ONLINE THE NEEDS OF THE MANY

by Michael A. Martin

  War Preparedness and Stop

  Worrying About the Undine)

  This correspondence is reproduced here with the permission of both the sender and the recipient, and with the approval of Starfleet’s Public Affairs Office.

  From the comlogs of Deep Space Station K-7, Stardate 85563.8*

  TO: Samantha Wildman, M.D. (Lieutenant Commander, Starfleet, ret.)

  FROM: Naomi Wildman (Commander, Starfleet)

  Dear Mom;

  I hope this note finds you well (and Dad, too, because I expect you to pass this along to him the next time you two get in touch). First, let me apologize for not having contacted either of you via a live subspace feed (or at least sending you a holo) instead of this block of electronic text. But with the heightened security and encryption protocols we have to use out here on the edge of Klingon space—not to mention the lack of subspace bandwidth available to us because of all the outdated equipment here—text is my only option at the moment. I should also apologize for not having transmitted this letter a few weeks sooner than I have, but the security situation is sensitive enough to warrant the delay; after all, we don’t want the Klingons taking advantage of any time-sensitive information if they should happen to intercept this. I know how eager the both of you are to see that third gold pip on my collar—especially now that my promotion to full commander has been a done deal for a while now.

  I have to confess that my first command isn’t quite what I’d hoped for. This place has been in continuous operation for about 150 years now, and it looks like the last major systems upgrade here dates back to the middle of the 2350s. Ensign Esheli in engineering has been twisting her antennae into knots trying to remedy that situation ever since she got here three weeks ago, but she’s been running the Red Queen’s race just keeping this ancient station spaceworthy and on an even keel, so to speak. Fortunately, my new first officer knows a thing or two about solving thorny engineering problems on the fly, and because of him I expect this place to be entirely shipshape before mid-month—and, with luck, before any angry Klingons come a-calling. Icheb got promoted to lieutenant commander just before they sent us out to the Klingon Shore to run this hoary old outpost. He’s become exactly the sort of Starfleet officer we’d always both imagined he’d one day grow up to be: competent, trustworthy, cool under pressure, and almost invariably the smartest person in the room, even when he’s conferring with the Borg Task Force (though he probably could be a little more restrained about displaying that last characteristic, particularly around Commander Silel, who sometimes shows his typically Vulcan aversion to being out-thunk by anybody who looks as human as Icheb does).

  I know everything I’ve just told you probably hasn’t made you any less nervous about my having accepted this assignment. Yes, I’m posted almost right on the front lawn of Qo’noS. Yes, if and when the Klingons come here, it won’t be to play kadis-kot. Yes, Deep Space Station K-7, as inadequate as it may be at the moment, is the only thing standing between a newly expansionist and bloodthirsty Klingon Empire and far too many more-or-less defenseless inhabited planets (Ajilon Prime, the Delta Outposts, Donatu V, Sherman’s Planet, etc.), none of which can count on the Organians for help this time. On the other hand, I have a crew of Starfleet’s finest pulling this place together, and in record time. And while I’ll always hope for the best regarding the Klingons (the Federation has made friends with the Empire before, after all, and probably will do it again, someday), we’ll be preparing for the worst as we get the station ready for what could be a long and brutal siege.

  If you receive this belated note when I expect to send it, you can at least take that as a hopeful sign: it means we’ve managed to survive out here long enough to get the last of the hatches battened down—and that means we’re finally ready to put up a fight that the Klingons won’t forget any time soon.

  More later. I can see sparks from the corridor outside my office door. Lieutenant Tal and Lieutenant Gabriel need some help right now getting the new bioneural power relays installed, and everybody else is tied up putting out other fires (both figurative and literal) around here. Gotta run.

  Love always,

  Naomi

  JAKE SISKO, DATA ROD #P-63

  Champagnifer Planum (in Margaritifer Terra, just outside New Chicago), Mars

  The ground beneath the vast overhead vault of pink-stippled atmosphere is thin and dry—not to mention cold enough to elicit a shiver, as though my dark thermal windbreaker were no more substantial than rice paper. Still, the chill afternoon wind carries a not altogether unpleasant bite, even though it’s moving fast enough to kick up a small but noticeable amount of dust. The airborne particles broadcast the familiar baseline smell of the Martian regolith, its bleachlike aroma intermixed liberally with the gentler scents of growing plants and turned, living earth. I inhale deeply, though never quite deeply enough to suit a pair of lungs long since spoiled by the warm, humid breezes of Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana.

  This world is the closest in proximity to Earth that merits description by the word “planet.” Not surprisingly, humanity has treated Mars almost as an extension of its blue birthworld, leaving our unmistakable mark everywhere during the three centuries or so we’ve been here. With the exception of the polar regions, the skyward reaches of Olympus Mons, Ascraeus Mons, the Tharsis Bulge, and a few other plateaus and peaks in the southern highlands, the entire surface of Mars now constitutes a more or less continuous shirtsleeve environment. So the ruins toward which I walk, which consist mostly of an old, corroded section of a long-obsolete twenty-first-century pressure dome (complete with what appears to be the original outer airlock door!) is merely an ornament now—or perhaps a monument to the far less temperate climate that this world’s twenty-first- and twenty-second-century pioneers subdued and tamed at such great human cost.

  I lived here briefly as a boy, long after the life-and-death struggles of the pioneers, the political and economic storms of the War of Martian Independence, the sunrise of hope marked by the Fundamental Declarations of the Martian Colonies, and the marsquake-inducing Kuiper comet-bombardments of the great terraforming projects all had passed into history. Bradbury Township had by then become more a cozy bedroom suburb than a jumping-off place for those bound for the final frontier. About as exotic as the outskirts of Toronto, it had devolved into a place of tedium and ennui; it was a huge disappointment to a boy whose expectations had been primed by dozens of fictional (and often mutually exclusive) portraits of the Red Planet that had been written over the last few centuries.

  The adventure I had always craved came at last when my parents and I shipped out on the Saratoga—which became one of the thirty-nine Starfleet vessels that the Borg destroyed at Wolf 359. My father and I returned to Mars afterward, where he resumed his work for Starfleet at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards—and where I returned to my endless hours of reading and daydreaming.

  And fought my first real battle against regret.

  Today, as I trudge through the rusty, red-brown soil toward the ancient, ruined dome, leaving my shoeprints in a mix of artificially cultivated agricultural products and rehabilitated native regolith, I wonder how many times I’ve quietly wished that my family had simply stayed put here on Mars, sitting out the Borg attack that took my mother from me when I was only eleven. Perhaps a part of me—the part that still daydreams about Barsoom and all the other versions of Mars that never were but perhaps should have been—never left this place the first time.

  With its salmon-streaked skies, Mars even now remains a quintessentially alien place, humanity’s aggressive presence notwithstanding. Despite the purely decorative nature of the few fragmentary airlocks and dome sections that remain standing here and there, and the proliferation of much newer conifers I can see arrayed all along the western horizon, this place is still recognizably Other when compared with humanity’s cradle, Earth. For starters, that tree-lined western horizon is much closer than it would be on an Earth-sized globe. The sun that illuminates th
e dust-pinked ceiling of sky is wan and pale and far too small to rule the heavens properly. And Mars’s point-three-eight g puts a spring in my step that sets my feet moving out ahead of my body whenever I’m less than completely careful; since the interplanetary transport first delivered me to Lowell Spaceport, I’ve landed flat-on-fundament twice already, and may do so yet again here at New Chicago. Despite my having been acclimatized to Martian standard gravity during my childhood, years of living on Earth—to say nothing of constant exposure to shipboard artificial grav plating—appears to have spoiled me permanently for any radical departure from an Earth-normal sense of up and down.

  Generations of terraformers have wrought uncountable environmental modifications on Mars over the past quarter-millennium, effectively remaking it almost into another Earth. Regardless, Mars has never entirely lost its air of strangeness and wonder, at least for me. When I gaze at any Martian landscape, whether it’s festooned with recent-growth forests like the ones I see creeping up on New Chicago’s margins, or sere with the ocher-and-brown grasslands, the seltzer lakes, or the carbon-fizz-and-brine seas that predominate elsewhere on this world, I still see a place where a four-armed Thark warrior straight out of the pages of Edgar Rice Burroughs might ride into battle, his eight-legged thoat leaping from crater-rim to crater-rim at full gallop; I still see a possible dwelling place for Percival Lowell’s desperate, thirsty canal builders; or H.G. Wells’ relentless conquerors; or Ray Bradbury’s fearful, astronaut-murdering shape-shifters; or the human-swallowing plants and prolific Martian flatcats that Robert Heinlein wrote about centuries ago.…

  Of course, who really needs any of those things when you’ve got the Borg collective to worry about, or the Dominion?

  Or the Undine?

  I put aside my ruminations as a trim, wiry man of perhaps thirty emerges from the shadow of the ruined dome section and extends his hand toward me. He grasps my hand firmly as he introduces himself in a resonant, mellifluous voice. As we walk together past the crumbling dome section, our designated meeting place, I note that he smiles easily, and that his features are already familiar to me even though I know I’ve never met him before. Much of the familiarity no doubt comes from his more-than-passing resemblance to his famous father, from whom he acquired his European-inflected speech patterns, an impressive Roman nose, and an emerging pattern baldness that already appears to be driving his close-cropped, copper-hued hair into a slow but inevitable retreat toward the back of his head.

  Despite the significant gap in our ages, I know I have something fundamental in common with this young man: like him, I have a parent who has acquired some renown, both in and out of Starfleet (he can boast two such famous parents, in fact). The interview begins in earnest after I activate my mobile recording gear, and we walk as we converse, leaving the pressure-dome ruins behind us as we head at a brisk, body-warming pace toward the stand of conifers that beckons us toward the horizon.

  And I begin to discover what else I might have in common with René Jacques Robert François Picard, son of Jean-Luc Picard and Beverly Crusher.

  Your generation’s perspective on the Undine War years just might be a unique one, Mister Picard.

  How do you mean? And before you answer that, let’s agree right now to get ourselves on a first-name basis with one another. There’s always been far too much protocol in the Picard family for my taste. Please just call me René.

  René it is, but only if you agree to call me Jake. And what I meant is that every Federation national your age and younger has never really known a time when humanity hasn’t been either under threat or direct attack by the Undine.

  I suppose you’re right, Jake. You might even say that for my generation the Undine simply became a part of the cultural wallpaper, as it were. I suppose they’re still there, lurking in the shadows, at least sociologically speaking.

  You don’t believe they’re still a real threat?

  Quite the contrary, Jake. Anything that can influence an entire society so profoundly as to give it a general tendency to jump at its own shadow poses a considerable threat.

  You don’t seem all that jumpy to me, René. But then I suppose the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.

  My parents always placed a premium on rationality and coolness during times of crisis. On the other hand, perhaps the reason I don’t fly into a panic whenever somebody utters the word “Undine” has less to do with that and more to do with the fact that I’m not in charge of any aspect of the Federation’s response to such things. There must be a lot of fairly sobering information about the Undine that I’m simply not privy to.

  If you don’t mind my asking, René, why aren’t you in charge of such things?

  I suspect you already know the answer, Jake. Or at least a big part of it.

  You’re saying that the reason you came here to Mars instead of shipping out with Starfleet to the ends of the known universe might be the same reason I opted to pick up a pen instead of a tricorder?

  It only stands to reason, Jake. Look at us. Either of us would have been given an extraordinary degree of consideration at Starfleet Academy.

  But you know as well as I do that a pedigree can take you only so far in Starfleet, René. It’s a true meritocracy.

  Of course it is.

  And you didn’t find that just the least little bit… daunting?

  Of course. Who wouldn’t? After all, a surname like “Picard” doesn’t guarantee anything—except, perhaps, a certain heightened degree of expectation on the part of others. I imagine it’s much the same for anyone named “Sisko.”

  It’s not something I enjoy thinking about, but I suppose it’s true. Did those expectations cause you to doubt yourself?

  Not really. I don’t believe I’ve ever lacked for faith in my own merit, and I’d imagine that you’re much the same as I am on that score.

  Why would you assume that?

  Because it’s obvious from your choice of occupation. Now, I don’t claim to be an expert about writing. In fact, you could probably fill several libraries with everything I don’t know about the subject. Nevertheless, I’m reasonably certain that a writer must maintain a certain sense of hubris to believe his work is sufficiently worthwhile for anyone else to read. Since I know you’ve been writing since you were a boy, I have to assume you’ve been well acquainted with this hubris for at least that long.

  That’s… very insightful, René. You’ve just reminded me that the “family business” wouldn’t necessarily have led you to the bridge of a starship. You could just as easily have followed in your mother’s footsteps, and become a medical doctor. You’d have made an outstanding psychiatrist.

  I actually considered doing something like that. Just as I considered entering Starfleet.

  But you would have carried quite a burden of expectation in either of those occupations.

  A double burden of expection, considering who my mother is. And that’s why I began looking for a… third way.

  But I’d say you’ve done a lot more than just “consider” following in your parents’ footsteps, René. You took a lot of advanced medical training during your undergrad years. And when you applied to Starfleet Academy they accepted you on the spot. Your Starfleet career might even have surpassed your father’s. After all, his first application to the Academy was rejected—

  I know. But getting accepted on the first try only made the burden of expectations worse. It seemed to make the comparisons between me and my father even more inescapable.

  Is that why you made the last-minute decision not to enter the Academy?

  Partly.

  You needed to establish your own identity, distinct from those of your parents. Just like me—except that while I was growing up I never had to worry that I might really be an Undine “sleeper agent” living under deep cover.

  I suppose so. But the idea of personal identity—an identity that I’ll always choose to believe belongs to René Picard, regardless of the Undine threat, by the way—i
s only part of the reasoning behind my choice in careers. The reality is actually a bit more complicated. You see, I came to realize that the Federation’s relationship to the rest of the galaxy has… changed over the past several decades. That change was well under way before I was born, only Starfleet and the Federation Council hadn’t realized it yet. Maybe they still don’t.

  That seems to be one of the great leitmotifs of history, especially with regard to large-scale conflicts. We always enter the next war by preparing to re-fight the last one.

  Precisely. For most of the Federation’s history, we’ve faced adversaries that were essentially nation-states that were, at least broadly speaking, constituted much as we were. Putting aside differences in ideology, economics, and so forth. In fact, our adversaries have nearly always been similar enough to us to instill a kind of empathy in us. This often led to alliances eventually, or even real partnerships and interstellar friendship.

  But that began to change with the Dominion War.

  Yes, but the change was almost too subtle to be generally recognized for what it was. The Dominion War brought us into contact with a nation-state that was not only hostile and paranoid, but also capable of infiltrating Federation society on a massive scale—or at least making us fear mass-infiltration to the point that we very nearly lost everything the Federation stood for.

  The later Undine infiltrations and attacks carried the pattern further along than the Dominion ever managed—and the Undine managed to do it while keeping their profile so low that the nation-state vs. nation-state war paradigm ceased to work for us. Worst of all, the Undine delivered a fear factor that the Founders of the Dominion had never approached, not even on their best day.

  But a lot of that fear is more than justified.

  Certainly. But one has to keep things in perspective, especially when one is frightened. Fear or no fear, the sun will still rise in the east tomorrow—even here in the backwoods, on Mars. Fear or no fear, babies will keep being born, children will continue to grow up, and the wheel of life will go right on turning.