To: , ,
        , ,
        , "JustKenning"
        
From: "Jay  P Hailey" 
Reply-To: trekcreative{at}yahoogroups.com


Title: Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile
Author: Jay P Hailey (JayPHailey{at}yahoo.com) Series: MISC - TNG OCs
COdes: None
Part: 127/335(?)
Rating:[PG]
Archive: Fine with me, just tell me where. Disclaimer: Paramount owns all
things Star Trek.  I claim Original Characters and Situations for me.
Webpage HTTP://www.phoenixinn.iwarp.com/jayphailey

    Through the Looking Glass
    by
    Jay P. Hailey
    And
    Dennnis Washburn


    We were back on El-Au. I knelt down on the ground for a moment and tried
to collect myself. I felt the grass and the fresh breeze on my cheek. I
realized that I was crying.

    "Ghod damn it." I said to no one in particular. I hated the fact that
the Borg could exist. It said unpleasant things about the way the universe worked.

    "Interesting." Aaron said. "Not too many people have such a strong
reaction to that."

    "Have you ever seen a Born cube ship?" I asked. "There
was one at Earth
a few years ago. We could see it in the air over us." I shuddered at
the thought.

    "No. I wasn't on Earth at that time. I was also away from El-Au during
the events we will witness here." Aaron said quietly.

    I stood up. "I really don't need to see this. Can we just agree that
your point here was made and move on?" I didn't want to see a happy
calm planetary utopia eaten by the Borg.

    "There is a point that must be made." Aaron said. "I'll
show you now."

    He held up his hands and waved a screen into existence.

    I saw the Borg cube ship advancing towards the planet. Once I had
explored the intact wreck of a cube ship. I knew things about the internal
structure of them. The only variance seemed to be in the way that
assimilated equipment was added to the cube. If you had an eye for the
proper detail you could recognize individual cubes, even if the Borg said
that the concept was irrelevant. I could recognize the cube that ate the
scout ship Gau.

    As the cube advanced, I could see small pods approach it. "Approach" is
a relative term. They swooped up to it. The pods were all engine and gun.
They danced through space with great grace and skill. "What are
those?" I asked.

    "Those are the planetary defenses of El-Au. They are automated weapons
pods. They are piloted with complex AIs designed for the task. They are as
if the minds of the best El-Alurian combat pilots were crossed with birds
of prey and then adjusted to fly battle pods." Aaron said.

    "How did they do?" I asked.

    "Watch and see." Aaron said.

    The pods tore into the Borg cube. The cube didn't enjoy the experience.
The pods shot the Borg cube and damaged it. The cube returned fire and
missed. This happened for a few passes until it looked like the cube was in
serious trouble. Then the weapons of the pods stopped having as much
effect.

    "The Borg have adapted to the weapons." I said. Even though I knew that
it was a recording, I was rooting for the pods.

    "Uh-huh."

    The pods backed off a little and then began to attack again. Their
weapons were different, but not quite as effective as before.

    The Borg cube finally tagged one of the pods with a tractor beam. The
pod shuddered and fought, but the Borg cube relentlessly drew it in.

    "If we had known exactly what we were dealing with, we would have had
the pods destroy the captured one." Aaron said. "As it was, they
weren't programmed to. It would have felt like murder to them."

    The Borg cube was getting better at shooting pods. The pods' adjusted
weapons were having less effect.

    After a while the Borg ship began to nail the pods with every shot and
the weapons of the pods were not effective at all.

    "The Borg analyzed the pods and then they were irrelevant." Aaron said.

    "Did your world have any other defenses?" I asked.

    "Not so you'd notice." Aaron said. "Those pods were very
advanced on
your scale. That group could have held off the entire Klingon battle fleet.
We didn't think anyone was advanced enough to defeat them."

    "They did better than our fleet at Wolf 359." I said.

    "Yes, but not quite good enough." Aaron said.

    People started to pour out of the arcologies and into the woods. They
carried equipment and sometimes even weapons.

    "Evacuating the arcologies?" I asked.

    "Yes. The Borg told us that they were only interested in technology.
They were in a macroscopic sense." Aaron said. "We thought that
if you were standing away from your technology that the Borg would ignore
you as irrelevant."

    The Borg cube appeared in orbit over El-Au. From the ground it looked
just like the one that menaced Earth. Several of the small ships rose in to
sky. Some tried to fight the Borg, but they didn't last long. Some tried to
flee. The Borg shot them anyway. A few made it.

    The cube quickly tractored the big arcology buildings into orbit and
consumed them.

    I couldn't help it. I raged and shouted at the Borg. I looked for a
weapon. I found someone's blaster, dropped on the ground during their
flight. I grabbed it and emptied it into the sky at the Borg. I was
completely hysterical.

    Then El-Au was stripped of all technology. Most of the population was
standing around in the woods in various states of shock or mourning or even
rage. Then the Borg cube started firing on the people. We all ran or hid or
tried to find some way to fight, but it was useless

    -*-

    The Borg cube was well on the way to scouring El-Au of all life forms
when I found myself in Rosinante, screaming.

    It took me a few moments to calm down. As I came down, I could feel
accumulated sweat and tears. I was exhausted. I felt a little sick and my head hurt.

    "What happened?" I asked Aaron. He didn't look much better.

    "What do you mean?" He replied.

    "The Borg are said to take technology but ignore life forms. Individuals
are irrelevant to the Borg."

    "We're not sure. We guess that the Borg were, for lack of better word
impressed at how well our minimal defenses performed. They had also just
assimilated many of us. Our half made plans for recovery and revenge may
have been open to them. They elected not to leave us intact behind
them."

    "I don't understand." I said.

    "Individual El-Aurians were irrelevant to the Borg. The El-Alurian race
as a whole was not."

    "Gaah." Part of what made the Borg scary to me was that they didn't
care. All of human history and culture were useless clutter to them. No
matter what we did, we were just another race to assimilate. The El-Aurians
had frightened the Borg into an act of unimaginable violence. Was
frightened even the right word?

    I tried to relax. The nauseous feeling was going away, slowly.

    Aaron said. "That was a long trip in a short time. You're feeling the
effects of a neuro-transmitter overload. It'll go away in a while."

    "I know. I've had it done to me before." I said. "What
does all this
have to do with this colony?"

    "I would have shown that to you if I could have, but there are no
surviving records. The Federation absorbed more than it's fair share of
El-Alurian survivors. About thirty percent of us have wound up here."

    "Okay. Keep going."

    "Before the Borg destroyed our home world, we had installed some of our
people on your worlds under false identities. This gave us a certain amount
of resources. Money, access to officials and knowledge of what your
Federation was up to. After the invasion, these were turned to finding
homes and safe havens for our fellow survivors. That's when the debate
began."

    "You mentioned this debate. What was the question?" I asked.

    "The debate was whether we'd use our knowledge to upgrade the
Federation's technology. The recording and simulation you've just
experienced showed that for the Borg, absorbing our world was a challenge.
Our studies indicate that a battle fleet armed with the technology of the
battle pods might have destroyed the Borg cube. The idea was that if
properly armed, the Federation could resist the Borg."

    I was shocked. That would be the grossest kind of interference in our
development. "But we weren't ready for that technology. You have no
way of knowing the results of that kind of interference. You might have
twisted the Federation beyond recognition."

    "These were all arguments on behalf of what you might call the pro-Prime
Directive stance." Aaron said. "Many of the arguments made by
what you might call the pro-interference stance were confirmed by the Borg
at Wolf 359."

    I stopped. Eleven thousand Starfleet officers had died there. I knew
some of them. Starfleet was decimated and Earth was left defenseless.
"Could you have prevented that?" I asked.

    Aaron shrugged. "Maybe. The Borg arrived well ahead of our
predictions."

    I shook my head. "As often as I've debated the Prime Directive, I've
never seen it from this angle. Now we're the primitives."

    "What do you think of it now?" Aaron asked.

    I thought of all of the Federation's history. Zefram Cochrane, The first
big exploration and colonization push. The Great Awakening period led by
starships like the original Enterprise. The long histories of the other
worlds in the Federation. We learned more every day from the people right
under noses than we ever thought possible. I looked out the Rosinante's
ports at the Discovery. I was reminded of the Constitution. Not the first
of the starships, but the ancient one. Six hundred years old. The first
United States Navy ship. Wooden hull, sails for catching the winds. Big
iron reaction cannons. Ropes everywhere. A testament to the genius of men
working with only natural elements available to them by their bare hands.
They were as proud of the Constitution as I was of the Discovery. Each of
them represented their cultures. Each was now hopelessly primitive in its
way.

    Now take those ancient Americans and introduce them to the Federation.
The might recognize and approve some of the basic structures. They might be
awed by the new technology. However, to make the thirteen colonies members
of the Federation would be to take something away from them. They might
eventually catch up with the general level of technology, but would the
world have seemed as open to Ben Franklin or Tom Paine? Would they just
assume that whatever they could think of must have been invented before?

    Now the Federation. Would we try as hard to understand the universe if
we knew that there were El-Aurians around who had been there and done that
well before us? No. Maybe the Federation left to its own devices could one
day match or exceed the old Empires of El-Au. If the Federation was made a
colony of those old empires then we would never top them. Our spirit would
be gone.

    We had managed with a great deal of luck to survive the Borg. I had
faith that somehow, we would make it through without El-Alurian technical assistance.

    "I think that you survivors should butt out, frankly." I said.


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