by David Smith
Changing tack, he asked “Commander Mengele, what’s the situation with our list of injuries?”
“The Captain is weak. The continuous ejaculation has resulted inconsiderable weight loss, dehydration and low-blood pressure, but that’s nothing we can’t control. I’ve splinted his penis and am trying various tissue repair techniques while keeping him sedated.”
“Commander Joynes is still in his quarters, although he keeps contacting Security to report disturbances. Apparently, the pink rabbits invited a few friends around, word got out on social media and a bunch of weasels turned up. Joynes had to call in some hedgehogs as muscle to back him up. He believes the situation is now under control. Commander Cassini is still comatose with very little sign of brain activity….”
“So what’s new?” muttered Deng.
“…but the prognosis is positive. He will make a full recovery but I will be keeping him sedated for quite a while yet. Lieutenant-Commander Romanov has come out of her coma, and her body is responding to treatment, but she is still very weak. Fortunately, I believe that given time she will make a complete recovery. Most of the engineers have been discharged and are back on duty although several of them still have injuries that restrict them to light duties. As well as the very large numbers of trauma victims from the crash stop, there are still various crewmen suffering from the effects of drowning from the incident on Deck 6, and we still have several crew-members with various infectious sexually transmitted diseases in isolation. In total, thirty-eight still in sick-bay and about one-hundred and sixty, including yourself, still requiring treatment for minor injuries.”
“Thank you, Commander” said Dave. “So to sum up, the crew is battered and bruised, the ship is a wreck, we’re completely out-gunned and there’s no sign of reinforcements from Starfleet or the Sha T’Al. And we’ve run out of haggis, too.”
“We’re going to have to think outside the box here. We’ll reconvene in twenty-four hours. I need a full status report on the ship and the crew and I want everyone to consider alternative strategies. Dismissed.”
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For his part, Dave decided to see if the Science team had discovered anything useful in the database obtained from the Sha T’Al. Down in the A&A Lab he found O’Mara, L’Amour and Selassie all gathered around a flat topped console which was projecting an image of Tana space above it.
“So, what have we discovered about the Tana that’s new?” he asked the assembled team of scientists.
Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara answered.
“Quite a bit actually, but as we know next to nothing about them, that’s no great surprise.”
Lieutenant Selassie took over: “The Tana are a true Empire, with a hereditary Imperial family, supported by a Senate which is in essence their civil service. Equal to them, but considerably more numerous, is the Militia which governs their armed forces. It’s an exclusively patriarchal society, with a near fascist mentality. The females of the species stay at home and raise the brood, while the vast majority of males join the armed forces to protect and expand the empire.”
A frown crossed her face “Their numbers are incredibly small. The Sha T’Al estimate there are only two billion Tana, but they seem to be continually attempting to expand the Empire. They’ve currently colonised about one-hundred and twenty systems many of which are fabulously wealthy in terms of minerals and materials. They’ve annexed the same amount again, but don’t seem to have landed anything other than a flag party of a few dozen Tana to claim the territory. With their limited drive technology some of these invasions must have taken years to accomplish. The males seem to commit their entire lives to conquest, and it appears that many of them never make it home to see the families their partners raise.”
“I don’t get it.” said Dave “Expansion of an Empire is normally driven by need or greed. They either need the living space for their expanding population or the want the wealth and power the conquered territory can bring them. If they don’t need breathing room and can’t be bothered to exploit systems they’ve already annexed, what’s driving them?”
“Beats us, too” said O’Mara with a shrug, “we’ve never seen anything like it to draw comparisons from.”
Lieutenant L’Amour went through her findings, standing far closer to Dave than she needed to. She reached into the centre of the holographic display, touching a particular star. The display changed, zooming in to reveal an individual star-system, then again to pick out the Tana home-world which was a small blue-white globe showing oceans and continents much like those of Earth.
“The Tana home-world is an Earth analogue, although a near circular orbit gives a much more uniform climate. Genetically and physically they’re very similar to ourselves, even down to having twenty-three chromosome pairs with DNA based exclusively on carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen.”
She seemed quite excited by her research “It’s an uncanny proof of Hodgkin’s theory of convergent evolution: In an environment almost identical to ours, they’ve evolved to fill the same ecological niche. Their world is a tiny bit more massive, with 1.09 surface gees, so they’re a little stockier than us. Sha T’Al data shows the average across the species is 1.65m tall compared to humans being 1.75m tall with approximately the same body mass. It’s made them bipedal, humanoid, omnivorous and very intelligent.”
Dave considered how similar these four factors made the Tana to the crew of the Tiger: three out of four wasn’t bad. He was stirred from this line of thought when Lieutenant L’Amour very discretely placed a hand on his bum and gave it a bit of a squeeze.
He jumped and moved away from her, but she stared at him, completely untroubled, and gave him a little wink. Clearing his throat, Dave asked “What about their technology?”
O’Mara took up the story “Similar to ours, but not as evolved. They have warp-drive, but it’s at least one generation behind ours. I doubt they’ve got anything like dilithium focussing. We’ve already seen that their weapon and sensor technology isn’t as advanced as ours, although they seem to be on a par in terms of communications, with systems almost identical to ours.”
Dave interrupted “I thought they couldn’t communicate with us?”
“It’s not that they couldn’t. They just chose not to. Ignorant rather than incapable” shrugged O’Mara.
L’Amour continued: “They don’t seem to have transporter technology, although the Sha T’Al found indications that they’re working on this. Their computers and interfaces are almost identical to ours which I suspect is a reflection of their very similar physical characteristics.”
“So essentially they’re nearly identical to ourselves, but are slightly behind us technologically. Anything else?” asked Dave.
L’Amour scratched her head and sidled back up to Dave pressing herself against him in almost cat-like fashion. “Only a sort of recurring theme throughout the data. They seem to have very little imagination. They’re a much older race than us, but have developed more slowly, which I would attribute to a lack of ability to think laterally or imaginatively. Reminds me of a guy I used to go steady with…” she mused.
Dave smiled and eased himself away from the little kiwi again “I didn’t think you were the type for a steady relationship?”
“Cheeky!” She smiled, “I’ll have you know I was in the second year of a very stable relationship before I was assigned to Tiger.”
“I apologise for my assumption. Who is the lucky man? Are you finding it difficult to maintain a long distance relationship?”
“The lucky man is the Brisbane Boomerangs Rugby Union team. The first team are fine with me being out here, but a few of the reserves and the back-room boys gave me a hard time over it” she giggled.
Dave was temporarily speechless and was unsure if the nubile young Lieutenant was teasing him. He was now at the opposite end of the console from where he’d started but Lieutenant L’Amour was still chasing him around, pressing herself against him in a very pleasant but very un-
professional and slightly disconcerting manner.
Shaking her head as she watched L’Amour tease the ExO, Lieutenant Selassie continued: “Anyhow, getting back to the Tana, they don’t seem to have any recognised art forms, literature, or music. Even in simple things such as decoration, they tend to stick with a family or corporate colour, do everything within that one shade, and go out of their way to make everything match as closely as possible. As an example, everything in their Militia is grey: uniforms, equipment, fixtures, fittings, ships inside and out.”
“No wonder they don’t mind staying away all the time: what the hell would they talk about if they did go home?” Dave joked.
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Later in the day, Dave visited the brig following up an inkling of an “alternative strategy”
"PO Park, I have a proposition for you" Dave said.
"All of the highly illegal activities that you undertook whilst working for Chief Money are logged on the ship's computer, but only the fake half of the system that has now been isolated and quarantined."
"In our previous conversation, we discussed Chief Moneys plan to control the link between the sub-space relay station and Tiger using a transmitted computer virus. I want you to finish what the Chief started. Find us a way to create a link between us & the computer of the Tana vessel that’s heading our way. If you can do that, I'm happy to let you expunge your name from any incriminating records still in the fake computer interface."
Park's face lit-up, but then darkened to a frown.
"If I do that, I'll also destroy much of the evidence you have against Chief Money", Park added, obviously feeling guilty.
"True" said Dave, "but only you and I will know that......"
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Twelve hours later, Dave was in Engineering. Park and Chief Deng were stood over the PILOCC's console making detail adjustments to the plan when Dave arrived. To one side, Ensign Arse stood immobile, his eyes glazed over a familiar blue.
"We think we've cracked it, ExO" said Deng as she caught sight of Dave.
Park continued "When the comm system opens a line to a vessel of non-federation origin, the first thing it has to do is harmonise its outputs and inputs with the other ship, otherwise any comm data transmitted will just be noise. To do that it transmits a series of standard data patterns until it gets a response from the other vessels. Once it gets a nod, it focuses on that pattern and expands it, transferring information like data formats for images, video-comms, documents, transfer limitations, interrupt protocols etc."
"One of the standards is for executable files, so things like the nature of our operating programmes are laid out so their computer understands them. What we have is a programme which puts a back door in that piece of data. We transfer that data with a priority rating, then immediately operate it, before their system can put fire-walls in place. We transmit a hack programme which stops all data transfer and locks out the Tana interrupt request system which means we have control of their computer.”
"Their computer will fight back by trying to interrupt our data flow using anti-viral protocols, or failing that, by physically over-riding the comm system to stop data transfer. However, this will happen so quickly, it'll be impossible for the Tana crew to react fast enough. The back door is tiny, as it needs to be unnoticeable when it's installed and that limits how much data we can squeeze through it, so it'll then be straight race between our computer and theirs: Ours will be trying to overwrite their operating system to give us complete control, theirs will be trying to shut the back-door, or power down and reboot itself."
Deng interrupted "We don't have any details of what's installed on the Tana vessel, so there's an element of risk in this, but everything we've seen of the Tana gives us confidence that our computer is quicker than theirs."
"So it all comes down to the PILOCC?" asked Dave slightly nervously.
Deng and Park exchanged glances "Err.....well.....yes." said Deng.
There was a pause while the implication of this sank in.
“Wonderful” said Dave “and how is Susan feeling today?”
There was another awkward exchange of glances between Park and Deng.
“She’s…… a bit busy” said Deng nervously.
Dave shook his head, almost dreading the reply he’d get to the question he had to ask: “Susan, what queries do you have running currently?”
“There are currently four queries taking up significant proportions of my capacity”
“Lieutenant-Commander Beauregard has lodged a query concerning the Tana Scout vessel and the data of our conflict with that ship to extrapolate the likely capabilities of the larger vessel.”
“Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara has a lower priority query concerning possible interactions between a given list of chemicals and the body chemistry of the Sha T’Al test subjects.”
“In accordance with my programming to learn and grow as an individual I have logged a request to myself to investigate fully Sections Four and Five of Starfleet Regulations, which concern offences and punishments”
Dave was surprised. He’d never considered that the computer might be literally thinking for itself, and even then, the subject matter was something that was quite obviously irrelevant to the computer itself.
“Why have you chosen to undertake that study?” he asked.
“I seem to have a flaw in my database. I assumed I had full knowledge of all Starfleet Regulations, but this would not appear to be the case. I am therefore researching all case law and precedent in the stated areas”.
“What makes you think your database is flawed?”
“Standard operating procedure requires me to review all authorities and permissions on reboot, which I was obliged to do by a power failure after the ship’s warp-field collapsed. I was obliged to request access to certain secure files from Chief Deng as she is currently the ships Senior Engineer. Permission was denied when I requested access to Commander Joynes standing mission orders”
Dave threw Deng a puzzled look, but she shrugged her shoulders, managing to look even more puzzled than Dave was.
The computers personality matrix detected the conflict between the ExO and the Chief and Susan expanded on her statement:
“To quote Chief Deng, “Don’t bother with Joynes, he’s still going to be stoned”. I am unable to find any reference in Starfleet text relating to this form of punishment”
Dave shook his head, but it was late, he was tired and he really couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“Most importantly, 42% of my capacity is currently engaged on an A1 priority request from Chief Burns.”
“Susan, A1 requests are only allowed for issues related to the immediate safety of the ship or crew, or in line with the priority rating of orders direct from Command.”
“That is correct, Lieutenant-Commander Hollins” replied the computer in an extremely condescending tone.
“So what has the Chief requested that is a matter of life and death?” asked Dave, completely bemused.
“Members of the crew are at risk of starvation due to their inability to digest or even retain haggis. He has instructed me to find methods by which haggis can be made palatable for the entire crew.”
“And that’s taking up 42% of your total capacity??” asked an astonished Dave.
“I believe you’ve eaten haggis, therefore you should understand what a challenge I’ve been given!” said Susan testily.
Sighing, Dave elected to humour the computer.
“Susan, as Executive Officer USS Tiger, could I ask you to restrict priority on the queries from yourself, Chief Burns and Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara to no greater than B1 rating?”
“Well since you’ve asked nicely, of course you can!”
“Thank you” said Dave with a groan of relief.
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The following morning the senior officers re-convened in the Officer’s Mess to discuss options for their predicament.
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br /> Dave took a status report first, but it was uncomfortable material.
The ship had been badly damaged by the failure of its warp drive. More power relays had blown, including the primaries of the inertia-dampers. Dave breathed a sigh of relief that the back-ups had held; they’d cut in a nanosecond after the failure of the primaries, limiting the acceleration of the crews bodies to a few meters per second. If they had failed too, every member of the crew would have been subjected to the full force of the deceleration and been reduced to a red stain one-atom thick on the bulkhead immediately forward of where they’d been when the drive failed.
The phasers could be put back into service, but their power ratings required the relays that were also needed for the shields, integrity fields and navigational deflector. Some of these systems would have to be given the repaired / re-repaired / re-re-repaired relays and thus be put at greater risk of failure.
The warp-drive could be repaired, courtesy of yet more raw dilithium from Lieutenant L’Amour, but the core containment had cracked, and Deng had been forced to seal it with hundreds of layers of duct-tape and cable-ties. The tuning of the warp-field would take longer than the actual repairs and Deng was not certain she could achieve it within the eleven days until the Tana battleship caught up with the Tiger.
The worst news was still to come. In any event, the drive systems had taken an absolute battering and the core containment was marginal at best. Driving the ship to anything over warp five would inevitably lead to failure of the containment, leading to the loss of the core and the ship as a consequence. There was no way they could out-run the approaching Tana battleship.
The whole of the warp-drive system was patches upon fixes upon bodges and at some stage something would probably fail catastrophically, disabling or destroying the Tiger.
They still had three viable long-range probes of the type they’d converted into makeshift torpedoes, but two of these were still flying loops of the border area to give the Tiger advanced warning of anything coming their way. ASBeau had five remaining “personal tactical nukes”, although he begrudged using all of them. They were, after all, part of a lovingly assembled collection of 21st century death and destruction. Ironically, it transpired that Chief Belle also owned two PTNs. She too was loathe to part with both: her kitten, Topsy, habitually slept on the one she kept under her bunk.