FIRST CONTACTED
by ardavenport
* * * - * * * - * * * Part 1 - * * * - * * * - * * *
"Mmmmm . . ."
Commander Will Riker floated up to consciousness. Weirdly, as his awareness of himself formed, he became suddenly awake. Then he registered that his body lay on a flat, padded surface and was more than a bit numb. Sound suddenly burst into his world.
The perpetual hum and barely perceptible vibration of the ship, life support, a scanner hum, the engines . . .
The Enterprise . . .
Sickbay . . .
They got him back.
He was safe. Off the planet, Malcor.
How?
The last thing he remembered . . .
His eyes flew open.
He blinked away a waking haze. The blue and red figure with the comforting starship gray behind it resolved into the ship's chief medical officer, Dr. Beverly Crusher.
"Hey, Will, you're fine. You're on the Enterprise." She placed a restraining hand on his shoulder, but it was hardly necessary. He wasn't going anywhere any time soon. Nor did he need any reassurance. He was on the ship and that was all he needed to know . . .
. . . almost.
"How'd you find me? I got separated from the survey team in a riot."
Crusher patted his shoulder and straightened, satisfied that he would not attempt to get up. "Captain Picard contacted the leader of Malcor. He convinced them to let us have you back. Just in the nick of time, it looks like."
Riker stared up, digesting her words before he remembered what 'nick' she was talking about.
"Wait. That security guy - - "
"Stunned only," Crusher reassured him with a smile and he sighed. His vision had been blurry during that last struggle and he had not been quite sure that he had reset the phaser right.
"Good thing he didn't know how to use a phaser if he was trying to fake that you killed him."
"If he did, he wouldn't have been holding it in my hand with his own. We probably would have both gone." A shot from a phaser on full power would leave little evidence for Malcoran technology to find. Aside from it being a fantastically dangerous act, it had also been a ridiculously stupid plan.
"Where is he?"
"Back on the planet, with Chancellor Durken." She sighed and shook her head. "They don't want us back."
"No first contact?" His head fell back on the pillow. "Uuugh. Sorry I screwed this up."
"No," Crusher told him firmly. "You did not screw this up. Chancellor Durken told the Captain that his planet was not ready for first contact and they would not have been even if you hadn't been captured. So, you might have just saved them from a rocky introduction to the rest of the galaxy. And he knows we're here now; he said he was going to more covertly work on getting his people ready for the idea."
Riker still felt a bit like he had failed. But given the reactions he'd seen from the people at the medical facility, . . .
He remembered something else . . . .
He took a deep breath and Crusher immediately noticed his change in attitude.
"There was an incident. At the medical facility. I tried to escape and I needed help . . . "
It was going to be a very long away-mission report.
Counselor Deanna Troi scanned the Ten-Forward lounge of the Enterprise and spotted two of the Malcoran observation team at a table near the window. But as she approached, one of them, Bri-ann Greeley, got up to leave.
Nora Ahn, the head of the observation team, saw her and welcomed the ship's counselor to their table.
"I don't mean to interrupt, please sit."
"Oh, no," Greeley mimed a huge yawn. "It's past time for me to turn in." Her hand strayed to her smooth forehead under her short graying hairline. Smiling, she quickly pulled it away. "Oh, I keep doing that." The cosmetic cranial lobes that had allowed the mostly Human team to pass as Malcoran had been removed in Sickbay. Waving, she left. Ahn gave her own smooth, pale forehead a sympathetic tap.
"How are you settling in?"
Doctor Ahn sighed and glanced toward the wide forward ports with only stars rushing past in the blackness of space. Malcor had been left far behind.
"Well enough. I mean, we were preparing to evacuate with you anyway, before first contact, but I just wish it wasn't under these circumstances. I really am very sorry that we lost Commander Riker the way we did."
"We know it wasn't your fault," Troi reassured her, but she shook her head slowly.
"Tell that to the Federation Diplomatic Corp. Or Starfleet. I'll be filling out reports and going to mission review panels for the next year about all this."
Knowing that this was all too true, Troi could only offer sympathy. Ahn's eyes strayed back toward the bar and her expression changed. Dr. Beverly Crusher approached, climbing the low steps to the upper level of Ten Forward. Her expression was a little more serious than Troi's.
"Beverly." Troi faced her. 'How's Will?"
"He's fine," she answered right away. "He's awake, but still weak and he's going to be in Sickbay for the next few days."
Relieved, Troi still sensed that something else was not right.
"He – Commander Riker –" Crusher nodded toward Ahn, "needs to report an . . . incident, while he was being held captive."
Ahn sat back in her chair and Deanna Troi did not need her empathy to know what she was thinking. Just when she thought the end of the mission calamity couldn't get any worse.
But how much worse was it?
Captain Picard let his silence stretch out a little while his officers remained at attention in front of his ready room desk.
"How is Will?"
"Healing," Doctor Crusher reassured him. "But he will be in Sickbay for the next few days. And I recommend that he rest for at least three more days after that."
Picard nodded, accepting his medical officer's prognosis. But that was not why they had come. Sighing, he gestured for them to take seats.
"And mentally, how is he?"
Tossing her dark hair back, Troi tilted her head thoughtfully. "Well, he is quite certain that she, the Marcoran who demanded sex in return for her help, did not think that she was committing any kind of crime, or even offending him. He is sure that she had convinced herself that everything was consensual."
Picard grimaced. "Was what she did a crime, by Malcoran law?
Troi sighed. "I have spoken with the observation team. Technically, yes, by Malcoran global law, she was guilty of coercion, and possibly bestiality because she and Commander Riker are also not the same species. But that law also defines other species as 'lower' entities because Malcorans are defined as the only sentient species in the Universe."
"Mmmm." Picard had seen this in the briefing on Malcor; it was one of the many things that would have made the now-aborted First Contact difficult. "Have you spoken with Mirasta Yale about this?"
Troi shook her head, her long curly black hair waving with the motion. "No, not yet. I was going to talk with her after speaking to you."
"Of course. We will need to add this to tomorrow's hearing. Do we need more time?"
"Yes." Crusher answered. "But only half a day at most, I think; it's only a preliminary hearing. And Will is not going to be able attend, unless you want to have it in sickbay and limit the time."
"We can use recorded testimony from Will. Doctor Ahn said she can conduct it," Troi added.
"The sooner the better." Picard leaned forward, arms on his desk. "We will convene at 1500 tomorrow before we get to Starbase 234. I trust that will be enough time to prepare?"
Both his officers agreed and left, ending the meeting.
Mirasta Yale sat back and sighed. She had been glued to the computer screen in her quarters for three of what was called on this ship, 'hours'. She would have kept going but her neck was getting sore. There was so much to learn. So much to know. Turning her head to the left, she saw star-streaks going by the enormous window of the passenger 'cabin' that she had been assigned to.
It was a suite with a combined sitting/dining area with a 'replicator' that could provide her with whatever sustenance she cared to request, plus a separate sleeping room and private lavatory. She shook her head when she thought about the cramped metal tubes that the crews of her planet's warp-drive test ships were willing to travel in for the sake of exploration.
The thought brought on a frown of guilt when she remembered those crews who had trained for years, just for the chance to enter interstellar space; Thelm Pan, Greena Zoni, Commander Jeros. Their dreams, and the aspirations of the crews, scientists and engineers who built the first test ship, would be crushed by Chancellor Durken's decision to hold them back. She could never agree with that choice. Many of them could live out their lives and die, not knowing the wonders that had been denied them by a politician.
Thoughts of her co-workers inevitably brought on more: all the people she was leaving behind. All they would ever know would be whatever story Security Minister Krola's people arranged to explain her absence. It would be like when her cousin died in a traffic accident. She would just be gone and everyone would be shocked, stumbling through the life left behind, packing things away. She hated to do that to her family, even the ones she did not get along with. Shivering, she pushed those regrets away. There was no going back now.
A chime disturbed her straying thoughts. She stood as the door to her cabin slid open with a quiet hiss. Counselor Troi entered and politely asked to speak with her. Yale quickly invited her to one of the plush chairs and they sat down together.
Yale assured the ship's counsellor (What a wonderful and enlightened people who realized that the mental health of a crew living together on a ship needed a dedicated person!) that she could not be happier.
Counsellor Troi politely moved onto something that was less happy. She succinctly described what happened when Commander Riker tried to escape from the Sikla Medical Facility and what he had to do to enlist help from one of the staff. Yale listened carefully as Troi described her demand for sex for helping with his unsuccessful escape attempt.
"Oh, well. That was very unprofessional of her. She should not have done that. But," she shrugged. "No harm done, I suppose. Well, except for when the mob in the hospital attacked him," she finished, embarrassed by the fear-driven violence of her people.
Troi shook her head, her dark eyes grave. "I'm sorry, but this is very serious. She forced him into performing a sexual act, against his will, to gain her help when he was in danger for his life."
"Oh." Yale was surprised, her eyes glancing down toward Troi's wrists and their terminus, resting in her lap. Doubly embarrassed, she forced herself to look away. "I'm - I supposed I'm surprised. She didn't hurt him, did she? She didn't make him do anything too unnatural? I only saw him once, but Commander Riker looked like a large man, who could defend himself if . . ."
Her words trailed off. Counselor Troi's expression had frozen into rigid neutrality. She felt herself slipping down a slope of her own ignorance without knowing where the bottom was.
"Um," Yale started again, "I realize that what this woman did - "
"Commander Riker said that she introduced herself as 'Lanel'."
"Lanel." It was a ridiculously common name. "What Lanel did was, perhaps, considered a more serious act in the Federation than on Malcor . . ." Words failed the now-former Science Minister of Malcor again.
"Would what she did be considered a crime on Malcor?"
Yale gathered her thoughts. "It would depend on the circumstances. I suppose.
"For example, something like that unfortunately happened in my own department a few years ago." She shuddered. "An older man forced himself on a younger woman who had just been hired; she had a brilliant career that was just ruined by the trauma. He was removed from his position. But there were other cases," she guiltily went on, "where there wasn't any actual violence, so the situations were settled more quietly. . ."
Troi shook her head. "The demand itself is considered an act of violence under Federation law."
"But she didn't physically force herself on him? And it would have been so easy for him to satisfy her demand . . ." Her eyes glanced back down again to the long digits on her guest's terminus;Troi caught her looking and held them up. Four (four!) on the end of each terminus, plus a short opposing crooked one; more like a pincer than a Malcoran terminus.
"We are aware that the fingers of Humanoid hands do resemble the Malcoran male sex organ. And Commander Riker did satisfy Lanel with them. But the action was compelled; it was not with his consent."
Yale looked away toward the star field. "I have been trying not to stare. I admit that I looked up your anatomy first after Commander Data showed me how to use the computer terminal."
"Of course."
Looking back, Yale felt relief that Counselor Troi's expression had softened. Regardless of the embarrassing resemblance of their terminuses, their facial expressions were remarkably similar to her own people.
"I suppose it does not help that so much of our popular culture that speculates about other life in the universe commonly depicts them being preoccupied with sex. And I did look up the actual anatomy of your digits – fingers – to confirm that they are not used for sex."
"Actually, they are commonly used in sex acts, or for self-satisfaction, but they are not part of the act of procreation itself."
"Oh." Yale readjusted her thoughts, again.
"I have to admit that I did not ask your computer about anything more. It just sounded so juvenile for me to be handed an infinite library about the whole universe and the first thing I do with it was find out how everyone else in the galaxy does it." She cringed; that sounded worse than the plot of the tackiest public entertainment.
"I suppose I will look it up. I'm just a little embarrassed about the whole subject, especially now with what you've told me happened to Commander Riker."
"Would you like to talk to one of our medical staff about it? You've met Doctor Crusher; I'm sure she could explain the anatomical differences."
Troi's complete acceptance and lack of offense, put her at ease. And talking to a doctor, a fellow scientist, would be so much better than just voyeuristically pawing through their computer files and finding who-knows-what.
"I think I would like that very much."
* * * - * * * - * * * End Part 1 - * * * - * * * - * * *