Face to face with the Undines

As soon as they stepped out of the Delta Flyer, they all could immediately feel vividly the strangeness of their surroundings. The air was too pure, the temperature too well balanced for even the extremes of them, the slightly disturbing smooth yet firm and warm flesh-like contact of the floor much more akin to walking on someone's back than on any deckplate or even soil they had ever stepped on. Around them, the high curving, smooth and slightly glittering walls with their rib-like columns arching over them and from one end to the other of the large hangar truly gave the impression of being inside the belly of some immense beast. A row of softly glowing yellow orbs stretched between those columns and looked as much as felt as so many alien eyes staring at them.

They had time to take it all in before an opening yawned on the wall directly in front of them. Again, the disquieting impression that it was a mouth opening to swallow them could not be avoided in anyone's mind. The captain deliberately spoke to tame in everyone as in himself the emotions that such an image evoked.

"We came without fear to stare at the wolf's jaws; time to go see what it really has in it's guts."

"Quolloquially put, Sir... but we are ready," the Marines Lieutenant answered, her stare high and unflinching, he voice calm but curt, her face a stone mask.

S'Tan, who had begun taking tricorder readings the moment they disembarked, was not amused. The readings were telling him that they were in-fact, walking through a living being. Most of his scans were being reflected, but what he could see was amazing. Unfortunately, what he could not detect was any way of inputting the virus. The only source of technology he could even see visually were the yellow orbs scattered around the room. He understood why the Borg wanted this race so badly. Without being allowed to rip through the 'skin' to get to the internal systems, he couldn't even begin to understand how it functioned. 

Kheren was flanked by Somers on one side and Oseno on the other while K'leysha followed right behind him with Solius and Yiral in tow. As they progressed, Somers spoke aloud with her combadge on an open channel as per security protocol, to inform the shuttle of their progress, test their comlink with them on a continual basis and thus have their back up ready to pull them out of trouble if it suddenly started... or to retreat back to them in case trouble instead struck those left behind.

"We are entering the adjoining deck of the hangarbay; the door is slowly closing behind us as we enter a long curving corridor with the same features as the hangar itself except that there is no column-like archways, just smooth circular walls with smaller glowing orbs making one line on each side... most probably internal sensors as much as lighting sources..."

"Lieut... Somers, your sig... ... ...king up. Switch... ... transpond... sign..."

As they went deeper inside the vessel, they never saw any room or adjacent corridor opening anywhere, nor any console, wall panel, access port, maintenance well, jeffreys tubes hatch or anything else but smooth glistening greenish walls with little yellow lights. It was like one single, long, uniform and seemingly endless corridor with walls as disturbingly smooth, spongious, humid  and warm as the floor, curving this way and that before them. Somers continued her report as they walked at a leisured pace to wherever this sole road was leading.

"You hear that, Lieutenant Commander? And you Lieutenant?" Kheren asked of K'Leysha, as he knew her hearing was superior to the Human norm, and of Solius, although he wasn't sure a Romulan had the same keen auditory sensibilties as a Vulcan since they had emigrated eons ago from thin-aired Vulcan to a planet with much denser, Earth-like atmospheric density.

"Just broken garbage, Sir." The engineer responded. He stopped fruitlessly scanning the ship and redirected his tricorder in an attempt to boost the signal. It failed.

"These seemless doors open before us as we approach and close after our passage."

"We're being herded, Captain," understood his chief of security from what he was describing. "This will make any retreat or escape rather complicated."

"Lieu...nant So... do ... copy?"

"Three to five, Lieutenant S'Kon. You're on transponder frequency?"

"Affir...tive; ... ... best we can ... at ... moment. Transport... signal shows ... same def...ciency. Lieu...nant Blakely ... work... to compens...te."

We will keep all channels open and maintain continuous report , Ensign, so that you have a constant to work on."

"Acknow...dged, Lieutenant."

"Difficulty maintaining contact with Dusk, Captain," then officially reported the red-haired woman to her commanding officer while they still walked along the sinuous passageway. "They're working on a way to strengthen the signal."

Kheren simply nodded, understanding the implications and integrating the risk factor into his multiplanning thought process he was quite known for, even among his already naturally tactically-minded predatorial species.

They all knew that, despite the long walk,  their trek through the bowels of the alien bioship was soon to come to an end... and then maybe, to a new beginning.

S'Tan sighed, "Looks like we are going to need permission to speak with our ship, Sir. Everything I am trying gets negated almost instantly. It's almost as if each room we enter is a self-contained bubble. My active scans can't even see the prior rooms as soon as the door closes."

The engineer thought of an idea at that moment. Turning to Lieutenant Somers,

"Lieutenant, please give me your tricorder."

The woman donated her scanner to S'Tan and he went to work syncing up their sensor emissions. The Lieutenant looked at the engineer strangely, so he explained.

"I believe you read about 'Hanzel and Grettle' when you were a child? Romulans have a different story, where ghosts devour the children, however, the principle they used was sound. If I use your tricorder as a loaf of bread, I can use it to see if we can puncture these lead walls...

After setting up the frequency broadcasts and overriding a safety protocol or two, he was able to make the Marine's tricorder emit a high-frequency burst every minute. He assumed that they were still close enough to the shuttle to use it as a homing beacon, if need be, as well. He wedged the tricorder against one of the yellow orbs and made sure his tricorder picked up the signal before they walked through the door. Once it closed, he stopped walking and muttered:

"Now we wait..."

They didn't wait long before the voice of Ensign Skon came to them much stronger and clearer than before.

"Dusk ... away team; we are receiving a ... stronger signal now. We follow you on ... commlink and transponder sig... Channel open ... transporter  on standby."

"Well done, Lieutenant Solius," complimented Kheren. "Dusk, keep watch. We should reach rendez-vous point soon."

Before them, another aperture opened and they entered a large ovoid room where the pulsing lights were much more numerous and arranged in patterns that, although not really recognizable at first glance, felt slightly familiar. On the walls and on top of certain protrusions, even on the floor in a few places, they formed what looked to the Starfleet officers like console controls. 

And in the middle of it all stood Boothby.

Or rather, it was the form of the old Starfleet Academy gardener taken by an Undine leader, as reported by the famous logs of the starship Voyager and those much more recent of the USS Alsea during Operation Horizon, then under the command of Oseno Jureth. And, after nodding in welcome to Captain Kheren, to him the obvious leader among them, it is to the Bajoran that the figure of the old man first spoke.

"We meet once again, Captain... or is it Commander now, if I am to interpret your rank insigna correctly? It seems strange to me that you would be so demoted after being the first in successfully convincing some of us that you Federations are neither prey nor predator."

Boothby, or rather the Undine impersonating him, then turned to face the Andorian.

"Captain Kheren of Horizon; from my meeting with your Captain Janeway of Voyager, I understand that you speak for these people here."

"I carry the responsibility, yes," answered Kheren with a polite nod of his white-haired head, "but we all are here to speak together to you and your people as representatives of the United federation of Planets and what it stands for."

With a hand he indicated all the others one at a time.

"Commander Oseno Jureth you already know; and his interaction with you during your meeting is fully representative of what the Federation is all about: peace, the respect of life and universal brotherhood... with the strength and resolve to ensure it. And with us are those who's very diversity exemplifies our dedication to share these values with all; Lieutenant-Commander Snowfire K'Leysha is chief of science under my command, but she is from outside of the Federation, yet a friend who came to us on behalf of her own people to partake with us, just like you, of the benefits of this sharing. Lieutenant S'Tan Solius is Romulan, a people not only also out of our Federation, but for a long time our self-declared ennemies, just like yours; yet, he is my chief engineer, proof that even among enemies can sprout the seeds of future friendship. Lieutenant Alexandra Somers is of Earth, as you already can see, and my tactical officer. You know quite well about Humans and their strength equal in peace as in conflict; she exemplifies how deeply committed we can be to work for peace as much as to preserve it. And finally, this is Lieutenant Commander Adira Yiral, our on-board ambassador, herself from a species that was a long time ago decimated by your own deadly enemy, the Borg; among all of us, she can best understand what you went through... and where we want to go next, with you."

As the Andorian captain introduced his companions each in turn, the polymorphed Undine looked attentively at them, one at a time, obviously trying to fathom in their eyes what the words he heard truly meant. After a moment of silence following the introductions, he turned again his attention to Kheren.

"Good words, Captain Kheren of Horizon. You're already familiar with us..."

The Andorian shook his head.

"The worst thing to do when you first meet someone is assuming you already know those persons before giving them a chance to truly open their hearts to you."

Boothby thought about those words for a moment then nodded.

"I tend to forget that your kind is not telepathic like ours. And in this form neither am I, actually. In light of this, there is lboth logic and wisdom in your words."

He took again a few seconds before resuming.

"My people has a very basic outlook; the weak shall perish. This has been our way of life for as long as we existed. When the Borg invaded our space, it was the first time in our long History that we saw another sentient species, someone not of our own kind. It was something that we had not even ever conceived before. And they came upon us to... assimilate us, to... consume us, as the strong does upon the weak. That we understood quite well. But weak we are not. We blasted them out of our space and were on the verge of annihilating them in their own space when your kind appeared. And then, they chased us out of their space with your kind's help. Even more, you entered or own space and threatened our very survival."

"But may I remind you, Sir, that once the point was made, that invading our space was not an option, the USS Voyager left your realm without further threat and closed it's access so that even the Borg would not threaten you again."

The Undine in disguise nodded in approval to Kheren's assessment, even if his face was still set in a deep frown.

"Agreed; but the fact was, your Federation showed us that now we were the weak. To our mindset, this was intolerable... even frightening. It meant to us that we should perish."

Kheren was about to protest but Boothby raised a hand to stop him.

"Of course, we would not accept this. My guess is that you are also familiar with me, this form  that is, from your Starfleet records. You know that I took this form initially, as did several hundred of my kind, so as to study you and test your strength and weaknesses prior to infiltrate your Starfleet Command as a first step in invading your space and vanquishing you."

"Yes, Sir," admitted the Andorian. "But that plot was aborted when you reached an understanding with Captain Janeway and her crew. My guess is that this resolved the quandrary."

A crooked smile appeared in the craggy human-like face.

"You assume this because of our message that brought you here. But I'm sure that you considered that this could be a trap... yet you came."

"That we did, Sir," Kheren admitted without hesitation. "But, in our view, it was worth taking the risk."

It took again some long seconds before Boothby cocked his head to one side and looked at him with a renewed frown.

"Are you trying to tell me that you would welcome invaders?"

"No, Sir, we would not... but we would welcome friends."

Kheren's answer did not seem to surprise Boothby. Yet, it took a long moment of obvious pondering before his gravely voice was heard again.

"Since the dawn of our consciousness, eons ago, my kind never had even the basic concept of friendship... until very recently. As a purely telepathic species, that strange, alien concept has been propagating among us as a very sharp, unique image... that of a humanoid face."

And as he spoke, he looked directly at Oseno Jureth.

All the while, Adira Yiral was saying nothing, just looking at the Boothby figure with a frown. Kheren noticed her expression.

"Something wrong, Lieutenant-Commander?"

The El-Aurian didn't answer immediately. She continued for a few seconds to stare at the Undine in human form and then she spoke with a voice that showed no doubt.

"You do not want just our friendship... you want... our help?"

"Your comrade is very perceptive," then admitted Boothby once again facing the Andorian captain.

He looked at each of them in turn once more before continuing.

"There is something you have to understand about us; contrary to the Collective or your societies like your Federation, we have no society as you understand the term. fact is, we do not understand the term ourselves. This also is a novel concept for us... and it's mental representation is this."

With a gnarly finger, he pointed at the combadge on the chest of Kheren; or rather, at the symbol it was shaped to show... the smooth-curved delta shaped symbol of Starfleet.

"We Undines are, each one of us, a world unto itself. Each one of us is born out of the very elements of our universe, what you call Fluidic space. Each of us is born with and from the ship-entity we travel in, grow in, live in and die in. This entity we are in, what you define as a bioship, is not just a mere vessel to travel in space; it is my mother, my father, my brother, my spouse and my child all in one. It is my whole world.... and it is me... and I am it... and my whole world."

It took a moment for each of the Starfleet officers to grasp the full meaning and the implications of what wwas now revealed to them.

"In simple terms," then said Yiral, "you have no society and exist, all of your kind,as pure individuals?"

"Like the absolute opposite of the Borg Collective," sumrized Kheren.

"Essentially, yes," agreed Boothby with a small sad grin. "That's why the Collective frightened us, angered us and why we hated it beyond the mere fact of their attack against us. When they came and we saw what they were, for the first time in our entire History, we were all thinking and acting like a community; all individuals working for a single common goal. Beyond individual survival through the simplest law of survival of the fittest that had been our way from times beyond memory, our goal had become a common one;  to eradicate that which by it's very existence was the very denial of our own. And because we felt that the weak was destined to perish, we pooled all our forces and wills into that common goal."

"This was so novel and thraumatic an experience to your kind , you extended it to us when you encountered Voyager and Starfleet," immediately understood Alexandra Somers, thinking out loud. "Our own group pattern, our societal life, you saw as something akin to that of the Collective."

"I should not be surprised how you Humanoids quickly understand even without reading minds," nodded the Undine. "Yes, that's why we attempted to impersonate you and trained ourselves to learn how to think and act like you in order to infiltrate and conquer your kind with our mock-up Starfleet Academy training grounds, the one your starship Voyager discovered. That is where we developped the genetic-altering compound that allows me to have this Human body you now see. We had to do it before you came after us, like the Borg did... And you had proven yourself even more a threat than the Borg, since you also were individuals yet living in this communal structure we barely could comprehend... and cope with. We had a fatal weakness..."

"But then, things changed..." guessed Yiral and again Boothby nodded in agreement.

"Our last meetings with Voyager left us... confused. The truce we struck on our training ground as sharing your form started to make us feel as you do... The lost one hunted by the ones you call Hirogens that Janeway's crew helped to hide, heal and escape, an experience none of us had never ever lived through, let alone conceive before... And then, when we discovered the massive destructive anomaly that threatened not only your universe but ours, we again met you..."

Again he turned to face Oseno.

"We tried to capitalize on your difficulties and distraction from that cosmic menace, attacked you... but then we also felt prey to the phenomena. Then you, Oseno Jureth of Alsea, with your crew and your other ships, you pulled us out of the brink of annihilation and let us go free to return home. Once more, your kind had baffled us with that attitude that neither predatorial instinct nor prey reflexes could explain. And when we returned among our own kind, it spread among us like wildfire."

Hearing those words, Kheren's antennae sprang up suddenly.

"Like... an infection."

They all looked at him, even Boothby, although the transformed Undine was smiling in shared understanding. Kheren shared that understanding with the others.

"They are telepathic; it is their only mean of communication. Once an idea appears in one mind... it spreads and is shared to all. So now, they are all confused by these totally new alien ideas of... peace, compassion, friendship... helping one another... living all together for the betterment of each individual."

Boothby looked at them all as he confirmed the words of the Andorian.

"You can not conceive... except for you maybe, Lieutenant-Commander Snowfire K'Leysha... you cannot imagine how fast, how deeply this... infection spread among us. And even you can't imagine how it... disturbed us."

"Confusion... anguish... death," then said Yiral in a soft voice, as she caught on the feelings of their host.

" All of us were left confused... most of us experienced anguish for the first time, an anguish that would not leave us... and some of us could not even continue to live with it. Captain Kheren of Horizon, my people is on the verge of a major evolution..."

"Or... revolution," said the El-Aurian pointedly.

Once more, Boothby nodded and smiled with a strange mixture of wonder, joy, sadness and fear in his old leathery Humanlike face.

"I alone lived through all those experiences, enough to cope with them and find out a way to resolve this. That is why I sent my message to your Federation. To better my kind, or at least help it... if not save it."

Kheren looked at the others and then back at Boothby, his antennae suddenly flaying wildly.

"You... you mean yourself... alone..."

The realisation then also struck Somers like a punch in the face.

"You do not come to speak for your people... because you have no people. You're all individuals, each with it's own mind, dreams,wants, fears, ambitions... So there might be some who do think and understand as you do and would agree with what you are attempting to do here, be it because they want to or simply to survive this... trauma. But... as for the rest..."

And then, the whole universe shook.