They went out into the shuttlebay, where Nurse Ogawa and her son were in the middle of a joyful reunion, holding hands and telling each other about their respective experiences. Keru and T’Pel stood near them, basking in the warmth of the scene. T’Pel’s eyes widened at the sight of her returned husband, and though she and Tuvok only exchanged a simple nod, Riker believed he’d gotten to know them well enough to see the mutual relief and love beneath the surface.
The scene wasn’t entirely happy, though. Nearby, Ree stood in restraints, surrounded by the security team. Riker came forward to meet him, still cradling the baby. Ree looked at him in surprise. “You…trust me to be near her?”
“Why not, Doctor? You delivered her.” Deanna had shared everything she thought and felt about her experience through their empathic link. He knew they were in agreement on this. “There still needs to be a hearing, but it’s just a formality. I understand why you did what you did.”
“I stole your pregnant wife. Attacked a security team. Hijacked a shuttle.”
“And you did it all to protect my little girl. Do you have any idea how reassuring that is, Doctor? To know that anyone who wants to hurt this child will have to get past the most dangerous and relentless member of my crew to do it?” He took Ree’s shackled manus in his hand and shook it. “Thank you, Doctor Ree. Now don’t ever do that again.”
Ree gave a formal, heartfelt bow, then let Tuvok and the security team lead him away.
Deanna was by his side. “Does he really have to be in the brig?”
“Regulations,” Riker said. “We’ll have the hearing as soon as possible, I promise. But if anything, I think maybe he needs this. He’s obviously very guilty about what he did—I think he wants to feel he’s paid his dues.”
“Hey. Who’s the psychologist in this family?”
He beamed. “Family. We’re really a family now.” He admired his daughter a while longer.
Then he furrowed his brow. “I think we’re forgetting something.”
“What?”
“I don’t think the young lady and I have been formally introduced.”
Deanna nodded. “Oh. A name. I wanted to talk with you about that.” She huddled up against him, stroking the baby’s head. “We’ve all lost so many people this year. You and I lost the one that would’ve been her brother or sister. I want to name her in honor of someone we knew far too briefly. A friend whose life was cut short much too soon…because she tried to save mine.” She whispered the name in his ear.
He smiled. “I like it. In fact…I think there’s someone else lost too soon that I’d like to commemorate. In honor of this world, and the one who saved me from going too soon.”
“The repairs are almost complete,” Vale reported to the command crew. Riker looked around the conference lounge, pleased to see the whole group reunited again. Even Lavena was finally back aboard and back in her hydration suit—fidgeting like crazy, but visibly glowing with pride at the new pip on her collar. “When they rebuilt this ship, they built her to last. Even after all the damage we took, the spaceframe is as solid as ever and all systems are virtually good as new. We should be ready to set course to our next destination within the day,” the first officer continued. “Whatever we decide that destination will be.”
“That’s it?” Lavena asked. “After all this, the relationship we’ve built with the squales, we’re just going to up and leave? There’s still so much we can learn about them, and they about us.”
At Riker’s side, Deanna leaned forward. T’Pel was taking care of the baby so the two of them could both attend the briefing, though he knew Deanna was just as eager to get back to their daughter as he was. For now, though, she was the ship’s diplomatic officer again. “Aili, we’re all very grateful for the job you did with the squales,” she said. “It was a remarkable piece of diplomacy. I’m glad to know we have someone who can fill in for me when I’m busy with parental obligations.” A chuckle went through the room, though Lavena didn’t join in. “But the Prime Directive is clear. Just because interference has happened, that isn’t a license to keep interfering. We have to minimize the interaction as much as possible, just as we did on Lumbu.”
“But that isn’t fair to them! The squales are scientists and explorers just as much as we are. They have an intense curiosity about the universe, and we’ve just opened the door to a whole new realm of it.”
“Then we need to let them build on that knowledge at their own pace,” Christine Vale countered. “We don’t do them any favors by giving them knowledge they aren’t ready for yet.”
“Who says they aren’t ready? Just because they don’t have warp drive?” Lavena laughed. “Look at what the squales have accomplished. They have a biotechnology far more advanced than our own—and they’ve developed it all, built an advanced technological civilization, without metal, without stone, without even having hands! Can you imagine how long that took? They’re a much older civilization than yours or mine. They had genetic engineering before your species even learned to domesticate animals. And in a lot of ways, they’re a more advanced civilization than ours. Is it fair, is it even meaningful, to use warp drive alone as the only benchmark for whether a civilization is ‘advanced enough’ for contact?”
“It is not the only benchmark,” Tuvok put in. “However advanced their technology may be, the squales responded to our arrival with aggression and xenophobia.”
“It’s not like we didn’t give them reason. Our devices were hurting them from the moment we landed. And we should’ve left well enough alone with the asteroid.”
“And there’s another reason, Aili,” Deanna said. “The Prime Directive is as much about our lack of readiness as theirs. It’s about keeping us from being incautious in a contact situation. The squales are very, very alien. Who knows how else we might clash with the best of intentions?”
Lavena straightened. “Then doesn’t that make this a symmetrical issue? What gives us the right to make the decision unilaterally? Shouldn’t we at least give them a say, let them decide if they think we’reready for further contact?”
“I think she’s right,” Riker said. “This is their world. And we’ve done enough harm trying to make decisions on their behalf. The Prime Directive exists to keep us from imposing our will on other races, but unilaterally deciding to deny them further contact can be just another way of imposing our will.”