Theoretically first contact situations were supposed to be enacted without indulging in ego, in spite of whatever ills might beset you. The delicacy of contacting a new sentient species was invariably dangerous – potentially fatally so – meaning that any crew agreeing to make first contact with a new species tacitly acknowledged the very real possibility one or more crewmen may well die in the name of the federation. Being in Starfleet came at a price, and it was not a slight one.
The burden of leadership in these situations meant that one was forced to do what was right rather than what one wished to do. For example, Will Riker very much wished that he had given the order to destroy the Giant with the ship's main phaser banks rather than recovering and restraining the giant. It would not have been the diplomatically appropriate solution or his duty as a Starfleet officer, but it would have been deeply satisfying.
Will Riker hated the Giant of Antiea as much as he could recall hating any man. Five – the giant had killed five crewmen and had done his damnedest to kill another fifty, most of whom hadn't even been part of security. It was pure chance that he hadn't killed a room full of elementary school students.
So it was that when Lieutenant Worf voiced his concerns, William found himself agreeing with his Klingon counterpart.
"I do not understand why we are allowing it to continue to live." The Klingon smashed his hand on the table. "The very notion that it continues to breathe is offensive after the carnage it caused."
"Mr. Worf – this is a first contact situation. One that we have grossly misjudged." Captain Picard steepled his fingers in thought as he leaned back in his chair. "We assumed – incorrectly – that Mr. Data's deception would be sufficient to fool the Giant. We detained a sentient against his will and he reacted to that situation with fear and anger. I am to blame for this – not he."
"With respect Captain, might you be allowing your interest in the distant past to cloud your judgment for the present? Thisthing is a cold blooded killer without remorse. It would skin you as soon as look at you." The Klingon growled. "You can't negotiate with a rabid dog."
"I wonder, Mr. Worf, if the Federation might not have said the same about the Klingons not so long ago?" The Captain sighed. "The birthing pains of forging ties with a new species – especially one who represents as unique and strange of an opportunity as the Giant does – must be endured. If the Federation declared every species who killed someone in a first contact situation irredeemably anathema to us, there would be precious few sentient beings in the Federation."
"Fewer still if the Giant has his will." Lt. Worf growled. "He fights without honor, attacking those without weapons to defend themselves – killing without mercy."
"Did he not allow Lt. Barclay to pass by him unmolested?" The Captain asked. "His report seemed to indicate that the Giant had every chance to harm to the Lieutenant but the Giant just walked past."
"The Giant's… aggression was primarily directed at non-humans." Worf's lip curled, exposing fang. "The human officers were attacked for trying to protect the wounded or acting aggressively to his person."
"Captain." William interjected, "I share a number of Mr. Worf's concerns. Every effort to communicate with him has been met with violent and unwarranted aggression. Even if we don't incarcerate him for his actions on this ship, I don't know how we can justify forcing a diplomatic engagement without considering it a wanton violation of the Prime Directive."
"We woke him up Will." Deanna replied. "We're responsible for everything that's happened to him since. This isn't some species we can just leave alone and give time to mature – he has no home upon which we might drop him off. He's an orphaned son of a dead society older than the Federation by countless ages. There likely isn't a society left for us to affect."
"But this is still a thinking being." Will retorted. "He has free will, the will to choose what happens to him, and nothing he's done indicates that he would chose to remain with us."
"Actually, that might not be precisely accurate." LCDR LaForge said, furrowing his brow. "When we beamed the Giant up to the ship we ran a standard pattern recognition routine to detect and transfer him up to the holodeck. We didn't account for a number of rare atomic particles used in the Giant's cyborg components, specifically those in his brain. The rare elements were left behind, affecting functionality."
"Are you telling me that we lobotomized the man's brain?" Captain Picard said in horror.
"Not precisely Captain." The android Data replied. "He has a network integrated into his brain which would, in theory, allow him to continue operating after massive cerebral trauma or to modify cognitive function. Without the rare elements used in the cybernetics, the components misfired randomly – presumably defaulting him to a survival state. One can only speculate how complex his thoughts were, but it is reasonable to assume that his higher reasoning skills were deeply impaired."
"So he is a wounded and cornered animal – that makes him more dangerous, not less." Worf Growled.
"Yes, but it's an issue that we can hopefully fix. The cybernetics in the Giant were clearly designed by someone who indented for their technology to be easily repaired with more primitive tools than were involved in their fabrication. I think that a standard medical tricorder and hypospray could be used to restore what we undid." LCDR LaForge tapped his visor. "The implants in my head work on similar principles."
"I confess that I'm reluctant to expose a medical team to the potential dangers of the Giant in open surgery." Captain Picard chewed his lip. "Can he be sufficiently sedated to even try it?"
"I don't need to remove him from the brig Captain. Presumably I can program a remote hypospray to inject him with the necessary inoculation of nanomachines to restore his cybernetics. That's not our problem." Dr. Crusher sighed. "That's the least of our problems. Exposing him to the vacuum of space has activated some sort of willfully induced comatose state. His body has started secreting a viscous waxy oil that is hardening over his dermis, presumably to protect him from radiation."
"Tough bastards aren't they?" Joked Will.
"Tougher than you could imagine." Data nodded, immune as ever to the intended humor. "As you are aware, it took a full fifteen minutes for the Giant to be rendered unconscious. The Giant spent those fifteen minutes attempting to crush me. Though he was unable to do more than superficial harm to my exoskeleton, I do not believe that I would have been able to extricate myself from his grip under my own power. The doctor had to forcibly separate me from his interlocked arms with the aid of a muscle relaxant."
"You're telling me that the Giant managed to keep trying to murder you while he was in a coma?" Will chuckled at the sheer absurdity of it. "This guy is so ornery that he's even trying to kill people in his sleep."
"So it would seem." Captain Picard smiled sadly. "Dr. Crusher, it was not my intention to endanger this crew when I brought this man aboard. And yet I must burden you with the unfortunate task of ministering to our most 'ornery' guest."
"I've faced ornery patients before. Rage I can handle." Beverly sighed. "No, my problem is going to be having a recovering patient responsible for the majority of the other patients in sick bay or the morgue. There are going to be a lot of angry crewmen that we're not killing him outright."
"Their rage will have to be subordinate to their duties as members of the Federation." Picard's words slowed with deliberate intensity. "We cannot allow our passions to overwhelm what is right."
"Passions or no, I may not be able to fix him at all. It's hard enough to fix injuries in someone whose physiology has been studied for centuries but I've got less than two days of documentation on how to treat the Giant." Dr. Crusher bit her lip in agitation. "I'm largely operating blindly. But even I can see that if he doesn't wake up soon, his organs are going to collapse due to sheer stress. Not to put too fine a point on it, but he hasn't eaten since before the dinosaurs and he has about 0% body fat content. I can get intravenous nutrients going, but that's a stop gap at best. He needs to actually digest some solid food and his body has currently put the digestive process on hold."
"Can you wake him with a stimulant or something?" Will asked.
Beverly shook her head. "I've already tried all the cerebral resuscitation methods I dare. I don't feel confident enough in my knowledge of his chemistry or cybernetics to try anything stronger. I could end up damaging him even more than when we started this process."
"Captain, I've looked over the readings on the Giant's brain." Data intoned. "There are similarities between the cybernetics inducing the Giant's coma and known technologies used by telepathic species. It seems likely that the Giant's trance might be broken with the use of a telepath."
"Absolutely not." Will interjected before Deanna could offer to do some damn fool thing. "The last time the Counselor tried to make contact with the Giant's mind he used it as a way of attacking her. We can't assume that he won't do the same twice."
"No, we can not. But it is still our most viable option." Data replied. "The situation remains, if nothing is done to ameliorate the Giant's current condition he will die. Deanna is the most powerful non-Vulcan psychic to whom we have access. Vulcans appear to elicit excessive violence from the Giant. Logic dictates that it must be the Counselor."
"Will," Deanna put a comforting hand on his arm. "It's ok. I will be ok."
"Deanna, he had you in tears for hours." Will replied.
"Yes, but I've been sifting through the memories. Trying to piece them together in a way that makes sense." Deanna stared out the viewport at the stars. "It's like watching several movies at once. There is a lot of noise and motion that doesn't all seem to mesh together the right way. I think – I think it is worth trying if it means I can save a life. Enough people have died today Will. I have to try."
"I can modify a force field generator to specifically bind the giant." LCRD LaForge offered. "He shouldn't be able to break out of it."
"He should not have been able to break out of the Holodeck either." Lt. Worf asserted. "And yet he was more than capable of repurposing components of his armor into an explosive device."
"Well it's not like we could have removed the power supply from his armor without him noticing," The dark skinned head of Engineering shrugged. "And I honestly didn't even know that that sort of a power supply could be turned into an explosive. I've only even seen it used in theoretical mock ups for entire star ships."
"Indeed." Agreed the android. "However he no longer has the use of his armor. We have removed all power sources to ensure that they can't be activated remotely, and have moved them to a runabout off ship just to be doubly assured of their security. The relative threat he represents should be neutralized with the use of localized force fields, rendering him impotent."
"Having seen the man, I don't believe 'impotent' is necessarily the appropriate choice of words, Data." Dr. Crusher replied with a puckish smile. "But I would appreciate some additional security around him, for the Giant's protection as much as my own."
"I will see that the detail are all human." Worf replied in a voice of world-weary resignation. "If we are to try this foolishness again."
"Good," The Captain sighed. "Very well, you have your orders. Make it so."
Will chose to stay, even as the other officers filed out of the room. He took care to let the door shut behind the last of them before saying what had been on his mind for hours. "Captain, you know that even if we manage to heal the Giant, we're going to have to address the fact that he killed five people and assaulted an entire deck crew. That can't just be swept under the rug."
"Nor should it be." Picard replied. "But if it is true that we are responsible for his current mental state the one who will have to respond to the charges is I."
"Captain you can't be serious." Will blanched.
"I very much am." He walked away from will to the replicator, addressing the computer firmly. "Earl Grey, hot."
"Why? Why in God's name would you do that?" Will massaged his forehead with the palm of his head to address the sudden pain in his temple.
The Captain sipped his tea in thought before looking out the viewport. "Commander Riker, when the Borg took me and used me as their interlocutor I became the instrument of many deaths – Federation deaths- as a result of what was done to me. By no will of my own I was forced to do things that were – and still are – abhorrent to me. In our fumbling efforts to connect it would seem that we have undone this man's– this Giant of Antiea's – sanity. We robbed him of free will, took away choice."
"Sir…" Will's voice softened, recognizing the genuine hurt in the Captain's voice. "What we did is nothing like what the borg did to you."
"Are you so sure of that Commander?" The Captain raised his tea cup to his lips, looked at it, and set the cup back upon its saucer without drinking. "I fear that in our arrogance and haste we well many have done a greater disservice to the Giant than you realize. There is blood on his hands thanks to us – blood that we caused him to spill. I doubt the Giant will see me as any less of an antagonist for having made him a murderer than I see the Borg. No, I will not belittle him by claiming my innocence."
"But you are innocent. We are innocent. We had no way of knowing that transporting him would cause him harm." Will shook his head. "The odds of him having those elements within him – "
"The odds of his very existence are astronomical. For us to presume that a being older than written history would fit within the boundaries of our own limited understanding of the universe was foolish." Picard sighed, adjusting the front of his uniform. "Lieutenant Worf was correct. I allowed my eagerness to touch the past and connect with a living, breathing mystery cloud my judgment. Were I thinking I would have sent some sort of holographic transmitter to the planet rather than brining him up to the ship. I was just so thrilled to have the mystery of Antiea within my grasp."
"Captain." Will trailed off at the man's title, unsure what words of comfort to offer.
"Commander Riker, we will see this through to the end. We will see the Giant mended and I will not allow his actions resulting from my lack for foresight destroy a historical treasure." He fixed William with a steely gaze. "Is that understood?"
"Yes Captain." Will replied. "And Captain?"
"Yes Commander."
"For what it's worth. We don't blame you for what the borg made you do. Make sure that you're not using this as an opportunity to punish yourself for what the Federation wouldn't."
Picard's lips tightened as his eyes flashed in anger. "That will be all Commander."
"Yes Captain."
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The giant's chest heaved with each breath, a rumbling groan that felt like it shook the room. He didn't fit in the standard beds for patients, meaning that engineering had been forced to replicate an entirely new set up to ensure that the giant remained appropriately sedate and restrained. At Worf's insistence they'd added three redundant systems to the brig's shielding to restrain the occupant. Geordie had even tied it into the ship's main power rather than an internal system – the Giant wasn't going anywhere.
He almost looked peaceful.
"I do not like this." Spoke the taciturn Klingon. He was not in the room. They'd cleared the brig of all non-human security and limited themselves to only a minimal presence of medical crew presence, but Worf insisted upon being present via a surrogate hologram projector. An ethereal human shape spoke with the man's voice, keenly observing the proceedings from where he stood on the holodeck six floors down. There was more worry in his voice than Beverly suspected he would have liked, an anger tinged with an edge of fear to it. "It would be better to neutralize this threat before he has the opportunity to do greater harm to this ship."
"Worf, we can't kill everything we meet just because it's dangerous." Beverly replied, though she found a part of herself agreeing with the Klingon she was embarrassed to admit wasn't exactly small. "When he killed those people he wasn't in his right mind. We made this man a killer."
"He is a warrior." Worf replied, his avatar's expression doing a poor imitation of the Klingon's scowling frustration. "It was doubtlessly not the first time he killed."
"Killed perhaps, in war – but some of the people he hurt were civilians. And we rendered him unable to make another choice." The doctor shuddered, examining her patient through the shimmering energy of the force-field. "Can you even imagine how terrible that would be? To wake up and discover that you murdered innocents? We're going to have to tell that man that his body wasn't his own, that his thoughts were beyond him."
Worf paused, mulling over the idea. "To be robbed of your honor would be a most grievous insult in Klingon culture. I would be – angry – to say the least, were it to be inflicted upon me." His avatar shook its head. "But that changes nothing, to rob a man of his honor is to give him cause to seek your death. It does not matter if we face a warriors righteous vengeance or a murderer's callout rage, this will end in blood."
"Your opinion is noted Worf." Beverly replied curtly, reaching over to the man's holo-projector. "But I need to focus on the needs of my patient at the moment."
"You wish for me to leave?" Worf's irritation was visceral.
"You're welcome to keep watching but I need to have the space to think, yes." Beverly replied, depressing the button on its side – allowing Worf to watch but dismissing his avatar. She turned from the evaporating hologram and faced the giant yet again.
Nobody would call him handsome, rugged certainly, but not handsome. His face and body were badly scarred. There was barely a scrap of skin that wasn't marked with some sort of scar or blemish earned through some type of pain. Beverly couldn't be sure how old the man was, not entirely, he'd had so much modification done to his body that she wasn't certain how much of his genetic structure even began to resemble what his species had originally been.
The Federation ban on genetic research following WWIII and the genetically modified men and women of Sung's brood had all but killed the field of human genetic alteration. There were pockets of society which delved into such things, fringe societies operating outside the jurisdiction of the Federation, but the Federation itself limited research into the creation of "better" humans to the purely theoretical. Khan's later re-emergence to harry the celebrated Captain Kirk had done little to improve Federation opinions on the subject of human genetic modification.
Clearly the society who'd produced the giant shared no similar stigma upon the modification of their basic genetic code. She'd identified no fewer than ten organs that seemed to have been grown externally to the man's body and later implanted into their host. A redundant heart, a lung to filter harmful toxins, and various other redundancies effectively made the man impossible to kill short of decapitation or total disintegration. He was a marvel of medical science – a Frankenstein's monster from the far distant past, complete with metal protrusions jutting out from either side of his neck where the helmet had apparently interfaced with the man's spine.
Under other circumstances Beverly might have been excited to study the man, but she found herself unwilling to take joy in the scans of the man's body. She had too many coroners' reports going across her desk. Whatever else this man might have been, he was a murderer. He was a murderer whose crimes were due to a mental deficiency beyond his control, but that made his victims no less dead.
If Beverly was being honest, a small part of her wasn't sure if she even wanted to heal the Giant. Perhaps it would be better to just let the creature stay in his slumber forever. But as a healer, it was her sacred duty to tend to the sick and do no harm. He was in her care and she would make him well if it was within her power to do so. Life was life – there was always value in protecting it, even if the ones she saved couldn't see it. The Giant wouldn't be the first enemy soldier she'd treated.
He'd done bad things. Terrible things, but she was his Doctor. Until that stopped there wasn't anything that would stop her from doing her duty, even if she found it hard not to hate him. The tricorder in her hand felt unusually heavy as she monitored the man's vital signs.
It had been difficult to configure treatment to repair the damages done to the man's cybernetic interfaces. Even with a supply of the necessary rare elements, one needed to insert the correct portions of the precise element in the exact locations within the complex interlacing of cybernetics to ensure that no greater harm was done to the Giant than had already been inflicted upon him. Fortunately for the Giant, Data was an expert on the subject. Though she knew that the Android had no true emotions, there was an unmistakable sense of longing in how the Lieutenant Commander had fretted over making sure that he was able to ensure proper functionality of the man's hardware without preventing his higher brain functions and emotional centers from operating at optimal efficiency.
It had been a slow process by design, fearing that they might trigger some sort of failsafe or involuntary response from the patient. She'd spent the time going over the man's medical scans in depth, analyzing and re-analyzing the man's vials to understand him better. The Giant was old. Not just in the sense of his timeless incarceration within the stasis chamber of the pillar, he'd already been an old man before entering the pillar. He looked no older than forty, perhaps fifty considering his salt and pepper hair, but her guess was that eighty or ninety was closer to the mark. Hopefully she looked half that good at his age.
She'd happily do without the scars though. The Giant had not lived a happy life. There were so many scars and burns across the man's flesh that she was hard pressed to even parse out which scars corresponded to which injury. He'd suffered several recent fractures unrelated to his time on their ship, cracking though not breaking the thick, interlocking bone-like ceramic plates protecting his organs. The man bore tattoos across his chest and parts of his back, curious angular script written in verse beneath the images of a black fist and a two headed bird. Beverly paused, something about the script seeming oddly familiar to her.
Beverly tapped the insignia on her chest twice, "Computer, run a translation program on the man's tattoos. Search early Earth languages, German."
The computer's droning female retort chimed in reply. "Partial translation of symbols managed. Similarity to known Earth linguistic patterns 20%."
"Try adding Latin, French, English, Spanish." Beverly noted, the jagged script seeming increasingly familiar to her the more she squinted her eyes.
"Similarity 45%." The computer replied.
"Computer run it through all known languages." Beverly replied.
"75% similarity to symbols and grammar present in known languages of existing sentient species." The computer replied.
"How many are human?" The doctor asked, feeling a jolt of electricity up her spine as a wild thought hit her.
"60% similarity to earth based linguistics." Replied the computer.
"Is it sufficient to approximate what it means?" Beverly asked.
"Negative." Replied the ship's computer. "Crucial elements of grammar and syntax do not correspond to known linguistic patterns. Further information is required."
That was unusual to say the least. Alien languages tended to be, for lack of a better word, alien. For the giant to have even partial linguistic similarly indicated linguistic cross pollination. Which was impossible. Or at least which ought to have been impossible… yet there it was.
Yet another mystery from the pillar.
"You're an odd one." Beverly pushed back a lock of crimson hair from her face as she adjusted her equipment, fretting over the readouts. The element appeared to have been properly re-integrated into the man's neural network. Appeared being the key word. There would really be no way to know until Deanna had her crack at him.
Beverly tapped her comm badge, "Beverly to Deanna."
"Yes Doctor?" Replied the ship's counselor.
"I'm ready when you are." Replied Beverly.
"I don't know if I'll ever be ready." Replied the counselor's voice as the doors to the brig opened, allowing her to pass the cadre of phaser rifle armed security personnel.
"Deanna, have you just been waiting outside the brig all day?" Beverly's face scrunched up in worry.
"Yes," The half-betazoid replied. "I don't think that I was going to be of much use for anything else today. I'd be too distracted to be of much use for any of my other patients."
"Other patients?" Beverly smiled. "Putting the cart before the horse aren't we?"
"Possibly." Deanna replied. "But I find that it's best to think of a damaged mind as a mind in need. Even a mind that wishes me ill. It makes it easier to help that person find their calm."
"So what do we do?" Beverly asked.
"I stand here and reach out to his mind, and if it works he wakes up." Deanna replied, the worry in her voice leaking through.
"What can I do to help Deanna?" Beverly asked.
"You could stay and hold my hand." Deanna replied.
"Will that improve the psychic connection?"
"No, but it will help me be less scared."
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