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Vash Deveneaux did not want to go to the Captain’s Ready Room. It went against all protocol and considerations of shipboard life. When on the bridge, the Captain was surrounded in a perpetual cloud of holographic information that he had to monitor, analyze and react to on a second by second basis. The Ready Room was, in theory, a place to retreat from that and contemplate a single subject. Sometimes a subject unrelated to shipboard duties. It was grossly inconsiderate of the crew to pursue the Captain there with distractions and they all knew it.

Which was why it was doubly disconcerting to arrive at the Ready Room door and find Commander Rand there already. Vash frowned, sizing up his fellow officer. He’d never worked with Rand before their assignment to the Stewart, something that was no longer uncommon in the Rodenberry Stellar Navy. This wasn’t the six ship fleet the colony had started out with, it was a genuine fleet of eighty three ships plus six under construction. You couldn’t know every officer in your peer group anymore.

But in their six months together on the Stewart Vash had learned to loath him.

It was a very professional loathing, rather than a personal one, but a loathing none the less. Rand seemed to think shipboard security and tactical performance was the first duty of every department and spent an inordinate amount of time pestering his fellow department heads about their section’s performance in various drills. Meanwhile, he’d ignored two formal reports on excessive energy use Vash had sent him in as many months. It wasn’t the drop in efficiency that bothered him. It was the lack of consideration.

But Vash felt he had good cause to call on the Captain in his Ready Room. He was willing to do Rand the courtesy of assuming he had the same. So he just nodded a greeting. “Commander.”

“Morning, Vash.”

Vash did his best not to bristle at the familiarity. Rand was casual with everyone. “What brings you here?”

Rand was about to answer when the Ready Room door opened. The Captain was seated behind his desk, attention fixed on a text display. He waved one hand absently. “Come in, gentlemen.”

There was a moment’s hesitation as Rand wavered then Vash brushed past him. Rand followed with an annoyed sound and the Ready Room door closed behind them. “Unusual for the two of you to come together,” The Captain said after another few beats, closing down his reader. “This must be important.”

“Actually, we’re here on separate business,” Rand said, giving Vash an opaque look. “I have Jimenez’s report on the matter we discussed earlier. You did say you wanted to see it as soon as it was finished.”

The Captain nodded. “Yes, I did say that. I’m sorry, Commander Deveneaux, this will have to wait.”

For a brief moment Vash considered protesting, pushing for the importance of his own case. But it wasn’t because he honestly thought he was bringing something more important than the tactical officer; it was because he hated letting Rand have yet another win. The realistic portion of his mind knew that, under the circumstances, tactical considerations probably did take precedence but his pride still protested. Quite a bit.

“I understand, Captain. At your convenience.” Deveneaux turned around and let himself back out of the Ready Room, annoyance gnawing away at his patience. Still, there were options. As soon as the Ready Room door was closed behind him he keyed his comms. “Devenaux to Fabrication Bay Three.”

“Chief Volney here, Commander. Go ahead.”

“Go ahead and clear the fabbers for the new jobs we discussed earlier, Chief. Pull the pop-up shelters from the cue and swap in the parts the Spiner recommended, then move on down the list. Priority one, I don’t want this job suspended unless the orders come from me or the Captain.” He walked into the lift and ordered it back to Engineering.

“Understood, sir. Glad the Captain saw it your way.”

“I’m sure he will, Chief. Deveneaux out.” The truth was, very little of the equipment Vash’s engineers were responsible for was under their sole supervision. Even the nanofacturies in the ship’s fabrication plants had such constant demands placed on them that many people in other departments felt possessive of them. Which forced Vash to maneuver carefully where they were concerned most of the time. And to lean on other department heads when he had to assert himself. Vash keyed his comms again. “Deveneaux to Lab 232. Put me through to the head of Martian Operations, please.”

---

 

Harriet checked the AI display inside her helmet for the fifth time in as many minutes. She’d made the mistake of assuming she could navigate the streets of Old Borealis as easily as Commander Fyodorovich did and was fast discovering the actual limits of her abilities. It was annoying, less because she couldn’t get where she wanted to go and more because she’d been so confident she could do this she turned down an offer from the ensign in the lander to escort her to the base camp. Some might find constantly doubling back to find the right street in a place like Old Borealis fun. But those were people of different tastes and, more importantly, not people on the cusp of scoring the scoop of two centuries.

There were more than a dozen embedded journalists in the Fleet but the only one with a Terran human on the same ship was named Harriet Thacker.

There was still a chance some shenanigans would put the main body of the fleet in contact with Earth before her scoop developed into anything particularly meaningful. But she had to keep her instincts sharp and at least try for it or she was going to rot away and become useless as a journalist thanks to all the inactivity she’d endured in the Fleet so far.

Then again, she had gotten to Mars before any of the other journalists in the Fleet and there did seem to be something interesting going on here, too. Most of the Martians she’d met had been tight lipped about pretty much everything so far but a lot of journalism was slowly cultivating contacts until you learned something big. With less than a week invested on the ground so far she couldn’t expect a whole lot just yet.

But then again, maybe she could. One of the orange suits was hustling his way towards her. It was hard to tell with the ill fitted nature of the suit, plus the helmet obscuring the face, but it looked a lot like the Head Watcher, Teng Pak Won. Harriet waved a hand to him as he got close. “Good morning!”

He caught his breath then ripped his helmet off, confirming it was, in fact, Pak. “I need to talk to Volk, please. Is he here?”

“Last I heard he was at the base camp.” She studied his face a little more closely. “Is something wrong?”

“There’s been an accident.”

---

 

“So we’re looking at a Prime Directive problem,” Oda mused. “They’ve built a culture based on a work of fiction that leads to ritual suicide. The question it raises is whether it’s our place to interfere.”

“I’m sorry,” Aubrey said, her holographic projection leaning forward a few degrees, “this may not be procedure but can I ask what a Prime Directive problem is?”

“Of course, Miss Vance.” Craig dredged through old memories of Academy lessons – and now that he was thinking about it Veers was right, there was a lot of time spent on Rodenberry’s television there – to formulate a comprehensive answer. “I presume that Star Trek is not one of the aspects of old Earth culture that you maintain?”

“If it is, I’ve never heard of it,” she said. “But I’m not a real student of old world cultures.”

“Then simply put, the Prime Directive is a belief that interfering with the natural progression of a culture or civilization of vastly inferior scientific and technological knowledge is innately harmful, and thus immoral. Prime Directive problems hinge on when that belief is put in conflict with another core tenant of humanism, like the belief that life is inherently valuable. Is it ethical to use modern medicine to save a stone age species from dying in large numbers from a disease? Their culture will naturally warp in response to that. Can we guarantee it does more good than harm? We can’t see the future, after all.” Craig spread his hands. “But like the Three Laws of Robotics, the storytelling function of the Prime Directive was to challenge the idea that even straight forward moral notions could be easily understood when applied to real life.”

“That may have been Rodenberry’s original purpose,” Commander Dhawan said, “although I’m not sure the record there is clear. Regardless, many writers played it entirely straight even before the franchise crossed the accountability threshold. For example, in The Next-“

“Putting aside the more labyrinthine parts of the analysis,” Craig put enough of an edge at the beginning to ensure Dhawan knew the topic was closed, “what we really need to ask ourselves is how ethical we think it is to interfere in this situation.”

Farah Dulan, human development officer, sociologist and the only other person physically present in the conference room with Craig, tapped the table to draw their attention. “While I’m not sure the Prime Directive was ever a truly ethical principle to hold to, it also doesn’t apply to our situation here. I can’t quote you every time the Directive was referenced in Rodenberry’s work but I do know that it wasn’t really meant to apply between radically different human cultures. All spacefaring civilizations were exempt from it and Mars was settled by a spacefaring civilization.”

“But they’ve clearly lost that capability,” Oda pointed out. “And there is a noninterference clause in the Naval charter, so its ethical considerations are secondary – we are bound to uphold it.”

“I think the question is moot.” There was a moment of uncomfortable silence as everyone in the physical and holographic meeting space turned their attention to Sergeant Langly.

Oda finally broke it. “Please explain, Sergeant.”

“I thought it was obvious,” Langly said with the annoyed tone universal to senior enlisted personnel who felt their officers were being obtuse. “First, you’re already here. You’ve already interfered and taken – or been given – a place in their cultural landscape. What you do with it or whether you even accept it is up to you but clearly the noninterference ship sailed long ago. Besides. This isn’t a Rodenberry mission.”

Craig nodded. This was the thing he’d been thinking all along. “It’s a joint mission between our governments. Even if Rodenberry was obliged to withdraw, a different ship from the fleet would just take our place.”

Commander Fyodorovich got to his feet and for a moment Craig thought he was about to make some kind of appeal to the assembled crew for one purpose or another. But instead he just made a motion to SFC Shen and stepped out of the hologram pickups, vanishing from view. For a brief moment Aubrey and Langly’s heads pivoted at odd angles, watching Fyodorovich leave relative to their own point of view. Opting to ignore the incident Craig carried on. “What are the potential outcomes of continuing here? Between Miss Vance’s briefings and Commander Fyodorovich discovering Out of the Silent Planet as the source text for this culture, what is there still to learn here?”

“We’ve never observed a culture this close to the myths that shaped it,” Dhawan put in. “We could learn incredible amounts just by studying it.”

“Interesting but not ultimately useful in the short term,” Craig said. “What else?”

There was another pause as Fyodorovich rejoined the call, sans SFC Shen. “Not exactly something to learn,” Langly put in, “but the colony is well positioned as a rally point for new ships entering the Sol system. If relations with Earth remain tense that’s really handy to have.”

“Interesting but again not the question.” Craig zeroed in on Fyodorovich in particular. “Given the recent difficulties, how much more can we hope to learn by remaining here? What do they know and how likely are they to share it?”

“I’m not sure what they know,” Volk said. “But I don’t think they’ll share it with us unless we agree to help them in one way or another. They’ve been desperate for contact with the world outside their dome, Captain. They want our help and I think we’ve reached the point where they’ll cut us off if we don’t give it.”

“The fleet didn’t exactly arrive prepared to help a struggling colony out,” Langly pointed out. “What do you think you can do about it?”

“I don’t know,” Fyodorovich mused. “We could probably expand the dome considerably, and equip it to defend itself against Earth or space pirates, with a couple of months work.”

“Raw materials are the problem,” Rand pointed out, “not time or know how.”

“There’s a planet full of old, empty cities we can break down and repurpose in the nanofacturies.”

“I don’t think UNIGOV is going to allow you to harvest any of the old places for parts,” Aubrey said.

“Maybe if we had anyone in the fleet that specialized in removing things from planets over the planetary government’s objections…”

Langly’s head snapped around – presumably to look at Fyodorovich although the holoprojections didn’t make that clear – and he said, “You want to send the Galileans to raid Earth?”

“They have the ships for it…”

The idea was amusing but not where Craig wanted their energy spent. “Thank you, Commander. I’ll pass that suggestion on to the Admiral. Now, for the third time -”

But there wasn’t a third time because Harriet Thacker burst onto camera and said, “Commander you need to get to the Sunbottle right now.”