CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Lieutenant T’Pring, Ensign Slidell, what can you tell me?” As the Sol followed the Tyndoran vessels past the fifth planet at a significant distance, Adele, now wearing her dress uniform in preparation for official first contact with the Tyndorans, stared at its magnified image on the viewscreen.
Alex Slidell answered first. “There’s definitely extensive evidence of civilization, but I’m reading less than a thousand life signs, mostly clustered in an area dense with structures.” His console beeped. “Captain, we are being hailed.”
“On screen,” Adele said.
“We’re approaching,” said Ordi’te, on the viewscreen. “We will take up a formation around your ship and extend our shielding to encompass you. Please shut down any active sensor arrays and refrain from running scans. The shield won’t allow us to pass if it senses any kind of probe.”
Adele nodded, then turned to Alex. “Do what he asks,” she said. With a few touches to his console, Alex disabled the active sensors and several displays went blank.
“Thank you, Captain,” Ordi’te said.
Adele nodded at him, and the screen reverted to display the space ahead of them. As the three Tyndoran ships surrounded the Sol in a triangular formation and activated an energy field, the view on the screen briefly distorted, then went back to normal. “Steady as she goes, Commander,” Adele said to Adrian Keller at the helm. The nervous bridge crew exchanged glances, including Irina Marchenko, who sat at an auxiliary console. She had come from sickbay ostensibly to analyze the life signs from the fifth planet, but really, the extroverted doctor had mostly wanted to alleviate the soul-crushing boredom of sitting alone in sickbay for two days. No one on this mission was sick or injured. As she watched the alien ships surround them, the thought struck her that perhaps that situation was about to change.
As the tiny, mismatched fleet neared its destination, they passed through a barrier that no one had seen coming. One moment, they could only see the sun and distant stars, the next, the viewscreen was filled with the brightly lit surface of the night side of a small planetoid -- definitely larger than an asteroid, but not quite worthy of being called a planet, Adele thought. It was covered in so many structures that if it hadn’t been for its slightly irregular shape and a few small patches of visible surface between solid cityscape, Adele might have thought it was an enormous starship. She could see a series of orb-like objects orbiting in a wide sphere around the tiny world. She assumed they were the generators for the shielding and cloaking system.
“Interesting,” said T’Pring, raising a Vulcan eyebrow.
Irina gasped in surprise at the sudden sight. The others, having nothing to do, since they weren’t permitted to run scans, simply stared.
“They’re hailing us again, Captain,” said Alex.
“Let’s see,” replied Adele.
“Welcome to New Tyndora,” said Ordi’te. “You have been cleared for orbit. Do not attempt to scan the shield generators. You will trigger an alarm. I have been in contact with my superiors; they advise me that you should have technology that allows you to instantly travel to the surface without a landing vessel. Use it. I’m sending you coordinates now.”
Adele raised her eyebrows with interest at the Tyndorans’ apparent familiarity with Federation technology. “Very well,” she said with a smile, “Perhaps I’ll see you down there.”
Ordi’te, obviously a man of few words, cut off the transmission without reply. Adele resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
“All right,” she said, “Ryzal, Lindley, T’Pring, you’re with me. The rest of you, do as you’ve been asked by our hosts. Refrain from actively scanning anything. Passive sensors only. Keep orbiting. Stay ready.”
“Should I notify the Tesseract that we’ve arrived?” asked Alex.
“Wait,” said Adele. “These people seem extremely suspicious of us. I don’t want to give them any reason to think we’re calling for reinforcements. I’ll get clearance from them first.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Adele and the rest of the surface team left the bridge and walked down the narrow corridor to the transporter room. A Tellarite transporter chief beamed them down to the surface coordinates they had been given.
When they materialized moments later in a large, airy, brightly lit room, they were facing five Tyndorans, all purple-skinned and wearing long tunics and slacks of varying muted shades. Two were smaller than the others and lacked the W-shaped ridges Adele had seen on Ordi’te and his second-in-command. Adele guessed that they were females.
“Welcome to New Tyndora,” one of them said, and her lilting voice seemed to confirm Adele’s guess. “I am Lineta, First Minister of New Tyndora. These are my advisers, Midran, Jor’te, Nyreni and Barmot.” The others nodded in greeting, but said nothing.
Adele smiled warmly. “I’m Adele Oyugo, captain of the starship Tesseract, of the United Federation of Planets,” Adele replied. “These are some of my crew -- T’Pring of Vulcan; Ryzal, a Saurian; and Marcus Lindley, from Relva VII, one of our colony worlds. We’re on a mission of peaceful exploration to the Delta Quadrant. I apologize if our presence has violated any protocols. We did not intend to enter your space, but the damage to subspace caused our ship to lose its quantum slipstream. There was nothing we could do. However, I’m happy to have this opportunity to initiate contact between our people.”
“You are not the only unexpected visitors we have had in recent months,” said Lineta. “Come, let us go to our meeting room. We will talk.”
Adele smiled and shot a satisfied glance at the rest of the away team. Marcus smiled back, but T’Pring merely raised an ever-skeptical eyebrow. Ryzal kept his perpetual look of tactical awareness, glancing around subtly, looking for exits and potential threats. The group followed the Tyndorans out of the brightly lit welcoming room and down a short hallway to a large room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the dazzling nighttime cityscape below. They were on one of the upper levels of a tall structure, and it seemed as if they could see half the small planetoid from the well-appointed room.
“It is nothing compared to what Tyndora was,” Lineta said wistfully, as she saw the four Starfleet officers staring down at the city. “Our people used to thrive on the fifth planet until the Borg largely destroyed our civilization. Those who escaped found refuge on other worlds for a time, until we developed adequate shielding and cloaking technology and decided to return and rebuild here, because it was small enough to cloak completely. A few people also returned to old Tyndora, but they are not safe there.”
Adele looked at the frail-looking First Minister. “I lost my husband to the Borg eighteen years ago. Many of our people have suffered similar losses. It can’t compare to losing your entire world, but I can imagine a little bit how you must feel.”
Lineta widened her pale blue eyes, and her shiny third eyelid blinked once. “I am sorry. Was he taken to be one of them?”
“No,” Adele replied quickly, “he was killed, and I’m thankful for it, given the alternative.”
Lineta nodded. “We also consider death preferable to assimilation.” She gestured toward the large table in the center of the room. “Enough of that. Please, sit down. Let us speak of the present, not the past.”
Adele nodded to the away team and they took their seats around the table. As they sat down, Adele asked, “May I ask where Ordi’te, the captain of the escort vessel is? I would love to thank him in person for his assistance.”
“That may be possible later,” said Lineta. “First, let us discuss what you came to discuss. You want to know what happened to subspace, is that correct?”
“Yes,” said Adele. “Before we began our journey, we received a distress call from a small colony in the Aris system, several thousand light years away from here. We responded, only to find the planet destroyed, subspace torn to pieces, and -- ”
“ ... and fragments of Borg vessels scattered throughout the system,” Lineta finished for her.
“Yes,” replied Adele. “Exactly like what we found here, only much more recent. Please tell us what you know about what’s happening,” she said pleadingly. “One of our vessels was stranded in the Delta Quadrant and ended up destroying the Borg’s Unimatrix Zero and one of their transwarp hubs eight years ago. We’ve been tasked with finding out the status of the Borg Collective, as well as exploring the Delta Quadrant officially and revisiting some planets we opened formal diplomatic relations with. I would love to know exactly what we’re heading into. Can you help us?”
“I wish I could help you,” replied Lineta, “but we know very little about the current status of the Borg.”
“Then you didn’t destroy the tactical cube?”
“We have no weapons capable of such destruction. Our only advantage is our silence. As long as we stay behind the cloak, keep strict control over outside communications, and keep to our own as much as possible, we have been ignored. Someone else has been destroying the Borg. We have witnessed the destruction of two cubes in the last year.”
“Do you have any idea who it is?”
“We thought it might have been you. Your ship certainly appears capable. That is why we sent our ships to intercept.”
Adele couldn’t hide her disappointment at this answer. “It isn’t us. We signed a treaty banning the use of subspace weaponry years ago. Our ship is tactically capable of destroying a Borg vessel, but our weapons would not harm subspace.”
“May I ask you some questions about your vessel?” queried Lineta.
“Of course,” replied Adele. “We would also be happy to let you come aboard, if you’d like to make the trip. In fact, I would love to tell you everything about the Federation.”
“We are familiar with your Federation,” Lineta replied, a bit coolly. “Your reputation precedes you.”
“Oh?” asked Adele. “May I ask what you’ve heard?”
“Please understand,” said Lineta, “our goals are not dissimilar. We are a peace loving species, and we value freedom and the search for knowledge, much like you claim to do. But we have seen that in practice, Federation membership, despite its many material benefits, requires too much in the way of oversight and restrictions. We would rather do things our own way, and make our own choices. That is why we have not sought you out, despite our familiarity with several of your member worlds.”
“I see,” replied Adele, raising her eyebrows. “Well, perhaps that’s a discussion for another time, then. For the moment, though, please feel free to ask any questions you like about the Federation or the Tesseract.”
“Very well,” said Lineta, “the scans Ordi’te took of your vessel were very odd. We know what Federation technology looks like, but your ship is different. It shares many characteristics with Borg vessels, including its shape and size.”
“You’re correct,” said Adele. “Our ship that got stranded in the Delta Quadrant, the USS Voyager, freed several Borg drones from the Collective and brought two of them home. Actually, one of those two is now my second-in-command aboard the Tesseract. Both individuals were influential in the design of the Tesseract, along with the crew of Voyager, who all gained a lot of experience with Borg technology during their seven years in the Delta Quadrant. My ship was designed to fuse the best of Borg technology with the best of Federation technology, and much of the former was reverse-engineered so that our Starfleet engineers would be able to use it properly.”
“I must say that the resemblance is unsettling,” replied Lineta.
“Our engineers thought of that, and there was a lot of debate over whether it was acceptable,” admitted Adele. “Intimidation was never a primary goal. We’re peaceful people, and traditionally, we’ve tried to make our ships look like it, but finally, it was decided that it was a tolerable side effect of the design. We were in a hurry to return to the Delta Quadrant, and it would have added years to the design process to figure out how to get all the Borg-inspired technology to work reliably in a completely different configuration. Not to mention, there are species in that part of space we know to be hostile who would likely avoid any ship that looked like ours if they saw it on long-range scans. Ultimately, the Tesseract was always going to be a very large ship, and it would have been hard to make that look peaceful no matter what shape we chose. Some of my crewmen have been calling it ‘fleet in a box,’ and that’s essentially exactly what it is.”
Marcus Lindley glanced at her in surprise, and Adele turned to him. “I hear everything,” she told him pointedly, and he blanched and looked down at the table. Ensigns, Adele thought wryly, and resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the green young officer. Turning back to the Tyndorans, she explained, “We didn’t need to send a lot of costly slipstream-capable vessels to the Delta Quadrant. We needed one big ship with a powerful slipstream drive that could project a field big enough to take a lot of people and a lot of smaller merely warp-capable ships with us, plus a couple of smaller slipstream-capable ones for other missions and emergencies. We plan to use our smaller, more traditional-looking auxiliary ships for intentional first contact missions like this one, and leave the cube at a safe distance with all remaining personnel being well protected.”
Lineta nodded thoughtfully, as did a few of her silent advisers. “Your approach makes some sense. I do wonder if it will be more trouble than you had anticipated given the apparent situation with the Borg.”
“So do I,” sighed Adele. “That’s why I was so hopeful you could shed light on what’s happening here.”
“I am so sorry that I cannot,” said Lineta. “You said you have a Borg officer?”
“Ex-Borg,” clarified Adele. “Yes, he’s a native of Brunali, a Delta Quadrant world.”
“Please explain what you mean by ‘ex-Borg.’ He is no longer connected to the Collective?”
“Correct,” said Adele. Being careful to avoid disclosing anything classified, she explained, “He was found on a damaged cube as a neo-natal drone. His connection to the Collective had already been severed. Our people brought him aboard their ship along with the few others who were with him -- all children -- and removed most of their cybernetic implants. Most were adopted by the Wysanti, but Icheb stayed aboard and enrolled in our officer training school, Starfleet Academy.”
“I see,” said Lineta, and exchanged a glance with her advisers. “So then, you have medical technology capable of removing Borg cybernetics?”
“Yes,” said Adele. “It’s not perfect. We haven’t been able to remove everything; some of it is responsible for the functioning of vital organs. But other than a single remaining facial implant, you’d never know he was ever Borg just looking at him.” That is, until he starts talking, she couldn’t resist adding in her head.
Lineta looked back at her advisers, and one of them nodded. “I would like to meet this drone,” she said. “Did you bring him with you?”
Adele shook her head. “No, he’s commanding the Tesseract in my absence. I’d be happy to arrange a meeting, but you would have to travel. We’ll lose too much time by having the Tesseract come here, plus my chief engineer is very nervous about spending any more time than strictly necessary in the vicinity of subspace ruptures.”
“I understand,” said Lineta. “The damage to subspace has inconvenienced everyone.”
“This is widespread?” asked Adele.
“I cannot tell you how extensive the problem is,” replied Lineta, “only that we have encountered several warp-capable species recently who have reported similar findings at widely disparate locations stretching all the way to the Delta Quadrant. Your report of the incident in the Aris system is the furthest into the Alpha Quadrant I have yet heard of, though.”
“Interesting,” said Adele, glancing at T’Pring. She wondered what the relentlessly logical Vulcan science officer made of all this. “Would you like to accompany us to rendezvous with the Tesseract?” Adele asked Lineta, knowing what the answer would be.
“No. As I said before, we try to keep to ourselves. I regret that we will not meet him, but it is not worth the risk.”
That was what Adele had been expecting to hear. “In that case, I’d like to return to my ship and let them know we’re all right,” she said. “May I send a subspace transmission through your shield?”
“No,” said Lineta, “but you may use our secure communications room to talk to them. While you do that, Midran would be happy to take your people on a tour of our parliamentary offices.” Midran nodded, though he looked less than enthusiastic about the prospect to Adele’s eyes.
She looked at her away team, who, to a person, looked thrilled by the suggestion, each in their own way. She nodded at them. “They’d love that.”
“Excellent,” said Lineta. “Midran, treat them well. Nyreni, please take Captain Oyugo to the communications chamber.”
Adele rose and gave a warning look to Ryzal, whom she sensed was about to protest her separation from the rest of the away team. “Thank you,” she said to Lineta.
As Adele and Nyreni entered the corridor outside the meeting room, they walked by a man whom Adele recognized as Ordi’te’s second-in-command. Adele smiled as they passed him, and as he brushed against Adele, he covertly pressed a tiny object into her hand. She avoided making further eye contact as her hand closed around the small item, and she quickly slipped it into the side pocket of her dress uniform pants. Now, we’re getting somewhere, she thought to herself.
Inside the communications room, Nyreni helped her find and connect to the Tesseract. She was genuinely happy to see Borux’s face on the viewscreen, as she had missed their chats for the past couple of days. “Borux, I’m contacting you to let you know we’re all right, and that we’ll be heading out to rendezvous with you soon. Is everything okay there?”
“As good as it’s ever been,” replied Borux with his too-large Denobulan smile. “This hasn’t exactly been a picture-perfect mission, so far.”
Adele shook her head and smiled. “True enough. But everything is fine for now?”
“Yes, Captain. A quiet night.”
“Good to hear. I’ll be in touch soon. Let Commander Icheb know, as well, he’s been concerned.”
“Should I have the chief engineer wake him if he’s regenerating?”
“No, that’s not necessary. As soon as he wakes up is fine.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the display went blank, Adele turned to Nyreni and smiled. She slipped her hand into her pocket and fingered the small object Ordi’te’s right-hand man had given her. Maybe now, we’ll get some straight answers, she thought. The Betazoid part of her, which had been screaming at her for the last hour, thought that if she had to listen to one more lie out of these people, she was pretty sure that -- at a minimum -- she would say something very undiplomatic.
And no, Plan Z is definitely not Starfleet-approved. Whether or not they end up needing it now, it's something that might certainly be handy to have as an option later -- assuming it doesn't kill them all, of course.
Thanks for the comment!
What is going on there? 
