything but I've heard everything from countries were tired of how much power the United States had to people wanted a military power that could stand up to the Borg. Conspiracy theorists have thought up all sorts of explanations, doesn't mean they're wrong mind you, just that they have no factual basis."

"So you're saying it's hopeless?"

"No, not at all. I fully expect both the System Alliance and the Borg to show up and drive out the aliens. I just don't expect to be alive when they finally get around to it."

"You weren't this depressing yesterday," Kevin pointed out.

"As I was reading up on what our phasers can do I started realizing just how outclassed we are. Michael is crazy-prepared and he only barely survived one encounter with the aliens, what hope do you and I have?"

Before Kevin could respond the door opened and Michael walked in, arms loaded with stuff. "Whelp, I managed to salvage a grand total of three useable clips for my Uzi. Guess I'm sticking with the shotgun as my primary weapon in a firefight."

"An Uzi and a shotgun? Those were the only guns you were able to save?" Fred asked.

"Afraid so," Michael said, setting his gear on a nearby table. "Shrapnel from the explosion damaged just about everything. Don't quite know how it managed to do some much damage to the weapons behind me without killing me but I'm not the sort to question that much good luck."

"Now that we've got everything that could be used to defend ourselves. . .what do we do?" Kevin asked, looking back and forth between Michael and Fred, figuring one of them had to have an answer.

"We wait," Michael said firmly. "I moved my truck so that it's blocking the road up here so unless the aliens decide to scale the mountain, we'll know when they come up."

"What?" Kevin scratched his head in confusion. "What does your truck have to do with letting us know when the aliens show up? Isn't it just an obstacle they will have to climb over?"

"You're right, they will have to climb over it and since I rigged it with some of the C4 I had, we'll know when they make the attempt."

"That's actually a good idea," Kevin mused. "This way we won't have to constantly have someone on the lookout."

"We should still do that anyway," Michael argued. "There isn't any guarantee that they will take the road up, and even if they do, there's no guarantee that they will trip the trap. Besides, it's not like we have much else to do up here besides watch and wait."

Jia Siang, Shanxi. March 14, 2157 AD

Finn was shocked at how long it had taken the aliens to figure out that the shots were coming from outside of the spaceport. Granted, if someone takes a bullet to the head while indoors your first thought isn't going to be 'it came from a magic gun that can shoot through walls' but still, it should have occured them sooner than it did. Jingles and Schmidty had taken out two dozen of the aliens before they had gotten their act together and sent out search parties looking for the two men. By that time, Finn and Yon had gotten back into position and were able set up a crossfire that prevented the aliens from getting to JIngles and Schmidty's location. Sadly, the four snipers became victims of their own successes. Whereas other landing sites around the planet had encountered heavy resistance upon their initial landing, the Mao Zedong Spaceport had been taken without resistance so the aliens hadn't done much beyond securing the perimeter. Once they realized there were enemies in the surrounding area they brought in their big guns. Small, single person gunships now patrolled the air and tanks hovered through the streets. Even worse, Finn's fears about the civvies had been right. The aliens did eventually figure out that Jingles and Schmidty were hiding somewhere amidst the stores to the north of the spaceport. Rather than send in foot soldiers to get shot up, the aliens had sent in one of their tanks to demolish all the buildings. Jingles and Schmidty had managed to make it out fine, a lot of the civvies had not.

At the moment, Finn and Yon were on the second highest floor of the parking garage (didn't want to stay on the highest floor and get seen by passing gunships) next to the strip mall where their platoon was hiding out. After the aliens had arrived in force their Lieutenant had ordered them to pull back, they needed to rethink their strategy to avoid high civilian casualties. While there had been a meeting when they had returned to brainstorm no one had any good ideas so they were just sitting there waiting. After getting a (surprisingly decent) nights rest, Finn and Yon had been sent out on guard duty.

"You know what the worst part of this whole alien invasion thing is?" Yon suddenly spoke up.

"No idea," Finn said as he looked down one of the nearby streets. He had thought he saw someone moving down there.

"I never got a second date with Tara."

"Seriously? People were killed and you're worrying about not getting another date?" Finn asked, only half paying attention.

"Finn, man, you don't understand. Tara does this thing with a lawnchair, six milk bottles and a tuning fork that you wouldn't believe."

Finn grimaced. "Ugh, gross. I don't want to think about you and a woman doing. . .whatever it is you do with that stuff. I did not need to hear about your sex life, heck before now I didn't even think you had sex. Ignorance is bliss man, why'd you have to go and ruin that for me?"

"Ignorance may be bliss but knowledge is power."

"That doesn't mean I want to think about you naked, you're not exactly good looking Yon."

"You shouldn't judge a book by its cover."

"Yea well, clothes make the man, so keep yours on." Finn shuddered. "I'm gonna need to bleach my brain to get that image out of my head."

"You ain't exactly a looker yourself."

"Which is why I don't talk about my sex life," Finn explained.

"Well that and there's only so many ways you can talk about your right hand."

Finn couldn't help it, he grinned. "Alright that was a good one. But let's be serious for a second, I keep thinking I see movement. Come over here and tell me if I'm imagining it or not."

Yon hefted up the duo's rifle and walked over to where Finn was standing. Finn was silent as Yon rested the gun on the wall and began scanning the area.

"I'm not seeing anything Finn, where'd you see movement?"

"In front of the boarded up computer repair shop."

"Hmmm," Yon muttered. He reached up and pressed a button on the side of his targeting sensor. He muttered some more and pressed another button before suddening pulling back in surprise. "Whoa!"

"What is it? What do you see?"

"I see an alien," Yon explained. "I was looking right at him and didn't see him until I switched to infrared."

"You're kidding, there is an invisible alien down there? How the hell is that possible?"

"No idea. I thought this sort of thing was only possible in science fiction stories."

"Think it's a technology he's using or do you think the aliens can do it naturally?" Finn asked.

"Ppfffft, gotta be technology," Yon answered. "He's holding a gun, there's no way his body could hide that."

"So what is he doing anyway?"

"From the looks of things, scouting. Which makes sense, he's by himself and invisible far away from his base. Think I should take him out?"

"On the one hand he's an alien invader so, of course, you should kill him," Finn reasoned. "On the other hand, if he doesn't report back his superiors will probably have a good idea where we're hiding. Considering how well organized they have been I seriously doubt he's just out wandering, he was probably given specific places to check out."

"Yea, you're probably right." Yon activated his radio. "Lieutenant, we have an enemy scout approaching. I can take him out but it will give away our position and we'll have to move before more of them show up. Orders?"

"Take him out if it looks like he figured out we're here, otherwise leave him be. If he reports back that there is no one here that can only help us," the Lieutenant said.

"Roger that," Yon said and carefully took aim at the alien.

"Wonder if we should try to recover the body," Finn said after several minutes of silence.

"Who's body?" Yon asked.

"The alien's body, assuming you kill him. I bet there are quite a couple companies out there that would pay through the nose to get ahold of technology that not even the Borg have."

"Selling an alien's body and technology to the highest bidder. Sounds awfully mercenary of you Finn. I thought you abandoned grave robbing as a possible career path in high school."

"Har de har har har," Finn deadpanned. "Any guilt I felt about selling a corpse could be easily washed away in a money bath. Besides, I'm not saying we could actually pull it off. Where would we store the body and how would we preserve it?"

"And how would we keep it for ourselves?"

"Exactly, I was just wondering out loud, not actually making a suggestion."

College Park, Earth. March 15, 2157 AD

Roma walked through the hallways of the University of Maryland trying to remember the directions the lady at the front desk at given her. Roma was here to talk to an economics professor that did occasional projects with the Collective. It was an odd change from how the Collective used to work, Roma reflected. Back when she had first started working for the drones, if they wanted to research something whatever drones were currently free would start doing so. But as time went on the drones began having problems developing new technology, thinking up new ideas. Just advancing really seemed to be a problem for them, the drones were stagnating. Jeff had theorized that it was the result of having so many people on the neural network for so long, they were so used to each other that they had lost their drive to improve. What was that quote Jeff had used? "If necessity is the mother of invention, what will drive our ingenuity once all of our needs have been fulfilled?" Something along those lines. Roma suspected that might be partially why the drones had scaled back their assimilation efforts around that time. They had realized they needed individuals, if the entire human race was assimilated the Collective would ultimately suffer for it because drones didn't have the desires that forced innovation. To correct for that problem, drones almost always brought in at least one, usually more, individuals for whatever project or product they decided to work on.

Roma turned a corner and looked at the various doors with names on them, this looked like a wing of offices for the professors so she was probably in the right spot. She walked down the hall looking at the names on the doors. Jane Tinbergen. Jonathan Keynes. Benedict Graham. Milton Freedler. Ah here we go, Adamo Fabbro. As Roma stood before the door she heard two voices speaking.

". . .it's a dog-eat-dog world is what I'm saying."

"You know, it's really a shame when people who don't understand science use scientific metaphors. You call capitalism a dog-eat-dog world but dogs don't even eat each other in nature, let alone the free market. Capitalism relies on win-win negotiations. That is a fundamental truth, if two people engage in voluntary trade it is because they expect to better off at the end of that trade. That is not the case with a lion chasing a gazelle, that is win-lose. Darwinism doesn't apply to the free market."

"What you're talking about is between a business and its consumers. I'm referring to competition between businesses, plus you're assuming that everyone will behave themselves without any government oversight."

Roma had a feeling this conversation could go on for a long time if she let it, time to interrupt. She knocked on the door.

"Yes? Please, come in."

Roma stepped into the office, which was a lot smaller than she had been expecting. All four walls were hidden by bookcases, none of which had empty space on their shelves. In the middle of the room was a desk with a (surprisingly new looking) computer on it. The man behind the desk didn't look that old in the face but he had long white hair which was pulled in a ponytail and was wearing a rather thick coat which made him appear older. The man sitting closer to Roma was heavy seat with an impressive beard and mustache that covered the majority if his face. Roma noticed the overweight man's eyebrows shot up when he saw her, whether it was because he recognized who she was or was simply taken aback by her good looks, she wasn't sure.

"Well Adamo, we can continue this debate at lunch. How's Italian sound?" The big man said as he stood up from his seat.

"Please Carl, you Americans can't make decent pasta to save your life. Let's get sushi."

"Works for me, see you then."

Roma closed the door after the man had left and then sat down in the available chair. "Dr. Fabbro, I presume?"

"In the flesh, what can I do for you my dear? Come to discuss your grades I take it?"

Roma smiled. "I wasn't aware I looked that young so thank you for that. No, I'm not a student. My name is Roma Gupta, I'm the one the Collective said would be stopping by."

Dr. Fabbro settled back in his chair before speaking, "Usually when you guys hire me it's via dronel. What sort of project would prompt them to send an actual person?"

"Oh, I'm not actually here about a new job, I want to discuss one you already did for us, the Lotito Study."

"Oh yea that one. Had to be all secretive because it was on Shanxi and the people there hate the Collective. What about it?"

"For starters, why did the drones need an economist for a biology study?"

"Well, as you know, some of the bacteria they discovered in one of the ocean trenches was capable of eating metal, including their fancy nanobots. The drones wanted to study the things but they were. . .well I don't want to say 'concerned' because that would be an emotion, but the drones wanted to figure out the impact on Shanxi if the bacteria got out of the water and hit one of the settlements. Now I will give the Collective credit, those drones are freaking geniuses when it comes to macroeconomics, they can predict things to a ridiculous degree. Don't know how they do it but they got a finger on the pulse of every economy out there. That being said, they are terrible at catching the little things. Apparently, they had decided the effects from an outbreak weren't large scale enough to bother devoting their brain power to but at the same time they wanted to know what would happen so I, along with a statistician, a sociologist, and a virologist got brought in to figure out those effects."

"When I asked a drone that question they said you were plotting infection vectors which didn't make any damn sense to me, glad to have that cleared up."

"You work for the Collective and they were being obtuse with you?" Dr. Fabbro asked in surprise.

"Not intentionally," Roma explained. "They just don't really know how to communicate with people off their neural network. They aren't going to spend much time explaining something that makes perfect sense to them no matter how much you ask because they feel it's a waste of resources."

"They think talking is a waste of resources?"

"Time explaining something is time they could have spent working out mathematical computations or something in their heads."

"I guess that makes sense," Dr. Fabrro said while scratching his chin thoughtfully.

"Yea, it does." Roma sighed. "I don't like it, but I understand why they do it."

"So anyway, back to the reason you came here?"

"Right right. Well you see, I read the report you and the others submitted about how the effects on Shanxi would minimal if not nonexistent but circumstances have changed so we're going to need you to take another look, and quickly."

"Why?"

"Your projections never took into account what would happen if all the Borg tech down in the oceans suddenly disappeared, also the situation on Shanxi's surface has been altered."

"Whoa whoa whoa," Dr. Fabbro said. "Stop, time out. Let's back up to the first point. The Borg have disappeared?"

"Oh no, nothing like that, at least not yet. It's just if they had to suddenly and quickly evacuate the planet and pull all their stuff with them, which might happen in the very near future, we need to figure out the effects."

"Drones can survive in the vacuum of space, what could possibly force them to pull out like that?" Dr. Fabbro asked.

"Well that brings me to the second thing I mentioned," Roma began, unsure of how to proceed. "About how Shanxi's surface has been altered. . .look you're still under contract forbidding you from speaking about your involvement with this project and Shanxi so what I'm about to reveal to you does not leave this room."

"I know, if I speak of it the nanites that were injected into me with activate and I'll be assimilated." Roma couldn't identify the emotions in Dr. Fabbro's voice when he said that.

"Right, well for what it's worth, this will probably hit the airwaves in a day or so you might not need to keep it a secret for too long. . .the event that is, your involvement is still to be kept under wraps."

"I know, just get on with it," Dr. Fabbro said impatiently.

"Shanxi has been invaded by aliens."

"What?" Dr. Fabbro asked incredulously. "Wait, are you serious? Aliens? Real, live aliens?"

"Afraid so."

"So what's going to happen to all the people that live on Shanxi?" Dr. Fabbro asked after several minutes of silence as he digested the news he was just given.

"Hopefully we can rescue them," Roma said. "The problem is getting everyone motivated to do the rescuing."

"What do you mean?"

"Even though this only happened a few days ago the Collective is already mobilized and ready to go so theoretically we could go and park a fleet over Shanxi."

"But. . ." Dr. Fabbro prodded.

"But the drones have decided that they should not do anything about the aliens unless its alongside the Systems Alliance."

"Well I don't see how that's a problem, surely the Systems Alliance will want to save Shanxi."

"It's a bit more complicated than that."

"How do you figure?"

"The Systems Alliance gets the majority of its funding from two sources, money given to it from countries on Earth, and taxation on supplies sent to colonies. A lot of the colonies make efforts to be self-sufficient so that decreases the amount of tax money the Alliance can bring in so they primarily depend on Earth," Roma explained. "Care to take a guess what country currently donates the most money?"

"I don't have to guess, I know, it's China. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Who were the primary immigrants to Shanxi?" Roma asked patiently.

"Oh. . .yea. Forgot about that."

"It's not like the Chinese government endorses the aliens killing people on Shanxi but they are definitely going to drag their feet about mounting a rescue operation. They'll claim it's expensive, a possible misunderstanding, that we don't have the capability to survive an interstellar war, that the people of Shanxi wouldn't want the help anyway, et cetera et cetera."

"So what's going to happen?"

"After I'm done here I'm off to Washington to talk to several politicians to convince them to put pressure on China, then I'm off to Canada to do the same thing. Another rep is already hitting up countries in Europe."

"That's good to hear."

"Indeed. However, that is not something you need to worry about. You need to focus on finding out any possible changes to the Lotito Study."

"Of course, yea. I'll be glad to help but what about the others? While I'm sure Ron will be glad to help Frank and Max hated the secrecy of the whole thing, can you really convince them to come back?"

"Dr. Fisher volunteered even quicker than you did when I told him the situation. You're correct about Dr. Burnet, we actually had to threaten to activate his nanites if he didn't agree to help. Surprisingly, Dr. Weber didn't mind coming back, guess he found retirement boring."

"Oh," Dr. Fabbro seemed to deflate at Roma's explanation. "Good to see you're ahead of me then."

"Don't take it personally, I met with you last because you were the closest to D.C."

"Right, well I suppose a drone with bit stopping by later with all the specifics?"

"One will come by today after your last class to pick you up. You will be given access to all the information on the trip to the Celestial Dragon."

"Wait today? But I already had dinner plans. . ."

"Cancel them," Roma said firmly. "We need to have your analysis before Shanxi is liberated and seeing as how we don't know how much time you will need or how much time it will take to convince China to stop dragging its feet you need to start today. Be glad I convinced the drones to let me talk you into coming and to wait till the end of the day, they wanted to activate your nanites."

"They were gonna what?!" Dr. Fabbro just about shouted.

"Don't worry about, I talked them out of it," Roma said dismissively. "But enough of this, I have to be going."

"Um, right. OK, well I guess I need to prepare for a leave of absence from the school. . ." Dr. Fabbro said as he began typing on his computer.

"Before I go, would you indulge my curiosity about something?" Roma asked as she stood up from her chair.

"Sure," Dr. Fabbro said, glancing up at Roma. "What do you want to know?"

"When I showed up you were talking to the other fellow about the morality of capitalism. You're a college professor, isn't that a little. . .I don't know, basic? Shouldn't you be debating whether or not the spatial labor arbitrage is good for Earth because colonies having lower production costs due to fewer laws or something?"

Dr. Fabbro smiled. "While I'm sure some professors like discussing that sort of thing, Carl and I prefer a different sort of debate. He teaches philosophy, I teach economics. For each debate one of us picks a subject and a method of debate, moral or monetary. Today was his turn so he decided we would debate about the morality of businesses competing for customers in capitalism. I'm thinking next time I'll make it a debate over whether or not hedonism is financially feasible for a society over the long term."

"Huh, well whatever keeps your mind sharp I guess. Thank you for answering my question," Roma said as she walked to the door. "The drones will be waiting for you as soon as your last class lets out so have everything in order before you start it."

"Hopefully I will. I pray for the people on Shanxi and wish you well in your efforts to save them Ms. Gupta." And with Dr. Fabbro's farwell Roma left his office.

As she walked down the hallway Roma had to shake her head at the situation. Roma genuinely felt bad about delaying the Borg from retaking Shanxi, who knew how many people were dying because of it, but if the Borg went in early and saved the colony that would just upset the higher-ups in the Systems Alliance. The Borg would have made them look inept and incapable of defending their own colonies and since the politicians already didn't like the Collective, Roma didn't want to make the situation worse. It sucked for the people on Shanxi but hey, they wanted to live on the farthest colony from Arcturus that had a minimal Systems Alliance garrison. They wanted to have all that extra freedom, that came at the consequence of the government not stepping in right away.

Still, the drones weren't holding out solely because Roma said so. While the Borg wanted very very badly to move in and assimilate the aliens to learn as much as possible they didn't want to move in too early in the event that more hostile ships were on route to the planet. The Borg wanted Systems Alliance ships alongside their own when they went to Shanxi for, well, for cannon fodder really. The Borg only needed to assimilate one ship and its crew in order to get the necessary information about the aliens capabilities. Actually, that wasn't necessarily true. Maybe the alien society was organized into castes and the warriors were all slaves or something and had no idea why they were fighting or where they were doing it. All the more reason to assimilate them really, the Collective just didn't have enough information. Roma shook her head in annoyance, remembering a conversation she had had with Jeff.

"What good is psychohistory if it couldn't predict something as important as an alien invasion!? You would think out of everything it's gotten correct, this would have come up at some point!"

"You know damn well it doesn't actually predict the future Roma. It just uses gathered mathematical data to extrapolate what is likely to happen. It couldn't predict the invasion because we had no knowledge of the aliens, it's for that exact reason why we have no idea how long the invasion will last or how the retaking will go, we have no data."

"Well, get some data! Tell the drones to assimilate something already! Need I remind you Jeff: ALIENS!"

That had certainly not been one of her finer moments. It had occurred shortly after Bert had told her about the Shanxi situation, she had called up Jeff to ask him what information the Borg had available on the aliens. She had not been happy to hear his answer, "Not much," which had resulted in her explosive reaction. Hell, they couldn't even use pyschohistory to make any assessments on what the Lotito Study would do to Shanxi if there was a breach of containment anymore. The introduction of the aliens to the situation rendered all their predictions moot, especially if a long, drawn out war took place on Shanxi, nothing spreads disease and bacteria like a war.