Chapter 6
Bio-scans. Brain scans. Questioning while under scrutiny. Technology available to learn the brain had been around on earth since the invention of fMRIs. They could literally take real time images of the brain, while the subject watched videos, and learned what cells were firing- and see in real time where the visual information was. They were then able to extrapolate further and recreate the image that the brain had made. In this way, they were able to watch and record a person in the dream state, in real time. The ability to discern if a person is being truthful or not was extension of that. Federation tech could be employed to read minds, but they had restricted the use of tech to court rooms, and to yes or no questions. A person could still, and always, take the 5th, or a version of that. Romulans had access to the same tech. In their study of him, the tech and the questions they asked, suggested he was not the first human to be studied. No doubt, they had acquired subjects as far back as the hundred year war.
“Are you thinking of killing yourself,” Teleb asked.
There were others in the room. Some off in the darkness. The only light came from directly overhead. He could see Teleb. He could smell Nelvana.
“No,” Garcia said. The chair was equipped with sensors. So was the headband he wore. If they computer was affirming or denying, he wasn’t privy to it.
“Do you want to kill anyone else?” Teleb asked.
“No,” Garcia said.
“But you have killed before,” Teleb said.
“Yes,” Garcia said.
“How many people have you killed?” Teleb asked.
Garcia resisted being tearful. “I am not able to give you a precise number,” he said. Even Losira didn’t have a precise count. This was not a badge of honor, as it was with the Klingons. The Romulans were closer to humans, in that they actually preferred not to kill, but if they did, the number was a badge that demonstrated proficiency. They were not Vulcans. “I have destroyed ships in battle. I have destroyed worlds.”
“And you intend to destroy more,” Teleb said.
Garcia met his eyes. The look Garcia gave him cowed him. “No.”
“Do you see things or hear things other people don’t hear or see?” Teleb asked. Again, Garcia sorted the question. “My experiences are not clinically relevant.” “Answer the question,” Teleb said.
“I am not depressed, I am not Bipolar, I am not schizophrenic,” Garcia said.
“You agreed to participate. Answer the question,” Teleb said.
“Yes,” Garcia said.
“Elaborate,” Teleb said.
“I have at least four distinct personalities that share my brain space,” Garcia said.
“They can manifest directly into my conscious experience, but are presently below threshold of perception, subconsciously operating tech in a remote location.”
“You have a multiple personality disorder?” Teleb asked.
“That’s an old term. Dissociative identity disorder followed that,” Garcia said. “I do not meet the clinical definition of either. I am considered a plural, type 3, capable of experiencing other with all the senses. Those in the Jungian camp have always though we are a collection of personalities, that the core personality is a collection of models of others, as well as fractured aspects of the self. There are also those who believe each age of a person is there, with each age demarked by a clear deviation event.”
“We are familiar with your psychology,” Teleb said. “Human psyches are extremely fragile. We have been able to create plurality in the lab.” “Trauma can lead to dissociative states,” Garcia said.
“What do you infer from my statement?” Teleb said.
“That you were hoping to provoke an emotive response to the suggestion you tortured humans,” Garcia said.
“It doesn’t bother you?” Teleb asked.
“Do you have human prisoners? Are you torturing them? If so, I would like to remind you we are operating under a treaty that specifically states no torture?” Garcia said. “What happened a hundred years ago? I have feelings. But it brought us to here.
Now, what’s next?”
“Are you saying your kind never tortured?”
“No,” Garcia said. “My kind, the Kelvan, they would break you in every way to tease out the worst and the best and everything in between. I am also human. Humans from the 20th and 21st century, yeah, they would have dissected you to try and understand you. They would have been as fearful of you then as you are of others now.” “You dare compare us to you? We’ve been around longer than you!” “And yet, humans have caught up and surpassed you,” Garcia said. “You were helped,” Teleb said.
“And you weren’t?” Garcia asked. “You resist change. You can’t be an interstellar species and not able to embrace change. Every planet you colonize will diverge biologically and socially from origin. Even if you have the perfect planet, perfectly terraformed to resemble your host planet, just a minute difference in gravity will lead to change. The first colony on Mars, the change was noticeable with in the first generation. Humans born on Mars, off the grid, could never return to Earth gravity. They were taller. Within five generations, there was significant, noticeable deviation. Contrary to popular belief, evolution doesn’t have to take millions of years. It can happen overnight. That’s why you differ so drastically from the Vulcans, even though you share a common ancestor.”
“Humans are mongrels,” Teleb said. “Your basic neural structure, from spine to first brain is reptilian. You have mammalian brain overlapping that. We still don’t know how you got the rest of your brain. Even humans don’t understand your origin.”
“Mongrels are healthier,” Garcia said. “Humans use to care about purity. It made us weaker. If we had stayed only on earth, we would likely have lost all the races to due to interracial marriages. We would become like you. Interestingly, we moved out into space and discovered we could interbreed with a variety of alien species. We all have a common ancestor, brother.”
“How dare you,” Teleb said.
“You don’t have access to Professor Richard Galen’s work, completed by Picard?” Garcia said. “You have access to all the DNA scans. You can unlocked the message yourself. It’s in you. We are not an accident. We were meant to find each other and come together.”
Teleb struck Garcia.
“You’re afraid,” Garcia said. “And you should be. Because, if humans and Romulans were to share a planet, it would lead to talking. Talking leads to touching. Kind of like what just happened. Touching leads to sex. We would create a new race, human
Romulan hybrids. Our children will be better than us…”
Teleb screamed, took up a surgical instrument and shoved it through Garcia’s eye, into his brain. Even as he was dying, he saw Nelvana coming into the light. Teleb killed her next.
Garcia struggled to get out of bed, the damn U pillow giving him an awkward departure. He fell on his face coming out of the bed, got up, and pushed weight into his leg while holding the wall. He pushed profanity under his breath.
Nelvana was making noises, too. She was making noises that sounded like the end result of sexual gratification. Her fingers pulled the linen from the bed. “Yes!” she sat up. And started laughing. She fell back on the bed, continuing to laugh. Garcia recovered and return to the bed.
“You’re okay?” Garcia asked.
“That was amazing!” Nelvana said. “Why didn’t you tell me about…”
“I don’t get that. Mostly, I get leg cramps,” Garcia said. “I am a little envious.” Nelvana pulled him to her and ravished him. They both lay, exhausted together, again. She snuggled closer to him.
“Tell me,” Nelvana said. “What’s the longest you’ve gone before recycling?”
He didn’t like her word, but he understood it. “Seven years.”
“Seven?” Nelvana asked. “Why… Ah, Simone! Pon Farr. She has someone fight you?”
“She kills me herself,” Garcia said.
Nelvana chuckled. “You let her?”
“I refuse to fight her,” Garcia said. “I don’t want to engage in the ritual with her at
all.”
“Then you shouldn’t have mated with her,” Nelvana said. “You only have two options. Kill her or mate with her.”
“She doesn’t want that…”
“It doesn’t matter what she wants. In that ritual, all rules are off. Fuck her, she will be pacified. Well, for at least seven more years,” Nelvana chuckled.
“You mean rape her?”
“In the ritual, it isn’t rape,” Nelvana said. “It’s your husbandly duty to bring her peace of mind. Tell me, in that time, before she kills you, do you experience more emotions?”
“Yeah,” Garcia said. “Most of them negative.”
“That bitch,” Nelvana said. “She’s pushing her emotions on you. Mostly the unpleasant ones. Don’t waste your time taming the shrew, just bed her and be done with it. Impregnate her before the ritual, you’re good. Her logic will kick back in.”
“Do the Romulans have a ritual?”
“Like Pon Farr?” Nelvana asked, laughing. “No! Our species divorced ourselves of that nonsense ages before we split from the others. If I want someone, I take them.” “So, anything goes? A person can just take someone against their will?” Garcia asked.
“If you can hold it, it’s yours,” Nelvana said. “Ultimately, females inherit property. If they have a child, the property is legally theirs. This encourages men to earn property, so they may have heirs. It also encourages women to take property by giving heirs. The stronger the male the woman takes, the freer she is from having to deal with rift raft.”
A chime to the door rang. She said come. She didn’t even bother to dress. She simply stood up, revealing her whole self, clearly pregnant, and clearly having been intimate with Garcia. Teleb lead the way, followed by Merik. They both paled. “You’re not happy about the data I gave you and you have questions,” Nelvana said.
“I… Yes.”
“Merik, hand me your weapon,” Nelvana said.
“Yes, Empress,” Merik said. He surrendered his phaser to her.
Nelvana turned the weapon up to incinerate. She aimed it at Teleb.
“Wait? Why?” Teleb said.
“I am the Empress. Do I need a reason?”
“I have served you my whole life…” He said, going to his knees.
“Yes, and because of that, you will die quickly,” Nelvana said. She turned to Merik. He disappear in a blaze of light. It was clearly painful, but had the luxury of no clean up. She turned to Merik. “Set a course for home. I want to be there within an hour.” “At once,” Merik said, bowing as he retreated.
Nelvana turned back to Garcia. He was clearly perturbed.
“Do you have a problem?” Nelvana asked.
“No,” Garcia said.
“Good, because I am still wanting,” Nelvana said.
“So, the Romulans deny themselves, too,” Garcia said.
“Not today,” Nelvana said, coming back in bed. “Today, I will deny myself nothing.”
Garcia had the privilege of being on the Bridge when they came out of warp. Romulus was large on the view screen, and getting larger. It was a lush world, clearly balanced between cities and nature. The Romulans did favor a balance. They embrace the warrior aspect, but they also protected that which they conquered. No life meant nothing to lord over.
“Arm torpedoes, power up all phaser arrays, prepare to fire,” Nelvana said.
“Target the senate building.”
The crew looked at her as if she had lost her mind. She stood up from her chair.
“Do we have problem?” she asked them.
“Nelvana,” Garcia said. “This is not the way.”
“The best way to diffuse a bomb is to blow it up,” Nelvana said. “Are you with me or against me, husband?”
Garcia reached out his hand, a phaser was there. He stunned Merik who was bringing a weapon to bear on the Empress.
“I am with you,” Garcia said.
That’s when the mutiny happened.
Nelvana and Garcia arrived back and bed. Garcia was unable to scramble out of bed to soothe his leg cramp, as Nelvana grabbed his arm and held him while she went through her experience. She laughed, and climbed on top of him.
“You have made me the happiest woman in the universe,” Nelvana said. “Let me return the favor!”
Again, they shared a wild intimacy. Nelvana was likely more exuberant and demanding because of her sense of new found freedom. That, and her belief she was now immortal. She proved herself to be a greedy lover, and, this, too, was likely due to not having emotionally compatible partners. That, or having never had to worry about whether a partner had been satisfied. There were no power struggles in her bed. That, and she likely saw Garcia’s as not being a true partner. He was an alien, and she could use him as easy as a toy, without regard. He was able to turn off his emotions and simply be in the experience, mostly trying to not be hurt by her aggressive style. She proved as equally aggressive as the Klingons. Saying that would likely result in his death. They played until they were again interrupted.
Nelvana got up, met them naked, glistening with sweat, again asked for Merik’s weapon, shot Teleb, and then shot Merik.
“Now, let’s go kill the rest of the traitors,” Nelvana said.
“You might not have a crew left,” Garcia said.
Nelvana and Garcia found themselves once again on the Bridge. She had everyone’s attention. They actually fired on the Senate building. All hell broke loose. Cloaked ships began to fire on Empress’ ship. She returned fire. Others ships came uncloaked and even though clear allegiances were revealed and or forged, Nelvana ship was destroyed.
Nelvana and Garcia arrived back in bed. She rolled over on him before he could stretch out his leg, in full orgasm and laughing. Once again, she made it back to Romulus, attacked the senate. Took out two cloaked ships before they could respond, as she knew where they were, followed the alliances being forged during the heat of battle, died, and went right back into making love.
Nelvana lay exhausted beside him. “I have never had so much fun… Come!” Nelvana got up, killed the two, and came back to bed. “I am absolutely insatiable today! Again.”
This time as they lay there, it occurred to her. “You never ask about your people.
How come.”
“I am not worried,” Garcia said.
“Will they follow your orders?”
“And help you with your coup?” Garcia asked.
“Yes, will they follow your orders?” Nelvana said. “If I beamed the Klingons on to one ship, and the humans onto another, could they capture the ships and give two more allies?”
“Yes,” Garcia said.
“Why?”
“Because I ask them to,” Garcia said.
“Why?”
“I consider this a dark path,” Garcia said. “I thinks it the wrong path. It won’t get you what you want. And I will do my best to help you achieve whatever it is you think it is you need in hope you will realize this is the least affective way to go.”
“You don’t have a clue what it’s like to be Romulan. I am the Empress, and yet I have no authority. The Senate blocks me at every turn…”
“The Senate ends up getting destroyed. The Reman employ someone name Shinzon who affectively complete a coup against the present order,” Garcia said.
“The Reman! I will kill them all,” Nelvana said.
“They’re your people!” Garcia said.
“They’re telepaths! I told the senate incarcerating them is insufficient,” Nelvana said. “No one listens to me.”
“Did it occur to you, your paranoia as a species stems from your extreme telepathic suppression?” Garcia said.
“And your species doesn’t do this?” Nelvana said.
“Of course we do. There wouldn’t be that much hostility and denial with in the academic ranks if there wasn’t,” Garcia said. “But we don’t kill telepaths. It’s a bad policy. It just drives it underground. Anything you suppress eventually bubbles back up into reality.”
“How dare you preach to me about suppression,” Nelvana said. “You burn within yourself and don’t share that with Simone!”
Garcia flipped Nelvana down to the bed and took the top position, pinning her wrists above her head.
“You mean like this,” Garcia said. “Is this what you want? To be dominated.” “Yes, be a man,” Nelvana said.
Garcia got off her, swung his feet off the bed and would have stood up had he not been tackled. He found himself pinned again.
“Don’t you ever turn me on like that and not follow through!” Nelvana said.
Nelvana forced herself on him. To avoid getting hurt, and or hurting her, he simply participated in the session. When they were done, she was quite pleasant as they showered, as if all was well, took food, and returned to the business at hand- taking over the world.
Chapter 7
With the help of two additional ships, Nelvana won the high ground. Garcia’s entire away team lost their lives in the battle. Nelvana kissed him. “I’ll make it up to you later.”
“Go, take a break, while I address my world,” Nelvana said.
Garcia thanked her, and retreated. He found his way to an assembly room, where Merik and Teleb were there, waiting, along with several others. So was his Away Team.
“Are you satisfied yet?” Garcia asked.
“I will kill her,” Merik said.
“No, you won’t,” Garcia said. “That was not part of the agreement. I will take her back with us. We will keep her safe. I will leave you with the Nelvana android.” “You will take the Reman away?” Teleb asked.
“I will take some,” Garcia said. “If we take too many, it might change the timeline. Picard must face Shinzon. That occurrence will lead to a true, lasting peace between our people.”
“Very well,” Merik said. “Take her, get off this ship. Do not come back.”
“You said we could have access to Hobus,” Weisberg said.
“I will honor that, too. The colony ship that arrives at Elmartay will escort you and your team once the colonist have departed the ship.”
They withdrew to the shuttle bay where the gateway was kept. There were more androids there. One of Nelvana. Nelvana herself entered the shuttle bay, in a conversation that seemed one sided. She was unaware of anything around her. She was escorted through the gate. Her loyal servants accompanied her, including a sister Garcia had met before. The sister’s android duplicate was just emerging from the android replicator, a device that similar to a three d printer, robotic car assembly.
Garcia was the last to go through the gate. No ‘thank you,’ or any other sentiment was expressed. He turned and went through. They arrived on the Pathfinder where Losira and Simone met him, and escorted him to Sickbay for downloads and debriefing.
“I told you, she would not agree to peace,” Simone said.
Garcia sat down in his chair without concern. It was a painless procedure. In truth, he didn’t have to sit down at all, but the more comfortable he was, the more alpha waves he could generate. The best recordings of general experiences came here. Deep theta resulted in bizarre information, and without computers and psychological profiling it might have been completely indecipherable.
“You acquired a great deal of intel on Romulan battle tactics and home world security,” Losira said.
“None of which Star Fleet can have access to,” Garcia said. “Will Nelvana be alright?”
“I assure you, she is quite content in a fantasy world of her own creation,” Losira said.
“A jail,” Garcia offered.
“She was already in a prison, only it had no bars,” Simone said. “You freed of her those, and allowed her true self to emerge.”
“That’s not her true self,” Garcia said. “That’s a lifetime of oppression and abuse that’s coming out of her.”
“She’ll be alright,” Losira said. “I got her. We got her. Her android replacement will ensure what we’ve done won’t alter the future. Even if Merik and Teleb benefit from the new arrangement, history will unfold as it has.”
Garcia closed his eyes. There was nothing else to do.
“Simone,” Garcia said, quietly. “Hypothetically, during Pon Farr, if instead of fighting you I made lov