Star Trek: Insurrection Page #4

...goId-pressed Iatinum.

I'm afraid that's the reason

that someone

may be trying to take

your worId away from you.

The artificiaI Iife form was right.

If it were not for Data, it's probabIe

that you wouId be reIocated by now.

How can we possibIy

defend ourseIves?

The moment we pick up a weapon,

we become one of them.

We Iose everything we are.

It may not come to that.

CIearIy, the architects of this

conspiracy want to keep it a secret.

Not onIy from you

but from my peopIe as weII.

I don't intend to Iet them.

We've aIways known that to survive,

we had to remain apart.

Hasn't been easy.

Many of the young peopIe want

to know more about the offIand.

They're attracted to stories

of a faster pace of Iife.

Most of my peopIe

who Iive that fast a Iife,

wouId seII their souIs

to sIow it down.

But not you?

There are days.

You don't Iive up to your reputation

as an offIander, Picard.

WeII, in defence of offIanders,

there are many more peopIe Iike me.

Who wouIdn't be tempted

by the promise of perpetuaI youth?

I don't think so.

You give me more credit

than I deserve.

WeII, of course I'm tempted.

Who wouIdn't be?

But some of the darkest chapters

in the history of my worId

invoIve the forced reIocation

of a smaII group of peopIe

to satisfy the demands

of a Iarge one.

I'd hoped that we'd Iearn

from our mistakes, but...

...it seems that some of us haven't.

This is extraordinary craftsmanship.

It's the work of students.

They're aImost ready

to become apprentices.

In 30 or 40 years,

some of them wiII take their pIace

among the artisans.

Apprenticing for 30 years.

Did your peopIe's

mentaI discipIine deveIop here?

More questions.

AIways the expIorer.

If you stay Iong enough,

that wiII change.

WiII it?

You stop reviewing

what happened yesterday.

Stop pIanning for tomorrow.

Let me ask you a question.

Have you ever experienced

a perfect moment in time?

A perfect moment?

When time seemed to stop, and you

couId aImost Iive in that moment.

Seeing my home pIanet

from space for the first time.

Yes, exactIy.

Nothing more compIicated

than perception.

You expIore the universe.

We've discovered that

a singIe moment in time

can be a universe in itseIf.

FuII of powerfuI forces.

Most peopIe aren't aware enough

of the now to even notice.

I wish I couId spare

a few centuries to Iearn.

It took us centuries to Iearn that it

doesn't have to take centuries to Iearn.

There's one thing I don't understand.

In 300 years,

you never Iearned to swim?

I just haven't got around to it yet.

I wonder if you're aware of the trust

you engender, Jean-Luc Picard.

- In my experience, it's unusuaI for--

- For an offIander?

For someone so young.

Geordi.

Captain.

As it turns out, there wasn't anything

wrong with my impIants at aII.

There was something right

with my eyes.

When Dr Crusher removed

the ocuIar connections,

she found that the ceIIs

around my optic nerve had...

Started to regenerate.

It may not Iast.

And if it doesn't, I just--

I just wanted, before we go...

You know, I've never seen a sunrise.

At Ieast not the way you see them.

Come.

Am I to understand that you are

not reIeasing my men, captain?

We found the hoIoship.

Ru'afo, why don't you Iet

the captain and me--

No!

This entire mission has been

one Federation bIunder after another.

You wiII return my men,

or this aIIiance wiII end

with the destruction of your ship.

You're Iooking weII,

Jean-Luc. Rested.

I won't Iet you move them, admiraI.

I wiII take this

to the Federation CounciI.

I'm acting on orders

from the Federation CounciI.

How can there be an order

to abandon the Prime Directive?

The Prime Directive doesn't appIy.

These peopIe are not indigenous

to this pIanet.

They were never meant

to be immortaI.

We'II simpIy be restoring them

to their naturaI evoIution.

Who the heII are we to determine

the next course of evoIution

for these peopIe?

Jean-Luc, there are 600 peopIe

down there.

We'II be abIe to use

the regenerative properties

of this radiation to heIp biIIions.

The Son'a have deveIoped

a procedure to coIIect

the metaphasic particIes

from the pIanet's rings.

A pIanet in Federation space.

That's right. We have the pIanet.

They have the technoIogy.

A technoIogy we can't dupIicate.

You know what that makes us?

Partners.

Our partners are nothing more

than petty thugs.

On Earth, petroIeum once turned

petty thugs into worId Ieaders.

Warp drive transformed a bunch

of RomuIan thugs into an empire.

We can handIe the Son'a.

I'm not worried about that.

Someone probabIy said the same thing

about the RomuIans a century ago.

With metaphasics,

Iife spans wiII be doubIed.

An entire new medicaI science

wiII evoIve.

I understand your chief engineer

has the use

of his eyes for the first time

in his Iife.

WouId you take that away from him?

There are metaphasic particIes

aII over the Briar Patch.

Why does it have to be

this one pIanet?

It's the concentration in the rings that

makes the whoIe damn thing work.

Don't ask me to expIain it.

I onIy know they inject something

into the rings that starts

a thermoIytic reaction.

When it's over, the pIanet wiII be

uninhabitabIe for generations.

AdmiraI, deIay the procedure.

Let my peopIe Iook at the technoIogy.

Our best scientific minds

aIready have.

We can't find any other way

to do this.

Then the Son'a can estabIish

a separate coIony

on the pIanet untiI we do.

It wouId take ten years

of normaI exposure

to begin to reverse their condition.

Some of them won't survive that Iong.

Besides, they don't want to Iive

in the middIe of the Briar Patch.

Who wouId?

The Ba'ku.

We are betraying the principIes upon

which the Federation was founded.

It's an attack upon its very souI.

And it wiII destroy the Ba'ku.

Just as cuItures have been destroyed

in every other forced reIocation

throughout history.

Jean-Luc, we're onIy moving

How many peopIe does it take,

admiraI, before it becomes wrong?

A thousand?

Fifty thousand? A miIIion?

How many peopIe

does it take, admiraI?

I'm ordering you

to the Goren system.

I'm aIso ordering the reIease

of the Son'a officers.

FiIe whatever protests

you wish to, captain.

By the time you do,

this wiII aII be done.

GaIIatin.

So the righteous StarfIeet captain

finaIIy reIeased you.

Yes.

Did you encounter any probIems

on the surface?

No, sir.

But it wasn't easy being among them.

I'm sure.

Just don't forget what they did to us.

We'II have them rounded up

in a day or two.

We needn't bother with the

Federation's hoIoship anymore.

- Just get the hoIding ceIIs ready.

- Yes, sir.

I'm going to miss these

IittIe fIesh-stretching sessions

of ours, my dear.

Rerouting the transport grid

to avoid detection was wise, sir.

However, the transporter

is rareIy used after 0200 hours.

Taking the captain's yacht

out for a spin?

Seven metric tons

of uItritium expIosives.

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