It came from outer space...Star Trek by Paramount, that is. Following somewhat close like a hesitant meteorite is Decker and Star Traks. BorgSpace by Meneks orbits at a distance.
Additional disclaimer: This is a work of fiction based in a sci-fi universe, which, in turn, has taken a backspin off the bumper into an alternate reality. Therefore, however the Roswell myth has been mutilated, torn, and spindled to fit the author's BorgSpace vision, remember, it's is only a story.
The truth may be our there, but then again, it may only be in my head.
The Roswell Incident, Part I
"The public will believe anything, as long as it is not founded on truth"
-Edith Sitwell
*****
Five hundred feet above the desert scrub of southeastern New Mexico, a weather balloon floated. It was early July, and the air was still with nary a breeze. Monsoon would soon begin, but for now the air was clear and overly humid. The faint whirring of night insects could be heard even from the balloon's lofty height.
On the ground, in the bed of his beater Chevy pick-up, the insect serenade was loud, but Gary Garcia had eyes only for the stars above. A dismantled telescope was in the truck's cab and a pair of binoculars in the bed beside him, but, at this moment flat on his back with hands laced behind his head, Gary wanted to directly experience the twinkling diamonds he so loved. Soon the desert air would chill despite the summer month, forcing him to scrounge a sweater from the cab, but far from the lights of sleepy Roswell, this now was a perfect moment.
Then, out of the southwest came a continuous thunder, something at supersonic speeds as it passed directly overhead. The object flamed brilliantly as it tumbled, a rough spherical shape shedding embers, as it tore across the sky. Five hundred feet above there was a flare as the weather balloon was hit, crumpled, but such was not visible to the ground-bound. Startled eyes tracked the path of the fireball, watching it pass over low hills to the northeast, followed by the flash of impact.
Silenced insects tentatively resumed their chorus, uncaring of the pyrotechnic display that had interrupted it in the first place.
Gary's eyes glinted in the dark and a smile turned up his mouth. "Hot damn!" he exclaimed to himself. "A meteorite!" The binoculars were grabbed as Gary scrambled from bed to cab. If he could get to the meteorite first...it was a dream come true for a hobbyist astronomer. No matter it looked like it landed on Bresh Ranch land. Bresh family owned many thousands of acres hereabouts and the Old Man couldn't be everywhere all the time. Besides, the fence was cut in so many places by trysting lovers that it might as well not be there.
The old Chevy coughed into life and roared away with a puff of dust from the rutted dirt road.
The insects sang, oblivious.
From such humble beginnings are legends born, or at least come kicking and screaming into the world.
The road had been bumpy, nigh near nonexistent at times, and it took Gary longer than he had thought to find the correct break in the fence. By then, his target was lit both by the flickering of oily flames slowly consuming rabbitbrush and sage and by the brighter lights of vehicles. Overhead, like technological vultures, circled two helicopters. Gary turned off the lights to his Chevy, shrugged on a windbreaker, stuck binoculars into an inside pocket, then began to trudge up a long hill blocking sight to the meteorite crash.
What was with all the activity? wondered Gary. It was just a meteorite! Unless...unless, maybe, it was some top-secret plane. Now, that would be interesting, but not nearly as nice as finding a hunk of space rock. Gary's thoughts whirled as the hilltop neared, tarry desert scrub pulling at his jeans.
The Roswell Air Force base was located approximately eight miles south of Roswell, a sleepy affair at the best of times; and the sum total of the military presence, including gate guards, had to be in the hollow. They were the only military relatively nearby (approximatley twenty miles as the crow flies), so it could be no other. However, Roswell was a place to mothball planes and stick personnel past their prime or those who didn't fit the military mold. Gary had seen the base - what local fella or gal growing up the area had not snuck past guards on a dare? - and it was mostly decaying buildings, dusty airstrip, paint-peeled checkpoint, and perfunctory barbed wire fence. Once it had been a bustling place, but the real military work hereabouts was out west at White Sands by the Rio Grande River.
Roswell itself wasn't much better. At the intersection of I-285 and I-380 in southeastern New Mexico, it was scarcely a wide spot in the road. There was some oil, and there was some grazing, but mostly there was a lot of nothing. Those who grew up in Roswell usually left as soon as they could, going to Albuquerque, El Paso, anywhere, except for those few like Gary who had just never been able to break free.
The top of the hill. Gary stretched himself flat under a thick canopy of sage, peering into the hollow with his binoculars. As expected, there was a great furrow plowed through the wash and into the hill opposite Gary's post. Down below moved men purposefully, guns slung over their shoulders as they set up flood lights. The commander of the base, Captain Conell, was distinguishable even at the distance, his wildly waving arms a dead give-away, not to mention the ostrich plume he insisted upon wearing in his hat. As said before, Roswell base was not the place for the elite. The captain was trying to make a point to an overalled man, most likely Old Man Bresh himself, who crossed his arms across his chest in a defiant gesture.
Gary switched targets, concentrating less on people and more on the crash, for crash it was. Wreckage lay strewn, some chunks big and others small, all unrecognizable. Scattered fires revealed more metal beyond the circle of technological light. And - Gary blinked in astonishment - were those /bodies/ those men were carrying on a stretcher? The forms were shrouded beneath a sheet, but the forms were definitely people-shaped. The stretchers were put into a waiting van, which sped off into the dark as soon as the four forms were inside. A plane /must/ have done a real nose dive!
What a time to forget the camera!
A helicopter buzzed overhead, causing Gary to wince as the floodlight barely missed his hiding spot. Perhaps it was time to go.
Crawling back down the hill, Gary regained his truck. So much for his camping/stargazing trip. He'd go back to Roswell and get the details tomorrow in the newspaper, suitably sanitized for all military secrets. Later he would brag to his friends in the bar about how he saw the plane actually go down, as well as mention the bodies, Captain Conell, and Old Man Bresh. It'd be worth the drinks his buddies would buy him. With visions of beer in his head, the Chevy was inched back towards the main road, headlights off.
Gary had almost made the fence line that delineated the edge of Bresh property when a shape, a man-shape, lurched in front of the truck. The brakes were slammed, not that the truck was going very fast, yet there was still the sickening thump of flesh on metal. Panicking and not caring if the helicopters saw him, Gary turned on the headlights and leapt from the cab.
"Madre de Dios," swore Gary under his breath. While his surname was Hispanic, as were his looks, he also counted more than a little Indian and white in his background, and identified himself as good ol' American mutt. He had not grown up speaking much Spanish; and as there was little work for immigrants and it was too close to the border for illegals to settle down, native Spanish speakers tended move through quickly. Nonetheless, it was impossible to grow up in Roswell without at least picking up Spanish blasphemies and cussings, of which Gary had excelled at in his not-too-distant youth.
In front of the truck's bumper lay a body. While it was human in shape, it was a foreigner from quite a bit further than Mexico. No, thought Gary, maybe it was a man from the plane, ejected from the cockpit before the actual crash. That was the explanation...it had to be.
The human mind is very good at deceiving itself. It has to be in order to keep itself sane in a chaotic world.
The man was a tad over six feet, covered with a body suit more armor than garment. His left arm appeared to be mostly machine; and there were more gizmos everywhere else, including the face and obscuring the left eye. Probably top-secret hardware, else the guy had undergone extensive reconstructive surgery, or both. Each rationalization which whirled through Gary's mind was wilder than the one before. Gary bent down, tentatively reaching out one hand to take a pulse along the stranger's neck.
The whole eye suddenly opened, and Gary noticed the deep blue of the iris even as he scrambled backwards. The eye slowly fluttered closed again as limbs moved feebly.
"Mister," began Gary as he edged closer, "you okay? You've some Air Force buddies over the hill that'll likely be glad to see you."
The eye opened again, narrowed against the glare of the headlights, then focused on the sound of the voice. There was no blood that Gary could see, but injury might be inside. A hospital was needed.
"One minus infinity, not close enough," mumbled the stranger. Gary was not sure he had heard the words correctly. "Not close enough." There was definitely an odd reverberation to them, as if sounds were not matching mouth. "Not...buddies. Assistance required. Comply. Not...okay. Malfunctions."
Gary swallowed. The man was rambling, delusional. But, if Captain Conell and squad really /weren't/ friends, then what? Was this a Russian? A communist? Gary shook his head. He'd get some help first, then sort out the story when the stranger was feeling better. Doc...Doc'd know what to do.
"Come on, man, let's get you to the truck. You've got to help me stand you up."
The stranger was a lot heavier than his frame suggested. Maybe it was the armor? Whatever the reason, Gary managed to sit the man up, then shove a shoulder under an armpit and stagger him to the pick-up bed. The man's whole hand twitched convulsively several times against Gary's biceps. Another long production was required to safely lower tailgate and slide the stranger into the bed.
"Hold on, mister: this may be a bit bumpy. Roswell's the only big place around, and it might take an hour or more to get there," called Gary as he hurriedly climbed into the cab. Dirt was flung from tires as the old Chevy spun away into the night, leaving helicopters, spotlights, wreckage, and mysterious bodies behind.
Gary lived in a single-wide trailer, somewhat ramshackle although structurally sound and, most important on the desert, windproof. The single-wide was located on Doc's ranch northwest of Roswell, a hobby-farm of three hundred acres of scrub. No livestock was kept, but Doc did use it as a personal hunting preserve for his beloved pronghorn passion. Gary, perpetually "between employment opportunities," paid his rent with odd jobs and repairs around the ranch. However, it was not the single-wide Gary skidded to a halt in front of when he pulled onto the ranch compound, but the clinic.
Doc was the nickname for Keith Holiday. Doc, who seemed to get a kick out of the moniker "Doc Holiday," was not a people doctor, but Roswell's vet. He also had a pretty good head in a crisis - necessary when a prize cow was struggling to calve and blood was hemorrhaging everywhere - and, frankly, Gary trusted Doc better than the real doctor in town.
The lights to the clinic, a modern building set adjacent to the rustic main ranch house, were blazing, reflecting upon the retinas of three horses under treatment and being held in the hospital paddock. There were no cars or trucks to indicate a client, but the lights were not a rarity: Doc was an insomniac, and many a night he puttered around his clinic rather than lie in bed staring at the ceiling, or so he had confided to Gary.
Gary stumbled from the Chevy, took one look at the stranger in the pick-up's bed, then rushed through the clinic's always unlocked front doors. "Doc!" he shouted, waver of panic in his voice.
"Back here, boy," came the sedate reply, an echo quality to it.
Gary half ran down the short corridor, past two examination rooms for smaller four-legged patients, past the kennels and cages that held only a few occupants, and into the equipment room. Doc was calmly sorting freshly autoclaved instruments into trays, readying for the "what-if's" that occupied a veterinarian's waking day.
"Good stars tonight, eh, lad? Thought you'd be gone for at least another day." Doc, age unknown, but surely not too old, called everyone 'boy' or 'lad' or 'gal' or 'lass,' no matter they were a baby or could be his grandma. He paused, a clamp held mid-air. "Something wrong, Gary?"
"Meteor, but not meteor. Crash. Fire," panted Gary. He sucked in a deep breath, leaned hands on his thighs, then continued, "Man! Lights! Hit him! Fell down!"
Doc blinked in confusion. "What? You hit a man?"
Gary nodded frantically, then made to leave, except for a suddenly strong grip on his shirt sleeve.
"I'm not a people doctor, Gary, I'm a vet. I only work on four-legged beasts, not two-legged unless they are chickens or that stupid ostrich Conell keeps at the base."
Impatiently, Gary pulled back. "You've gotta! The man...he said something about not wanting Conell and company to know. And he's, like, weird. This stuff all over him."
Doc's eyes narrowed. "Fine. Show me. But I'm just going to tell you to take him to town or the base." Pause. "He ain't dead yet, is he?"
"No. Still alive. Come on!" Gary hurried back outside, Doc in tow. He stood next to the Chevy, urging the vet to look.
Doc peered into the bed and was silent as his gaze flickered over the unconscious body. His face hardened as he muttered an obscenity under his breath, one Gary had heard once before, but only when a particularly troublesome stallion had kicked out, missing the vet's head by an inch. "Help me get him inside and on a table in the operating room. Then, Gary, you are going to go to your trailer and wait. I'll talk to you in the morning."
"But..." began Gary.
"No buts. You are going to help me, then do as I say."
Gary glared at Doc, opening his mouth to protest. Doc had never spoken so compellingly, so uncharacteristically forceful. The pause lengthened as possible arguments fluttered through his mind like so many moths. Then his desire to protest abruptly evaporated. No, he'd just do as Doc ordered. It was easier that way.
"Good lad," praised Doc, "now, let's get this man into the clinic."
Captain opened his eye and stared at the white tiled ceiling. The view was blurry, both from optical implant and whole eye, but the effort involved in focusing was too much. Memory...was fragmented. There was a...Voice; a feeling of wrongness concerning the sum one minus infinity; fire and noises associated with a crash in progress; and...not quite pain, but definite indications of bodily damage. Bodily damage....
The white tiled ceiling was not familiar, yet there was a clinical sense to the place, an antiseptic taste to the air. Humidity and termperature were too low. This was not Cube #347. This was elsewhere. As his mind increasingly awoke, Captain realized the squishy sounds and sensations emanating out of sight from his abdomen area was that of surgery. Captain tried to move his arms, legs, then his head, only to find he was firmly strapped to the table.
"Oh, f***. You aren't supposed to be awake," swore a human male voice. The cutting stopped, then the owner of the voice, Caucasian, on the older side with salt and pepper hair with matching beard and mustache, neatly trimmed. Captain felt an odd relief that the eyes were gray-brown in color, not green. "I don't know if you can understand me, but I'm fixing you up a bit. Some stitches, a little duct tape, a whole lot of cellular regenerator. You'll be okay, I think. At any rate, we'll be talking later, assuming I unscramble your innards. What a mess."
Before Captain could formulate a response, before his dazed mind could react to the input, a gloved hand crossed his visual field, aiming for a spot somewhere to the left. Electronic beeps quietly played the melody of a code adroitly entered one-handed.
"Nighty-night," spoke the human.
Captain obediently closed his eyes and fell to non-awareness, unable to resist the orders which impinged upon his core commands.
*****
Richard Conell was an ostrich of a man. He was lean and gangly, legs too long for his six-foot height. Hair and handlebar mustache were both a luxuriant black, not a gray to be seen despite the captain's mid-fifty years. It was widely believed he used hair dye, although it was yet to be proved. Richard's movements were quick, birdlike in their mincing quality.
Whispered the men under Captain Conell's command in vulgar gossip was that Dick had a bit of ostrich in his past, enough to explain his unfathomable infatuation with his giant pet bird. Richard ignored the scandalous talk, recognizing it as privilege allowed of the lower ranks to mouth off about the Old Man. Nor did he object to the ostrich innuendo, but he was offended by the "Dick" moniker, no matter it was an accepted nickname for Richard.
At this moment, Captain Conell seemed decidedly unostrichlike as he chewed on a tip of his mustache, an unconscious bad habit. However, his eyes were rapidly darting back and forth between the three lighted windows before him, examining the occupants. The click of booted heel on cement alerted him to the approach of an expected adjunct. "Lucy fed, Sergeant?"
Sergeant Willy Jones crisply nodded. "Yes, sir. She has the grain and corn cobs you indicated."
"And the scarecrow?"
"Already kicked to pieces, sir."
"Good, good. Glad Lucy is getting her exercise."
Willy's thoughts drifted to drumsticks the size of a small child and what ostrich meat tasted like. The only one who could actually approach the bird was Richard, who the creature appeared to adore. Everyone else was foot or beak fodder; and feeding was an exercise in staying as far from the ostrich enclosure as possible while pitching the food inside. Despite the dark thoughts, Willy kept his face expressionless, as a good sergeant should do.
The Roswell Air Force base was not the place for the elite: it was where careers came to die. Sergeant Jones was well aware of the action six years prior which had landed him in the dusty New Mexico hole, unwilling to leave the financial security of the military no matter the duty location. A check was a check. Captain Conell's transgressions were unknown, but it was strongly believed an ostrich had figured prominently. However, the captain, unlike the sergeant, actually seemed to like his unimportant command in the a** end of nowhere.
At one time, the Roswell Air Force base had been envisioned as a secure holding facility to interrogate prisoners. A place to make people disappear. Then, in the minds of the top military brass for whom any sum with less than six zeros was too small, other places closer to metropolitan centers (and their conveniences) became more attractive. The newly built Roswell airbase was abandoned to slowly petrify under the hot Southwestern sun. Among the "amenities" of the base left behind were six bullet-proof clear-fronted interrogation chambers of something that wasn't quite glass and wasn't quite plastic. Each chamber had its own entrance and filtration system. Yesterday at this time they had been used for the storage of decaying file boxes and excess small arms ammo for guns not manufactured in over forty years. Now, all were functional, although only three were currently occupied.
"That one's ugly, isn't it, sir?" ventured Willy into the lengthening silence. A more strict commander would have had his hide for speaking without being spoken to, but Old Dick, frankly, did not care. "Think it can hear us?"
Richard's brow wrinkled. "I don't know. It probably thinks we look like monsters, or some such thing. Central know about this yet? White Sands?" The latter was more important than the former.
Willy shook his head. "No, sir. Airman Kelly's cooked up a good one about a weather balloon, sir, and that's the story we are relaying. That's what the Roswell paper was told, too. The site's cleaned up, and we found a good length of silver fabric to drape around for snooping reporters. Bresh, well, he is known to be a heavy drinker at times, sir." Mentally Willy substituted "I" for each "we." Other than standing around and yelling, Captain Conell had contributed nothing the night before. Afterwards, while the sergeant was busting his hump to create the deception and topping off Bresh with a case of beer, the good base commander had gone and took a nap.
Richard cracked a slight smile. "Weather balloon? That's a good one. Don't know about the local press, but someone at White Sands at least will be comparing radar track with excuse and not coming up weather balloon. Still, we are going to try to sit on this one as long as we can. Then, when we learn something concrete like the cure for cancer or a devilish superweapon, we can tell Central. I will get this base some much needed recognition. After all, it was White Sands who got that last ET crash."
"Yes, sir," replied Willy noncommentabily. How fast "we" became "I" when rewards were possible. No matter. "Still, that one /is/ particularly ugly, isn't it?"
Richard, who had never taken his eyes off the three windows nodded agreement. "You may be right, Sergeant. You know, it looks like one of those muskrats or field rats or something rat-like, only without hair. No tail, neither. Not the prettiest of photos. The black space suit is okay, though. Black goes with everything. Sergeant, go see if the medical officer is done. Then you can get a little shut-eye.
Willy's eyes slid sideways at the black comment before his entire body snapped around for a salute just a whisker from mocking insolence. "Yes, sir! Right away, sir! Thank you, sir!" The reply, however, was pure sarcasm. Richard never noticed.
Doctor angled his head one way, then the other, trying to bring his eyes separately to bear on the scene unfolding fifteen meters away. The barrier presented difficulties when it came to reflections, but by using his hands as impromptu shades he could see through the glare. The task would have been easier for someone with a flat face, Doctor's short muzzle just sufficient to get in the way.
The red-haired human stood straight, flicked a stiffened hand to the be-mustached watcher, then stalked away. Left behind was the tall black-haired man who had been present since Doctor had regained consciousness amid his current surroundings. Deciding nothing more was to occur outside, Doctor withdrew from the barrier by stepping backwards a pace.
It was a box, plain and simple. Doctor, head of drone maintenance for Cube #347, was locked in a box. The walls, other than the one, were white, lit from above by a lone naked bulb. A nearly invisible door broke the monotony of the back wall, no handle or knob to facilitate exit. A ventilation shaft too small to afford a daring duct escape blew cold air from the back left corner ceiling. Seeing nothing new, Doctor briefly clicked his teeth together before closing his eyes and locking his joints, turning inwards.
Doctor's memories were fragmented, frustratingly incomplete. He did remember the Voice - it had a cold, as impossible as such should be - and an odd falling sensation that had nothing to do with the Fall. He then recalled impressions of a small vessel - a shuttle? - which should not be so because only moments prior he had been in Maintenance Bay #5. Or was his event chronometer scrambled? Nonetheless, after that, fragments turned into scattered shards yet to be assembled. The final meme sequence before regaining consciousness in the white room was of a very abrupt deceleration, followed by landing upon something (someone?) only slightly more yielding than metal.
Internal diagnostics detailed a surprising lack of damage. There were contusions, scrapes, and bruises, but nothing nanites could not (or already had) repair. The neural transceiver was another story, one fuzzy in nature. Doctor could only feel the presence of two other signals, and as they were Delta, they technically registered as one. Doctor had the garbled memory of at least four drones on the ship for a total of five, including himself. Yet, the missing pair were not there, not in that space in his mind Doctor expected them to be. One of those signatures belonged to Captain. The implications were...disturbing, and best not to dwell upon until the immediate situation was assessed.
Following the direction of his primary programming, Doctor attempted, as best as possible without physical access, to examine the condition of Delta. One each of her were located to opposite sides, presumably in rooms similar to the one Doctor inhabited. Delta B...no, that was Delta A. Delta A was unconscious and would remain so for two more hours while nanites finished repairs. Delta B, on the other hand, was not in good condition, a foreign body having penetrated her right leg and lower abdomen during the crash, creating massive trauma. There was no immediate termination threat, but she would eventually die unless surgery was performed.
Doctor opened his eyes and stepped forward to the barrier, peering through once more. The mustached human was gone. It was so very hard for a Borg, even one imperfectly assimilated, to determine a prudent course of action alone, but Doctor had no choice.
*****
"Well, what is it?" asked Conell to base medical officer Dr. Al Ann. Sergeant Jones had returned to the detainee warehouse to relay that Dr. Ann was available for debriefing before disappearing into the pre-dawn dark for the residential quarters.
Dr. Ann stripped the latex gloves off his hands. "I can tell you what it isn't, and that is human."
"Well, duh," responded Conell unprofessionally. "Did the four arms give you a clue? Or how about the train wreck face?" The captain nervously glanced around the surgical bay, trying not to keep his eyes on any one...part too long. It looked like a car garage had exploded in an operating theater, which was not too far from the truth. "Let's go into the other room to talk."
Dr. Ann shrugged. "Whatever." Just as Richard did not acknowledge the sergeant's sarcasm, so he similarly ignored the doctor's. The most likely explanation available was that the sarcasm recognition gene had skipped the captain's generation.
Dr. Al Ann, despite his feminine surname, was a big black man who looked as if he should play on a professional football team. His temperament, however, had not led him to the gridiron, but medical school and eventually the military. He was actually quite competent and had always scored high marks in school; and he had even been assigned to the top secret White Sands exobiology department (of which was an open secret, primarily because of the hypno-thingy which prevented anyone from talking about it to those Not In The Know, aka, the public). Unfortunately, the doctor's promising career had petered out because of a certain enthusiasm for his job.
A doctor should set a limb or clean a cut without showing that hint of a smile which indicated secret pleasure. There should be no accidental pinpricks or need to repeatedly search for a vein when it came to routine blood draws. There was nothing overt, nothing obviously wrong; and he was, when the chips were down, a damn fine surgeon. However, he had a tendency to creep out patients, who made them, as one soldier had eloquently explained, feel like a clock when under the doctor's care, a clock which a mad clockmaker was disassembling in order to find the tick.
And then there was that rumor from White Sands, a rumor now barroom story, which included a poodle, a jackrabbit, and an alien gizmo designed to meld two separate organisms into one. It was shortly after the rumor had reached Roswell Air Force base that a black helicopter had rushed in with the good doctor and a hastily typed set of orders. The signature had been barely dry.
That was three years ago.
"The thing?" prompted Conell when they were safely out of the operating room and in a waiting area consisting of the paisley upholstered chairs and decade-old magazines which are the hallmark of medical offices no matter where or when they are located.
Al's eyes flashed as he smiled with startling white teeth. "A puzzle, is it not? He - it is a he, I'm sure - died of a spar through the chest. There were probably complications due to the fact the others in the ship appeared to have landed on him, but the spar is what did the trick. Beyond that, well," the doctor shrugged, "he's a weird one. All sorts of foreign bits and pieces throughout the anatomy, primarily made of a substance that isn't quite metal. For instance," talking paused as one dark hand fished a length of cut bone minus muscle from one blood-splattered lab coat pocket, "this femur appears to be impregnated by a fine wire lattice. I need to look at everything more closely under a microscope."
Captain Conell blanched at the casual reference to the body part, then quickly regained his composure. "Fine, fine. No problem. How much longer until an intel report?"
"You want to beat the White Sands shop, don't you?" Dr. Ann was many things, but slow on the uptake wasn't one of them. "Another day or so for this one. It will take much longer for a comprehensive, assuming White Sands doesn't arrive too quickly to claim the booty." The femur fragment was repocketed.
"Get it done ASAP. I'll be in Lucy's paddock grooming her for the next hour, and afterwards you'll find me in my office," said Conell before beating a hasty retreat.
Al nodded. "Very well, sir." With the captain gone, the Roswell airbase chief medical officer returned the femur to the light and began to study it closely, turning it over and over in his hand. "I wonder what secrets you hold? And I wonder what secrets are held by your friends...?"
*****
Captain opened his eyes. Visual input arrived before the brain fully roused. Unlike previously, he found himself upright, no unauthorized surgery occurring. To the right side was a steady beeping cadence; and directly before was a human in a lab coat, back to Captain as he worked on a project unseen on a counter on the opposite side of the room.
Borg instinct clicked, and Captain tried to step forward, tried to reach out. Instead, he felt himself lean forward slightly, and that was all. For the first time Captain registered he was in an alcove, one not his own and one which was not allowing him to exit. Clamps remained fully engaged, limiting movement beyond clenching of fingers or swiveling of head.
The beeping gained urgency, then slowed again.
The human turned. It was the same bearded man Captain remembered from surgery. The frame was not that of a big man, nor one particularly tall, but he looked to have a strength beyond that afforded by mere muscle. Leaving his project behind, the man crossed the room and stopped in front of Captain.
"Awake, are you? About time." Ignoring Captain's renewed attempt to leave the alcove, the human calmly reached for an item out of sight, near the ever-present beeping. That item brought into view was a tricorder of the medical flavor, distinctly out of place considering the primitive surgical instruments in trays Captain was only now noticing on the far counter.
The human flipped open the tricorder and began to slowly sweep it across Captain's body. "My name is Kieth Holiday, but you can call me Doc." 'Doc' spoke as if a Borg was a regular visitor from next door come to borrow a cup of sugar. No anxiety registered in his voice or mannerism. "My trade is veterinarian, and although I've never actually worked on someone like you, the techniques and anatomy were similar enough; and, of course, I didn't have to worry about infection." The tricorder was snapped closed and Doc stared Captain directly in the eye. "My question to you is why the Hell is there a Borg in my vet clinic? I know exactly what you are even if no one else on this dump of a planet does. You shouldn't be on this planet or even near this /sector/ for another four centuries, give or take." He paused. "Damn, good thing I decided to keep that alcove I picked up at the swap meet before I was exiled here."
As the human - a description Captain was coming not to trust - made his demand, another part of Captain brought to attention the fact no other drones could be heard, felt. For the moment, the realization of being one, small, took precedence. It was not a comfortable feeling, especially since there was a kernel of memory which indicated such should not be, that at least four others should be present.
"Where...where are the others?" croaked Captain.
Doc frowned, then snapped open the tricorder once again and waved it around Captain's head. Frowning deeper, he disappeared in the direction of the beeping. There was the sound of metal scraping across metal, then Doc reappeared. "Your neural transceiver may be a bit on the fritz, and I'm not about to perform brain surgery on something that'll eventually fix itself. Well, I guess I could, but I don't have the proper equipment. It is one thing to root around in your belly, and another to stir up whatever organic bits remain in your skull. Others? Elaborate. How many?"
Before Captain could decide to answer, or not, Doc turned away and began to pace back and forth, forth and back in front of the alcove. He began to talk to himself, a verbal stream of consciousness. "Let's see...first, there was that anomaly I picked up late last night on the scanner. Then, Gary brought you here, claiming you were a pilot or some such ejected from a military plane. Finally, there is the Roswell airbase with the White Sands wannabes. Damn, it all makes sense. In a twisted, ridiculous way, it all makes sense."
Doc whirled upon Captain, eyes bright. "Your comrades, bet my last dollar, are at Roswell airbase. Hopefully they remain in one piece." Why they should not be was omitted. "And you, my little Borg, are going to help me retrieve them before something unwanted happens. Then I'm going to package you all up nice and neat with a bow, call the appropriate authorities, and get you off this rock. Do you understand?"
Captain blinked. "No."
***********
Here ends Part 1 of "The Roswell Incident," where upon Captain is under the care of a veternarian who is more than he appears, and Doctor and Delta are locked up in boxes, unknowing of the surgeon who has to know why things work. Return for Part II, which may include a daring escape, or it may not. It will, however, include an ostrich.
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