Star Trek Hunter
Episode 25:
I Dream of Shiva
Scene 18:
The Mouth of the Lavardorn
25.18
The Mouth of the Lavardorn
Minerva was still a juvenile for her race, not yet 400 years old. She was already nearly five times the size of the U.S.S. Hunter - not quite as large as a Galaxy class starship. But she was not a ship. She was a plant that lived in interstellar space. Her distant ancestors had been born in the oceans of their native planet, grown up in their sky and left their own atmosphere to sun themselves.
Smooth and dark on the outside, she looked as though she might be made of the same stuff as the Hunter. But where the Hunter’s form was frozen forever like a dark marble sculpture of a beast about to spring, Minerva rippled and swayed continuously with a supple grace as though she were endlessly swimming through space. She was shaped something like a catfish with a wide mouth that pursed to kiss the Hunter on the port bow, forming a seal against the upper port airlock.
Rear Admiral Sarekson Carrera entered Minerva for the first time by walking on what was functionally her tongue.
He was followed by Kenny Dolphin, Mlady, and Tali Shae, who was pushing a hover gurney. As soon as the gurney left the Hunter, it dropped firmly onto Minerva’s tongue.
“Minerva doesn’t generate artificial gravity the way that you do,” said the blue avatar. “You will need to carry him the rest of the way.”
“I’ll do it,” said Dolphin. He unhooked the armored figure from the gurney and lifted him into a fireman’s carry, then stood up carefully. “Good thing I keep up with my calisthenics. But he’s not as heavy as he looks.”
Mlady and Tali lifted the gurney, which was quite heavy and with some effort moved it a few feet back into the Hunter. As soon as the gurney was over the Hunter’s deck plating, it became weightless again.
“Antigrav plates work on planets as well as against grav plating,” said Dr. Carrera.
“That’s because grav plating mimics the relationship between mass and spacetime,” came the voice of Old Man Crusher, standing at what was effectively the back of Minerva’s mouth. “Minerva doesn’t generate artificial gravity using quantum mechanical solutions. She attracts molecular particles using something more closely related to an electro-magnetic field.” Wesley Crusher turned and walked through an archway at the back of Minerva’s mouth. “Be sure to stay level. Don’t take the path that goes down. Unless you want to get digested, that is,” he said without turning back.
As soon as Dr. Carrera, Tali, Mlady and Kenny entered the lounge, the archway into Minerva’s mouth closed. Dolphin carefully deposited the person he was carrying onto the couch.
“Will you be able to see to his needs? A charging station?” Dolphin asked. Even unconscious and completely relaxed, the borg, Hugh (3rd of 5), seemed menacing.
“Minerva will easily be able to sustain both him and Mlady,” said the avatar. “Both involve intimate mental contact, which Minerva will share with me. I am very much looking forward to it.”
The lounge inside Minerva was spacious and comfortable. It had grown in proportion to Minerva and was now a very large room, easily the interior size of deck 5 on the Hunter, affording plenty of room for running. Which neither Old Man Crusher nor alien Bob (known to Star Fleet as the Traveler) nor the Doctor (formerly the Emergency Medical Hologram for the U.S.S. Voyager) were inclined to do.
“There are no private rooms, no storage, what you see here is all the accommodations that Minerva can afford.” The blue avatar was speaking to Dr. Carrera. “Minerva is not a transport ship, a cargo ship or a fighter. She has no weapons. Her skin is her shield. But she is very intelligent and very fast. She is not a ship. She is a partner.”
“Extremely fast,” Crusher added. “So fast that trying to calculate her speed in relation to warp speed is, well, meaningless.”
“Minerva does not warp space around her the way your space vessels do,” said the avatar. “She selects future selves from waves of probability.”
“That sounds somewhat like the way we travel,” said alien Bob.
“Similar, but more intuitive. Minerva has to actually see her target. As I understand it, you phase in and out of spacetime. Minerva slips through it.”
“Well,” said Wesley, “Technically, you cannot phase out of spacetime. Since the universe is one dimensional, there is no actual spacetime between any two points…”
“Oww!!” howled Captain Dolphin, gripping his head between his hands. “My neo-cortex hurts…” He dropped his hands and looked around the room to find Dr. Carrera, Dr. Tali Shae, Mlady, Old Man Crusher, alien Bob, the holographic Doctor and Minerva’s blue avatar looking at him. Hugh was sprawled unconscious on the divan that ran the circumference of the room.
“There are a few far more intractable topics I would like to discuss in this spacetime,” Dolphin said. “I don’t think the terrorist cells we have been sent to investigate here at Rising Sun are unrelated to the rumors of unrest in the Klingon Empire. With all the fires Star Fleet is putting out all over the Federation and whatever this horrible religion is that our former captain has stirred up in the Romulan Empire… the andorians and the vulcans still putting down their own native insurgencies… The last thing we need is a war with the klingons. And we are very close to the klingon border.”
“Technically, local politics is outside of the purview of Star Fleet Temporal Command,” said Rear Admiral Carrera.
“Local politics?” Dolphin asked, his eyes widening. “An all-out klingon assault doesn’t stay local for long…”
“Local in this case refers to this time period…” said Wesley.
“I am standing inside a living… um… spacetreefish in a room full of super-geniuses,” Dolphin said irritably. “Find a way to keep the klingons from blowing the Alpha Quadrant to Kingdom Come in this decade so there’s something left for the borg to save - whenever you manage to get them here… Please?”
“Chancellor Martok would never allow a full scale assault,” said Dr. Tali Shae.
“Chancellor Martok is now the oldest unmodified klingon on record,” Dolphin retorted. “I’ve heard that he can still walk and seems to be in full command of his faculties, but he is nearly 95 years old and genetically unmodified klingons generally don’t live as long as humans. Martok has done a magnificent job of rebuilding the Imperial fleet. Meanwhile the Federation lost Vulcan to the romulans and now we’re making nice with the Romulan Star Empire… giving them star systems on our side of the Neutral Zone… And our current fleet looks nothing like the old Star Fleet that held the klingons at bay for a hundred years. You can imagine what the average klingon warrior thinks about all that…”
“All right, Kenny,” said Carrera. “I’ll think of something.” He looked around the room. “We’ll think of something…”
