Nothing's ever easy

Posted on Thu Oct 27th, 2011 @ 6:56am by Captain Nathan Cowell MD & Lieutenant Jasad Broca

Mission: Tomorrow's Arizona
Location: Bridge, USS Arizona
Timeline: Following 'Arguing with myself...'

After his counterpart from the 27th century had departed, Commodore Nathan Cowell rose and headed back out to the bridge in order to see if he could get what he hoped would be on file with their Borg allies. The old man came to a stop just behind the chair occupied by his Chief Operations Officer and made his presence known rather abruptly.

"Bronco!" Nathan bellowed unnecessarily, "Need you to do some research for me. Can you handle it?"

Jasad had been enjoying the quiet that descended upon Ops in the wake of Lt. Kohl's timely repairs. But as usual, the Commodore was capable of shattering any tranquility with the bombastic chaos of his presence. Nearly jumping out of his seat, he composed himself and answered, "Of course, Sir. What would you like me to research?" Though he didn't know the topic, he already knew one thing: It wouldn't be anything related to any of his fields of expertise. That would be too easy.

"Get on the horn and find out if the Borg have schematics for cloaking technology. We need to find a way to stay hidden from 8472 and that's the best thing I can think of. I'd hate to go somewhere without some natural sensor scrambling abilities and get jumped," Nathan said as he folded his arms across his chest expectantly.

Jasad turned his attention back to his console and began requesting the information from their Borg escorts via text. Vocie communications had been fully restored, but he had no particular desire to have a conversation with a drone. Jasad didn't have high hopes that the inventors of giant cube-ships and 'We are the Borg' introductory messages would have a comprehensive cloaking development program. On the other hand, they had probably assimilated members of races who did. The Romulans, the Klingons, and countless other races known and unknown. Heck, even the Federation had dabbled in various cloaking schemes in the past.

Unfortunately, the information that came back across the line was not particularly helpful. The first thing Jasad noticed was the dates associated with the information. "Sir, it seems that all of their assimilated information on cloaking technology is somewhat dated. I don't know whether they've changed their philosophy about assimilation or have run out of victims, but their latest information regarding cloaking technology is four decades old. They themselves see no value in it, which means it probably wouldn't fool 8472, either. If we're going to hide from the bioships of this era, none of this antique data is likely to be of use. We'll have to innovate something new."

"New like what? Be specific, son, I'm a doctor... not an engineer..." Nathan retorted rather flatly.

"Well, Sir," Jasad said, "you might prefer a Doctor to an Engineer. This race is from a fluidic universe. They travel in biological ships. Their natural environment shares more in common with cells in the bloodstream than it does with machines in a vacuum. It may be beneficial to think of them as an infection rather than an invasion force. How would a virus cloak itself from a body's immuno-defense system? How would you kill a bacteria? Traditionally, the Federation has avoided research into biological weaponry, but you are now facing a foe that IS a biological weapon, on a massive macro-scale. So the question isn't what would an engineer do... but rather, what would a doctor do?"

"Short answer, find an antidote," the Commodore replied, "But here's the problem, most antidotes use the very thing you're trying to fight as a base. Unless you're going to magic me up a bioship and give me a scalpel... there's really nothing we can do in that direction. Plus, we don't know enough about their make-up to just alter the ship's energy emissions enough to resemble one of theirs and go unnoticed. I kind of see where you're trying to go with this, but from a medical standpoint, we don't have enough to work with to make any head way..."

Nathan sighed and scratched his head for a moment, "Well, I suppose this won't be nearly as easy as I thought..." The old man let it hang in the air for a moment before speaking again, "I'll think of something I reckon. Thanks for the info, Bronco."