An Unusual Partnership - Part I
USS Corsair - NX-011979
Nebula II Prototype
“Sic Parvis Magna"
(Greatness From Small Beginnings)
Captain Taverain Ramius entered his ready room where he greeted his visitor who now looked rested and refreshed after a brief, but necessary, stay in sickbay. Captain Zane Akina, the somewhat famed Intelligence Officer, sat on his couch as Ramius took a seat at his desk.
“So Captain, what brings you to see me? I understand the doctor has given you a clean bill of health.”
“He still wants me to take it easy for a few days, but I’ve been discharged. What I want to know is why this ship is headed to Versailles Station at breakneck speed?”
Ramius’s expression turned pensive. “If afraid you won’t be able to take it easy for the foreseeable future Captain. I’ve learned that your Ambassador Lamont is currently assigned to the station.”
“So why the rush? Why risk drawing attention to ourselves and tipping him off?”
“Because I’ve also learned that the Ambassador, despite his protests, has been assigned to a deep exploration ship the USS Charon which is due to depart to begin her mission in just under twelve hours. The diplomatic corps appear to want a young, but talented diplomatic officer, aboard the Charon who will be exploring uncharted space on a two year mission. If we don’t hurry our only link to NeoDyne will ship out and I’ll be in the cold again.”
“You mean we’ll be in the cold”, Akina corrected Ramius. “Your need for expediency appears to be needed.”
“Well I’m glad you approve Captain”, Ramius said sarcastically somewhat annoyed by Akina’s last statement.
“How do you intend to play this Ramius? From the looks of things we won’t have much time to interrogate him if we cannot get to Versailles sooner.”
“I’ve asked my Engineering department to give us as much speed as possible without tearing the ship apart. We’ll get there in time.”
“So we get there in time”, Akina suggested. “Then what? Do we just walk up and ask the man for a friendly chat about NeoDyne and his connections?”
“I haven’t figured that part out yet”, Ramius snapped. “There are always options, its just knowing which one is the best to employ given the situation. Perhaps you have some clever ideas?”
“I've just learned of the situation. Hardly enough time to devise an appropriate response. However, a proper interrogation of the Ambassador could take hours. Cleaning up afterward will also take your doctor, should he be willing to cooperate in this less than legal business, another few hours to erase Lamont’s memory of the incident. We probably won't have have that kind of time unless this ship can run the higher end of warp 10.”
“I’m taking this one step at a time Captain”, Ramius calmly stated. “Once we approach Versailles, we can decide the best course of action. However, we cannot do anything until we arrive at the station and assess the situation and the target’s location.”
“Agreed”, Akina reluctantly answered. He too wanted Lamont in order to learn what his connection to NeoDyne was and how deeply the connection ran. Perhaps Ramius and Akina could turn the man into a double agent – working for them and NeoDyne and getting them one step closer to destroying the infernal company once and for all.
“Captain Ramius, you’ve yet to tell me your motives for wanting the NeoDyne Corporation destroyed other than your display of unusual abilities in your quarters.”
Ramius turned in his chair and faced his window staring out at the stars that were streaking by hundreds of times faster than they usually did when his ship was at normal cruising speeds. “I have my reasons”, Ramius muttered staring off into the blackness.”
“Captain, if we are going to work together it will be necessary for us to establish a bond of trust. At the moment you know more about my connection to NeoDyne that I do about yours which puts me at a disadvantage and makes me doubt your motives. I believe an explanation is in order and we both seem to have the time.”
“The truth you seek Akina is locked in none other than a real pandora's box. Open it and nothing but trouble will plague you.”
“I’m afraid it is a bit too late for that warning Captain. My involvement in this matter has already been cemented in this affair I’m afraid. You saw to that when you rescued me from certain death on Astate. NeoDyne knows what I’ve seen and knows I've escaped. So you see – the demons are already sharpening their claws. Obviously you opened the box and have been haunted by it demons yourself. I want to know the how and why.”
Ramius sighed. There was only one other man alive who knew his secret. Ramius trusted that man with his life and had done so for more than thirty years. Now that there were others involved in his messy affairs that would need the truth to help their understanding. He still wasn’t sure about trusting Akina. The man was fine in character and loyalty to the fleet, but could easily report his knowledge to Starfleet authorities which would likely end Ramius’s career and the honored career of another in the upper echelons of Starfleet Command. A calculated risk, to be sure, but Akina seemed driven to ruin NeoDyne and expose their crimes. Ramius was confident the man could keep a secret especially since he was now directly involved and on the radar of the powerful technology conglomerate.
“The demons you referred to a moment ago”, Ramius said quietly. “Many of them are on the payroll of Neodyne or its subsidiaries.” Ramius turned back in his chair to face Akina and look the man straight in the eyes. “The other two demons – perhaps the worst of the bunch were 'created' when pandora’s box was opened over thirty years ago.
Those two demons are none other than myself and my identical twin brother. We are the threat. NeoDyne is just a facilitator. They want us – both of us. If they should somehow obtain the two of us together the balance of power in the quadrant would forever change. Neodyne would become nearly invincible and would become a major power broker among the galaxy’s races. The Federation, Romulans, Klingons, Breen, perhaps the Founders themselves would have no choice but to cower before the company’s will.
“I don’t believe it”, Akina replied. “What could you and your brother possess that could so radically change affairs on a galactic scale with such far reaching effects?”
“You’ve already seen one in action Captain when you were in the NeoDyne Lab on Astate”, Ramius answered coolly. The experiment you fought, a teenager I believe you said, was just a deviant, a reject, half of the equation. He was created using an old, but nonetheless viable sample of my brother’s DNA obtained years ago from his youth.
“Impossible”, Akina muttered. “What I saw, what I fought was..”
“Something you know nothing about and have no understanding of”, Ramius interrupted harshly.
Reaching into his drawer, Ramius produced a small, marine knife of some sort with a razor sharp blade. With a quick motion he pulled the knife across his palm as the blade cut deeply into the flesh of his hand. Ramius seriously injured himself all without flinching, changing his expression, or uttering a single sound. It was if Ramius was unable to feel pain or was somehow able to block its effects. Akina, shocked and surprised at the Captain’s behavior, could do nothing but watch in a macabre awe.
Ramius squeezed his injured hand as several drops of his warm blood fell from his fist and landed on his glass desk. Moving a finger in the small pool of reddish liquid he stared at it rubbing it between his fingers. Uncoiling his hand and displaying his palm to Akina revealed only a pink mark where the vicious cut had been only moments before. The injury was practically healed and Ramius himself seemed unaffected by its disappearance or by the initial injury itself in anyway.
“This”, he said staring at the drying, sticky blood on his fingertips.
“This is the real demon. Modified against our will over thirty years ago it has been a curse and a burden my brother and I have had to carry for eternity. Death surrounds us as a powerful few seek us out to obtain our secrets. Try as we might to forget out past and leave it where it belongs – there are others who never sleep in their relentless pursuit of us.
Ramius tossed the knife back into his desk drawer and leaned backwards. “I suppose you’ve earned the right to know. But be warned – the truth will make you a marked man. So long as NeoDyne exists you must forever watch your back and choose your friends and allies with unrivaled caution. They know you’re involved and should they capture you – your knowledge could endanger freedom and peace everywhere for generations.”
“I accept the danger and the responsibility. I must know the truth Ramius. After what I saw in the NeoDyne labs – I have to know. You have no idea what they did down there - those children...” His voice trailed off as silence filled the room.
"I can only imagine", Ramius answered after a time with a sullen tone.
“Very well”, the captain replied with an icy, foreboding tone that sent a shiver down Akina’s spine. “Since you have accepted the warning I shall tell you my family's dark secret that haunts my brother and I every second of every day.”
An Unusual Partnership - Part II
“What do you know about Indirian System”, Ramius asked from his ready room desk.
“Indirian”, Akina repeated. “I’ve heard that name – wait, it’s a small class M planet, there’s a small space port, some limited colonization, and from what I remember, NeoDyne has a significant scientific presence there although I could never conclude why. If memory serves the planet is on the fringe of the Federation’s established borders. Why do you ask?”
Ramius’s continued his story with an expressionless gaze.
“Indirian II, to be exact, was a struggling Federation colony thirty years ago which was founded nearly eighty years before that. Colonized by a group of adventurous individuals who sought a simpler existence, they struck out and founded a small community which grew into several small, but thriving towns and a central city. At its peak, there were several thousand residents. However, as time passed, times became hard. Several droughts and disease cut the population in half. Lacking the resources and technology to cope with ecological changes – the colony finally contacted the Federation for assistance. Assistance came and so did fresh faces bringing with them more adventurers seeking fortune, fame, or just a place to get away from it all.
The planet’s population grew again and Indirian’s population again multiplied aided by advances in technology brought by the Federation and others to the colony.
Ramius continued the story leaning back in his chair with a quiet tone as if relating the information to Captain Akina was in someway painful or difficult to talk about.
“Thirty five years ago, a small team of dedicated geologists unearthed ruins of a long past civilization on Indirian. The race, to my knowledge, was never identified. However, the beings that inhabited the planet eons ago had been an advanced species. It’s hard to say how advanced, given what little information I have been able to cobble together, but regardless they had significant technology. Nothing remains of their civilization on the surface, that is if they even lived above ground – I cannot say. I’m not even sure what these beings may have looked like. But they existed – and they were found on Indirian II by sheer accident.
The find was quite amazing. As the scientists dug deeper they uncovered a small underground facility that had survived the ravages of time encased by layers of solid rock that took nearly a month to blast through with explosives and phaser drills. Upon entering the small facility, the scientific team found a facility filled with artifacts, advanced technology, and ultimately an ancient and long forgotten key to the gate of hell itself, yet no one knew at the time – or could have known the discovery would have such dire consequences years later.
The alien race, had used their technology to preserve themselves, perhaps to escape and wait out some cataclysmic planetary event, or as part of some ritualistic burial. In any case, the scientists opened Pandora’s box that day thirty five years ago. What they found were corpses of the lost alien race in essentially perfect stasis. Dead for millennia the bodies were preserved by systems powered by the planet’s perpetual geothermal energy.”
Akina interrupted Ramius. “This story is fascinating Captain, but I fail to see how this discovery could be so cataclysmic and dangerous to the present and future as you claim it to be.”
“Have I finished”, Ramius tersely asked.
“Forgive me”, Akina answered leaning back on Ramius’s couch.
“Finding the alien race wasn’t the event that has so endangered the future– its what they did with the discovery”, Ramius continued. “From the bodies, the scientists sent the remains to a small, poorly funded university on the Indirian colony. To the science teams surprise they were able to obtain and sequence the alien genome having been able to extract well preserved cells which contain DNA – which as you know are the building blocks of all organic life. The scientist’s work continued with a few papers published in prominent journals, but they received only trivial attention from the scientific community at large. The small team of scientists continued their work despite the lack of press, fame, or attention. However, there were some at the university who were not content to sit on the find – they lusted for recognition and fame. Quietly they formed alliances and discussed what to do with their findings.
Tourism became popular on the colony and even Starfleet eventually took notice of Indirian. The planet was close enough to Romulan borders to warrant a small intelligence outpost and a few dedicated officers who didn’t mind working on a small, backwards world collecting modest intel on Romulan activities in the area.
My father was one of the intelligence officers assigned to the planet, where he met my mother. They fell in love, married, and had two children - twins. Myself and my identical twin brother Aiden.
We lived in a small, country home with several acres of land on the outskirts of Indirian’s largest population center. Two years after our birth however both my brother and I were diagnosed with a rare and incurable birth defect. The doctors at the time gave us both about nine to twelve months to live. Devastated by the news, my father used every contact, his fleet position, and connections to find the best doctors in the Federation. The finest surgeons in the Federation reviewed our files and the answer was the same – no hope, no cure, no chance. Our fates were sealed according to every doctor, practitioner, or healer my parents could contact.
With only a few months remaining it was then my father learned about the interesting research being conducted at the local university on Indirian – research that involved the alien cells. The scientists, patiently working on their discoveries, had learned the alien’s genetic makeup had an incredible resistance to disease and multiplied at a rate far surpassing most humanoid species due to an increased metabolic process that wasn’t fully understood. More amazing still was that the scientists had successfully cloned living alien cells. The cells were incredibly resistant, and could duplicate themselves again and again without error due to an enhanced error correction mechanism in their genetic code. Resistant to disease, radiation, poison – the scientists were amazed at the discovery. The biological findings alone could have far reaching implications – new medical treatments, cures to diseases, perhaps even the ability to enhance or extend human life itself!
“Whoa, wait a second”, Akina broke in. “These guys found something like this and no one ever heard about it?”
“You can thank the scientists for that – or perhaps you can blame NeoDyne. It was the company who quietly and carefully erased everything I am telling you. They swept it all under a large rug away from the public on the edge of the frontier.”, Ramius answered.
“Well don’t leave me hanging – continue”, Akina said having unconsciously moved to the edge of the couch. His interest was peaking at Ramius’s continuing story of past events.
An Unusual Partnership - Part III
Captain Taverain Ramius sat at his desk in his ready room as Intelligence Captain Zane Akina listened to Ramius recount a story that began nearly a half century before. The story was amazing with facts that seemed almost unbelievable.
Akina continued to listen as Ramius continued to speak.
“My naive father learned about the experiments at the University through his intelligence contacts. The knowledge wasn’t exactly public, but the scientists were not hiding what they had found or what research they were conducting. Facing the loss of his children he made contact with the scientists. After several weeks of convincing and persuasion, my father convinced a handful of some of the less ethical members of the research team to attempt an experimental cure based upon the unique, restorative properties of the alien DNA. Some testing had already shown that the DNA might be used to enhance the regenerative properties of other species cellular structures. Much like a dermal regenerator stimulates skin cells to reproduce and heal a wound – it was my father’s hope that the alien DNA could be harnessed to induce repairs to his dying sons.
Blinded by his love for my brother and I, he made a pact with a small group of less than ethical scientists at the universty. They could use his sons as test subjects to attempt a cure. If they failed, any experimental data on the children would be theirs to keep and the matter would be quietly forgotten. However, if they succeeded, it was possible his children might go on to lead normal lives and my father promised the scientists they could observe us if indeed they were successful to further their research or personal quests for glory, fame, and recognition.
The small team of scientists, having made a bargain with my father, began work on a treatment utilizing the miraculous qualities of the alien DNA. After months of research, failures, and dismal reports the scientists contacted my father and indicated they had a possible solution. They had solved the primary problem that prevented any treatment from working on a human. Human cells reacted violently to the alien tissues and treated them as a disease – a typical immune response. The scientists achievement was their ability to modify the alien cells so that they were able to fool the human immune response and thus peacefully co-exist in a human body without being rejected.
My father again, somehow convinced my mother to go along with this nonsense, and my brother and I were taken to the university and administered carefully manipulated forms to the alien DNA in a reckless and illegal attempt to save our lives from our own defective genes.
Ramius paused for a moment his gaze distant. “Both of us should have died from our conditions, but fate decided to play a cruel trick on the galaxy. Within days of receiving the treatments, our conditions improved. Within a month, much to my parents and the scientists, amazement, no trace of our prior condition was evident in any scan or test the scientist ran. We had been completely cured from our ailment.”
Akina could barely believe what he was hearing. “So, you and your brother, were genetically altered?”
Ramius frowned on the word altered. “I prefer to say augmented. The scientists weren’t trying to change what we were, just attempting to cure us by introducing the alien cells. Perhaps its more like a vaccination – only not to prevent disease, but to cure it.”
“Does Starfleet know about this?”
Ramius fell silent. “Is this an interrogation Captain, or may I continue?”
“By all means”, Akina replied finding himself staring at a genetically altered human which was forbidden by dozens of treaties, laws, and regulations across dozens of cultures including the Federation.
My brother and I survived the experiments. As we grew older it became quickly apparent that my brother and I were faster, stronger, more intelligent, resistant to common sicknesses, and perhaps most incredibly virtually immune to injury. Cuts, bruises, broken bones – they healed in minutes or days as opposed to a normal child with similar injuries.
But there was a dark side to the miracles. The scientist’s original treatments were partially flawed – not so much flawed as the scientists had yet to figure out the second half of the problem, but devised a counter measure that was crude but effective. The techniques they developed masked the alien cells from the human immune system, but only so long as the alien cells remained few in number. A severe injury or a sudden burst of speed or physical feat caused the alien cells to multiply rapidly to repair the damage or provide the required energy for our bodies. As they rapidly multiply the scientist’s genetic trickery wears off – the body begins to attack the invaders to reduce their numbers. This was engineered by design – the scientists could trigger the alien cell growth, but they couldn’t find a way to stop it once it started. So they cheated – they crafted their cure so that after a certain point the human immune response would recognize the alien cells and begin destroying them until their numbers were reduced. Engineered to go dormant when threatened the alien cells regain their cloaking abilities after a time and stay dormant until triggered again where the process repeats itself.
I’m no superman as a result. While I can do things the human body was never created or evolved to do – it comes at a high price. I can’t maintain the enhancements for long before my body begins to literally destroy itself to purge itself of the increased alien cells.
It’s like a severe allergic reaction. The experience is extremely painful and can last several minutes to several hours. It’s quite possible that if I pushed my abilities hard and long enough that the stress on my body and the resulting immune response could kill me – in fact I sometimes wonder if I haven’t danced closed to that edge before on a few occasions.
Akina rubbed the bridge of his nose. This was all too much. Ramius’s revelations were something out of a science fiction novel. If he hadn’t seen NeoDyne’s research first hand he’d honestly think Ramius was insane.