Fic - "Going Native part 3"
Hmmm this started to get long winged. I am crossposting to gaeta-squee but it may turn into a more general fic. This is the sordid tale of Gaeta, the lost Starfleet guy and his never ending quest to always be the guy to blame. BSG/STNG.
“I’m concerned,” President Laura Roslin said, after a very long moment of thought. She gestured to the heavy stack of paperwork. “ They could literally overpower us. Take what little we have to offer, and leave us destitute.” It was frightening.
Bill Adama shrugged. “ They already have, Laura.”
She looked sharply at him. That wasn’t the answer she expected to hear. “ What do you mean, Bill?” Because while she was concerned, she knew a part of it was her natural tendency to distrust miracles. She was looking for things to be wrong. She didn’t expect Bill to agree with her.
“ They have our tactical officer.” He said it easily but sharply, sharply enough that she understood that he wasn’t happy with her. She had expected that. It was unspoken that she didn’t interfere with military matters, and she had. And in retrospect…
No, she told herself, it was the right thing to do. She could have insisted. The Starfleet captain, one Jean-Luc Picard, had looked conciliatory on the point but she had overridden Bill. Because she suspected that the Starfleet ship could outgun them easily. Because the Galactica was dead in the water until the FTL drive was back up. Because the people were sick and hungry and the Starfleet captain had offered food and medical supplies immediately and hadn’t used possession of Felix Gaeta as a bargaining chip.
There were other reasons.
“ I don’t think we need to worry about Lt. Gaeta’s loyalty,” she said finally.
Adama looked at her intently. “ Are you serious?” He stood up, and began to pace around his small quarters. “ He never so much as blinked when we discussed Earth. He’s known the whole time. You don’t want to know how difficult it was for me to not beat him down when he said he was a Starfleet officer.”
“ I do know. That’s one of the reasons I overrode you.” She waited for him to digest that. “I was worried for his safety, and just how awful it would look if we did insist on keeping him and then someone who doesn’t have your self control killed him. Have you thought about that?” She took a deep breath. “ As worried as I am about being treated fairly, it doesn’t change the fact that the nightmare of the last four years is essentially over. I’m positive these people think we’re savages. We need to start combating that.”
“They have no idea what it’s been like,” Bill said tiredly. He sat down beside her. “ One of them… Riker? Actually asked Saul what the crew did for entertainment.”
Roslin let that sink in. “ What did Col. Tigh say?”
Bill shrugged. “ I didn’t ask. Some variation on drinking, frakking, and fighting, knowing Saul. None of this changes the actual problem. They have a perfect source of intelligence about us. For all we know, they have Gaeta under interrogation, doped to his eyes with truth drugs.”
“Do you think that, really?” She didn’t. Gaeta had looked relieved. Not afraid in the slightest. If anything he had been close to tears from joy. They all had been close to tears from joy. And the Starfleet officers she had met… seemed squeamish.
“No,” Bill said after a long moment. “ But we have to accept the fact that he is being debriefed. And ultimately his loyalty is not to us. He’s an expert with the FTL drive. The FTL drive, and the Cylon prisoner, are our only bargaining chips with these people, the only thing we have to offer, and Gaeta can give them one, and he has a lot of information on the other. If we accept what they’ve told us at face value, it doesn’t even matter. They could destroy the Cylons like swatting flies.”
She could hear the tinge of anger in his voice. She considered her options. It wasn’t time. He was going to be very angry when he found out, but that couldn’t be helped. “So what do you suggest? We’re meeting with the captain of that ship in less than twenty minutes.”
“Do you think they can be trusted?” He asked it almost casually.
“ For the most part.” She hesitated. “ Can I make a suggestion?”
Bill looked at her. “ Of course.”
“ Don’t mistake gentleness for weakness.” She looked him in the eyes. “ We both made that mistake with Felix Gaeta. Don’t make it again.”
~*~
Captain Jean-Luc Picard stepped out of the runabout and onto the deck of the Battlestar Galactica. The crew didn’t completely stop what they were doing, which he took as a good sign. They were getting used to seeing Starfleet people and he considered that a good thing. The colonials were a fairly paranoid people, which was to be expected. First contacts were touchy. Especially with a society whose only contact so far had been so devastating.
They looked hungry, he thought worriedly. He had food and medical supplies being shuttled over non stop, but he understood that the admiral of the fleet had insisted that the civilian population have first access. He hadn’t yet allowed replicators to be placed on the ships, because the colonists weren’t openly asking for membership in the Federation, but he assumed that would be a matter of time. They were a shattered people, he doubted that if he did give them replicators that they would be able to make more, not without help, but he had to be cautious.
“ Is it just me,” Will Riker said softly, “ Or is that man wearing a uniform that’s held together with metal staples?” He didn’t point. Just a flick of the eyes and Picard knew which man he meant.
“ Yes, Number One. If you’ll notice, the two young women in the corner, the twins? Can’t possibly be older than sixteen.” More like thirteen, if he was any judge. “ These are desperate people.”
Riker nodded. “ It’s…” He waved expansively. “ It makes me wonder how well we would have done. If the Borg had taken Earth.”
“ That’s an interesting thought, Will.” And an uncomfortable one, considering his own role in the Borg assault on Earth, but Picard let that roll away. Riker had a point, and a good one, and it was certainly something that would be relayed to the boarding parties. The colonists appeared primitive partly because they had been running for their lives. Most of the fleet was composed of people who had been traveling short distances between the colonies, with little in the way of personal possessions. Most of the small fleet’s ships weren’t designed to carry passengers for any length of time, and the level of squalor was appalling. On the other hand, it was simply amazing that any of these people had survived at all, from what Lt. Gaeta had told them.
Lt. Commander Felix Gaeta was an entirely different problem. Fortunately not a serious one, at least not a serious one for Starfleet. Picard knew that Prime Directive violations had to be investigated, but all it took was looking around the Galactica to see that the violations couldn’t have been serious. There were no phasers juryrigged or replicators, or photon torpedos. The Galactica didn’t even have traditional shielding. And Gaeta had hardly been living large, using the fruits of Federation technology to secure himself fame and fortune. Just the opposite.
“ Just remember,” he said softly as their escort, a young blonde woman in a colonial officers uniform began to step over to them. “ They may be as human as we are, but this is a first contact.”
“ You must love this,” Riker said after a moment. “ Has there ever been a better example of a Preserver seeded society? Worshippers of the Greek pantheon… with space flight.”
“ And any number of potentially violent factions crammed into ships that are barely able to fly,” Picard warned. He nodded pleasantly to the young female officer who had approached them. “ Captain Thrace? Are you our escort today?”
The woman nodded. She was young, and hard eyed, and like many of the colonials, there was a faint aura of violence hanging around her. She reminded him of Tasha Yar. “ The Admiral and the President are waiting.”
They followed her through the maze of corridors. The Galactica was a very large ship, and Picard had to admit, there were a lot of questions he had about the colonials and their technology. It seemed to have developed along completely different lines. Those different lines included an FTL drive that worked without dilithium and that was very interesting. The fact that the colonials were human was enough to bypass some first contact rules. The fact that they had an FTL drive that wasn’t based on warp technology meant that it was a Federation priority to get them to accept Federation help and membership. It was going to be tricky.
Both the Admiral and the President rose when they entered the room. Picard hadn’t needed the briefing from Gaeta to know that he was looking at two very sharp individuals. Admiral Adama looked like a grizzled war horse that wouldn’t hesitate to bite. He didn’t smile. President Laura Roslin did smile, and Picard steeled himself. Roslin was a pleasant looking older woman, and he could see that she knew how to use that. She was crafty, in other words.
“ We have a problem,” she said simply as they all took their seats. Captain Thrace snorted with amusement. Roslin gave her a bemused look.“ Well, we have many problems, but this one is a bit awkward. I believe you’re aware that the Galactica is having some trouble with its jump drive.”
Picard nodded. From their previous meeting, he had understood that the main reason the Galactica hadn’t simply run upon detecting the Enterprise was that there had been a massive malfunction in the drive. The civilian fleet had flitted away in the blink of an eye, returning only after contact had been made. It had been impressive, as impressive as the display the smaller ships called Raptors had put on. “ There’s no pressing need to leave this area.”
“ One of the few people left who can fix the drive is Lt. Gaeta.” Adama said, his voice a faint growl.
Interesting, Picard thought. He almost wished that he had brought Troi with him, just to get a more accurate read on what was happening. Recovering a Starfleet officer in deep cover was rare enough, made entirely unique by an unprecedented first contact situation. He had asked Adama to relinquish the man partly because it didn’t take being telepathic to see that any number of the Galactica’s command staff felt grossly betrayed, and partly because it removed a potential temptation.
They were a desperate people. Leaving Felix Gaeta with them meant leaving a bargaining chip. A bargaining chip that could be tortured, and Picard had absolutely no doubt after speaking with Gaeta that torture was in the tool chest of the Twelve Colonies. Plus, he rather suspected that it wouldn’t take much to get Gaeta talking. Troi’s reports made it clear that the man felt guilty over not helping the colonials, that he blamed himself for any number of deaths. It said something about Starfleet training methods that a freshly graduated officer with next to no practical experience hadn’t yielded to temptation, but it was better to remove the temptation. For everyone’s sake.
At the same time, he could see the concern. The colonial ranking structure was different. “Lieutenant” was clearly a lower rank with them than it was in Starfleet, but Gaeta had explained his duties, and it was fair to say that he had been fairly high in the command structure. The tactical officer, and navigator, and apparently the only functional science officer, and if it was hard enough to be so desperate for help that ships getting supplies were in order of who was starving the most, it had to be very hard to say no to even high handed requests. It had to have occurred to them that they gave up a source of intelligence.
It was also entirely possible they were telling the truth, that they needed Gaeta to fix the ship. “ He is a Starfleet officer. We have our own concerns about this matter.”
“ What? Is he going to get a medal for keeping his mouth shut while people were dying?” Thrace sneered. Her anger was written on her face. “ Trust me, he’s real good at that.”
Adama rose to his feet. “ You may excuse yourself, Captain Thrace. Go to your quarters and stay there until I send for you.”
Thrace shot him an angry look, but wilted after a long moment. Picard allowed his estimation of Adama’s leadership to grow. Thrace looked like a handful, but she clearly respected the man. Not enough to be silent, but enough to feel bad.
“ I apologize for Captain Thrace’s remarks.” Adama said. “ This Prime Directive of yours… There’s some who are unhappy with the choices Mr. Gaeta has made in its name. Myself among them.”
Roslin tapped her stack of paper. She smiled slightly and Picard found himself smiling back. It was an interesting dynamic between the two, he thought. He suspected Roslin was the stronger of the two.
“ Let’s cut to the chase,” Roslin said pleasantly. “ We’re not fools. We understand that Starfleet has first claim on Lt. Gaeta. We also understand that he’s going to be an invaluable tool to you in dealing with our culture. However, it hasn’t escaped me that you’re very interested in our jump drive. I am extremely grateful for the help, you seem like very nice people, and we have nothing to offer. Nothing but the FTL drive, and Lt. Gaeta, who was required by your laws to not share any technical information due to our status as an uncontacted civilization, has spent ten years learning our technology. He’s very bright. I suspect you know that. He can give you the drive.”
“ Wait….” Riker said. He glanced at Picard, and Picard nodded. He had no problem with what Riker was going to say. It wasn’t a secret and the colonial government clearly needed some assurances.
“ Our laws works both ways,” Riker said pleasantly. “ We don’t steal. Mr. Gaeta can not tell us how your technology works. It’s an unprecedented situation, but you do have rights. If we had found one of your ships abandoned, then we could send in research scientists and back engineer it but everything would be carefully noted and if the society that built the ship was found, compensation would be offered. Mr. Gaeta told us that your drive was comparable to our lower end warp engines and we are very interested, but he made it very clear that our laws do apply to his knowledge.”
“If it eases your mind at all,” Picard added, equally pleasant, “ We agree with him completely. This is your knowledge.”
Much to his surprise, Admiral Adama chuckled. “ I should have let Captain Thrace stay. She’ll be happy to know Mr. Gaeta’s ability to be quiet has finally paid off.”
“I’m concerned,” President Laura Roslin said, after a very long moment of thought. She gestured to the heavy stack of paperwork. “ They could literally overpower us. Take what little we have to offer, and leave us destitute.” It was frightening.
Bill Adama shrugged. “ They already have, Laura.”
She looked sharply at him. That wasn’t the answer she expected to hear. “ What do you mean, Bill?” Because while she was concerned, she knew a part of it was her natural tendency to distrust miracles. She was looking for things to be wrong. She didn’t expect Bill to agree with her.
“ They have our tactical officer.” He said it easily but sharply, sharply enough that she understood that he wasn’t happy with her. She had expected that. It was unspoken that she didn’t interfere with military matters, and she had. And in retrospect…
No, she told herself, it was the right thing to do. She could have insisted. The Starfleet captain, one Jean-Luc Picard, had looked conciliatory on the point but she had overridden Bill. Because she suspected that the Starfleet ship could outgun them easily. Because the Galactica was dead in the water until the FTL drive was back up. Because the people were sick and hungry and the Starfleet captain had offered food and medical supplies immediately and hadn’t used possession of Felix Gaeta as a bargaining chip.
There were other reasons.
“ I don’t think we need to worry about Lt. Gaeta’s loyalty,” she said finally.
Adama looked at her intently. “ Are you serious?” He stood up, and began to pace around his small quarters. “ He never so much as blinked when we discussed Earth. He’s known the whole time. You don’t want to know how difficult it was for me to not beat him down when he said he was a Starfleet officer.”
“ I do know. That’s one of the reasons I overrode you.” She waited for him to digest that. “I was worried for his safety, and just how awful it would look if we did insist on keeping him and then someone who doesn’t have your self control killed him. Have you thought about that?” She took a deep breath. “ As worried as I am about being treated fairly, it doesn’t change the fact that the nightmare of the last four years is essentially over. I’m positive these people think we’re savages. We need to start combating that.”
“They have no idea what it’s been like,” Bill said tiredly. He sat down beside her. “ One of them… Riker? Actually asked Saul what the crew did for entertainment.”
Roslin let that sink in. “ What did Col. Tigh say?”
Bill shrugged. “ I didn’t ask. Some variation on drinking, frakking, and fighting, knowing Saul. None of this changes the actual problem. They have a perfect source of intelligence about us. For all we know, they have Gaeta under interrogation, doped to his eyes with truth drugs.”
“Do you think that, really?” She didn’t. Gaeta had looked relieved. Not afraid in the slightest. If anything he had been close to tears from joy. They all had been close to tears from joy. And the Starfleet officers she had met… seemed squeamish.
“No,” Bill said after a long moment. “ But we have to accept the fact that he is being debriefed. And ultimately his loyalty is not to us. He’s an expert with the FTL drive. The FTL drive, and the Cylon prisoner, are our only bargaining chips with these people, the only thing we have to offer, and Gaeta can give them one, and he has a lot of information on the other. If we accept what they’ve told us at face value, it doesn’t even matter. They could destroy the Cylons like swatting flies.”
She could hear the tinge of anger in his voice. She considered her options. It wasn’t time. He was going to be very angry when he found out, but that couldn’t be helped. “So what do you suggest? We’re meeting with the captain of that ship in less than twenty minutes.”
“Do you think they can be trusted?” He asked it almost casually.
“ For the most part.” She hesitated. “ Can I make a suggestion?”
Bill looked at her. “ Of course.”
“ Don’t mistake gentleness for weakness.” She looked him in the eyes. “ We both made that mistake with Felix Gaeta. Don’t make it again.”
~*~
Captain Jean-Luc Picard stepped out of the runabout and onto the deck of the Battlestar Galactica. The crew didn’t completely stop what they were doing, which he took as a good sign. They were getting used to seeing Starfleet people and he considered that a good thing. The colonials were a fairly paranoid people, which was to be expected. First contacts were touchy. Especially with a society whose only contact so far had been so devastating.
They looked hungry, he thought worriedly. He had food and medical supplies being shuttled over non stop, but he understood that the admiral of the fleet had insisted that the civilian population have first access. He hadn’t yet allowed replicators to be placed on the ships, because the colonists weren’t openly asking for membership in the Federation, but he assumed that would be a matter of time. They were a shattered people, he doubted that if he did give them replicators that they would be able to make more, not without help, but he had to be cautious.
“ Is it just me,” Will Riker said softly, “ Or is that man wearing a uniform that’s held together with metal staples?” He didn’t point. Just a flick of the eyes and Picard knew which man he meant.
“ Yes, Number One. If you’ll notice, the two young women in the corner, the twins? Can’t possibly be older than sixteen.” More like thirteen, if he was any judge. “ These are desperate people.”
Riker nodded. “ It’s…” He waved expansively. “ It makes me wonder how well we would have done. If the Borg had taken Earth.”
“ That’s an interesting thought, Will.” And an uncomfortable one, considering his own role in the Borg assault on Earth, but Picard let that roll away. Riker had a point, and a good one, and it was certainly something that would be relayed to the boarding parties. The colonists appeared primitive partly because they had been running for their lives. Most of the fleet was composed of people who had been traveling short distances between the colonies, with little in the way of personal possessions. Most of the small fleet’s ships weren’t designed to carry passengers for any length of time, and the level of squalor was appalling. On the other hand, it was simply amazing that any of these people had survived at all, from what Lt. Gaeta had told them.
Lt. Commander Felix Gaeta was an entirely different problem. Fortunately not a serious one, at least not a serious one for Starfleet. Picard knew that Prime Directive violations had to be investigated, but all it took was looking around the Galactica to see that the violations couldn’t have been serious. There were no phasers juryrigged or replicators, or photon torpedos. The Galactica didn’t even have traditional shielding. And Gaeta had hardly been living large, using the fruits of Federation technology to secure himself fame and fortune. Just the opposite.
“ Just remember,” he said softly as their escort, a young blonde woman in a colonial officers uniform began to step over to them. “ They may be as human as we are, but this is a first contact.”
“ You must love this,” Riker said after a moment. “ Has there ever been a better example of a Preserver seeded society? Worshippers of the Greek pantheon… with space flight.”
“ And any number of potentially violent factions crammed into ships that are barely able to fly,” Picard warned. He nodded pleasantly to the young female officer who had approached them. “ Captain Thrace? Are you our escort today?”
The woman nodded. She was young, and hard eyed, and like many of the colonials, there was a faint aura of violence hanging around her. She reminded him of Tasha Yar. “ The Admiral and the President are waiting.”
They followed her through the maze of corridors. The Galactica was a very large ship, and Picard had to admit, there were a lot of questions he had about the colonials and their technology. It seemed to have developed along completely different lines. Those different lines included an FTL drive that worked without dilithium and that was very interesting. The fact that the colonials were human was enough to bypass some first contact rules. The fact that they had an FTL drive that wasn’t based on warp technology meant that it was a Federation priority to get them to accept Federation help and membership. It was going to be tricky.
Both the Admiral and the President rose when they entered the room. Picard hadn’t needed the briefing from Gaeta to know that he was looking at two very sharp individuals. Admiral Adama looked like a grizzled war horse that wouldn’t hesitate to bite. He didn’t smile. President Laura Roslin did smile, and Picard steeled himself. Roslin was a pleasant looking older woman, and he could see that she knew how to use that. She was crafty, in other words.
“ We have a problem,” she said simply as they all took their seats. Captain Thrace snorted with amusement. Roslin gave her a bemused look.“ Well, we have many problems, but this one is a bit awkward. I believe you’re aware that the Galactica is having some trouble with its jump drive.”
Picard nodded. From their previous meeting, he had understood that the main reason the Galactica hadn’t simply run upon detecting the Enterprise was that there had been a massive malfunction in the drive. The civilian fleet had flitted away in the blink of an eye, returning only after contact had been made. It had been impressive, as impressive as the display the smaller ships called Raptors had put on. “ There’s no pressing need to leave this area.”
“ One of the few people left who can fix the drive is Lt. Gaeta.” Adama said, his voice a faint growl.
Interesting, Picard thought. He almost wished that he had brought Troi with him, just to get a more accurate read on what was happening. Recovering a Starfleet officer in deep cover was rare enough, made entirely unique by an unprecedented first contact situation. He had asked Adama to relinquish the man partly because it didn’t take being telepathic to see that any number of the Galactica’s command staff felt grossly betrayed, and partly because it removed a potential temptation.
They were a desperate people. Leaving Felix Gaeta with them meant leaving a bargaining chip. A bargaining chip that could be tortured, and Picard had absolutely no doubt after speaking with Gaeta that torture was in the tool chest of the Twelve Colonies. Plus, he rather suspected that it wouldn’t take much to get Gaeta talking. Troi’s reports made it clear that the man felt guilty over not helping the colonials, that he blamed himself for any number of deaths. It said something about Starfleet training methods that a freshly graduated officer with next to no practical experience hadn’t yielded to temptation, but it was better to remove the temptation. For everyone’s sake.
At the same time, he could see the concern. The colonial ranking structure was different. “Lieutenant” was clearly a lower rank with them than it was in Starfleet, but Gaeta had explained his duties, and it was fair to say that he had been fairly high in the command structure. The tactical officer, and navigator, and apparently the only functional science officer, and if it was hard enough to be so desperate for help that ships getting supplies were in order of who was starving the most, it had to be very hard to say no to even high handed requests. It had to have occurred to them that they gave up a source of intelligence.
It was also entirely possible they were telling the truth, that they needed Gaeta to fix the ship. “ He is a Starfleet officer. We have our own concerns about this matter.”
“ What? Is he going to get a medal for keeping his mouth shut while people were dying?” Thrace sneered. Her anger was written on her face. “ Trust me, he’s real good at that.”
Adama rose to his feet. “ You may excuse yourself, Captain Thrace. Go to your quarters and stay there until I send for you.”
Thrace shot him an angry look, but wilted after a long moment. Picard allowed his estimation of Adama’s leadership to grow. Thrace looked like a handful, but she clearly respected the man. Not enough to be silent, but enough to feel bad.
“ I apologize for Captain Thrace’s remarks.” Adama said. “ This Prime Directive of yours… There’s some who are unhappy with the choices Mr. Gaeta has made in its name. Myself among them.”
Roslin tapped her stack of paper. She smiled slightly and Picard found himself smiling back. It was an interesting dynamic between the two, he thought. He suspected Roslin was the stronger of the two.
“ Let’s cut to the chase,” Roslin said pleasantly. “ We’re not fools. We understand that Starfleet has first claim on Lt. Gaeta. We also understand that he’s going to be an invaluable tool to you in dealing with our culture. However, it hasn’t escaped me that you’re very interested in our jump drive. I am extremely grateful for the help, you seem like very nice people, and we have nothing to offer. Nothing but the FTL drive, and Lt. Gaeta, who was required by your laws to not share any technical information due to our status as an uncontacted civilization, has spent ten years learning our technology. He’s very bright. I suspect you know that. He can give you the drive.”
“ Wait….” Riker said. He glanced at Picard, and Picard nodded. He had no problem with what Riker was going to say. It wasn’t a secret and the colonial government clearly needed some assurances.
“ Our laws works both ways,” Riker said pleasantly. “ We don’t steal. Mr. Gaeta can not tell us how your technology works. It’s an unprecedented situation, but you do have rights. If we had found one of your ships abandoned, then we could send in research scientists and back engineer it but everything would be carefully noted and if the society that built the ship was found, compensation would be offered. Mr. Gaeta told us that your drive was comparable to our lower end warp engines and we are very interested, but he made it very clear that our laws do apply to his knowledge.”
“If it eases your mind at all,” Picard added, equally pleasant, “ We agree with him completely. This is your knowledge.”
Much to his surprise, Admiral Adama chuckled. “ I should have let Captain Thrace stay. She’ll be happy to know Mr. Gaeta’s ability to be quiet has finally paid off.”