Oniiri Behind

Rampart couldn't help but stare in amazement.  Small world.  Here they were nearly halfway across the galaxy, and he had to run into Sara Phillipa, of all people.

Her attitude hadn't changed.

"According to everything I've heard," Rampart told her, from the desk in the ready room off the main bridge, "they're sentient.  You can't claim custody over them."  He leaned against the edge of the desk, arms folded over his chest.  Sara opened her mouth.  "Don't argue, Sara," he cut her off, before she could.  "Starfleet has experts in determining sentient status factors.  Our officers do it everyday."

"So do I."

"More than you.  The Em-Chaiya Convention protects them.  They aren't property.  It's that simple.  Quit going territorial on me."

Anger flashed through Sara Phillipa's eyes.  Jordan Rampart knew that expression.  "I'll take this over your head, Jordan."

Rampart heaved a sigh and looked out the viewport.  "I don't know why you think you need to make threats.  If I was in your shoes, Sara, I wouldn't argue a lost cause.  I didn't make the policy, but it hasn't changed in fifty years.  I still abide by it.  So do you – whether you like it or not."

Upon returning, Mala had briefed him on what happened, and explained her reasoning in bringing the plasmoids.  Rampart accepted it.  He didn't have to return them to the Vortex.  Whether they would be allowed to remain on board indefinitely was not up to him.  They weren't Starfleet officers; but while they fit the definition of civilians, they weren't Federation citizens either.  Furthermore, they carried no assigned value of skills.  Every civilian on this ship had a job here.  If the plasmoids ended up being allowed to stay, they would have to contribute in some way.  Rampart wasn't sure what form their contributions, if any, might take.  He didn't want them here simply to be studied – that would be little better than what Sara wanted to do with them.

Sara's claims, and argument, on the other hand, decided the next step in the meantime: They could stay aboard Arcadia, for that time being... in case she pursued less than scrupulous aims, if having them in her reach aboard the Flammarion.  Now that Arcadia was clearing the Oniiri's outer layers, the Arc's engineers could repair the science vessel and send them on their way.  Rampart had already sent his report to Command, attaching an advisory of negligence regarding the science ship's crew, for allowing the vessel to become trapped.  Law required them to answer for the charges, before continuing their journey.

Sara's part in it changed nothing – yet had determined why events unfolded as they did.  Rampart had reviewed the Flammarion's log summary.  She was a full head of steam when she got going, and convinced the captain to grant her wish to get closer.  It had cost lives.  Those responsible for honoring her wishes – who had survived – had to answer for it.  Ironically, Sara was not legally culpable – although, if justice had any place in this universe... and it was, in fact, well entrenched... then reviews of her professional standing, as influenced by her character, would be forthcoming.  Rampart wanted to lash into her for her moral carelessness.  But he had been down this road before, with her.  He wanted more just to get her out of here, before she met Vor'ana and the proverbial excrement really impacted with rotating blades.  Vor'ana knew the trouble Rampart was having, adjusting to being in command of a ship for the first time.  He didn't need the extra hassle of Sara's narrow, provincial views adding to the stress – and the Romulan wasn't bound by regulations and protocols of conduct which limited Starfleet officers from telling civilians what they thought of them... if they thought it.  Vor'ana would tell Sara exactly where she stood – but Rampart didn't exactly want that hassle, either.

"The decision's final," he said.

"Don't give me that.  I'm not a Starfleet officer; you can't tell me what to do.  Civilians run the military, not the other way around."

Here we go – that old argument again, Rampart thought.  "They're on this ship and they have a right to be here.  Essentially they asked for asylum.  That gives me authority as the Starfleet ranking officer on the scene to make that decision.  You're not taking them.  Arguing is pointless.  Is there anything else you want to talk about?"

"Is that your decision, or theirs?"

Rampart had to admit, he had not asked if they wished to continue aboard Arcadia... or Flammarion.

Sara pushed it: "Why don't you ask them if they want to go with you, or me?  Or better yet – let me ask them."

"I will."

The side door to the ready room opened, and Vor'ana walked in.  It had been several hours since hooking up with the Flammarion; she had changed from the striking white dress to a simple black-and-brown affair.  It complemented her dark hair and eyes.  She looked at Sara Phillipa as she looked at Vor'ana.

"I have other things to do," Rampart told the scientist.  "Goodbye, Sara."

Sara turned, clearly unhappy, and walked out.  Inwardly, Rampart breathed a sigh of relief – until Vor'ana asked, "Who was that?"

Walker left sickbay, a dour look on his face.  He had come to check on Clicker's status personally, as Brisk prepared to release him.  Clicker moved a little more slowly than standard, but he moved.  Physically, he would recover.  But the Tribalself encounter left him a bit worse for wear.  Walker carried the furball professor, at Clicker's request.

Unexpected friends, Walker and Clicker.  It made him want to laugh.  Once upon a time he'd never imagined such concern for a so exotic lifeform.  Walker had compassion for any living being, sentient or no, but always assumed – though wasn't sure why he assumed so – that his friends would be humanoids.  Starfleet life taught a few things about such presumptions.

Silence accompanied Clicker, most of the time – a studious silence, computing and following chains of thought peculiar to his kind, while trundling through the ship on his own business.  Today: No different... except more studious than usual.  Withdrawn.  The Tribalself experience rifled his memory cells, a lasting impression of the touch with an alien lifeform – the furball had stated as much to Walker, while Brisk ran final med-scans.  The ordeal removed him from objective analysis.

Xenologists studied alien lifeforms.  Clicker specialized in that field.  The Oniiri encounter went beyond study – not unlike a time in Walker's life, observing lions in Africa, and nearly becoming part of the study when a lion tried to eat him.  What did it do to Clicker?  Clicker didn't say that it bothered him – yet it affected him.  Charged plasma channeled through one's body didn't leave no effect.  Brisk handled the physical effects... but the psychological were more enduring.  The mental vision of a Klingon counseling a furball, soon to come, leaped into Walker's mind.  He did not want to laugh this time.

"Professor," Walker said, eyeing the ball of fur hooked in one arm.  The black optendrils twisted in response.  "If anything's bothering you... If you need to talk..."

Clicker usually couldn't keep quiet.

Establishing communications with a new race!  Adia Shaar felt overjoyed.  Even aboard the Arc, opportunities like this came rarely.  She launched herself into the task with the usual, subtle exhilaration, and spent the hours, while Arcadia exited the Vortex, in the Harmonics Lab with one of the spheres... a blue, scintillating thing bobbing about, air crackling from the contact of air molecules with its super-charged skin.

"I think this should work."  Shaar glanced at Alex Crimson nearby, who had arrived with the spherical plasma being.  Touching instruments on a console, recalibrating the translation matrix again, she turned to the blue sphere.  "Can you understand me?"

Rays of beige and yellow wafted inside the sphere's interior, like sand spreading through water.

"We you are understanding."

Shaar's lips perked in a grin at her success.  The voice from her complant bore a tinny quality.  She tapped a touch-sensor, fine-tuning the equipment.

"Since we haven't been formally introduced," Crimson said, "I'm Lieutenant Alex Crimson.  Welcome aboard the Arcadia."

The sphere sank, then lifted, putting out tiny displacement waves of heated air.  Perhaps introductions were a strange concept among its kind.

"Do you have names where you come from?"

The voice emitted, with an easier vocal rendition, "Us names us Ma-la-hen-drix-un.  Names us, Hovers Questioning."

Shaar listened to the translation from the complant in her ear, trading looks with Crimson.  The collective reference – 'us', 'we' – did not entirely puzzle them.  Many species displayed such a collective self-reference, in relation to others.

Something bothered Shaar about this particular translation.  Most voices, even if artificially rendered, carried a lyrical ease – the music of speech.  Shaar's natural aptitude latched onto that, every time, without fail, in rendered translations.  But this rhythm sounded stiff, mechanical, forced – in opposing contrast to the fluid motion of its appearance and movement.  Whatever the reason, it was due further investigation.

"Hovers Questioning?" Crimson said.  "Why did she name you that?"

"Hovers," the spherical entity said.  "Understanding... difficult.  Perceptions stimulated, Mala Hendriksson to us, location displacement.  Uncertainty?"

"Yes, that's correct," Crimson said, and gestured.  "You... hover."

"Understanding," HQ said.  "Yes."  A different note entered the statement, then it continued, "Questioning.  Flow not Tribalself, questioning with questioning."

The diplomatic officer ruminated.  "So you like to ask lots of questions... Is that it?"

"Correct, yes.  Questioning tendency of self is."

Crimson smiled, although the physical expression might have been lost on the spheroid.  "You've come to the right place.  This... ship, if you understand what our ship is... was created to answer questions.  Questions we have of other species, like yourself, and about the universe."

"Pleased," HQ replied, and bounced, making Crimson smile again.

The door to the Harmonics Lab slid open, admitting the ship's captain.  Jordan Rampart strolled in, eyeing the plasmoid.  "Any luck?" he asked, eyes glittering, reflecting the blue glow.

"No luck," Shaar said.  "Just success.  Captain, meet 'Hovers Questioning'."

Rampart absorbed the odd appellation with a glance at Crimson, who nodded with a half-shrug.

"Welcome aboard the Arcadia," HQ chimed.

"I think that's supposed to be my line," Rampart said.

"Maybe 'Learns Fast' would be a better name," Crimson suggested.

Rampart explained the situation as best he could, with Shaar and Crimson's help.  Crimson still had to find the other spheroid, last seen with Hendriksson, and discuss it with that one – dubbed by Hendriksson as 'Floats Serenely'.  It wasn't easy: These individuals had little or no grasp of concepts most Starfleeters took for granted, invoking words derived from languages oriented by common senses... touch, sight, sound, ideas which evolved over millennia as a result... and then trying to educate those beings in just a few hours in that language, as well as the concepts.  Rampart spent most of the rest of the trip out of the Vortex, wrapped up in it.  It tested even his casual patience.  Times like this, he wished he had told April no, when agreeing to accept command of this vessel.  Sure, it wasn't unlike those times as a first officer, leading away teams on missions of contact with new species, when they had to find similar ground fast.  Rampart had that going for him, in those circumstances.  But these creatures were more exotic than the average.  It was all new to them.  When it came down to it, Stephen April just had more experience – and more enthusiasm – for situations like this.