Day 4: Bringing Chaos to Order


A reporter never reveals her source. That's not just a clever catchphrase. That's one of the most important rules of my job.

In the year 1972 in Washington DC on Earth – thirty minutes down the Potomac from Fed-Sec in Langley, by coincidence – two reporters working for the Washington Post by the name of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein met at the pool of the Watergate Hotel, not unlike when I meet my reporter friends at the pool of Intercontinental. Bob and Carl were going over documents provided by their source, a code-name they only knew as Deep Throat.

Deep Throat provided Bob and Carl evidence that the President, Richard Nixon, and members of his staff had been conspiring to ruin the Democratic Party's campaign to get their man, Gerald Ford, into the white house for that year's election. Bob and Carl took their evidence public, and the resulting outcry resulted in the arrest of five of the most important people in the country at that very same hotel, people carrying equipment to hide evidence of Nixon's tricky deals. Though Bob and Carl didn't have enough evidence for the Justice Department to file charges against the President himself, the mere implication that he was involved in such dirty business led Nixon to become the first – and to date, only – US President to voluntarily resign from office.

In the subsequent Justice Department hearings on the Watergate Scandal, Bob and Carl were constantly pressured by some of the most powerful judges and politicians in the country to reveal exactly who the man was that provided this evidence to a pair of nobody reporters who were sipping drinks at the pool of the Watergate Hotel. Knowing that telling the world his real name would put Deep Throat in danger of being jailed or killed, Bob grinned while Carl replied back to the chairman with six simple words. "A reporter never reveals his source."

Some time ago, a source who will go forever unnamed provided me some intelligence about the so-called Borg Queen. Most of what I was provided was largely known, but there was one thing that stood out for me. The Queen was asked to explain what exactly her role was within the greater Hive Mind of the Collective. And she replied back with words that I never fully understood before I wrote this article.

I bring order to chaos.

By the fourth day of FCRU's operation on Tarion IV, most of us thought that the initial chaos was behind us. Aylos was still unstable, but CPO Kaaran was able to repair nearly all of the intact power systems in the city. Julian and his team of Fed-Sec Paramedics had managed to get the most critical red and blue tags out of danger, so now they could move on to the yellow green patients. Sargent Talla and his Secret Squirrels had rescued just about everyone that could be rescued, so his platoon split into two halves. One half would shift to recovering bodies, while the other went back to the regular role of Marines, looking mean and keeping the rest of us safe by walking around with phaser rifles.

Nia, who had been coordinating everything from the Kitty Hawk up to this point, finally came down to join me on the surface. I smiled and passed her a mug of go-juice. "Been a hell of a week, but it looks like we're finally getting things under control here. We should be packing up soon eh?"

Nia wasn't as optimistic. It was Stardate 49011 point 4. I think all my readers should remember that day, but I'll let Nia explain it in her words.

"No. There's a problem. The Klingons have finally lost their damn minds. They launched a full-scale invasion of Cardassia last night. They're claiming the Changelings infiltrated the Cardassian government, so their little invasion is supposed be for everyone else's safety."

I couldn't believe what I just heard. For the past few months, me and my reporter friends had been trading stories about Chancellor Gowron planning just such a war, but like everything else we'd been hearing out of the Klingon Empire for fifty years, we figured it was just more bellyaching. I mean, really. Who'd have guessed that the Klingons would be stupid enough to start a war?

"Wow," I said, censoring myself this time, "Is the Federation helping?"

Nia sighed and drained her go-juice. "No, we made the smart call this time and stayed out of it. The Council even condemned it, said something like 'we can't support a reckless move like this,' or so I heard."

"More like idiotic. But what's that mean for us Nia?"

Nia sighed and lowered her voice to her a whisper. "Keep this to yourself for now, but I was counting on the Venture to relieve us tomorrow. But Starfleet command just fished telling me that Admiral Hastur got diverted to DS9. Seems like the Klingons might be stupid enough to actually attack Deep Space Nine. But that means we're gonna be on our own for a bit longer than I planned."

In case it hasn't sunk in yet, this was a pretty significant problem, dear reader. Our Crisis Team, like nearly every other FCRU Crisis Team, only had enough supplies and equipment for five days. This shouldn't be seen as a slight against FCRU though, in fairness. In the ideal world, our three uniformed services should be able to get off their collective asses and mobilize a proper relief expedition within five days. But I guess we don't live in an ideal universe anymore.

20 000 people are a lot of mouths to feed, not counting the five-hundred FCRU personnel, and the one reporter that went along with the team despite her better instincts. Kitty's replicators and CPO Kaaran's generators were working day and night, but as it was we were just keeping our heads above the water. A day or two longer on our own? Chaos.

"What are we gonna do?" I asked Nia quietly.

Nia wouldn't finish. A patient in the room that I had assumed – wrongly – was asleep had heard the whole conversation. And he reacted exactly as I would have reacted.

"Wait… We're gonna run out of food?" He asked Nia, "What the hell are you talking about?!"

Nia stood up on instinct. "Sir, just take a deep breath and relax. You are not going to run out of food. Everything's under control here."

"Like hell it is! My little girl's still up in surgery! Are you gonna tell her she's gonna go hungry you f*kn b*h?!"

"That's not, at all, what we're saying. Sir, I'm gonna ask you to sit back down on your own, or I'll get the Marines in here to tie you down."

The Man was in chaos, a chaos I couldn't blame him for. He picked up a laser scalpel from the table and ran out of the room. He started screaming to everyone else that we had already run out of food for the colonists. That was all it took.

What a lot of readers don't understand about these situations, is that people panic. A person, a singular person, might be calm and rational. But people are dumb, panicky animals that give in to the base instinct of flight or fight. That day, the Colonists of Torian IV in the city of Aylos chose the fight option.

Almost a hundred people rushed the canteen before we even knew what happened. Fed-Sec Security stepped in to push the crowd back, but then Our Man and a few of his friends picked up chairs, scalpels, anything they could get their hands on. Nia wasn't about to order anyone to open fire, and to my surprise yet again, everyone stood down and backed off, even Sargent Talla and his Secret Squirrels, who I figured would have been jumping at the chance to squeeze triggers.

Julian and his team sedated the craziest cases, while Nia and her team focused on calming everyone down again. Sargent Talla and his Squirrels held their fire, and removed everything out of the dining hall that could be used as a weapon. After fifteen minutes, what had been a full-on riot was calmed down to thirty or so colonists holed up inside the kitchen of a taco stand in the mall. Our Man was the ringleader. He was screaming and crying, demanding that his daughter be brought down and given something to eat. Nia complied, and had Julian bring her down in a wheelchair.

"You give her something to eat right now, or I swear to God I'll start killing people!" Our Man screamed.

There were a few options at this point. Nia could have shot him with her phaser. She could have ordered Sargent Talla or one of the squirrels to shoot him with their phaser rifles. She could have ordered Julian to rig up knockout gas. She could have ordered Kitty to beam him into a locked room somewhere. What she did though… I'd have lost every penny I owned if I put a bet on what happened next that day.

Nia took off her ballcap, got down on one knee in front of the little girl, and smiled. "Are you hungry Sweety? Did you get something to eat yet?"

The little girl coughed before she answered back in a weak voice that broke my heart. "I am kinda hungry, Miss. The Doctor said he'd bring me breakfast, but he didn't come back yet."

Nia reached into her IMP and took out a pack of cookies. And without a fuss, she handed the cookies right over. The little girl was confused. "Aren't you gonna get hungry, Miss?"

Nia just shook her head. "Don't worry about me, Sweetheart. I'll be okay." Next, she packed up the rest of her IMP and handed it off to Our Man. "Here, you go ahead as well. Like I was trying to tell you, there's plenty of food for everyone. No one's going hungry on my watch. All I meant was that we're gonna have to put up with these IMPs for a few more days. Why don't you go back to your bunk, and I'll see if I can find some more coffee, okay?"

And just like that, it was all over. No more rioting, no more violence. And true to her word, Nia made sure that all 20 000 surviving colonists got enough to eat for the next three days, even if it meant that her own people had to give up their rations. I never heard a single complaint. Not from a Fed-Sec Agent, not from a Starfleet Officer, not even from a Federation Marine.

A few hours later, it was supper time. I've always been a decent cook, so I was able to turn an IMP packet of chicken noodle soup into something at least edible with some onions and carrots that Kitty replicated for me. I found Our Man and his little girl again, and I smiled when she invited me to join them for soup. I sat down beside her, and while she was slurping her bowl, she asked me something.

"What do you do, Miss? Are you a Fed-Sec, a Starfleet, or a Marines?"

I couldn't help but smile. "None of the above. I'm a reporter."

The little girl turned to Our Man. "Daddy! I wanna be a reporter when I grow up!"

And for his part, Our Man – much calmer – just smiled back. "Okay Sweety. But eat your soup first."

Order to chaos, now that I think about it, is actually backwards. What Special Agent Nia Callahan did was also what Fed-Sec's Patrol motto is. We bring chaos to order.

For everything I've written about Fed-Sec, I have to reserve my highest praise for Nia. What could have been a bloodbath was ended in minutes, without single shot fired or a single life lost. Nia de-escalated a tense stand-off by giving a little girl a pack of cookies.

The Borg Queen can stick that up her assimilation tubule.


•~:~•