* * *
<<**You see everything like this?**>> Helvia asked, his tone still managing to convey wonder, despite his not possessing an audible ‘voice’ at all any longer.
<<**Yes. Here you can perceive not only the subatomic components of all matter and energy, if you look closely enough, you can see the matter/energy life-cycles of the individual quarks. You can observe when and how they came into being, how many times they were energy or matter, and how and when they will eventually be extinguished.**>>
He looked, closer and closer, finding himself drawn down infinite pathways of causality as he discovered that time had no meaning in this place. Without that comforting referent, he was lost. <<**It’s too much!**>> he panicked, flailing against the pull of too much information too quickly, drowning him in a sea of data devoid of context.
Helvia felt himself being steadied by some powerful outside force, drawing him back into himself.
<<**You’re too focused on the math, Titus. Numeric representations can help you grasp some of the fundamentals, but that’s only just scratching the surface. All that you perceive here, overwhelming as it is, represents only this single universe in its twenty-six dimensions. There are an infinite number of other such realms, each possessing its own fractal offshoots, the honeycomb of alternate realities that your people have occasionally encountered.**>>
<<**How is this supposed to help me understand what’s happening to my world, my people?**>>
<<**Your world and your people are inextricably woven into the fabric of this universe, Titus. Were I to annihilate Magna Roma this instant, they would still exist as their separate subatomic components.**>>
<<**Not as sentient individuals,**>> Helvia countered. <<**Their component atoms or quarks might remain as either energy or matter, but the living patterns they held, the thing that made them conscious beings with free will, all that would be extinguished.**>>
Patterns flowed all around them from their point of perspective, the very DNA of the cosmos itself, writ in chaotic subatomic geometries.
<<**Having lived a human lifetime among you, I know that consciousness in that form largely consists of suffering. I could spare them that, give them the purity and release of incorporating their patterns into the background radiation of the universe.**>>
<<**That is a crime against their sentience, robbing them of their agency. Yes, perhaps we are only meat to you, but that meat should have at least enough freedom to choose its own fate.**>>
<<**How ‘in control’ of your fate did you feel while in the arena?**>> the Mother asked pointedly. <<**Such control is an illusion in as fragile and ephemeral a form as yours.**>>
<<**I was as much in control as my opponents,**>> he replied. <<**Our skill, our strength, and our daring all combined to inform the outcome. Absolute control of a scenario is not necessary, so long as one can influence a sufficient number of variables.**>>
<<**What should I do then?**>> She asked again. <<**What fate is most fair for your people, given the pain and suffering they have caused themselves and so many others?**>>
Helvia thought about this for a long time, though he could not say how long, as time here was an illusory thing, more a psychological holdover from his physical form than anything else.
<<**The commodore’s suggested path is the most… humane,**>> he decided.
<<**Meaning what, precisely?**>> she pressed him.
<<**As you pointed out, the Romanii have developed their culture of competitive aggression and cruelty over millennia, crafted by the beliefs seeded in them by John’s people and enhanced by the very geography of their world. It will take immersion in a larger, pan-cultural environment to break those traditions and prejudices.**>>
<<**You mean, dilute the Romanii among the larger pan-humanoid culture of the Federation?**>>
<<**That is precisely what I mean.**>> he confirmed.
* * *
Lt. Commander Jarrod, acting captain of the tactical escort Gol, held up a maroon uniform jacket. The garment was holed through, tattered and burned in several places. It looked as if it had been used as target practice by a security team with weapons set to kill.
“Lieutenant Helvia was right next to the bridge console that exploded, sir. A dozen pieces of shrapnel from that explosion penetrated his uniform, yet there’s not a scratch on him.”
She nodded slowly, then took a sip from a mug of coffee. “I can understand why that would leave you with some questions.”
They were in the compact ready room situation just off Reykjavík’s Command-Information-Center, formerly the ship’s auxiliary bridge, situated on Deck 5 just forward of the computer core.
“I thought he was human,” Jarrod said of the man who had succeeded him as the ship’s chief security officer. “I mean, of Romanii stock, certainly, but human nonetheless.”
“He is,” Trujillo assured him. “Helvia was… elsewhere… in conference with me and the Mother-entity. She apparently decided to spare him, seeing as his untimely death would have cut short their conversation.”
Jarrod held her gaze for a moment, then balled up the uniform tunic and set it aside. “Okay, that’s one question down, only about fifty thousand more to go.”
Given that Jarrod’s ship, Gol, was currently under repair from her ambush earlier in the mission, and that most of Reykjavík’s senior officers had been wounded in the recent attack, Trujillo had made Jarrod acting executive officer of Reykjavík until a suitable replacement could be found.
Puget Sound, a Cle Dan-class repair tender, had docked with Reykjavík to affect the necessary repairs to enable the ship to return to the nearest starbase under her own power.
The door chime sounded, and Trujillo called out, “Just a moment.”
Jarrod stood, looking down on Trujillo. “Have you spoken with Glal in the past few days?”
She looked up, her expression uncertain. “No, I haven’t. Why?”
Jarrod wore his best poker face, the one he reserved for formal unpleasantness. “Not my place to say. You should speak with him, soon.”
Trujillo tamped down the urge to pry further. “I will. Thank you.”
Jarrod stepped forward, planting a kiss on the crown of her head. “For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry. This mission has been one catastrophe after another. When all this is over, we need a nice long shore leave someplace.”
“Pacifica again?” she asked.
“Or Risa, maybe?” he proposed.
She gave him a smile that was very close to genuine. “As long as it has beaches, palm-tree analogues, and umbrella drinks, I’m in.”
He nodded, toggling the hatch open as he prepared to depart. The massive form of Lieutenant Helvia filled the doorway. The Magna Romanii officer nodded in deference to his superior and stepped aside.
“Come in, Lieutenant,” Trujillo invited, standing to gesture to the chair sitting across from her desk that Jarrod had just vacated.
Helvia stepped inside, coming to attention.
“At ease, Mister Helvia. Have a seat.”
He waited until she had resumed hers before taking his.
“Can you tell me what transpired after John and I were cast out?” she asked, picking up her coffee cup and grasping it in an unconscious effort to absorb the warmth of its contents.
“We… conversed,” he answered haltingly, trying to put into words impressions and sensations that seemed to dwarf the concept of spoken language. “She showed me things that I cannot explain, perceptions that I struggle to retain because they are so utterly alien to me.”
She took a sip from her now lukewarm beverage, eyeing Helvia over the lip of the mug. “Did you discuss the fate of Magna Roma?”
“We did, sir. I told the Mother that I supported your proposal to evacuate the planet and incorporate the Romanii refugees into existing Federation colonies in nearby sectors.”
“Was she amenable to that idea?”
“She was, sir.”
Trujillo felt some fraction of her cumulative stress begin to ease at that news. “And how long did she give us… give them?”
“One hundred years, sir. We have a century to evacuate the planet.”
She set down the mug and leaned back in her chair, running calculations in her mind’s eye. “That might just be enough.”
* * *
Ambassador Kelv looked as unconvinced as he did perturbed, his porcine features enhanced on the large viewscreen where both he and Vice-Admiral Ch'thannak sat, appearing via subspace comms from Starbase 19.
Admiral Markopoulos of Starfleet Logistics Command, a man holding more than a little personal enmity towards Trujillo, seemed to give voice to Kelv’s reservations on the split-screen transmission from where he was stationed aboard Starbase 14. The aging human’s white hair and beard appeared more unkempt than that of his Tellarite counterpart, if that could be believed. Though Curzon knew of Markopoulos only by reputation, he understood that the ‘Chic Greek’ was a polarizing figure within the halls of Starfleet Command, either loved or hated with seemingly no middle ground.
“And what benefit is there to the Federation in evacuating some six billion humans off this planet, Commodore?” Markopoulos asked sharply. “You must have some concept of the enormous resources we’ll need to dedicate to this mission over many decades to accomplish such a Herculean task? The best-case scenario estimates say it’ll take no fewer than seventy-five years to remove a population that size.”
Ambassador Dax, seated beside her, allowed Trujillo to field that question. He knew something of the history between the two officers, and that the commodore was going to have to impress the tightly wound admiral for her plan to have any chance of success. Moreover, the idea had been hers, and though initially skeptical, Curzon had come to see its promise as Trujillo mapped it out for him.
“I do, sir,” Trujillo answered. “It will be the largest humanitarian effort ever undertaken in the history of Starfleet and the Federation, and it will require a masterstroke of logistics planning and creativity to achieve. We will undoubtedly make mistakes and learn valuable lessons that might well save many Federation lives should we have reason to evacuate entire worlds in the coming decades.”
Trujillo continued, “I also know that the Federation has been trying, without much success, to draw colonists to our newest settlements in the sectors along the border with the Tzenkethi, only two sectors from here. I’ve seen LOGCOM’s own projections of one-point-seven percent growth yearly over the next two decades. You and I both know that isn’t going to cut it, and that the Colonization Authority is likely to cut resources to this effort and look elsewhere to promote flourishing colonial growth.”
She turned fractionally in her chair to fix her gaze on Markopoulos’ glowering visage.
“If the CA diverts those resources to other areas, those colonies will stagnate, and the region will become a backwater. A few Border Service cutters to patrol the space-lanes, perhaps, but few outposts or other vital infrastructure. Those colonies would then present ripe targets for the Tzenkethi, who if you will recall, had already tried to annex those systems before we established colonies there to cement our claim on them.”
Trujillo gestured towards the screen with opening hands, as though making an offering. “By transporting the Romanii to those already established colonies, you can grow them at over ten times your projected rate. Those enhanced population numbers will support more star stations, trade outposts, and Starfleet and Border Service bases, giving the region a significantly greater defensive posture, not to mention the added importance and representation in the Federation Council’s lower chamber.”
She saw Markopoulos’ expression begin to soften as he, too, started to put the same puzzle pieces into place that Trujillo had days earlier.
“And If the Tzenkethi do decide to make a nuisance of themselves again,” Trujillo concluded, “you’ll have millions of Romanii civilians with prior military experience to fill the home-guard levies. These people, unlike the majority of Federation humans, will run towards the sound of disruptors.”
Markopoulos shifted his gaze to encompass the image of Vice-Admiral Ch'thannak and Ambassador Kelv. “What say you, gentlebeings?”
The Tellarite smiled toothily, his single tusk quivering in anticipation. “It sounds, Admiral, as though we have a great deal to discuss.”
Ch'thannak kept his own counsel, but the proud look he directed at Trujillo from across the parsecs spoke volumes.
“Very well, Commodore," Markopoulos said, "let’s break this proposal down into its constituent elements, shall we?”
* * *