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|\\\\\ Starfleet Command, Eighth Fleet (OOC)
\\\\\|__.-~~\
_--~ ~~/ Defenders Task Group 85.3, "Whitestone"
/~ _-~~~' Embarked on U.S.S. Coronado, NCC-97901
('-//////-// Rear Admiral Tebrun Lora Kor, Commanding
////// }}-) -----------------------------------------
/////~ Simulation Report
_///~ Stardate 240211.04
`
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/ Simulation Teaser |
/ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ
The doorbell rang in Coronado's Flag Quarters and Tebrun Lora Kor
looked up, sighed quietly, and then recentered, seeking a bit of
serenity. This wouldn't be an easy conversation. He glanced once
more at the information displayed on his terminal before shutting it
off.
The Away teams had returned to Coronado and Masada in a rush. The
Trill's admonition not to touch anything had hardly been necessary.
Both teams left the control rooms, eager to be out, not at all eager
to risk another "incident." Lora Kor himself had nearly bumped a
console with his hip in his hurry to leave and had nearly fallen
trying to avoid even that trivial touch.
Once back aboard the Defender ships, the teams had had some leisure
to think about what had happened... to discuss it with their
friends... to wonder at the differences between the timelines.
To consider the possibilities.
Lora Kor himself had reentered Coro's Flag Quarters and then taken
more than an hour to just... look at them. As if he was seeing them
for the first time, he considered the sword hanging from the wall,
the print of U.S.S. Coronado fleeing a gas giant that Savant had
made for him once, the small model of the Spectre class fighter
resting on a low table. He had pulled out a small box in his desk
drawer in which he kept his Starfleet recognitions and had looked at
each one and remembered all the things that had happened to him the
last few years. All the differences. There were so many.
The doorbell rang again. "Come!" he called.
S'buuth, looking a little unsure of himself, stood in the doorway as
the door slid open. It was amazing to the Trill how neutral... how
mechanical S'pht's posture and glowing eyes had seemed at first; now
he could read deep wells of emotion there. He was coming to learn
that the S'pht's emotions could be just as rabid as an Apori's when
pressed on something that it felt was important. "The Lora wished
to see me?" S'buuth asked.
"Yes, S'buuth," Lora Kor said, gesturing. "Please... come in."
The S'pht entered, a bit hesitantly at first, then more rapidly as
the Admiral gestured again. Floating a meter or so off the deck,
the smooth, rounded metal cylinder was little changed from the first
time that Lora Kor had seen it, but the eyes were a little
different. Clouded, as if viewed on an overcast day.
"Have you... recovered from your trip into Xanadu?" Lora Kor asked,
suddenly curious about how S'pht would have regarded the trip.
For a moment, S'buuth didn't answer, and when he did, the
synthesized voice was quiet and a little... ashamed? "The Jjaro are
wise," it said at last. "They have chosen to teach me wisdom in
their own way. The Lora must... forgive--" S'buuth stopped talking
and for a moment, overcome, and the glowing eyes looked away.
Searching his alternate's memories, Lora Kor understood. In that...
other timeline, when the S'pht'kr had been freed, the so-called
"lost tribe" had been found to be the S'pht's elders in every
possible way. When the elder S'pht had been released from the
race's ancient homeworld, they had in that moment freed the bonds
the Pfhor had placed on their S'pht slaves, wherever they were in
M64. However, in that moment, the S'pht'kr had been forced to take
their "younger" brethren in hand, else the suddenly freed slaves
would have rampaged across the space of their erstwhile enslavers,
destroying and killing unchecked. In that few moments, years--
decades of wisdom must have been transferred. S'buuth obviously now
carried some of the memories of that gentling hand... probably
carried memories of its own effect on him.
Lora Kor nodded sympathetically. "I actually didn't ask you here to
talk about that," he said. "I realize you probably have not yet had
time to... consider it." S'buuth turned his attention back to the
Admiral, and realizing that was all the response he was likely to
get, Lora Kor continued. "S'buuth, my own experiences..." he said,
then decided that was the wrong way to proceed. He started again.
"S'buuth, sometimes when one has free will, it is easy to be
overcome by the moment... make mistakes," Lora Kor said.
"Yes," S'buuth said. "That... that is certainly true." S'buuth's
voice was forced. The Admiral certainly saw the humor in that
response, but he let it go for the moment, and instead simply
nodded.
"You once offered to me to create a sort of parasite... something
that would attack the Pfhor food supply," Lora Kor said. "At the
time, I prevented you from releasing it. I realize now that was a
mistake." The Admiral hesitated for a moment, but then continued,
voice a little harder. "I'd like you to complete the development of
the parasites and release them," he said.
For a long time, S'buuth didn't answer. When the S'pht finally did,
its answer was a surprise. "The Lora told me that creating the
locusts would be wrong... when I wanted to create them. I
understand now why you said that." If S'buuth's eyes had been
clouded before, now they were positively haunted. Apparently the
S'pht'kr's hand was being felt here, despite the lost tribe's
entrapment.
With anyone else, Lora Kor might have chuckled at the irony, but he
suspected that S'buuth wouldn't understand. Instead, he nodded.
"Do you remember... in the other reality... how many were killed in
the war?" he asked. "I'm not sure creating the parasites wouldn't
be wrong." The Admiral paused, then looked at S'buuth seriously.
"But it would be more wrong to let the war go on for years... allow
millions to be killed. Innocents... innocents may die if we do
this. But it will be fewer lives lost, on both sides, if the war is
ended as quickly as possible." S'buuth still paused, clearly
wrestling with his memories of the alternate timeline, and didn't
answer.
Lora Kor stood up from behind his desk, passed it, and approached
S'buuth. "I understand your hesitation," he said. "I'll tell you
what... the old stories also talked about a... a rain of frogs, I
believe, that came before the locusts, before fire raining from the
sky," Lora Kor said. "If you like, tone down the parasites so that
they are a nuisance, rather than an actual threat. I will leave the
choice in your ha-- well," the Admiral said, "I'll leave the choice
up to you." Lora Kor almost smiled; S'buuth, of course, lacked
hands.
At his normal "height," S'buuth was actually a few centimeters
taller than Lora Kor. The Admiral realized that S'buuth had been
slowly sinking only then, when the S'pht's antigrav system pushed it
those few centimeters higher than the Admiral again. "I will give
thought to what the Lora wishes," S'buuth said.
Lora Kor nodded. "I can't order you to do this, obviously. Do...
do what you think is right," he said, crossing back behind his desk.
"Let me know what you decide. I won't keep you any longer."
As S'buuth left the Flag Quarters, hurrying, either eager to get
started or eager to get away, Lora Kor watched him... a little
surprised at himself.
In the end, it hadn't been as hard to do as he had expected. It
hadn't been that hard at all. Turning the terminal back on, he read
again the last paragraph of a letter written 439 years previously.
"...I knew what I was doing when I stopped the war that would have
killed a half a million youngsters on both sides if those bombs had
not been dropped. I have no regrets and, under the same
circumstances, I would do it again -- and this letter is not
confidential.
"Sincerely yours,
"Harry S Truman"
---------------
Time passed, as it tends to do. People spent their time talking
with friends... considering what had happened.
Coronado, Masada, and Vanquish remained within Xanadu and slowly,
over the course of the first 72 hours after their experiences, Rear
Admiral Lora Kor relented. Teams reentered Xanadu, though for the
moment, none approached the two control rooms. The ships remained
on the zero-G axis of the object's spin, carefully avoiding the
singularities, the docking platform hanging from it, and the towers
on either end of the second chamber.
The door to the third chamber did not open again and no more ripples
appeared in the singularity. Slowly, teams started returning to the
three ships with results from their explorations of Alexandria.
It was a period of brief quiet, broken only by reports via ansible
every six hours to the remainder of the Defenders. Not long after
the incident, Lora Kor sent a very terse report on his memories of
the alternate timeline to Vice Admiral Aldur. He received a terse
message back a few minutes later indicating that hundreds of people
outside of Xanadu also carried at least some memories of the
alternate timeline. A small footnote from Aldur himself on the
message, however, said that Aldur himself had no such memories. The
three ships were ordered to remain where they were, and Aldur
promised to send them reinforcements, escorted by the captured Pfhor
destroyer.
On the sixth day after the incident, ships entered the system...
though it was not the ships that Aldur had promised.
\_______________________________________________________________________
\ End Simulation Teaser |
ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ
Defenders Task Group 85.3, "Whitestone" Staff:
Commanding, TG 85.3: RADM Tebrun Lora Kor (Jester)
S-1, Group Adjutant: Cmdr. Sieven Drexler (Brad)
S-2, Group Intelligence: LCdr. Kariasa Ma'Aru (Kari)
S-3, Group Logistics: Cmdr. Savant (Savant)
U.S.S. Coronado Crew Roster:
Commanding Officer: Capt. William Daren (Daren)
Executive Officer: Cmdr. Darek Smith (Aggie)
Marine Commandant: Col. Jeremy Ironside (Fraser)
Raptors Squadron Leader: Lt. Colonel Thomas Wayne (Masters)
Chief Tactical Officer: LCdr. Kyle Marcy (Marcy)
Assistant Tactical: Ens. Tamarith (Tamarith)
Chief Flight Operations: Ens. Maiko D'Rall (Farrell)
Chief Science Officer: LCdr. Isamu Dyson (Isamu)
Company Commander: Maj. Jacob Prescot (Shadow-FjP)
Chief Engineer: Cmdr. Zunite Oswald (Sonya)
Assistant Engineer: LCdr. Jack C. Farley (CCC)
Assistant Engineer: Lt. Aramis Skylooker (LewisSharp)
Chief Medical Officer: Lt. (JG) Jason Vogel (Thompson)
Assistant Medical: Lt. Lauren Dyson (Natty)
Bartender: PO/1 Bridget Bourdeux (Dolin)
Civilian Liaison: S'buuth (rev)
On Extended Leave of Absence:
None!
Positions Available:
Flight Leader: (---)
------
Jester
Rear Admiral Tebrun Lora Kor
Commanding, Defenders Task Group 85.3, "Whitestone"
embarked on U.S.S. Coronado, NCC-97901
http://www.jestertrek.com/coro2400/