He was halfway to the Med Bay, walking fast, when his trusty datapad beeped to signal another message. It was an annoying, hourly sound, which Nick almost always ignored. But now was a unique situation, so he glanced at it quickly, and saw a note from Lt. Astrid waiting for him:

[code]
To: CAPT Carabello
From: LT Faust
Captain, are we going to attempt recovery of our guest’s ship, or do we not bother because of the risks?
[/code]

Ouch. That was a tough enough question to make the Captain stop in his tracks. 

On the one hand, the ISA crew might learn a lot from their first look at technology this side of the wormhole. Alien tech always surprises. And if Havi engineering is anywhere around standard for their region, it would give the Prize crew an informational edge going forward.

But then there's Vei to think about. She might be new to English, but she hadn't left much room for interpretation when she told the delegation to get out. It would be easy to explain away picking up the passenger: he was injured, he requested aid, etc., etc. But it's a lot harder to explain capturing a Havi ship and trying to figure out how it worked. If the ship is armed, it's practically an act of war. 

But having met Vei once, Nick decides she wasn't going to listen to anything he said either way. They'll just have to hope that first contact with the Havi won't end in a shootout. 


[code]
To: LT Faust
From: CAPT Carabello
Go ahead. Try to leave it functional. Don't spill anything on the seats.
[/code]

[center]-----[/center]

Nick didn't regret listening to Korax and Gue'rach's suggestion to put the ship on Yellow Alert. When the Universal Translator finally got set up for their guest in sickbay, nothing he had to say was good.

His name was pronounced in a way the human tongue couldn't quite imitate. At least, Nick's tongue sure couldn't. A spelling with Latin letters might be "T'ri," if you use the apostrophe as a stand-in for that same freaky growl that Vei kept making. Apparently, it's a natural part of how the Havi people speak.

And it looks like the attitude is too. When Nick introduced himself as the leader of the "travelers," the alien told him that he was too short to be a leader. Also, the room was too cold, the lights were too dark, and the doorways were too small. Entering the second hour of this conversation, it was getting really tempting to turn off the Universal Translator. 

"Fine, whatever, everything is wrong," Nick admitted. He had ran out of diplomatic decorum. "Are you happy now?"

"No," T'ri replied.

The captain sighed. "Alright, why aren't you happy now?" These simple, direct questions had proven to be the best at getting a real answer out of him.

"Because you are not being true."

"How am I not being true?"

"You do not really think that everything is wrong." The alien took another breath, and Nick was sure he was going to add [i]Even though it is[/i], but he seemed to catch himself. Is that progress?

Slowly but surely, it was. They settled into a slow but steady question-and-answer pattern, and the verbal barbs subsided. For a long time, T'ri still didn't volunteer any information that Nick didn't explicitly ask for, and it was still like pulling teeth to get a clear answer, but now it felt like their guest was cooperating. 

Somewhere along the way, he seemed to decide that Nick wasn't very bright. Maybe it was because of all the questions. But at least that made him more patient. T'ri took on a lecturing tone that reminded Nick of a professor he used to learn from. His answers were longer, then, and easier to understand. 

He taught Nick about the Havi deity, the "God Named Truth", which T'ri and Vei both technically worshiped. But according to T'ri, Vei was a heretic. He said that she was a usurper who had deceived the nations of Havi into giving her power, then betrayed and destroyed them. T'ri was obviously a bit biased, but with some careful questioning, Nick was eventually able to put together a picture of what must have really happened.

Vei was a new ruler. At most, she'd been in command of Havi for about 5 Earth years. She came into power as the head of an international diplomatic organization- something like the U.N. of Old Earth. According to T'ri, their shared faith in the God Named Truth had been the only thing that the various nations of Havi could agree on, so this organization used their religion as a way of conducting diplomacy. There didn't seem to be any difference between high-ranking priests and diplomats.

When some kind of political infighting threatened to trigger catastrophe on Havi, possibly coupled with environmental pollution, Vei's organization used it as on opportunity to seize power. To the national leaders, they claimed that they would restore order and political cohesion. On the side, they secretly funded religious fundamentalist sects to assassinate or terrorize their opponents. Eventually, the public lost faith completely in their governments, and Vei was there to fill the power gap. It was a coup. 

But just when Nick was about to bring up the dangerous subject of why T'ri was being shot at, the Holy one herself interrupted him. The Prize was receiving a hail from her compound. Was that foresight? Probably not.

[center]-----[/center]

They were in the Situation Room again. It was starting to become more familiar to Nick than his own bedroom. 

"So," he began, "we have a decision to make, and it's too big for even a Captain to make on his own."

The Captain explained Vei's message to his crew. She had told them that T'ri was a dissident priest and a wanted criminal, who escaped a high-security prison and stole the vessel he arrived in. "That explains why he's been shot," Nick adds, "and why he was worried about being pursued."

Of course, Nick also communicates everything that T'ri told him, and the theories about Vei that he was able to put together from T'ri's simplified answers. "If he really is a dissident priest, that would explain why he knows so much about Vei and her organization. He may have worked for her in the past."

Which makes the whole thing more complex. If Vei really rules Havi, and T'ri really is former follower, than that makes this a deeply internal affair to the Havi people. There's a real question as to whether ISA even has the right to be involved. 

Or, there would be, except that Vei just brought them into it. "Vei has asked us to return T'ri into her custody, where- and she was clear about this- he will be executed for treason." Carabello lets that settle across the room. "Normally, I wouldn't even consider it, except..."

He pressed a button on the datapad, and a recording of Vei's voice filled the room. "If you return the criminal T'ri to us, then we will [i]consider[/i]..." even through a recording, the growl-snort was unmistakable "...reopening negotiations with ISA." As if it wasn't obvious enough, Vei had added: "I may allow your ships to pass through this system."

So now the [i]Prize [/i]crew was facing a moral dilemma. "If we turn T'ri over," Nick said, pronouncing his name more like [i]Tree[/i], "other ISA ships can explore this side of the wormhole, and we might be able to really get a diplomatic foothold here." He sighed. "But we'd be condemning a man who, as far as I can tell, hasn't done anything but refuse to accept Vei as all-knowing and holy. You know, I don't think I blame him for that one." This was not something that Carabello wanted to decide on his own.

He looked to his crew for support. "I need opinions, ideas, other alternatives- anything."