| Inquirer:
I'd laugh about all this, if I could. Really.
It's been an….interesting week.
It's just….those D**n Star Fleeters just get on my nerves!
We rescue them, replace their….Dilithium crystals with more than adequate
substitutes (boy.…was it funny to see their reaction when we brought their
engine back online with Tiberium crystals as a substitute)! We do all this…and
we get a ration of S**t from them.
Oh, they are okay people, I guess. It's just that, sometimes…..
Sometimes they seem incredibly naïve about a few things, and easily
angered by other things.
Some of it I can understand, and can sympathize. However, Captain Janeway (both the fox morph and the human) had no call in storming into Captain Sterndeck's office and demand that the production of the "slammer" ships, the drone ships that will fly out in mass to overwhelm the remaining Enemy forces.…and crash into every last Enemy occupied world. The captain had patiently explained…several times….that the Enemy had
done so many evils….and were so bent on laying the Alliance low that there
was no choice. The Enemy thinks of human beings as being nothing more than
a source of food…or annoying smart animals. The Enemy sees themselves as
the only ones with souls…the only true people in the entirety of Creation!
They attacked our Home worlds without warning or justifiable cause. The
Alliance didn't start this idiotic war, but we're going to finish it, PERMANENTLY!
They don't like our plans for the future of home. Tough. They don't
have to live with the memory of what a hellhole Home has become! It is
more like a lawless prison…no worse! We even had coined a phrase for the
brig that is derived from Home. See, back in the early 20th century, there
used to be an old navy phrase "The U.S.S. Never Sail." It referred to a
sailor going back to civilian life, permanently. Home for the civilians
is not….very appealing to the average Military member. Life is better IN
the Military, than outside it…..if you can believe it. Military people
don't want to take leave and go to the "civilian" side of town. Military
people also don't want to go to the brig. Somewhere over the course of
the Enemy/Alliance war the brig has gotten the nickname: "Jail sail." The
slang word is derived from what I've told you.
Besides, we see the idea of "Starship Trooper" as the only way to get
things right. The company has let the education system slide to incredibly
dismal levels. What we have are people barely knowledgeable enough to push
the right button on the assembly line. Makes them easier to control, I'm
sure. You need an educated populous for democracy to work. It's none of
their business how we'll set things right. That's what their precious Prime
Directive is for (if nothing else….to stop annoying other cultures)!
They even dared to try to sabotage the computer system of the factories.
That was a laugh! We Alliance folks have striven against the Enemy with
every conceivable resource and dirty trick in the book. With over fifty
years of computer warfare under our belts, the Voyager was a little more
than dismayed that we counterhacked and copied ALL of their precious data…to
the last byte (or whatever They call their information units). The one
known as Seven of Nine look almost livid about it (I ran against her in
cyberspace….she was halfway decent there, but she was dealing with one
BORN in cyberspace….and a few dozen of my family and others AI clans…..)!
I was an Artificial Intelligence BEFORE I became a true golem through
a series of unlikely events!
All that aside, we've said and done things to get on each other's nerves.
After the third incident with injuries (we put more in the infirmary than
the reverse), Janeway put "off ship" as "off limits." I doubt that many
Voyager pukes were sad about that.
Some words I've heard them call us (the printable ones) amount to one
thing: villain.
If we Alliance folks are villains, then we are villains by necessity, and fie to them!. One person of the Voyager crew got a raw deal, however. He deserved
something for being a jerk, but…..not this….
Human Ensign Solomon was bored to tears.
There was much work still to do on the Voyager, but it was mostly small
stuff.
Besides, he almost could cut the tension in Engineering every time an
Alliance goon comes in there.
It had started when Probe, that….android?…..cyborg?….., had taken one
look at the schematics of the warpcore, and had nearly had a conniption.
Something to do with Tarin's Prophecy…and how the Company had basically
scr…..ah…..done the Military wrong by holding back a power source free
from the shackles of Tiberium.
It has something all to do with the "lifeblood" of their war effort.
Strange guys, these Alliance folk.
*Hic.*
At least they know how to throw a good party! And this is the best synthahol
whiskey I've ever tasted. Good party I've crashed…actually. Hope the Captain
doesn't' find out.
Good thing I can dismiss the effects of this stuff with a mental effort.
Right now, it's too fun to dismiss!
It's almost tastes like what the real stuff would taste like, I imagine.
"Sho…What's upa with da electronic girlfriend?" I ask. "Gotta prob with
real girls….gotta try the sytheti….the fake wones? He-he…"
The young man I had been ribbing was named Bishop. His "date" glares
down at me from the holoemitter above me as Bishop growls. He was supposed
to be a pretty good guy, decent and all. Next thing I know is that he's
got his hands around my throat, strangling the @#!$& out of me! His
friends drag him off me, and take him to a corner to calm down. Hey, it
was only a harmless joke. I made a few others like it, and nobody jumped
me for it like HE did!
The room goes quiet as the resident cynic and ship doctor of some scout
ship that had first "discovered" Terra (hah….as if it was lost to the natives!)
takes me by the shoulders and starts to steer me out the door. I don't
want to go, and start to shove him off. Lt. Bristol, nicknamed Paladin,
sighs and somehow puts me into some type of karate hold, because I find
myself on the floor…then being crabwalked out the door!
I shake my head, trying to clear it so I can whip this SOB.
Wha..? It…didn't work?
"Thasth…stuff was…..real…alkiholic?" I slur drunkenly. Good merciful
Powers above, I'm actually drunk on alcohol!
"Yes, you sorry sack of….," Erin Bristol begins, and then calms down
before continuing.
"Yes, you are VERY drunk, Ensign." Lt. Bristol says in a calmer, more
normal voice. "And I think you'll be going home now….. Eh, you've never
actually touched whiskey before? I thought by the way you went at it and
all…."
"No….drink Synthahol….from the Ferengi, can't be drunk on stuff," I
slur, slowly realizing that I'm going to be suffering…a hangover….soon!
"Fereng….the same mysterious race that had crashed out in Roswell so
long ago," Bristol says, suddenly nodding. "The one's who had somehow accidentally
gotten teleported SIDEWAYS in time when their cargo had some sort of accident
with their warp engines….."
The truth of the Alliance leap in technology (to something disturbingly
on par with us) was familiar to me, now. I see the wheels turn in Bristol's
mind. The story was now the stuff of legend back home (though until NOW
the Alliance had no real clue as to who the "Greys" had been). The ship
had crashed, and the aliens had suffered grievous injuries. Their trip
from universe to universe had been lethal, ultimately. Some of the aliens
had looked like what you'd find in what Bristol had seen on the remake
of Star Trek I, where there had been a horrible transporter accident (and
the teleportee's mangled body had been shown….after it had been snatched
back too late to save the poor SOB). Parts of the ship had been left behind,
but enough had been left to where those geniuses back at Area 51 had reverse
engineered what was left….and mated it to the Tiberium atomic reactor….that
mankind had already set up a fledgling Alliance before the Enemy had……
Bristol shakes his head, dismissing the past as past.
"Look, I'll cut you some slack for being drunk…since you didn't set
out to be that," the Alliance doctor sighs. "Just don't go around insulting
Queen Astra's sisters. Minestus was an evil fiend that had not a trace
of decency for putting her into a body that was controlled by instinct.
It wasn't nice, but….it's life here on Terra. The demifoxs up in Walants,
away from Ethiopia, have herbs to control those urges in both males and
females....but that is something that was in Walants....not there in the
Fox Forest. People were giving you not so subtle hints to shut up. Then
you make fun of my friend's choice of life loves.
"The war has been hell on us, Solomon." Bristol says softly. "We take
love in who we can…for we are human. We are more accepting of artificial
life forms than you…DON'T protest….I've seen the log entries of what you
guys thought of your Doctor when he was first turned on. He may have been
abrasive, but he's still a person. You shouldn't have even considered reprogramming
him, in the beginning.
Great, I'm being lectured to in tolerance by a guy who's part of
a group bent on genocide, I grump to myself. By a friendly fascist…sheesh.
"One….last thing," Bristol says, with an edge. "You got off lucky with
Bishop. He has the same stuff as I do…you know."
"Thes…broken downy hideout weaps?" I slur derisively. I blink as claws pop out of the fingernails of Bristol's left hand. He grabs me and holds one just…below the left ear….near the carotid artery. "No….he's got rippers," Bristol says in a low, mean voice. His voice
grows guttural (didn't somebody say he had been in a streetgang or somesuch
as….a razor guy?) "We…hava long time togetta….blood brotha from da street…ya
dig….Jafo?"
Boy….did I!
"We join up to…improve our lot in life," Dr. Bristol says, cleaning
up his accent to something acceptable in the King's English (funny how
Anglish is more Germanic than anything else on….Terra). "We both went through
reconstruction together…upgrading our cybergear….from the street trash
brand to something that doesn't cause us to be so…..crazy. Cyber-psychosis
is a….B**ch."
"Right," I squeak, frightened.
"Now, get back to your starship with it's wonderful stuff," Bristol
smiles, removing his claws from my neck. "And after you get over your hangover
in the morning…if your Doctor doesn't have anything for it….fall to your
knees and thank your god that you have it so well. Remember us Alliance
slubs….when you complain about how rough it was…Now beat it."
I run. They told me that the Alliance folk and we were incompatible….told
me!
I'll listen next time!
Bristol told me about how he handled Ensign Solomon (the human one).
That Voyager has a human analog for every furry crew member in there…..
What happens next was told to me by…..Sigin and Rosepaw. This is another
reason WHY we wanted the Voyager guys in their ship…and not about the countryside.
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