A Thorny Problem

Posted on Sun May 24th, 2020 @ 1:30am by Lieutenant Commander Mara Ricci & Master Chief Petty Officer Ryan Terry & The Narrator

Mission: S2:2: Best Laid Plans
Location: Canopus Station, Small Craft Bay Alpha
Timeline: A little time after Second Time Charmer

The shuttle felt cold, both literally and figuratively. From its thorn studded exterior and dark hull, an icy chill radiated as a rime of frost could be seen condensing out of the air to glitter on it. There was also a sense of malevolence to it, as it's tapering tail section and open rear hatch radiated a soft amber light from within. Inviting, warm, a place to shelter from the cold.

A pair of Marines, newly arrived from the SFMCS Normandy as part of Commodore Grissom's Task Force, stood guard along with the engineers present. The fact the Marines were in full hard shell battle armour, their faceplates lowered and servo assistant joints humming every now and then, said something about the threat potential expected here.

And the fact the Marines stood with Ryan and Mara between them and the shuttle said a lot more.

Studying her tricorder readout, Mara wasn't gaining any more information than what they could see. "I can't even tell you how badly I want to see the inside of this ship," she told Terry.

Instead of replying, Terry simply bent down and picked up his large Engineering tool kit and advanced on the Marine that looked like he or she might be in charge. "You. You're in charge here, right? Master Chief Terry Ryan, Structural and Environmental Specialist. The big Boss upstairs wants us to take a look at this ship, if you'd be so kind to step aside, and we can do just that." He offered a beefy free hand and gave a large smile.

The laser proof coating on the armoured visor hid the face away, but there was the slight murmur of a voice speaking on the other side of it. With odd synchronicity, the two Marines stepped aside and gestured the Myriad shuttle.

"I am to inform you that any loud utterance will result in our immediate arrival to investigate," the Marine Terry had been talking to said, the voxsponder of his suits sound system turning his voice into a metallic machine buzz. Maybe these weren't troopers at all, but the Infantry Drone's that had been the talk of military theories up until Mars got turned into a camp stove. "You two play nice and go hotwire the rich kid's car."

Mara blinked in surprise. "I did not expect to be allowed on it," she admitted. "All right, let's go," she told Terry and carefully ventured forward.

He reached down and hefted his heavy tool kit and walked beside of her without glancing at the Marines. "This is going to be fun."

The ramp up to the interior of the shuttle lead into a spacious looking hold. The walls were a smooth soft amber in colour, emitting an autumnal light into the space. A trio of seats designed for the specific needs of the three unique biologies of Haztor's entourage. A humanoid chair for the Sishimi, a tall bar stool like set up for the scholar's long limbs, and something suitably robust and armchair like for the Abalatory Hive called Cadence. And on the opposite wall was a slender alcove pressed into the bulkhead, like the impression of a handprint in wet sand.

The air within was warm, stifling almost, a direct contrast to the frigid air rolling off of the spike-covered exterior of the shuttle.

"This is far less interesting than I had anticipated," admitted Mara, still scanning the ship's interior. "There's nothing really surprising in here. Except, you know, lack of controls. He must control it with his mind."

"Or sitting on one of these chairs activates a console," Terry said as he took his tricorder out and began to scan the chairs, then the walls and every other area.

Her first instinct was to sit in one of the chairs and see what happened, but she decided against that almost at once; sitting in an unknown chair seemed incredibly unsafe at the moment. "And undoubtedly bio tuned to whoever sits there anyway," she replied.

There was a sound of a snapped twig, a dull crack, and the air turned heavy with potential energy. Like a leaden thunderstorm sky, the interior of the shuttle became charged with curling waves of static electricity. And then three things happened. The first was the ramp rose up and sealed into the hull, closing the shuttle and the two Starfleet crew members within. The second was the amber-coloured walls of the shuttle suddenly turned transparent, revealing with glass-like clarity the small boat bay beyond and the two startled Marines.

And thirdly...the shuttle rose up and exited neatly from the small boat bay into the vastness of space.

The power readings were off the scale on Terry's tricorder and he fiddled with it, but got the same results. "Commander, this thing has the power of a Sovere..." he trailed off as the interior changed and his short blonde hair decided it looked better spiked as the static electricity rolled through the shuttle.

Then he blinked as the ramp closed and blinked again when it turned transparent. However, when it started to rise, he ran for what had been the ramp and tried every Engineering bypass he could think of to open it. "Oh shit..."

An expletive shared by the two Marines left in the docking bay, who knew even with the armour data logs, would still be blamed for what was happening.

The Myriad shuttle quickly accelerated away from Canopus Station, arcing through traffic lanes and pickets with nimble little bursts of controlled thrust. That was another thing the tricorders were picking up, the shuttles motive force wasn't reaction-based. It was actually creating an area of pinched gravity ahead of itself so that it was being pulled along a given vector.

Fascinating, but as the tangled thorns studded arms of the Myriad Thorn Ship appeared, moving over them like the bows of a great gnarled tree, it was less enthralling.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" shrieked Mara angrily. This was the second time she'd been kidnapped since coming to this godforsaken galaxy- or star cluster or whatever you wanted to call it- and she vowed that if she ever got back to Canopus, she would leave for Earth and never leave that sweet sweet planet again.

Okay, so she knew that was a lie, but if she lost a leg this time, she was going to take off her prosthetic arm and beat Ingram over the head with it.

"Avoid these... whatever they are," she said, slapping one of the thorns away from her face. "And just let the tricorders record."

The shuttle flew into an open reception bay in the side of the Thorn Ship, landing easily. The rear hatch opened, allowing cool breathable air to flow within from the outside. OUtside within the reception bay, were stacked rows of carefully stowed shuttles. Not a single one was the same as the last, each reflecting a different design philosophy, whilst others were of a totally different level of technical prowess. Some were also aged, their hulls brittle from many hundreds of years of time.

"Do... do you suppose they'll believe that we were just curious?" Mara asked apprehensively.

"I say we go in bold and act like we were sent here from Haztor to exam their tech," Terry whispered as he checked his tool kit for anything that could be used as a weapon. There wasn't much. "What do you say?"

"Or an information exchange!" Mara replied. "Not everything, of course, but just a little bit- enough to interest them, but not enough to really tell them anything. And then after a bit, we tell them to send us back. Let's try it." She hesitated, then motioned for him to go first.

Of course she wants me to go first, Terry muttered mentally as he hefted his toolkit and programmed his tricorder to record his death, then marched off the shuttle.

Once he was through the door, Mara followed, feigning confidence, and looked around. "Well, I'd have thought they'd have someone here to greet us, wouldn't you?" she asked, doing a very good job of acting surprised. "Unless they weren't informed that we would be arriving."

There was indeed no one there to greet or direct them. There were the carefully racked wall of shuttlecraft, the open maw of the reception bay's entrance with a frosty atmosphere certain keeping the air in. The only other openings in the bay was a high vaulted arch, leading into an autumnal coloured corridor.

Well, now what? Should they continue playing their 'we came by order of one of you' ruse or start scanning? Mara opted for both. She restarted her scans and looked around the bay. "Maybe we should wait here," she said, forcing uneasiness into her voice. "I'd hate to be accused of trespassing. Maybe they're just occupied and will be with us shortly."

He glanced at the Commander and realized that he was indeed the meat of this particular mission and shrugged his large shoulders. "They brought us here. Or something did, and we haven't been vaporized, eaten or sold yet, so let's go see if they put out a welcoming buffet," he said as he headed down the autumn colored corridor.

“Hey!” Mara called after him. “Wait! Don’t go- argh!” And with one last quick look around, she followed after him, muttering under her breath the whole way.

Every few meters an archway leading off of the corridor. Most of them were sealed by heavy doors of burnished metal, decorated in frescos and lithographs of alien worlds and scenes. But after a few minutes, they passed by an open door. From it a baleful red light emitted, seeming to turn anything it touched into a monochrome of red and black. Within was another high ceilinged chamber, narrower in width than the shuttle bay and maybe forty meters long. Within was the source of light, strung from the ceiling like the glow lights in a hydroponic garden. Each conical emitter projected a cone of red light.

And standing within each cone was a person.

The variety and array of species on display were staggering. Humanoids of every description, from the scaled to the feathered, the furred to mottled chromatophores. Eyes in a dozen biological configurations were on display, from human-like to insectile. Some had two, or one, or a half dozen. And all of them were dressed differently. Some were in nothing better than rags and hand-spun cloth, whereas others could have stepped out of a diorama at the Smithsonian on the early days of space flight. Others were more advanced, slick quicksilver suits, smooth carapace armour, or in one case a transparent gauzy material over what looked like a business suit.

Each was still, unmoving, bathed in the sticky treacle-like light.

“No,” said Mara, shaking her head vigorously. “Hell no. No information is worth this. I’ve already lost an arm, I don’t need to be stuck in one of these things for the foreseeable future, too. I’m going back to the shuttle and hoping for the best.” And with that, she turned on her heal and started back down the corridor.

"Commander Ricci!" Terry called as the woman turned to leave. "I think these people are still alive!" he said as he scanned the cones. "In some type of suspended animation. We have to help them."

That stopped Mara in her tracks. “What?” she demanded, turning once again and positively storming back to where he stood. “Some of them are children! Or at least I think they are. It’s hard to say when you haven’t encountered the species yet, but those two over there. They look awfully young.” She glances at the readout and then studied the room again. “Do you suppose they were hurt and are being cared for? Could this be a hospital or something?”

Terry examined the beings with his tricorder while doing a visual inspection of what they were wearing. "I think...I think this is some sort of trophy room," he said, more than a little horror entering his voice at the thought of that. Entombed alive. Kept alive.

"Nothing so gauche."

The figure stepped through the doorway from the corridor, stepping around Mara and Terry, and smiled. It had Haztor's voices, and like the Myriad proxy that had walked off the shuttle, its eyes blazed like coals fresh from the fire. For a moment they might even have mistaken the proxy for a copy of the one that had walked into the conference room with Captain Ingram.

Except this one had horns. A pair of ivory rams horns curled up from the temples, framing the short-cropped white hair.

"Unlike this thing," Haztor said, gesturing to himself with a sigh. "You were a little quick off the mark, and I only had the one Human proxy made so I went something off the rack as it were. Chadrian is the name of the species, charming little demi0warp society that is having the most darling global war. Very entertaining. But, not the point. These, are not trophies. They are priceless."

He walked up to one of the cones of red light, running a hand delicately along the terminator between normal space-time and the closed curved within which one a tall figure in gleaming golden armour stood.

"This is a sentry knight of then Seventh Lunar Imperium. At the height of their power, they encompassed several worlds and over a hundred moons. Their art, history, technology...trinkets now, little more than keepsakes. But this. Basaanikka, the Seventh Blade of the Brotherhood Of The Crescent. Poet, inventor, philosopher king...he was the father of the modern enlightenment. His treaties on any subject universally regarded as truth without equal," Haztor said. He then turned to Terry and Mara. "Would you like to talk to him? The last of his kind, the very last whisper of an echo many kilo years dead? The secret he could provide you? Weaknesses that only his mind might know about the Myriad. Technology that could catapult your civilisation to dominate over your entire home galaxy. All yours, to share or hoard...and all you need do, is meet my price."

“Ah... no,” replied Mara nervously. “No, that’s not why we’re here.” Her shoulders straightened and she became more confident. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Mara Ricci of Starfleet, United Federation of Planets. We’re here for a sort of information exchange. We’re curious about you and thought maybe you’d be curious about us, so here we are.” She added a closed-lip smile, unsure if showing teeth would be seen as a sign of aggression.

"By walking onto my shuttle, with active sensor devices designed to absorb various spectrographic and metallurgical data. You do ask your questions in rather roundabout away," Haztor smiled, showing teeth as he did so. "I was....intrigued by your curiosity. A failing of the Myriad, I'm sorry to report. We like seeing creativity in others, watching them solve little puzzles. But...everything has a price. Everything has a value, be physical or intrinsic. The data you have...borrowed without permission? I think there might be a price to that. Though, if you are interested, I could provide you with a working model of the shuttles 'skein drive'. Its quite unlike anything your science has or will have for the next few kilo years. What do you say? The next Zephram Cochrane could be standing in this room."

"Actually, Sir," Terry began as he realized the game was up and they had no real excuses since this being in front of them flat out told them that he knew everything, including their scans of the shuttle, he figured he'd try to something higher. "How about schematics for your communications gear?" he asked while flicking at glance at the other beings in the temporal stasis and hoping he wouldn't be one of them.

“Unfortunately,” interjected Mara, “Neither is what we’re after.” She turned to Ram-Horn and motioned to Terry to keep scanning surreptitiously. “Okay, so yes, we entered your shuttle. We’re curious about you. Painfully curious! Perhaps it’s a failing of our species but we want to learn as much as we can. We thought examining your shuttle was a good way to do it. While we’re not after your Engine or Communications schematics, I could settle for something about you as a species. What motivates you? What are your customs? Taboos? Anything!”

Haztor clapped his hands together, his smile becoming a delighted grin.

"Oh, this is simply splendid! I had heard so much, seen so much of your kind in the data but to see two living examples before me...well your data troves do not do you justice! To this one, there is a brash grab for information! Bold! Forthright! The very human will to see beyond the newly visited horizon to the next! And then," Haztor turned from Terry and looked upon Mara. "There is you. Lady Nyessix, a sister of mine in the House of Foxes, reported you to the Myriad after your escape from the Sleepers Bazaar. Not quite the near thing as your colleagues sent to the trading floor, but close enough. You obfuscate the same basic request, hiding behind baffles of pleasantries and protocol."

He turned on one heel and walked from the stasis chamber.

"Come! I will offer both of you answers once, freely, to that which you seek," he said stepping into the corridor and stopping. He then gestured down the hallway. "Or you may return to the reception bay. and my shuttle will relay you back to Canopus Station."

Terry turned to follow him, then glanced at Mara. "You didn't say you'd already had contact with them," he said quietly before gesturing towards the hall. "Shall we?"

"Lets," Haztor said brightly. "Would you two like something to drink? Eat? I have shimmer wine from the mobile vineyards of Perambulation, the rarest vintage given that no city on that dusty rock has moved more than an inch in a kilo year. I'm told its sweet, but robust. With a nose of melancholy and regret."

"It sounds lovely," answered Mara honestly, nodding to Terry in answer. "But, no thank you. I'd rather just stick to business."

"So dry and to the point. You know, I'm in conversation with your Chief Diplomat on the station. Calida, an Unbound like myself. She has passion, drive, absolutely marvellous conversationalist," Haztor said with a happy sigh. "It's rare to match wits with one's contemporaries. We Myriad so rarely get a chance to meet and talk honestly with one another. I think the last Myriad I met was of the House of Suns, dreadfully boring fellow. All technical figures and designs and ambitious plans. I can't be doing with all of that if I am, to be frank with you. Where is the beauty in it?"

As he talked a tray with a glass of silvery liquid came into view. The tray of brass metal was held aloft on the thrashing writhing tail of a metallic whip, the slender thread snapping and crackling as it wriggled furiously to produce locomotion and to keep the tray atop steady. He took a sip of the shimmer wine.

"Are you sure I can't tempt you? I could try to fabricate coffee, but I'm told it's best made corporeally instead of matter synthesis. Though I would be interested in procuring a coffee plant for breeding purposes. Imbibing a cellulose-based defence mechanism as a drink, how delightfully macabre!" Haztor said. The tray snickered past them both on its razor-thin tail.

"No, thank you, and I strongly recommend the coffee," Terry said. "And how is it that you can be here and communicate with others at the same time?"

"The clue is in the name, 'Myriad'. I...huum, how best to relay this to a Bound? Imagine this body," Haztor gestured to the ram horn Proxy which, with the gesture, displayed the thumbs and three fingers of its hands. "As the right hand, and the body in the conference room with Captain Ingram, Lu'kat and Calida as the left one. In one hand I can sip wine, and with the other, I can make grand pronouncements. It is a trifle for a Myriad to be in many places at once. I am currently here with you, and currently here in a conference room on the station, and currently here within the ship's data troves and architecture, and currently here on the plains of Perambulation overseeing the removal of various sundry resources. Each current instantiation of me is separate, and each current instantiation of me is aware of the other. We are constantly threading our lives together to form a whole singular narrative. It's a skill you pick up once you depart the confinements of the flesh and blood. To become Unbound."

“In other words,” said Mara as if it were the most natural thing in the universe. “He’s ubiquitous. Like our station’s computer. Except he can leave at will.”

"Now that would be something worth learning," Terry said thoughtfully, but his species had a long way to go to evolve to that point. If ever. He had heard about some human kid that supposedly evolved, but it was also on some old flagship the fleet had back in the day. That ship had some wild stories and he doubted most of them were true.

"In a way yes, it is simpler for a Bound to think of us a single entity controlling many bodies. But it might be truer to think of us as many bodies controlling a single mind. The Haztor on Canopus Station, the one on Perambulation, and myself, are all of same instantiation, but we are also living out this moment in singular uniqueness with you. We thread these narratives together to form a whole, a tapestry of many myriad threads, Haztor chuckled at his pun.

He led them into another chamber deep inside the Thorn Ship. The space was huge, as large as one of Canopus Station's dry docks, with their entrance coming out on a balcony midway along one wall at mid-level. Within, suspended in midair along its long axis, was the bastard child of an industrial blender and a Christmas tree. Conical in form, with stepped rows of spinning, churning blades that moved silently, the machines sole function seemed to be to provide paper shredding services to the Library Of Alexandria.

"May I present the Luminal Cartographer, the means by which Myriad communication is achieved," Haztor said with a bow. "No doubt your hand scanners detected the shuttle was little more than a very powerful subspace transceiver and repeater, allowing local real-time control for the instantiation of myself on Canopus Station. But this provides a zero-lag data conduit across the entirety of Myriad controlled space and beyond. Impressive, no?"

Terry could only stare at the thing for a moment while his tricorder continued to scan. "What in the...is it sentient?" he added mentally.

"It is a machine," Haztor smiled with a chuckle. "Of course I am but a layperson, not a techno adept of the House of Suns. From what I know the blades move at such speed that they physical tap against the edge of relativity. Pushing past it, phasing in out of our space-time. Plucking information from various streams of temporal knowledge. Of course, to avoid paradox the Luminal Cartographer cannot look into the future as such, instead plucking data from 'now'. So that a thought I am having on Perambulation on the far side of Messier 4 might be relayed to me instantly here without lag. A marvellous device."

While Terry would love to get his hands on it and spend a decade or two studying it, at the moment, all he could do was give a nod and pretend he understood half of what Haztor said to him.

Meanwhile, Mara was busily studying every inch of the machine, attempting to commit as much of it’s form and what Haztor said to memory while managing to appear only mildly interesting. To anybody who didn’t know her well, she appeared almost bored, as if humoring the other two while secretly wishing she were elsewhere.

"How much for the arm?" Haztor asked, nodding his flute of mercurial wine towards Mara's artificial limb. "I could provide you with a much more sophisticated appendage, in exchange for it of you desire?"

"No thanks," said Mara quickly. "I've already lost one, I don't need to lose another." She tore her eyes away from the device, having learned as much as she could about it from just looking at it. "No, it isn't for sale. No matter how amazing a replacement would be."

"Oh it would be," Haztor said with a smile. He cocked his head to one side. "It would seem we are coming to an agreement on the station, a summit so that the Myriad might bring forth our worthies to show that our management of their worlds is beneficial and not in need of Federation intervention."

Haztor turned to Terry and Mara.

"I think perhaps the tour is over. Let us return to the shuttle and the station, and I will let you be with your gifts."

"That sounds good to me and I hope you reached a profitable agreement," Terry said, then got a thought. "Are you familiar with caffeine?"

"Familiar, yes, but I have yet been able to procure a sample of the plant or even its gene code," Haztor beamed as he led them back towards the reception bay. "As for profitable, not all transactions bear such rewards. Sometimes they are just the opening steps of a larger dance. I am one of those Myriad who enjoy that dance, I revel in the art of the deal, the final signature. The scratch of ink on parchment, vellum, hide, slate, glass...it is a symphony if you listen for it. If you have an ear for it."

"Remind me to send you a coffee plant the next time I get back to the Alpha Quadrant," Terry said, wishing a living plant could be replicated.

"If you get back," Haztor chuckled. "Who knows, you might decide to stay. Messier 4 is quite captivating."