Of Cats and Dark Energy
Part 3: Pooling Resources
Picard had reported in to his 'Number One', and now returned to the meeting with the air of a man who had made a decision.
"Commander Shepard, I am aware that StarFleet has no legal standing, or even existence, in this reality. However, our aims and directives remain clear, and one of those is to keep the peace and protect civilians.
Now, the experimental TransWarp module that brought us here is currently unsafe to approach – highly unstable and intense chronoton emissions – so we cannot yet investigate the malfunction which brought us here. That being the case, I offer you the services of my ship and crew during the current emergency.
"I dare say I am flying in the face of what the Doctor thinks we ought to do – no doubt stay in deep space and have no interaction with anyone here – but I am not prepared, and neither are my crew, to stand idly by while people are in danger.
"There is also the fact that, if we are indeed facing a Borg incursion, we have more experience than you in dealing with them. Formidable as the Enterprise is, we are no match for a Borg cube, but we do have the technology and knowledge to investigate and shadow them without their notice."
"It seems to me," Grunt commented, "that even if you could go home now, you wouldn't. Not while these Borg might be around, anyway!"
"I will admit, we do have our issues with the Borg, Mr Grunt." Picard allowed. "But even if it were not so, we should feel obliged to at least offer assistance. Commander?"
Shepard grinned. "I've been called proud, even arrogant, a loner who likes to do things his own way and to Hell with the rules..."
"...and that's by the people who like you." Miranda murmured.
Shepards' grin broadened. "But I'm not too proud to accept help when it's offered, Captain Picard. That human colony is outside Alliance space, so their military can't legitimately go there except for humanitarian aid. But I'm a Corsair, I can go where I like, and if you're working with me, you're a Corsair too."
"Stretching a point there!" Tali noted.
"So what else is new?" Garrus asked.
"Then if you would upload the coordinates of the colony to the Enterprise, I suggest that we go and investigate that incident while you look into the other matter." Picard stated.
"Makes sense." Shepard replied. "You'll need the access codes to the relays."
Picard shook his head. "Our warp drive works on entirely different principles from your mass-effect. We couldn't use your relays even if we needed to."
"I hate to strike a sour note, Commander," Miranda broke in, "but aren't we being a little too trusting?"
"What do you suggest, Ms Lawson?" Picard asked.
"An exchange of hostages?" Shepard asked. "One of my officers goes with you, one of yours comes with us?"
"Agreed." Picard said.
"That OK with you Miranda?" Shepard enquired. She nodded, and he said. "Good. Because you're the one that's going with the Enterprise. Go get your gear."
"Me and my big mouth!" Miranda said as she got up. "I'll be back in a few minutes, Captain Picard."
"Commander Data," said Picard, after he had acknowledged Miranda, "would you be prepared to stay aboard the Normandy?"
"I am not the obvious candidate." The android observed. "The local attitude to AIs would indicate that I would not be considered sufficiently valuable as a hostage."
"We're not actually talking about hostages, here, Commander Data." This was Tali. "More of an officer exchange. Anyway, if my readings are correct, your scrap value is greater than that of the entire Normandy!"
"Thank you, Miss vas Normandy." Data replied.
"Sarcasm, Data?" Geordi asked. "Isn't that the lowest form of wit?"
"I am still learning." Data replied.
It was too much for Tali, who collapsed in giggles. Picard said to Shepard. "Commander Datas' positronic brain is capable of storing immense amounts of information. He is also directly linked to the Enterprise database, which contains all Federation knowledge. Before we leave, he can download all the information we have pertaining to the Daleks, and for that matter, the Doctor, as the two are inextricably linked in our history. You may find it useful."
"Might save me having to explain everything, for once!" The Doctor said.
"Shepard." Samara said. "I know I pledged myself to your service, but I feel I must also travel with Captain Picard. Do you permit this?"
"Samara, I've never considered you a subordinate." Shepard said. "Your pledge to me was until the Collector threat was ended, and it is. You're a Justicar, and have the right to go where you want."
"Thank you, Shepard." She replied. "Captain Picard?"
"You are, of course, welcome, Justicar." Picard said. "Do you require further surety from us, Commander?"
Shepard shook his head. "Samara is a friend, but she is not a crew member. A Justicar, like a Spectre, can go where they feel they are needed. Besides, this ship isn't as big as yours, and we're already crowded.
"But I will be very annoyed if any harm comes to Samara while she is with you."
"Understood." Picard said. "Do you need to bring anything, Justicar?"
It was only a little while later when both Miranda and Samara returned to the conference room, both carrying what little luggage they required. Shepard had been talking - exchanging tall tales, really – with Picard. LaForge and Dr Crusher had been speaking with the Doctor, Data was sitting quietly, having said that he was accessing the information he would need from the Enterprise, while Tali was covertly studying the android. Massani had wandered off, saying something about developing special tactics. Worf had been talking with Grunt and Garrus. Shepard heard the end of that conversation.
"Commander Data is a colleague, a comrade and a friend." Worf was saying. "Should any harm come to him while on this ship, I will be...irritated."
"Got it!" Grunt replied. "I'll be pissed off if anything happens to Miranda or Samara."
"Then we understand each other, gentlemen." Worf concluded.
"Are we all ready?" Picard asked. "Very well, let us proceed. Picard to Enterprise, six to beam aboard. Good luck and Godspeed, Commander Shepard. Energise."
The shimmering effect of the Transporter device was disorienting. The familiar conference room around Miranda faded away, and for a moment she was alone in a sparkling nothingness. Then a completely different room solidified around her. She felt slightly dizzy and a little nauseous. Incautiously, she tried to step forward and stumbled.
In front of her, Picard shot out an arm to prevent a fall. It was like coming up against an iron bar. Then Crusher had her elbow. "Dammit, Jean-Luc, we should've warned them!"
"Of course." He replied. "My apologies, Ms Lawson. The first trip by Transporter can be disturbing. Do you need a moment?"
"I'll be fine." Miranda said. "That was just...weird!"
"Our fault." Crusher told her. "We jump on and off this thing all the time. Never occurs to us that other people aren't used to it. This was your first time, so you may have lost some fluid. You'll need a drink. Oh, thanks, Miles!"
Miranda realised that a stocky, square-faced man in black and yellow was proffering a glass of water. She accepted it with a grateful nod. It was cold, and cleared her head at once.
"Drink all of it, mind." He told her in a pleasant Irish brogue. "You'll be right as rain in a minute."
"Justicar, are you well?" Picard asked.
"Indeed, Captain." Samara replied. "My metabolic and neurological makeup is different from a humans. The experience was unique, but not unpleasant."
"Excellent." Picard turned to the stocky man. "Chief O'Brien, can you see to it that our guests' luggage is sent to their assigned cabins? Thank you.
"Beverley, Geordi, you should get back to your posts. Ladies, if you will follow Mr Worf and I to the bridge?"
As they walked, Samara was looking about her with keen curiosity. Miranda, however, had other concerns. As a genetically-enhanced nonborn, she had always been superior to the other humans around her. She was stronger, faster, generally smarter and would live longer. But when she had stumbled just now, she had discovered something that both disturbed and excited her. Picard was not a young man, for instance, but he had reacted to her plight as quickly, perhaps a shade more so, than she could have done, and the strength of his arm had been shocking. Equally, the grip Crusher had placed on her elbow, though gentle, had been as strong as any Miranda herself could have applied.
Are these people genetically-enhanced? She wondered. Then shook her head. Of course they were. They were from the 24th Century. Enhanced by two hundred years of scientific, medical and educational advances, as well as good, old-fashioned, evolution. Ruefully, Miranda Lawson realised that aboard this ship, she was just an ordinary person. She wondered if Shepard had realised that when he chose her for this mission. Knowing the Commander, he probably had!
By this time, they had reached the bridge. This, Miranda saw, was more like the Normandys' CIC than the cubby-hole from which Joker flew the ship. The elevator let onto a raised section, at the front of which was a curved control panel at which Worf now took station, relieving a human officer. In front of and below that section was an arrangement of seats, the central one of which was clearly the command chair. Beyond that was another control desk with two officers seated at it. The focus of the room was the large viewscreen on the front wall, currently showing a view of the Normandy. There were other work-stations around the room. She noted that this ship used touch-screens rather than the holographic interfaces she was accustomed to.
Then for a while she lost interest in her surroundings as Picard introduced her to the tall, broad-shouldered man who had risen from the command chair.
"Miss Lawson, this is my First Officer, Commander William Riker. Number One, this is Miranda Lawson, XO of the Normandy."
"Welcome aboard the Enterprise, Miss Lawson. A pleasure to meet you." The hand proffered was easily twice the size of hers, and though Miranda was a tall woman, she had to cock her head to meet a pair of warm blue eyes and an easy, unforced smile in a ruggedly handsome, bearded face.
"Miranda, please." She replied, drinking him in in gulps. "And the pleasure is all mine!"
"Will." He responded, the twinkle in his eyes and slight broadening of his grin indicating that her interest had been noted and was not unwelcome.
Picard cleared his throat and Miranda pulled herself together in time to be introduced to a dark, sensually lovely woman with direct black eyes and a mischievous smile. "Ships' Counsellor, Deanna Troi."
"Welcome aboard, Miranda." Troi said in a low-pitched voice with a trace of exotic accent. "I'm sure you'll find a lot to interest you here.." she glanced over Mirandas' shoulder at Riker, "...and if there are things you want to know that are non-technical - social customs, etiquette and so on – I'll be more than happy to help."
This one is a little bit too perceptive, and not quite human. Miranda noted to herself. Are her people the local equivalent of asari?
Miranda was offered a seat between Picard and Troi. Picard himself settled into the command chair and said. "Mr Worf, hail the Normandy."
"On screen, Captain." Worf replied.
By the look of things, Shepard was alone in the conference room. "Commander," Picard said. "we are about to take our leave. We will be moving the Enterprise some five hundred kilometres clear of the Normandy under impulse drive. We have no way of knowing how our warp field would interact with your mass-effect core, and I would rather not take any risks."
"Understood and thank you." Shepard replied. "Be careful out there, Jean-Luc."
"I would make the same recommendation, Adam, except that I doubt being careful is in your nature! Good luck. Picard out.
"Mr Crusher, thirty degrees to port, ahead two thirds impulse."
"Aye, sir." The boy – he was a teenager – at the helm clearly shared more than a surname with the ships' doctor.
"Mr Horek," Picard asked, "can we translate the coordinates Mr Moreau sent us?"
The man at Ops swung round in his seat, a rangy fellow with a thin,harsh-planed face, sleek black hair, a greenish cast to his skin and pointed ears.
"Affirmative, Captain." He reported in an inflectionless voice. "Astrometrics were able to superimpose Mr Moreaus' charts onto historical ones of our own. The colony known here as Rainbow World corresponds to a class M world designated Theta Hydra 2.
"Mr Crusher has laid in a course. At Warp Seven, our ETA is two days, five hours, seven minutes and fifteen seconds, approximately."
"I see why Data chose you as Acting Ops Officer." Troi murmured. "A man after his own heart."
"Two days?" Miranda said, astonished. "Rainbow World is in the Confucius Cluster! That's a four-day run in the Normandy!"
"Two hundred years makes a difference." Picard noted.
"Captain, we are now safe to go to warp at your command." Crusher reported.
Picard leaned forward in his seat and pointed forward. "Engage!" He said.
For a moment, the omnipresent hum of a ship in space rose In pitch, then settled again. There had been no physical sense of acceleration, but the stars in the viewscreen were now streaks of light rather than points. Miranda realised that, without apparent exertion, they had just left light in the starting blocks.
"Wow!" She said. "This is some ship!"
"We like her." Riker remarked.
Crushers' voice emerged from a speaker near Picard. "Sickbay to bridge. Jean-Luc, can you ask Justicar Samara to join me here? Nothing sinister, just a routine new species interview to make sure we're doing everything we can to make her comfortable."
"Are you willing to undertake that, Justicar?" Picard asked.
"Of course, Captain." Samara said. "I was surprised not to be placed in quarantine as soon as I came aboard, in fact."
"The concept of quarantine is almost obsolete." Riker told her. "The Transporter would have scanned your pattern in the buffer and removed any potentially harmful organisms."
"I see." Samara nodded. "Well, in that case, all I need is someone to guide me to your Medical Centre. I am afraid this vessel is quite bewilderingly large, even by asari standards."
"Of course." Picard said. "Mr Worf, please provide an escort for the Justicar.
"Miss Lawson, there are matters we should discuss, please join me in my Ready Room. You have the bridge, Number One."
The Ready Room was a compact but comfortable mixture of office and sitting room, rather larger than Mirandas' own office on the Normandy. One wall was dominated by a dramatic portrait -done in acrylics, if she was any judge – of the Enterprise. A tank in one corner held a lionfish. There were one or two items carefully placed around, apparently archaeological finds of some kind. There was also a small bookshelf, holding actual, old-fashioned, paper books. Miranda scanned the titles.
"I see our two histories have some things in common." She remarked. "These are classics in our universe as well."
"Indeed?" Picard commented. "It would be difficult to imagine the human race without Shakespeare, Dickens and Pratchett." He moved over to a recess in the far wall. "Would you care for something to drink, Miss Lawson?"
"What do you have?" She asked.
"What would you like?" He asked. "Since we were served coffee aboard your ship, I imagine the replicator can provide something to your taste."
She shrugged, and went for broke. "Skinny caramel latte?" It was a favourite of hers, and though he did his best, Mess Sergeant Gardner could never get it quite right. "One-and-a-half sugars?"
"Computer, one skinny caramel latte, plus fifty percent sweet." Picard requested. There was a shimmer in the recess that solidified into a steaming cup. Picard lifted it out and handed it to her, before turning back and ordering "Tea, Earl Grey, hot."
The coffee was one of the best Miranda had ever tasted. "Wow!" She said. "How do you do that?"
Picard shrugged. "I'm sure Mr Laforge or Lt Barclay can explain our Replicator technology more clearly than I. Besides, I have other questions to ask.
"This colony we are bound for. I understand it to be primarily a human one, but outside the jurisdiction of both your Council and Alliance. I need a better understanding of the politics involved. I don't want to find myself being chased across the Galaxy by the local equivalent of StarFleet."
"I can understand that." Miranda replied. "Well, when humans discovered the mass-effect and started to spread across the Galaxy, it became obvious that we needed to stick together. But at the same time, nobody wanted a single human government. So the Alliance was formed by the eighteen most powerful nations of Earth. They established a parliamentary body and pooled their military resources in order to protect human colonies and control expansion.
"By that time, we'd encountered aliens. There was a short war – the First Contact War – with the tuians. They thought we'd be a pushover, we weren't, and things looked like escalating. That's when the Citadel Council stepped in. The Citadel itself is a huge Prothean construct in the Serpent Nebula. It's the hub of the Mass Relay system,among other things. Centuries ago, the asari and salarians decided to set up a Council there to act as a governing body for their spheres of influence. They invited other races to set up embassies at the Citadel and become associate members, bound to follow Council rules in return for assistance and protection. After the Krogan Rebellions, the turians were invited onto the Council.
"After the Council made peace between the turians and humanity, the Alliance was granted an Embassy on the Citadel. Cerberus – the organisation I used to work for – believed that it was more about keeping humans in check than helping. You see, unlike the other races, humans are generalists, good at almost anything we set out to do. Our cultural and social developments are almost as high as the asari, and our technological and scientific advancements match the salarians. More importantly, our military skills and forces are as good as the turians'. We worried them.
"Then, of course, Eden Prime was attacked by the geth. The original Normandy responded, and Commander Shepard initiated the series of events that ultimately led to the defeat of Sovereign and the geth, and gained humanity a seat on the Council. So now, Alliance space is also Council space, though the Council doesn't meddle with internal government.
"But, humans being humans, there are always some people who aren't happy with the status quo. Some people think the Alliance is a military dictatorship, some are outright xenophobic and want nothing to do with aliens. Others just want somewhere that's not crowded, where they can follow their own traditional or religious lifestyles. What they tend to do is pay independent spacers to take them to worlds outside Alliance and Council space, where they can do as they please.
"It's awkward sometimes, because the Alliance wants to respect these peoples' wishes -if only because they don't want potential troublemakers in Alliance space. But on the other hand, the Council holds the Alliance responsible for anything that happens on those worlds. At the moment, though, that's good for us, as nobody from the Alliance or the Council will be anywhere near Rainbow World. Fortunate, because this ship of yours would raise more than a few eyebrows!"
Picard smiled. "I'm sure she would! The Enterprise is the pride of StarFleet, she raises eyebrows even at home.
"But now you have answered my questions, is there anything you wish to ask me?"
She nodded. "I'm sure your library computers can tell me anything within reason about StarFleet and your Federation, but I do want to ask you about these Borg. What are we facing here?"
Picard frowned. "This is a unique situation. Consider, we here on the Enterprise are cut off from StarFleet Command and the Federation. But, this ship can sustain itself and everyone aboard without visiting a planet for almost twenty years in comfort -it is designed for deep-space exploration. Also, myself and my crew have the ability to make decisions on what we do, how we react to the situation. There are certain directives and a common ethical perspective we act within, but that still leaves us a good deal of freedom.
"Now a Borg ship and crew have only one purpose – to seek out new species and new technology, and assimilate anything of value into their Collective. But this cube is cut off from the larger Collective. More than that, our scans indicate that there are no TransWarp corridors in this universe.
"It is possible to travel at TransWarp velocity outside one of these corridors, but it is a high-risk action. The fields are notoriously unstable, and the larger they are, the greater the problem. Also, the TransWarp coils needed to generate the field have a short life-span in normal space, they burn out rapidly and would be difficult to replace – the raw materials are rare in our universe, and even if they exist here, it is unlikely that they are mined or used to any great extent. The Borg would need to seek them out, extract and process them themselves.
"This means that the cube will likely be restricted to normal warp speed, making it little or no faster than this ship.
"Over and above that, there is the matter of disconnection from the Collective. The Borg are a hive mind. The individual drones, the equipment they use, the ship itself, are all part of the same organism. What we have here is, in effect, a single cell or organ separated from a larger body. As far as we understand the matter a Borg ship is tasked by the Collective with a specific function, and supplied with the knowledge, skills and equipment to perform that function. Should the situation change, data is uploaded via TransWarp channels to the Collective, and the necessary adaptations are downloaded.
"That cannot happen here, so we have no way of knowing what they might do. The evidence seems to indicate that they are following their primary programming, to seek out and assimilate new species and technologies. That said, the attack on this colony might simply have been an attempt to gather data.
"The best case scenario is that the cube might go into a dormant state. If so, after a certain time, a self-destruct mechanism will activate and the problem will solve itself. In the worst case, the cube will follow primary programming and continue assimilation of anything it considers useful.
"Miss Lawson, if what you have told me is correct, the most unique and advanced artefact in this universe is the Citadel!"
"Oh, Hell!" Miranda said. "You think these Borg could do that? Take down the Citadel?"
Picards' face was grim. "A single cube destroyed an entire StarFleet flotilla at Wolf 359." He told her. "So yes, it is entirely possible."
"So what can we do?" She asked.
"Our first order of business," he told her, "will be to confirm that this actually is the Borg. After that, well, we have some strategies open to us. We can modify the ships' emissions to produce a sensor profile the Borg will find neither interesting nor threatening. It's been our experience that such things are ignored by them. Then we may be able to infiltrate an Away Team onto the cube. Again, the Borg tend to ignore individuals or groups who present no immediate threat, unless ordered to do otherwise. Once aboard, it should be possible to infect their systems with a computer virus that would force them to shut down, at least temporarily. The Collective adapts to such things quickly, but an individual cube may not be so effective.
"For now, however, I suggest you familiarise yourself with this ship, Miss Lawson. Get some rest and a meal, get to know some people. I'm sure my First Officer will be happy to show you around.
"It may also interest you to know that StarFleet regulations do not forbid or restrict fraternisation. Of any kind."
Miranda Lawson was not a woman who blushed easily. Most of the time.