Datarecord: 2/12, 2ndry adjunct unimatrix 07 (pending reassimilation/reclassification)
"Aww, come on," I say in wheedling tones. "I need to be down there already. They're expecting me. Come on, I've got impressionable young minds to mould." I follow that one up with my best manic grin.
The big Andorian */*species 4464*/* transporter chief looks completely unimpressed. "All reception pads at the Academy are fully booked," Chief Ch'Shen says. "We don't have clearance to bump any of the incoming visitors to make space for you. Take a number, sir, and wait your turn."
Every so often, this happens. The transporter rooms at the Academy are always fully booked, what with students bunking off and heading back in a hurry, and doting parents looking in to tuck their offspring up in bed, and visiting dignitaries and whatnot.... And, sometimes, the Chief gets all stickler-for-duty and starts enforcing the rules, so you can't charm him into jumping the queue.
*/*whole system is inefficient---
transferring data by direct neural connection obviates need for learning institutions---
family ties are irrelevant---
collective effort and collective knowledge are superior in all respects*/*
Quiet, you. Actually, it's a relief to hear my residual Borg half sounding so normal, spouting stock collective propaganda instead of developing a worrying personality of her own. I don't know what it was about the Tiaza Zephora business that caused that little development, but by gum I'm glad it's over.
I could try pulling rank, I suppose. Problem is, the Chief knows his job and knows his authority, and he is not going to be impressed by that, and with the redesign of Earth Spacedock, the transporter room is uncomfortably close to the boss's office, and Admiral Quinn could very easily hear me if I start shouting. I don't know about this redesign. Everything is clustered together in one big empty space... trouble is, the station took a lot of pounding, lately. They'd only just finished patching it up after Tylha Shohl blew its doors off and set it on fire during the Hegemony thing, and then the Undine attack did a whole lot more damage, and somewhere along the line, the redesign happened. I still haven't found the new version of Club 47, which is bad news when I want a drink.
But if authority won't work, flattery might. "Yes, but," I say, "you don't need to send me to the reception pads, do you? I mean, c'mon, Chief, you could put me down anywhere."
"All incoming traffic to the Academy has to be routed through the Academy's transporter rooms," the Chief says.
"Oh, right, yeah, reasons of health and safety, I know, you don't want people materializing in the middle of a wall, or a cadet. But, c'mon, Chief, that isn't going to happen with you on the controls, right? You're a professional. You're an expert. You learned your trade on the flight deck of a carrier, right?" I'm just guessing, but I'd be surprised if I wasn't right. "Compared to pulling fighter pilots off exploding ships just in the nick of time, this sort of thing is a doddle. I bet you could beam me right into a cadet's uniform without the cadet even noticing."
A reluctant snort of laughter escapes the Chief's nostrils. "All right," he says. "Just to show you I haven't lost my touch... and just to get you out of my hair... all right. This once."
"You're a prince, Chief," I say, and skip onto the transporter pad before he can change his mind.
He makes a great show of checking everything on his console, then says, "Energizing."
Bright light shimmers around me and takes me away... and then stays; bright light reflecting off the walls of the Academy, off the waters of the Bay. I blink my right eye, and the Borg implant that replaces my left clicks and stops its brightness down a notch or two.
Ch'Shen has put me down by one of the memorial plaques - well, that's safe enough, no cadet ever stops to read them more than once. It's startling, sometimes, to think how many of these memorials are to things I was around for - or, worse, missed, because I was frozen in a time-warp in the middle of the Stygmalian Rift. This is the one about the whales. I'd have liked to have seen that business, but, hey, rift.
I turn around, and catch a glimpse of myself in a reflective surface on the mess hall. It's not pretty. I have spruced myself up a bit, black dress tunic, shiny boots, combed my hair and polished my implants... but the face that looks back at me is thin and pale and old, scarred and violated by Borg technology. How the hell did I get old? I don't remember getting old.
I shake my head. Forget it, Ronnie. It's just being surrounded by all these fresh-faced young cadets that makes you feel ancient.
*/*inaccurate---
chronological age in excess of 280 Earth years---
physiological age in excess of*/*
I don't want to know. You're as old as you feel. I feel ancient. Never mind.
I walk round to the entrance of the mess hall, and I can see the two of them sitting at a table. Comparing notes, no doubt. One tall lanky scarred Andorian, one small neat red-haired Vulcan */*species 3259*/*, just what the doctor ordered. "Yo!" I yell at them.
"Ronnie," says Tylha. "Hello."
"Vice Admiral Grau." Well, from a Vulcan, that's a warm greeting.
I take a seat at their table. "You guys ready for this shindig, then?" I ask.
"We were in the process of comparing notes," says T'Pia.
"Oh, right," I say, "notes. Knew I was forgetting something. Well, I guess I'll just have to wing it."
T'Pia raises her eyebrow at me. "That is not a procedure to be recommended."
"If I were a cynic," says Tylha, "I would say that Ronnie has already rehearsed what she's going to say, down to the last detail, has it all stored in Two of Twelve's eidetic memory circuits, and can recite it word-perfect at the drop of a hat. If I were a cynic." She's getting to know me too well, that's the problem.
"Then it will not be feasible for us to compare our presentations with yours, Vice Admiral Grau," says T'Pia. "That is unfortunate."
"Oh, call me Ronnie, everyone does. Anyway, I'm not planning any surprises. This is all just, well, a ritual, isn't it? And our names turned up because someone noticed the Tiaza Zephora foul-up. Well, I suppose that's us justly punished."
"I do not see this as a punishment," says T'Pia. "Nor could I characterize the outcome of the Tiaza Zephora incident as a... foul-up."
"We did break the planetary ecosystem a bit," I point out.
"In the process of liberating the Klingon colonists from the Rift entity, and putting an end to whatever threat that entity represented. I do not think that 'foul-up' is an adequate summary." T'Pia picks up her PADD and stands. I think I like her. Not only is she very Vulcan, she's even shorter than I am, and I don't often get to loom over people.
Tylha stands up too. She can loom like anything. "Well," she says, "it's about time... let's do this. Lecture hall two."
"Lead on." Lecture hall two is... since my time. Actually, the whole place is since my time. Starting to feel old again. Stop it, Ronnie.
I troop dutifully off behind Tylha and T'Pia, trying to look businesslike and military and not worried. Tylha is right, of course, I've been rehearsing for ages, and my Borg neural circuitry... doesn't let me forget stuff. Sometimes I wish it did.
The lecture hall is like a lecture hall. Raised dais at one end, facing rows and rows of benches, soon to be filled with eager little faces waiting for our pearls of wisdom. Or hung-over students wishing they, or we, were dead. We're a little bit early - an instructor's supposed to be along soon to introduce us. In the meantime, we take our seats on the dais, and Tylha and T'Pia re-check their PADDs. And I sit back and watch the cadets filter in.
There are quite a few of them already, and they come in all shapes and sizes, to put it mildly. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, indeed. Two of Twelve is eating her assimilatory little heart out, trying to classify and species-number them all...
*/*species 5618--- 5618--- 3259--- 4780--- 5618 correction 5292--- 5618 correction 5292--- */*
waitaminute, what?
*/*species 5618 correction 5292*/*
So I take a little look at that one... and some of his mates sitting by him. To my right eye, they look just like some ordinary male human cadets, maybe slightly less pimply than most. But the Borg implant is telling me a different story...
"Guys," I murmur quietly, "we got trouble."
T'Pia quirks her eyebrow. "What kind?" Tylha asks, equally quietly.
"Three rows back from the front, on the right, group of human cadets... only according to my implants, they're not human. Holographic disguises. Two of Twelve says, species 5292. Nausicaan. Anybody upset any Nausicaans?"
"Plenty." Tylha looks disgusted.
"Whoo boy. OK, so we know they're up to no good, what've we got to stop them with? Security will take time to get here, maybe too much...."
"I have standard ground equipment in my transporter buffer," says T'Pia. She, too, is talking in an undertone. Catches on quick. I like it.
"Me, too," says Tylha.
"OK, great," I say. Transporter buffers are a neat idea; equipment suspended in transit, called up as you need it - they don't hold too much, of course, but they can hold enough. I have a bunch of fun toys in mine -
*/*inaccurate---
experimental proton beam rifle is not a toy---
unsuitable for immature members of any species*/*
Oh, can it, you. It's playtime. I stand up. "If I could have everyone's attention," I shout, "I'm sure the Nausicaan hit squad in the third row would feel much more comfortable if they took their holo-emitters off. Everyone else, take cover!"
Tylha and T'Pia are already moving as the rifle materializes in my hands. The phony cadets are springing into action, too - I can't see their guns, but I'm damn sure they've got them. T'Pia, being a science officer, is fiddling with her tricorder -
There is a piercing whine and a burst of light. T'Pia has rigged the tricorder to release a tachyon harmonic; a cone of dazzling light shoots out towards the Nausicaans, and their holographic disguises flicker, distort, and wink out. The tachyon harmonic, more usefully, rips through their personal shields, exposing them to, well -
The proton rifle makes a noise like an asthmatic wolfhound, and a bolt of blue light snaps out towards one Nausicaan. I have it set on heavy stun, and he drops, poleaxed, to the floor. I move, fast, ducking out of the way of a flash of disruptor fire from his friends. The wall behind me bursts into flames; they haven't set heavy stun. Didn't really expect them to.
There's a pop and a hiss and a sudden cloud of white fog; T'Pia has thrown an anesthezine gas grenade. Useful, but some of the Nausicaans are wearing breath masks, and others have the sense to hold their breath. There is a sudden chatter of phaser fire. Tylha has had time to rig a turret on the dais, and it is spitting more heavy-stun at the standing Nausicaans. Cadets are shouting and running for cover in all directions. I send another proton bolt at a breath-masked Nausicaan, watch him fall.
T'Pia has a gun out, now, a nasty-looking sonic AP rifle. Even on stun, it's not something I'd like to get hit with, and she is fast and accurate with it. As for Tylha, she has popped a support drone from her buffer, and is holding one of those MACO pulsewave guns, very handy in a close-quarters fight. Golden bursts of phaser light, and scarlet lines of sonic AP fire, slam into the Nausicaans. Two more of them drop.
But there's one big one, and he's wearing a breath mask, and the beams are just bouncing off his heavy-duty shield. He has a disruptor rifle in his hands, and is spraying full-auto fire in our general direction, tearing holes in the floor and the walls. He needs taking down, and fast. So I charge him.
He looks taken aback. Let's face it, if you look at me, I look more suited to asking people for spare change on a street corner than to single combat with an armoured Nausicaan pirate. But looks are deceiving, as he finds out when I kick him with my full Borg-augmented strength.
He staggers back, shields flickering, and stumbles over a bench behind him. The disruptor rifle drops from his hands. Fine by me. He screams pure rage through his breath mask, and draws a nasty-looking Tegolar sword. Less fine. He comes at me with murder in his eyes -
"Ronnie!" Tylha's voice. "Down!"
Oh, God. That MACO pulsewave thing comes with a grenade launcher as backup. Never give an Andorian a grenade launcher if you don't want her to use it.
So I dive behind the nearest bench, and the concussion is ear-splitting, but the bench stops it from being actually Ronnie-splitting, and anyway the biggest part of the blast goes straight where it's meant to, into the enemy's body. About six gallons of pureed Nausicaan flies through the air above me. Pureed Nausicaan. Best kind.
I stand up, head still ringing. The rest of the Nausicaans are down... actually, one of them - a game lad, I'll give him that - is trying to stand up. T'Pia walks up to him and pinches his neck, neatly and efficiently, and he goes down and stays down.
"Hope you were paying attention, class," I remark to the world at large, "because there may be a test later. The basic lesson is, Science evaluates and assesses the threat, Engineering deploys resources to counter it, and Tactical kicks seven different kinds of butt. And where the hell were you guys?" A security team is making its way into the lecture hall. "Off on a tea break?"
"Sir." The security lieutenant looks nonplussed, as well he might. "We came as soon as...."
"Take them into custody," Tylha snaps. "But first -" She goes up to one of the Nausicaans, who is groggily regaining consciousness. "The war is over," she snarls.
The Nausicaan glares up at her. "Governor Gvochkorr sends his regards, Shohl," he says.
Tylha's face sags; for a moment, she looks as old as I do. "Yes," she mutters, "I thought it would be something like that." She gestures to the security team. "Take them away."
---
Well, of course it's not that simple, it never is. Long hours of incident reports and depositions follow, and by the time Security actually lets the three of us go, we get to watch a fine Earth sunset over the bay.
"So who's Gvochkorr?" I ask Tylha.
"Military governor of Gimel Vessaris." She kicks moodily at a pebble. "Or was, until we took it back. My home planet," she adds.
"The war, as you say, is over," says T'Pia. "This Nausicaan is behaving irrationally."
"Well," says Tylha, "they do that. Warrior culture... sometimes pride overrides their rationality. I know," she adds, with some feeling.
"A diplomatic protest will no doubt be made," says T'Pia.
"Don't know how much good it'll do," mutters Tylha. She gazes out, over the bay, at the dying light of the day.
Then the light suddenly, briefly, gets much brighter, and there is a sharp hissing noise.
"Whoo!" says Q. "Finally, I get all three of you together."
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