The Continuing Story of Deep Space 2: Page 120
As Sarah mentally summoned Ernie to help her look for Karn and the others, she felt a tingle of energy from her Tears. Little did she know that this was the exact moment that Scarlett was clutching his Tear pendant. This would prove to be a value asset in the not too distant future because would enable our band of fighters to detect when Scarlett was trying to use his Tear --obviously up to no good.
"M.A.C.C.S. IX; Serial No: 326-DLC, that is a nice name. M.C. will be fine. I have allowed you to come here. Not because I like you. So this is nothing personal, but I would like to get some more information about the recent events in timeframe 6 Alpha. I will show you. PLease keep in mind my officers can terminate you any time..."
The old man turned around and pointed towards a large monitor. On the monitor was a simple time table, recognizable even by a junior cadet. While the old man was pointing to the points he would like to pose questions, M.C. seemed to listen...
Even droid 26, who had entered the bridge aboard USS Strike a few seconds before, seemed to be amazed.
"Admiral, pardon my asking, but isn't it unusual for romulans to kill eachother?"
"Yes it is 26."
Admiral Arthur had turned around. The number 26 was painted in red on the droids chest. Droid 26 was the only droid aboard with his number in red. Arthur had tried to figure out what the color could indicate, but when he had asked droid 1, who seemed to be the leader of the droid collective, droid 1 had explained he had no idea. Droid 1 himself was the only droid with his number painted in black. Most numbers were in white. And when Arthur had thought about it he had not seen a droid with a number higher than 100 in another color than white. Apparently the numbers also indicated some form of hierarchy. But it was only a guess. Arthur also had noticed that the droids themselves seem to work in shifts. The droids serving on USS Strike seem to change duties every four hours. Arthur wondered what they did in their free time, if one could call it that. The second thing on Arthur's mind was the incident with the Romulans. Maybe Colonel Theys, in command of the USS Ajax, was thinking about the same thing. the Colonel appeared on the USS Strike main viewer.
"Shouldn't we contact this Sub-Commander Taklosh of the Romulan Warbird Reldar? I checked her out. She is indeed who she says she is."
"No, it is not our place to contact Romulans. The Vice President of the United Federation of Planets is here on the USS Alice Cooper-B."
"You know I don't trust that man."
"I know. But as long as we cannot prove anything, he is clean and he is our superior."
"But even Scarlett has a superior..."
"You know as well as I do that a procedure through the Federation council will take at least six months. We don't have that kind of time and I don't see a reason why..."
Arthur pauzed. There was a way to take control of the situation, but he needed hard evidence of criminal activity by the Vice President if there was any, or he could bluff his way through...
"Droid 26, open a secured communication channel from the USS Strike to the office of the President of the United Federation of Planets."
Aboard Deep Space 2, droid 1 had followed the events aboard the USS Strike through the channels of the droid collective. The time and space continuum had been damaged, but droid 1 was not ready yet with the complete calculation of the effects. He knew the old man was waiting for results and that the old man had all the time he wanted, but droid 1 did not. And the young Admiral Arthur had not either. The time to fix this was running out, in cosmic terms anyway, not in human terms. Time was relative. And if necessary, droid 1 had his specific orders to make changes himself, but then only in the almost impossible chance of failure by the officers of the old man. even the time war with the Giloppen had been won by only making a few changes. It had been the time that Deep Space 2 had been threatened by a spcies called Giloppen, who had been able to gain access to time control mechanismes, primitive but effective. Droid 1 was serving aboard the last Federation starship, all that was left of the United Federation of Planets. The ship didn't really have a name, but droid 1 remembers all the names of the officers and crew aboard, next to the 36 thousand civilians, in search of a suitable planet. But the last war had destoryed almost all of those possibilities. The old man and his son often had discusions about ethics of changing time. droid 1 was very sure that if the old man had wanted it, he had already changed the entire history, which would end in the United Federation of Planets to prevent the Omega history. The chain reaction that followed had no mercy on space. Warp travel in 94 percent of the galaxy had been made impossible and only a small part of the Delta Quadrant had been untouched by the effect, thanks to the pretty Borg and their possibility to addapt fast. But even the Borg were leaving the galaxy to another. These were all things yet to come. And calculations indicated that chances to prevent the Omega chain reaction was close to zero. Even if one was in control of all time and space...