—- USS Luna, Captain’s Ready Room —-

To the side of the main bridge sat the Captain’s Ready Room, currently being used by the acting captain, and normal first officer Commander Olivia Carrillo. She sat at the desk, the Devore Imperium’s ships dropping back further but the USS Luna at the edge of where they could reasonably trust their warp engines to hit their maximum warp speed. Soon they’d have to slow, and their pursuers would begin to makeup ground.

The door chimed.

“Come,” Carrillo said sipping the herbal tea that the replicator had made for her. She’d slept fitfully the night before and had been tempted by something with a little more caffeine but had worried that this might make her feel jittery when she needed to be in control.

The door slid open and Lieutenant Yuhiro Kolem entered. The Chief Counsellor was also the acting first officer, and as a telepath had a great deal of skin in the game. It was her, and the other telepaths aboard the ship, that had caused the Luna to run.

“How’s the crew,” Carrillo asked, worried that this was stressing them out. It was straining her and she had gotten to take most of the previous day off to relax and prepare for this moment and all the tense moments to come.

“They’re holding up, they trust you,” Kolem said.

Carrillo had only been the first officer aboard the Luna for a few months, so she did not blame the crew if they had doubts. Certainly she had doubts about her own ability, and had been much more comfortable with Captain Adriana Cruz aboard the ship as the real commanding officer.

“They trust you more than you seem to,” Kolem said, sensing the doubt that played at the edges of Carrillo’s mind.

“Do you ever wonder if this is all a mistake?” Carrillo asked, gesturing out her window to the stars streaking past them.

“Space exploration?” Kolem asked taking a seat across the desk from Carrillo.

“No, this underspace,” Carrillo said, “Humans, Vulcans, Andorians, basically everyone, we started exploring and taking small steps out into the unknown. Baby steps, as it were. Suddenly we can go anywhere and the universe if suddenly not much bigger than our own solar system.”

Kolem shrugged, “We’ve tried before, slipstream drives and other ways of speeding up. This is just that, times a million.”

“Maybe, but those haven’t worked. The Excelsior worked as a ship, but not a slipstream ship. This renders territory and borders ineffective. What if we’d popped out in front of ten Borg Cubes that now could enter the Triangle in a few minutes? One Cube decimated a fleet, ten would crush us. What’s to stop the Klingons finding a tunnel to the Sol System, or to Vulcan?”

Kolem shrugged, “I find it’s best not to worry about what the natural world does, and just figure out how you can respond. Do we stop mapping these out of fear of what we find? The Cardassians, the Klingons, the Romulans, they’re all mapping them. I’m sure the Devore Imperium is doing it. I’m sure the Borg are doing it.”

“So map away?” Carrillo asked, “That’s how we ended up right in the middle of an unfriendly empire running for our lives.”

Kolem shrugged, “Maybe it would have been better with a ship prepared for meeting the Devore Imperium, no Vulcans no Betazoids. But that’s not who we are, our diversity has always made us stronger, and now we can share that with them. Though perhaps not at this moment, since they seem hell bent in sending us all to camps.”

“Do you know about La Malinche,” Carrillo asked.

“It’s an Excelsior II-class isn’t it?” Kolem answered, questioningly, unsure if she had that right.

“Yes, but it was also a person. A woman in what’s now Mexico that Cortez had as a guide and interpreter. I wrote a report about her in high school. The Europeans came to the New World, and this woman helped them, but not that she had a choice. As a child she was given to them as a gift, she bore their children, she helped them settle the New Word and destroyed the old ways,” Carrillo said, “Captain Cruz, myself, were descendants of women of that time, aboriginal women who were given to the Europeans by their tribes to curry favor and to birth a new race. Later La Malinche was blamed for the fall of the old ways, for the victory of the Spanish and other conquerors. They did not have a Prime Directive guiding them, they simply wiped away what had come before.”

Kolem nodded, “And how many cultures are about to be wiped away now?”

Carrillo nodded, “The Federation might have learned from all the times the native peoples of our worlds were displaced and destroyed but the Romulans haven’t, the Klingons haven’t, I don’t think the Bajorans would say the Cardassians have learned.”

“What happened to La Malinche?” asked Kolem, doubting it was going to be a good result.

“She had Cortés’ first born son, and birthed a new race,” Carrillo said, “But in Mexico they still use her name to mean something like a disloyal compatriot. Even though none of what happened was in her control or her choice.”

The pair were quiet each lost in their own thoughts then Kolem shrugged, “Again I find it’s not helpful to worry about every decision that has to be made all at once. I’m sure Starfleet is thinking about things like that, and all you need to worry about is yourself and your crew. We can come better prepared the next time, but for now we have one important job, to get back to the Triangle without letting the Devore Imperium jail the crew.”

“Sorry,” Carrillo said, “I did a lot of thinking last night, and didn’t reach any conclusions. I don’t know that we can reverse the discovery of underspace any more than the Spanish could undiscover the new world. If it hadn’t been them, well the French and English have their own empires and blood on their hands. But you’re right, this isn’t the time for a lesson on Earth’s colonial past.”

“I enjoyed it,” Kolem said, “Our previous captain, Hawthorne, he found all that stuff romantic and fun. He liked old ships, and probably thought that discovering the new world was a good that had no downside for anyone.”

Carrillo nodded, it was easy for white men who looked like the pictures in the history books to see all of history as a long parade of progress because they were never the ones in the background whose land was being stolen, or whose family was being stuffed into ships and sent to slave away in the newly discovered country. It was not racism, it was just missing out on the full picture and needing to have that extra bit explained.

The truth was, Carrillo admitted, that perhaps the underspace would be the greatest boon in the history of the Federation. Or more likely it would allow them to do what they naturally were inclined to do anyway, the Klingons would have new worlds to conquer, the Romulans would find new slave worlds, and the Cardassians would rebuild their empire. Perhaps peace would reign in Federation space because everyone was so busy doing what they wanted to do on the other side of the universe.

“Do you think this plan will work?” Carrillo said, standing and walking to the window in Cruz’s office and looking out.

“I think it’s a dumb plan, and that just might work,” Kolem said, “Not that we have any better plans.”

Carrillo nodded, “Set it up, I want to pull the trigger in an hour.”

“I need to talk to Pr’Nor, get flight control ready to go,” Kolem said standing as well. She paused at the door and looked back at the young Commander, “Ma’am, you’ve got this.”

Carrillo smiled, “Thank you Number One.”

The two acting officers smiled at that, neither quite comfortable in their role, but neither having a choice in the matter. It was far too late for second guessing now.