How High

[Archie Phoenix 0]

Archie was certainly moving up in the world (the ship to be more precise). First he’d received an unexpected, though not unappreciated, promotion. Now he was sitting at the engineering station on the bridge of Arcadia, the nerve center of the ship’s command structure. He’d been brought there personally by Captain Lo’Ami himself! Physically speaking, he couldn’t move any higher up than this (relative to Arcadia’s artificial gravity, of course) without either floating in space or taking the service lift to the warp nacelles.

 

Archie couldn’t think of a time when he’d felt more appreciated. Even when he became the first Renazian to enter Starfleet Academy for officer training, he was treated just like any other Renazian his age. In fact, since having anything to do with Starfleet Academy classified as a severe taboo among his people, it could be said that he was treated worse. The constant reminders that Renazia always comes first and that the ‘primitives’ of the rest of the universe must always be kept ignorant were just hammered into his head a bit harder and a bit more frequently.

 

Now Archie felt like an important piece of the puzzle. He had authority! He had people working under him in the chain of command! His voice was heard -and- even sometimes taken seriously! He still had people to answer to, naturally. Some, like the Captain, didn’t seem to mind him too much. Others still seemed downright perturbed by his presence. Lieutenant Sema’J, for instance.

 

If the doctors who’d cleared Archie’s chief for duty knew what they were doing (something Archie strenuously hoped was the case), Sema’J was in a perfectly proper state of mind when he shouted at Archie in front of everyone in Sickbay (which seemed like the majority of the crew), reprimanding him for feeding his ideas to the Captain. Archie was not sure what exactly he’d done to offend his chief, but Lieutenant Sema’J was beginning to remind him a lot more of his Renazian elders than he cared for.

 

Keep your thoughts to yourself.

 

His Renazian teachers certainly would have objected to his freely offered comments on the chewana situation. They’d argue that his job as assistant engineer was to go where his superiors pointed and fix what was broken. But it seemed somehow wrong for Archie to keep his suggestions to himself. Wasn’t it an officer’s job to think and to make his thoughts known? Otherwise, he’d be no more useful to the crew than one of the enlisted men. Four Renazians had already gone the enlisted route, and although even their decision was considered downright scandalous to the Renazian elders, Archie had known from the day that Starfleet became a desire to him that his aspirations were even greater.

 

And now those aspirations have gotten him a new rank and a position (albeit temporary) on the bridge. Surely he was doing -something- right.

 

But then … for all his candidness, there were still some thoughts on the chewana situation that Archie was keeping to himself. Those thoughts had just gotten even shadier. Now not only was the crew gathering an active narcotic for delivery to Axrekrav, they were also exploring methods of modifying the inactive chewana root to activate its narcotic properties. In other words, the drug lab was undergoing a critical expansion. Unfortunately, this was the only way to meet the Axrekravians’ quota; there simply wasn’t enough active root on the planet. Considering how much -inactive- root there was, however, successfully developing a process to activate it would allow Arcadia to exceed their quota by at least 9000%. With that much narcotic chewana, a harvester could possibly build a pleasure palace out of nothing but the stuff.

 

Was that what the Axrekravians wanted? Were they fully aware of the shortage of active root on the planet? Did they want a team of brilliant scientists (nobody could offer better than Starfleet) to figure out what they could not -- a way to activate the chewana root so that they could repeat the process at their leisure? That meant that if the science staff managed to develop such a process, they could give the Axrekravian government the means to distribute an unimaginable amount of the narcotic. And if the medical staff could not develop a counter to the chewana’s addictive properties, the Axrekravians could transmute the chewana root into a powerful control device.

 

Even if that wasn’t the Axrekravians’ intent, the possibilities that Archie envisioned were downright frightening. Part of his brain argued that it was too high a price to pay for a handful of captured Starfleet officers. Still, he said nothing. Offering mission suggestions was one thing, but this was fell squarely under the header of ‘ethical dilemmas.’ Those were the sole province of the ship‘s commanding officer, and Archie would trust Captain Lo’Ami to do the right thing. If you can’t trust the Captain, who can you trust?