Sootrah Yuulik’s personal log, supplemental

I spoke to her.  I’m sure I did.  I’ve reported to Captain Taes how I talked to Flavia before the explosive decompression.  I’m sure that happened before I learned about the warp core sabotage.  Not after.  At this point, if I told Captain Taes, I better be remembering rightly, or my rank is on the line.

The junior science officers were motivated to capture Addie.  They plotted and schemed like their lives depended on it.  Because their lives did depend on it.  Addie had learned that the Borg had genetically assimilated every soft-brained officer in their early twenties in the past few months.  The programming by Addie’s traumatised designer hard-coded her to kill every Borg, despite our medical officers removing all traces of the Borg DNA from those same ensigns.

The science department ensigns, plus half the ensigns in operations and med bay, offered themselves as bait for Addie.  They assembled in the shuttle bay before they even told me the plan.  They piled into shuttles and planned to use them as weapons.  If security couldn’t stop her, a shuttlepod hull could dent Addie’s molybdenum-cobalt alloy.  Their plan was luminescent and reckless, and I love them for it.

It was right when I ditched my security guards and snatched a phaser from the transporter room armoury that Flavia found me. She stopped me in the corridor. I told her about the ensigns’ plan. I invited Flavia to join me in the shuttle bay’s observation booth, but she told me that was too dangerous for her. 

Flavia said, “You’ve already killed me once. Why are you so eager to do it again?”

Flavia retreated to a turbolift.  I heard her call for the bridge.  The doors closed, and I rounded a corner before my combadge chirped with a message from Lieutenant T’Kaal.  T’Kaal reported that Addie had sabotaged the warp core on deck twenty-six.  She asked me to meet her in warp engineering.  I told her I would join her presently.

And then I accessed the diagnostic systems on a bulkhead panel.  The diagnostics showed the warp core was perfectly operational.  It was a trap.  Addie had learned to mimic T’Kaal’s voice.  So I holstered my phaser and called another turbolift.  I requested it take me to warp engineering on deck twenty-six.

What was I going to do?  Not walk into the trap?  I can’t let security boy have all the fun.

I thought I was so clever, but it was Addie who found me in the warp core ejection channel.  I was distracted.  The warp core was in working order, but Addie had sabotaged the warp core ejection system.  Whatever she had planned next, she had determined there were too many ex-Borgs on the ship to eliminate by hand.

She moved faster than I could see.  She stole the phaser right out of my hand.  My vision isn’t the best on a good day.  I should have brought security boy.  He’s so tall.  He would have seen her jumping down from the upper catwalk.  …But she might have hurt him.  Addie’s bare hands can tear duranium apart.

Like in the med bay, Addie begged me to cure her of existential angst.  She recognised the logical paradox within her.  Her programming to kill Borg was consistent with her programming to protect the children under her charge.  And yet, her programming to kill Borg contradicted her programming not to harm sentient life.

Addie pleaded with me to either make her more sentient or less sentient.  She didn’t care which.  More sentient to accept the burden of free will and at least have the choice not to murder Borg.  Or less sentient to forget the existential horror of being unable to stop herself from murdering Borgs and xBs.

While I lured her away from the warp core, I told her I didn’t know if I was sentient myself.  I keep making the same mistakes over and over again with Taes.  I keep rejecting Nova, and I don’t know why.

I said to her, “I wish I knew how to be sentient for you.”

And then Flavia fell out of the sky.  She ordered Addie to surrender.  Flavia leaped at Addie, swinging handcuffs at her.  Addie shot at Flavia, but she had anticipated wrong.  Addie assumed a direct assault, like a Borg would do.  But Romulans come at you sideways.  Rather than leaping at Addie again, Flavia tackled me to the ground.  Flavia handcuffed my wrist to her own wrist.  She bound us together and activated the handcuffs’ mag-locks.  Each of our cuffed wrists were dragged down to the deck grates.  We were bound to the floor together.

Ten seconds later, the warp core ejection hatch opened.

Flavia had rigged it.

Because of Addie’s sabotage, the warp core stayed in place. When the hatch opened, the ejection system failed.

Addie didn’t stay in place.  Explosive decompression hurled her through the hatch directly into the sun.  She must have been vaporised.

When we checked the sensors later, we found no debris.  

Flavia still wouldn’t tell me how she survived and escaped the Dominion.  Not even after everything.  Not even after I almost died.

When Taes read my report, she called me to her ready room.  She asked me what I had left out of the report. I told her that Flavia had gone to the bridge. Flavia hadn’t been with me when Addie told me there was something wrong with the warp core.

How had Flavia found me at the ejection hatch?

Was she spying on me?