Sojourn

B'Elanna

Later, during a much needed coffee break....

After the Doctor and Inquirer had managed to get the Defiant out of it's limbo, my entire universe had become those volunteers with any engineering experience and the Defiant's vital systems, up to and including the warp engine! Oh, nothing vital enough that was an immediate threat to the ship's existence. Nothing like, say, a warp core breach in progress. Just hundreds and hundreds of little things that could , if left unchecked, eventually add up and make further travel on this "dren bucket" (to use a Farscapian term) impossible.

Right now the human volunteers were on their sleep cycle. Creator! If I and my husband, Elrond, hadn't been elves, we'd be dead to the world as well! As it was, all I and Elrond needed a rest from time to time, like this one we're having now, drinking coffee fit enough for an old style atomic reactor's coolant fluid!

Hmm, that one Roughneck volunteer, Corporal Jeff "Goss" Gossard (M.I. - Marauder Suit Spec.) (see http:// misterhook. tripod.com/ roughnecks/ characters .htm for details) had actually raved about the coffee! Do not believe I'll ever take up an offer for coffee on one of his Federation's ships. I fear for my health if I tasted it because it has GOT to be toxic waste if he likes this swill I'm drinking!

Odd tastes in food aside, "Goss" had been handy for a few jobs here and there. Now, mind you his specialty lay in Marauder suits which is a far cry indeed from Star Fleet engineering, but he was competent enough (after a bit of instruction) in fixing some of the more minor things....

As long as we didn't bring up politics (of which I found out from just casual conversation) he and the other Roughnecks have a rather strong leaning to the "right" in a lot of areas. Not to say he was fascist (hey, never think that just because a person happens to be a bit more conservative means that they're automatically Nazis....though I'd met some fools who'd. . . . nevermind). At least he was tolerant enough to allow for dissenting opinion, and . . . Ah, let's drop it. Besides religion, there were good reason for politics being a social taboo for casual talk! Just trust me when I say that as far as the Roughnecks are concerned, they're not like what Hollywood made them out to be in the movies. More like the book version, but...

Right, back to the updates. At least the Roughnecks had stopped wearing their suits inside everywhere in the Defiant. Made me nervous, all that firepower clanking about. Too easy to imagine the damage they could have done us and the Defiant...

....

Back to it.

"Starfleet bodies!" A'eitia finished up updating me on events from down below. "Being that we are elves and not humans, we didn't see ghosts, but we sensed that the elfin spirits of departed ones weren't happy about their unexpected. . .er . . . house guests."

"We used a page from Inquirer's method of operation in situations like that," Hathar'ruil says, picking up where his wife leaves off. "We did a 'hit and run'. Ti'mma, still somewhat shocked was still able to Send a message to those elves still about in the Palace what had happened, why, and perhaps they wanted to burn all these human bodies because they were disturbing that 'holy place' with their presence. All that and that we were leaving so don't stay up to greet us!

"We got the Hell out of there because we . . . couldn't stay!" he finished up. "That realm wasn't home in two ways. First it was only a mirror of our now vanished world and home before our reincarnation. Second, we've all changed and grown . . . the simple life we'd enjoyed before the 'Disaster' wasn't suited for us all now.

"We, having been unfortunate enough to have found that our com badges weren't able to connect with you all," Ti'mma adds. "We got away from the Palace but we had problems. We guessed that maybe something had damaged them or something and we grabbed a communicator off one of the bodies of the Star Fleeters. Hoping that they worked, we were happy to get in contact with Ragan whilst she was still playing Uhura up on the bridge. She told us how to get up here and we appeared just a moment after Inquirer had beamed aboard."

I and my husband had been there, with them, but it was good to know why they'd been so quiet up to now. Had kind of known, but they'd confirmed.

And with that, I and my husband were up to date after nearly a week down in the Engine room! My, we'd been busy. Either fixing things or shooing away Captain Crais (how in the heck did he get joined up with the Farscape folks, considering the history that he and Crichton had?) with his demands to get in contact with Talyn. He'd been frantic when his connection between him and the gunship was lost upon beamup and wanted us to reestablish contact and do it NOW.

We had enough on our plate just keeping the ship together, thanks. While Talyn probably is as frantic as our boy Crais, we have to do other things first. By the end of the week when we get to our dropoff point for our Quest, we'll tackle his problem. Not right now, though.

By the Creator, one thing at a time!

Sipping my coffee, I frown over something that Inquirer's tale (as told by the other elves). She and the Doctor had been busy playing peacemaker between the various groups of visitors we'd dragged up with us as brushfire after brushfire had arose when misunderstands (and other things) happened between various groups. Given the volatile nature of some within this ship, it was almost an never ending occupation!

"Uh, I was just wondering about the implications of turning all those people to elves," I begin, "given that: (1) Middle Earth's own ruling 'deity' (what passed for a god I'd say, but I'm biased) The One, I remember, had decided that the next age was to "be an age of men" (or some similar wording). (2) with the failing of the three elven rings caused by the One Ring being destroyed, all that had been done with them was going to fade, and elves had a choice of either their culture declining or of going into the West. (3) Arwen's decided to accept mortality so she can marry the human Aragorn, and now suddenly he's an elf."

"Of course," my husband added, "any or all of those things could be different in that universe. Maybe the One (I'd call him the Creator, but like you I'm rather religiously biased) had a change of heart and allowed the change to happen. Maybe like so many other times, the arrival of a Champion had heralded a vast change in fortune. Who knows. Honestly, I don't feel like going back down to that Middle Earth just to satisfy my curiosity over the matter."

It was kind of a Prime Directive thing, you know. Don't think the Doctor gives two copper pennies about that Star Fleet rule, but he respected us enough to not force us into such an awkward situation.

Still was rather fond of Star Fleet and the Star Trek Federation, despite Janeway...

"As for Arwen,"he finishes. "Rather doubt that this sudden change amongst the humans will leave off at just humans. I might be wrong but I fear that the Middle Earth brand of elves will change into Terra Prime variants and THAT means that Arwen’s choosing mortality will be null and void. Terra Prime elves like us don’t age."

"But what about this business with axiom wash,"Ti’mma asked, thinking of something. "Does it just end with Middle Earth?"

....

"Yes,"I say, after consulting some facts and figures I’d remembered seeing from sensor logs taken on the planets below. Of all of the Earthlike worlds, only Middle Earth showed signs of that Torgian event. The rest were alien enough in their own ways (the Farscapian ones had some differences that I believe, scary as it is, would allow for those wormhole weaponry that Betty had talked about to us after "our"Crichton and his friends had left the TARDIS.

Nightmares like that were possible in the Whoniverse, but took a lot more know how than what OUR Critchon had inside his skull!

And as it stands I and the others are going to be hard pressed enough just getting the Farscapers and the Roughnecks BACK to their respective realities.

The records are in the Defiant’s sensor logs, but we’re going to be needing a LOT more assets than we have right now at hand to cypher it all out. Afraid that we’re going to have to hand them off to some friends back on Babylon 5, who owe us a few favors.

They’ll get the exact coordinates from the muck inside the sensor logs and we’ll use the TARDIS herself to drop them all back off where they should be left. Drop them off and leave them all to figure out their own lives for themselves. That’s what they need to do for themselves. We can’t and won’t play god.

So....later, at the end of the Quest.

We drop off the components to the awaiting Rules and Agents after getting a few facts. Yes, we get confirmation from the Celestrials that indeed the ultimate goal all of all this mess is one last jab at the Demons by taking yet one more set of victims of theirs (i.e. the proto- Dark Elves who’d been tricked into their clutchs, the Artizza and Fertal who’d we’d met down down in those caverns at the beginning).

Oh, don’t ask me to explain how just or not just it had been all that shit had been to them. The torture with the knives while they’d been in the Demon’s clutches had been brutal but from myths and legends of similar events where mortals had been swept up into that realm (few though there are), if a mortal is able to resist they’d win free and be returned to the mortal realms. It would mean that "our"Artizza and Fertal would be changed back into mortal humans.

Of course, that would have been hard for them. See, their change into elves had been very . . . agreeable to them and it would be very difficult to walk away from all that. But I believe that given the choice of all that (but losing their souls all that was good inside them) or living out their lives as human beings . . . . believe they’d rather be humans than Demonic puppets. Rather human than members of some kind of Germanic version of the Unseelie Court...

That’s the caliber of people both Artizza and Fertal were (and still are). But now they don’t need to make such a choice. Right before they’d disappeared with the Rule and Agent (they’d been restored so they could have a say in matters), they’d expressed a real interest in joining up with our clan, Eternity Inc. So they could stay elves (proto-Dark Elves, but elves) and remain both unaging and immortal to boot!

So, after the dropoff we find ourselves, the visitors, the Defiant, and the TARDIS find themselves at the Babylon 5 space station...

Contacting an old balding friend named Garabaldi, Inquirer asked for a favor and soon a lot of techs are crawling all over the Defiant while quarters are provided to the Farscrapers and Roughnecks on B5. Both Pip, Chi (the nickname we’d come up to use for the Season 2 Chiana while aboard the Defiant to differentiate her from the others), and the Rygels were going to be a TERROR down in the Brown Sector on the station, I’m sure.

Sure made of terror of things back aboard the Defiant, even AFTER we’d shown them the industrial replicators. They’d made enough gems and precious metals that I’d have thought would have kept them sated, but....

Well, maybe our Chiana could be "light fingered"as the next Nebari named Chiana, but perhaps her change into a dragoness had elevated her lust for riches to something above what we all had in our quarters!

So, with a goodbye and a promise to return when we got word back from Garabaldi over what he and his friends got from the Defiant we would take them back home.

We also needed to take care of that Kirk still in the Security cell, but we let Garabaldi take care of releasing him (and figuring out how to handle the rather ticked off Captain). We’d agreed while aboard he’d be better off out of the way and out of our hair. That and he’d not left us with a good impression after how he’d drawn a phasor on the Aeryn Sun and Crichton who’d come up to the Defiant.

At least we warn Garabaldi about Kirk before we . . . fob Kirk off on him.

Ah, let's not forget we need to take care of those from Blake's universe. Young will be quartered in B5 as well pending our return (which the Doctor says something in passing that tells me that he has something more than a mere dropoff for Young). Avon and his Shadow drugs will be examined by the med staff of B5 and hopefully something can be done for both the "frellwit" and that damn drug. Failing that, Inquirer said that the Healing springs will take care of the physical addiction . . . and it should take care of the danger of him dying of withdrawl.

Betty hasn't told me if there was mental addiction, so I don't know if he'll still crave the drug even after we cure him. But we'll take it as it comes, later.

Need to get all these other new Quests out of the way before we can concentrate on the visitors (which includes Avon).

Well, we manage what we can but we need to get back to Terra Prime. Frankly I and the other magic based folks feel like "dren" here in the reality of Babylon 5. It’s rather short on magic...

Besides, we need to get back there because the Celestrials had been kind enough to send our new friends (as well as some of our old ones) ahead. So while there, later, we'll find out that Inquirer's mother, Evis 7, had taken a shining to them and was presently enjoying a chat with them over . . . this and that. Giskard had been more than a little amazed and delighted at the turn this conversation had taken when the Brig mentioned having read Foundation and Empire. Their hostess had replied that that socio-equation for predicting human civilization development/behavior had apparently been one of the many things left behind in a special spaceship crash near Groom Lake (aka Area 51). Point in fact, it was one of the things that said the best course of action for long term survival for the Military and Alliance folks was to integrate themselves into the Federation of Piccard's time. Very fascinating stuff, considering that while still a Robot Giskard had thought such was possible . . . .

1. So down upon Terra Prime the TARDIS materializes and Chiana sees the other Sigins (and their loves) for the first time . . .

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