419 Choices
Once we were out of the ship, the storm we had passed through started to clear up. Bright sun almost assaulted us as the two science teams used their tricorders and found two sources of power. One where the SOS signal was coming from and another one not far away from where we landed.
“I don't feel like walking two kilometres to find the SOS signal from here.” I stated and hit my comm badge. “Captain to Main Cargo Bay.”
“Ensign Wildman here.” A man's voice responded.
“I need a cargo hauler teleported down to the planet's surface at my location.” I said.
“Aye, sir. Give me a minute to move one to the cargo transporter pad.” Wildman responded. A moment later, one of the cargo haulers that could hover and be driven appeared nearby. It looked like an open air forklift, only the forks part was a large flat area that could have a small forcefield around it to protect the cargo while moving.
“Thank you, ensign.” I said.
“You're welcome, captain. Wildman out.”
I tapped my comm badge. “Tammy, I know this might be a downgrade for your piloting skills...”
Tammy laughed. “You're kidding, right? I love these fast little things.” She said and hopped onto the driver's seat and played with the controls like Rom had back on DS9, even with the little giggles. “Officially, I'm on report for reckless endangerment after I played with one in the cargo bay.”
I shook my head at her. “At least tell me it wasn't loaded with cargo.”
Tammy gave me an eye roll. “Of course not, captain. I can't take sweeping turns and race them if there's an unstable load in the cargo area.”
“Race... you dragged Helen Kim along, didn't you?” I asked and waved for one of the science teams to climb onto the cargo area of the hauler.
Tammy smiled. “She might act reserved most of the time, then you get her relaxed and she's just as wild as anyone else.”
I climbed on and sat beside her. “How much does she bate you after your little adventures?”
Tammy laughed. “Like you wouldn't believe!”
“And you keep doing it to her.” I said, amused.
“Helen just needs someone to help her get over her shyness.” Tammy said and looked at the science team. “I'm activating the protective field, so pull all hands and feet inside the edge of the platform.”
They all did and Tammy turned it on. The three men and two women relaxed as the bue waist high wall appeared around the platform and they sat down to lean against it.
“Don't go too wild, Tammy.” I cautioned her and she gave me a look, as if asking if I was serious. “You know what I mean.”
Tammy smiled and nodded. “I'll do my best to not make things too bumpy.”
The cargo hauler rose up about two feet from the ground.
I took out my tricorder and set it to scan for the SOS signal, then held it up for Tammy to see.
“Thanks, captain.” Tammy said and added power slowly.
Instead of jumping to full speed like we all thought she would, we slowly accelerated as we moved forward. She avoided a few mounds and dips and then we were off at the top speed and it was a surprisingly smooth ride. Because the terrain was sparse, almost like a dessert, there was almost nothing that impeded us for the entire ride out to where the signal was.
“It's an airplane!” Tammy gasped and slowed us down near the old dusty thing.
It didn't look like it would have anything on it that would work, let alone be strong enough to send a signal out into space. The equipment it had wasn't that powerful, even when it was brand new, and that thing was over 400 years old.
Tammy brought us to a stop and waited for the science team to stand before deactivating the protective field, then all five of them swarmed over the airplane with their scanning equipment. It took them no time at all to find the odd power pack and the signal booster attached to the airplane's radio that was sending out the distress call.
“I guess this means we can't reclaim it for Earth.” One of the science team members said, sadly.
“No, it seems to be a relic and set here on purpose.” I said and didn't tell them I felt someone nearby and my Danger Sense was warning me we shouldn't touch it more than we were. “Get full scans of it, down to the molecular level, and we can save them and have it replicated for one of the museums back home.”
That brightened everyone up and we spent the next twenty minutes ensuring the scans were as complete as possible, minus the alien technology, of course.
“Science Team Two to Captain Janeway.” A woman's voice came over my comm badge.
I tapped it. “Janeway here, go ahead.”
“We found what appears to be a large underground cryogenics facility.” She said. “It's mostly empty, except for eight of them, with various types of humans inside.”
Tammy gave me wide eyes at hearing that.
“Various types?” I asked.
“Race, skin color, gender, and height.” She responded. “They're from around the same time period as the old truck, except the scans show the people are from a place none of us expected.” She paused dramatically. “They're all from Earth.”
“We'll be right there. Janeway out.” I said and looked at the surprised science team. “Everyone, load back up into the cargo hauler. We have a mystery to help solve.”
“Aye, captain!” They all said and we loaded back into the improvised transport.
*
“Fascinating.” The EMH, or Emergency Medical Hologram said as she went over the medical scans of the eight people with the sole nurse as an assistant. “They've been in long term hibernation and show no signs of degradation, even after all this time.”
The EMH looked like she was modelled after Lwaxana Troi, only she didn't really exist in this gender-swapped universe. The male version of her named Luxor, didn't inherit the same titles or had the same reputation, or was chosen as an ambassador for Betazed. In fact, it was his little sister that inherited everything and was the one with many husbands and several children, one of which was named Dean Troi.
“Can they be woken up?” One of the science team members asked.
“Stop!” Captain Janeway said and everyone jerked and turned to look at him. “Waking them up after so long will be shocking to them, not to mention we're inside an alien facility and we have no idea who controls it.”
“There's nothing in the computers about any of that.” Helen Kim said. “It's all function and maintaining the cryotubes.”
“There's nothing else?” Tammy asked. “Who would do that?”
“We would.” A female voice said and she was the same person Janeway had felt back at the airplane observing them. She had brought friends along this time and they had weapons pointed at everyone. “Why are you here disturbing the final resting place of the 37s?”
“Final resting place?” Janeway asked, slightly confused. “No, they're not dead.” He said and motioned to the portable hologram projection. “Doctor Chappel has determined they can be woken up safely, with little effort. I was just objecting because they are severely out of their element after centuries of sleeping.”
“That's true. They will have no concept of the way things are now.” Doctor Chappel said.
“They're not corpses?” One of the other cloaked figures asked.
“They are only in suspended animation. It's a simple procedure to revive them.” Doctor Chappel answered. “However, you might want to skip traumatizing them with the current time period. The technology level and not being dead will be bad enough.”
“Not to mention the kidnapping.” Tammy Paris added.
“Quite.” Doctor Chappel said.
Janeway let the people that had them under guard stew on that for a minute and looked at the woman that had revealed her face. “I think the more interesting question is where did you come from?”
It didn't take long for the woman to explain about the Briori, an alien race that visited Earth in 1937 and abducted some 300 humans, then brought them back to the Delta Quadrant as slaves. The humans later successfully rebelled against the Briori, whom she claimed fled and never returned.
However, she believed they were killed, since the humans at the time destroyed the ship and harvested it for its technology. How could the aliens flee without their ship? Right, they couldn't.
It was now fifteen generations later and there were more than 100,000 humans living in three cities on the planet. The last eight un-revived humans in cryo-stasis,were believed to be dead by the rest, with the later generations revering 'The 37s' as monuments to their ancestors and where they came from.
Voyager's crew members being attacked made sense, if the humans living on the planet thought the Briori had sent more members of their race after them to have their revenge for the rebellion. It made Janeway feel relief that he hadn't brought along any of the obvious looking aliens from the crew along.
Janeway then spent several minutes explaining their own predicament. Before he could get to the part where the Starfleet was sending more ships to build another space station with the means to send them back to Earth, the leader of the attackers interrupted him.
“Since you're human, and so very far away from home...” The woman said and waved at her compatriots to lower their weapons. “Your people would be more than welcome to stay here with us and join our society.”
She then went into an explanation about how they lived in three futuristic cities and all their needs were taken care of. They had spent the last 300 years learning and improving Briori technology and had progressed to nearly the same level as the United Federation of Planets. The standard of living was almost the same and people worked for pleasure and not for profit.
“Then I'll extend the same invitation.” Janeway said and explained that he had three ships that needed more crew and that anyone that wanted to volunteer for adventure, would be more than welcome to enlist and become members of Starfleet.
The woman and her friends were shocked by the offer, since it didn't occur to them that they could leave, and it started a debate over the merits of both proposals. They left the facility, which had become a pilgrimage museum over the years, and everyone entered Voyager through the lower hatch.
The human colonists weren't surprised or amazed by Voyager's technology level, which proved that their own level of tech was on par with the federation's. They went to the conference room and everyone sat around the large table and continued the debate, with the science teams asking a bunch of questions about the colonists, whom in turn asked about life in the Federation.
After half an hour, with both sides entertaining the idea of telling their people about each other and giving them the choice to stay or go, they came back around to the eight people still in cryostasis. It didn't take long before Janeway decided to let them stay with the colony.
The 37s were technically members already and forcing them to go back to Earth where everything had changed and their lives and livelihoods no longer existed. That would only sadden them and it was better for everyone if they stayed. But, they would eventually be given the choice to return to Earth to visit, just like the people in the first human colony in the Delta Quadrant.
Not surprisingly, no one on the Federation ships wanted to stay. Not even anyone on the science teams, since they were too excited about all the discoveries they had during the trip. They needed to get back to the Federation to tell them about it and to work on all the scans and work with all of the samples they had gathered. It was too much work and too enjoyable for them to do, so they didn't want to hand it off to someone else to do for them.
What was surprising was there were about 300 people from the 100,000 colonists that wanted to take a chance on adventure. It was fitting that was the amount and Captain Janeway, Commander Cavit, and Commander Tuvoc accepted the new crew members onto their ships with open arms of welcome.
Voyager lifted off from the surface and a storm grew above it in the atmosphere. It was apparently a safety feature built into Briori technology that was installed to protect the planet from other ships than their own. The ship had just as rough of a flight out of the atmosphere as they had entering it, and reached space with a sigh of relief from Tammy Paris.
The three ships were soon filled with their new crew members and they departed orbit. By the time they flew all the way back to reach their insertion point in the Delta Quadrant, the new crew members had settled down into their chosen roles and everyone was happy.
They were just in time to witness the arrival of the first squadron of ships from Starfleet and the distortion wave event was just as awe-inspiring from the outside as it was to ride in the thing. The four ships dropped almost right on top of the message buoy and Voyager hailed them with the standard greeting.
The main viewscreen lit up and Captain Janeway held in his laugh at seeing the tall redhead named Commander Bernard Crusher, the previous Chief Medical Officer on the Enterprise D.
“Captain Janeway.” Crusher said with a smile. “I heard from a particularly upset DS9 security officer that you were forced to declare an entire star system as a biological hazard.”
Janeway barked a laugh. “Of course Starfleet would send one of their best here after that.”
“Of course.” Crusher said and her eyes moved to either side, then back to his face. “It seems a few other things have changed since you were stranded here.”
Janeway nodded. “If you haven't picked up their IFF protocols properly, since I doubt their registries have propagated through Starfleet records yet, let me introduce our first little sister ship the USS Forerunner, with Commander Cavit in command.”
The screen split and showed the grey haired woman. “Commander Crusher.”
“Commander Cavit.” Crusher said and looked back at Janeway “How did that come about?”
“It was the result of cleaning up after a large scale battle with the Kazon that happened the first time we were brought here to the Delta Quadrant by the original Array. The aliens already stripped the hulls, so with industrial replicators and excessive power available, it only took three weeks to have her up and running.” Janeway answered.
“And the other one?” Crusher asked, curious.
“Nearly the same circumstances. We were scouting around and were ambushed by yet another Kazon task group. The difference this time was we had two nimble ships on our side and made short work of them and sent the attackers back to their people and reclaimed their ships.” Janeway said.
Crusher smiled again. It was always nice to hear Starfleet overcoming overwhelming odds.
“We found a similar hull among them, so were inspired to build a nearly identical sister ship to Forerunner named USS Retaliation, with Commander Tuvoc in command.”
The screen split again and showed the female Vulcan. “Commander Crusher.”
“Commander Tuvoc.” Crusher said and looked back at Janeway once more. “My OPS officer sent me a message that the local space is secured and there is no debris to cause us problems.”
“We did an excellent job of clearing up the messes we've made.” Janeway said, a little cheekily.
Crusher chuckled. “Very well. I'm ordering the dispersal of the squadron to start deployment of the industrial replicators. We'll release the larger components we have stored in the cargo bays as soon as there's enough superstructure to attach them to.”
“We have three ships here willing to help contribute resources if you need them.” Janeway offered.
Crusher shook his head. “I appreciate the offer; but, we have to prove we can build the station by ourselves. If not, then the drafted plans have to be changed.”
“I understand.” Janeway said. “As soon as you're free from the initial obligations of the Array Program, you can beam over and see for yourself the disgusting Phage information we gained from the Vidiians and all the records of their crimes against common decency.”
Crusher grimaced at the description and nodded. “I can't say I'm looking forward to it. Hwever, it has to be done.”
“I understand.” Janeway responded. “Until then, commander.”
“Until then, captain.” Crusher said with a nod and ended the call.