Chapter IV: Prisoner Exchange

A few hours go by uneventfully as all four ships in the system wait for the arrival of the Veron vessel that is carrying the humanoid prisoners.
Eventually, that ship arrives. It is not of the same design as the Four. Instead, it seems to be just a captured freighter. Darcy informs everyone on the bridge that the scanners do not read any weapon systems on the ship although it does have shields, which are turned off at the moment.

Shortly after the freighter’s arrival, the bridge receives hails from both the Four and the Dove pretty much simultaneously. Alex and Cass are on the bridge at that point, together with Darcy and Mezron.
Moira is in the transporter room, finalizing the program that will restore the slugs that were biofiltered out. She’s in contact with Davis, who is in the hangar bay from which the shuttle carrying the restored Verons will leave. Your tests have concluded that you will only be able to restore the parasites inside the Potential so you will have to do the restoration while the shuttle is still in the hangar bay. Moira is informed of a communication for her from the Four regarding last arrangements for the exchange.
Lorq, Marbo and Zephyr, you are still sitting together, discussing possible alternatives to the current Veron lifestyle as well as giving occasional help to Moira for her preparations, when you unexpectedly receive a communication from the Dove, asking specifically to speak to the doctor and/or science officer of the Potential

Cass, Alex

The viewscreen lights up to show Captain Thompson who has a very serious expression on his face. "Looks like the parasites have brought the prisoners in and they aren't even sporting any shields. Let's just get this whole thing over with right now. We'll beam everyone to our ships, including the guards. Then we blow up the other two ships. They're not expecting anything. No need to go through with this stupid exchange, right?" He pauses for just a tiny moment before breaking out into a grin. "Just joking, Junior. I know our orders are to give them the slugs back. Any last minute decisions to be made? You need some extra security? Are we meeting the slug captain or just doing it all over comms?"

Cass, Alex

"We have security teams standing by to guard the hangar bay during the rematerialization. I don't see a need to have an armed shuttle accompany the transport but if the two of you think that would be helpful...", Darcy explains. Before she can even finish her sentence, Thompson interrupts her: "It's settled then. I'll send some shuttles to accompany all transports carrying prisoners from either side. Just for extra security. Good suggestion, Cassie!"

Cass, Alex

"Now listen, Junior, do I have to read the list of previous encounters with this race to you? There's been a whole lot of bloodshed going on. I know you're new and probably a bit emotional about these negotiations but with some more experience you'll learn that being careful always pays off. I'm not saying we'll shoot them down right away but if they try to eat someone's face again, I'd like to be ready."

Moira

You're sitting at a smaller screen and take the communication from the Four. The screen lights up and reveals not the captain but a woman in civilian clothes. Her hair is greying which wouldn't be unusual for her age but could also be the result of the Veron inside of her. "Bruce. You are your ship's head engineer, in charge of the revivification of our people, correct? I was ordered to make sure the exchange will proceed without problem. Please let me know the details of the proceedings that your crew has decided on. And I would appreciate it if you could send me the code and blueprints for everything you are using in the revivification so that I can have my team look it over."

Cass, Alex

Thompson frowns at Cass' reply, an expression that looks much more natural than his smiles do. "Well, Commander Shawna Cassano, I think the risk of escalation exists regardless. Let them deploy some extra arms as well if they want. We can have our shuttles armed with photon torpedoes within the hour, making them vastly superior in weaponry than what the slugs, excuse me, the Verons, could be using, fast enough to use them during the exchange."

Moira

The woman nods. "Please get the plans sent over to us as soon as possible. I want some people to look over the schematics before we attempt the revivification. Once our people are rematerialized, we will have to put them back into host bodies, children for the most part, immediately. For that reason, I would like to ask permission to send a number of medical shuttles into your hangar bay so that you can revivify our people onto them and we can implant them into the hosts without delay. Of course we can send over a list of crewmembers and equipment for these shuttles beforehand for your approval." She pauses. "As for a name, you can call me" She performs a slow series of clicking noises that would not be easy but also not impossible to replicate for a human. "If you prefer to call me by a name in your language, I will not be offended but I'm not overly familiar with your naming conventions. You can call me whatever you want."

Cass, Alex

Thompson doesn't reply for a while. He knows you have the lead on this mission so he can't really go against your decisions. "Well, I'll have some security ready and standing by regardless. We'll do it your way but if someone dies, it'll be on you, Junior."

Moira

You can tell from the woman's expression that she appreciates your effort at pronouncing the name she gave you. You must have at least been reasonably close to it with your attempt. "What we call children are members of a species of animal from our home planet, comparable to Earth bovines, that we have genetically edited to increase compatibility with our people. They are terrible hosts but they are enough to keep our young alive until we can find suitable humanoid hosts for them"

Moira

"That would be all for now. Thank you for your cooperation, Bruce. You have been very helpful!", the woman says before ending the communication. Moia should probably inform someone of the changes to the procedure, with the Veron doctors coming into the hangar bay with their shuttles.

Lorq, Zephyr, Marbo

Lorq accepts the communication from the Dove. Since all of you are in a lab together, you can all see and hear this communication and join in whenever you want.
A young human man appears on the screen. He's wearing a blue spacefleet uniform and the markings of a Lieutenant. He has black hair and a patchy beard.
"Good day, gentlemen. I'm Lieutenant Harrison Abadi, assistant doctor of the USS Dove. I wanted to talk to the medical and science staff of the Potential. Who am I speaking to, please?"

The man turns his attention towards Zephyr. "Lieutenant Commander Borealis. You are exactly the one I wanted to talk about. I'm sorry for bringing up bad memories but according to the files your captain sent us, you were infected by one of the Verons, is that correct? Do you remember anything. Were you conscious?"

Moira

The code you've written based on the Veron engineer's failed code looks pretty convincing to you. You are pretty sure nobody could determine that it's not real unless they tried to actually use it. Then it would be obvious of course, that something's wrong with it.

Science Team

Doctor Abadi strokes his beard in a thoughtful gesture. It doesn't quite look like a subconscious thing, more like he is actively doing it to look more in thought. "I am not asking about any details right now. My worries are just about the humanoid host that is going to be implanted with another one of those parasites during the exchange. I'm asking about whether that is ethically justifiable. You are the only one who can judge that since you are the only one who actually knows what it's like to be infected by those things."

Science Team

Abadis leans back in his chair a bit. "I see - 'Needs of the Many', how very utilitarian. I am having trouble justifying forcing a spacefleet officer to be infected and taken over by a Veron against her will but maybe to me, this just sounds worse than it actually is. You are the expert on this topic so I will defer to your opinion on this, Mr. Borealis." His eyes shift, no longer focused on Zephyr but looking at all three of you. "If there is anything you need from us - doctors, equipment, help - just ask." He lowers his voice slightly. "The captain can be difficult to work with, I know, but we're all here to help."

Cass reads, belatedly, the note Moira had sent, and watches the recording of the encounter. She sighs. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that, lieutenant commander.

"Mezron, send a message to the Dove to please go ahead and prep some extra security shuttles as Capt. Thompson suggested, just as a precaution, with the understanding that we may not decide to deploy them And open a channel to the Four."

Cass, Alex

Mezron confirms your order and starts writing up a message to the Dove.
A few seconds later, the viewscreen lights up again to reveal the captain of the Four. He is not in usual seat. Instead you can see the medbay in which you were fighting the Zephyr-Veron and his ally earlier. Behind him, there is some activity but he is sitting on a bed, ignoring the other people behind him.
"Commander, good to hear back from you. We are finishing up our preparations and should be ready to proceed with the exchange in an hour. Would that suit your schedule? I commed you earlier to ask if there are any further details we need to discuss beforehand. I also had one of my people get in contact with your chief engineer to work out the technical details. I hope you don't mind.

Taking in the activity behind the captain, Cass asks, "I would have preferred to be in the loop, actually, captain. Your engineer requested all of our code for the reconstitution of your people housed in the biofilter. I'm a little taken aback by that, as it is something I would have expected us to negotiate over."

Cass, Alex

"Well, I am surprised you feel that way about it. This is the technology we are going to be using to restore Veron people after all. You yourself said we would only have one shot at this. We are only trying to maximize our chances of success by having as many people look over this code as possible. There is a lot that depends on the outcome of this experiment." He pauses, his eyes firmly focused on Cass. "But I promise that I will clear any further attempt at communication from my ship to yours with you first."
Alex, even with your experiment, infected hosts are still almost impossible to read unless they want their emotions to be seen. You are unable to glimpse any real information from the captain's emotionless face.

"I understand, commander. However, I hope you understand that that means that if anything goes wrong during the revivification process, I will be holding your ship personally responsible for it."
In response to Cass' question, he replies: "Not that it is any of your business but no, I am not. We are preparing for the exchange and my doctors are currently getting ready to perform the final examination of the chosen host. I am just here to supervise"

Cass, Alex

"I am willing to share the blame if anything goes wrong - but not if you are unwilling to allow us to cooperate. We will need at least four shuttles, better five, in total to be able to perform surgery on all our people immediately after their revivification but we can agree on only using one shuttle at a time. Comm me again only once you are ready to begin the exchange."

Cass plays the recording of the conversation before responding. "Dr. Lorq, I agree that this conversation was a little... odd. I think Abadi might have been feeling you three out for signs that you were willing to let personal feelings about the ethics of this deal impact your actions if things go awry during the prisoner exchange. If that's what he was doing, none of you gave him any reason to think you'll do anything but support your commanding officer. But I'm very glad you shared this with me. Thank you."

Everyone is busy with preparations until the scheduled time for the prisoner exchange arrives.
The hangar bay is secured with biofilters in the door and a way to biofilter the entire room should it be necessary. If any of you have other security measures you wanted to install, let me know and we'll say you did that in the meantime.
All the PCs are gathered on the bridge and everyone has some terminals available to them to watch over the process and ensure things are going as intended.

To initiate the exchange, you just need to comm the Four.

Mezron opens the channel and the captain of the Four appears on the view screen. He appears to be in the Four's engineering section, judging by the background. "Are you ready to begin the exchange?"

Alex, the captain appears tense. There's a lot riding on this moment and it shows even in his host body. From the angle that the view screen shows, you can't see anyone else except for him but you can hear other voices from offscreen. They are speaking in the clicking language but the universal translator can interpret them in real time by now. They're talking about technical details about the shuttles they're sending out.

"That is good to hear. We will send out two shuttles now. One contains a medical team and will go into your cargo hold so you can revivify four of our missing people into it. The other shuttle contains four humanoid prisoners. You can use your transporters to recover them immediately before the revivification. Do not revive the Second Generation Veron in this first group."

The connection to the captain does not get broken but it gets changed to audio only as the viewscreen changes to show the outside of the Four. Just like the captain announced, two shuttles are leaving its hangar bay simultaneously. One is obviously of Veron design and mich larger than the other one, which appears to be a spacefleet shuttle. The spacefleet shuttle stops moving not far from the Four, the Veron shuttle continues and enters the Potential's hangar bay. Your sensors confirm four humanoid life signs on board the spacefleet shuttle and five humanoid and four non-humanoid life signs on the Veron shuttle.

Cass frowns slightly. "I'm not sure we've discussed anything about a Second Generation Veron, captain. Can you explain more about that?"

"We have briefly talked about her before, the direct offspring of the Queen that we are going to be joining with a humanoid host. We have sent your engineer her biodata separately so she should be able to determine which one of the rematerialized Verons is her", the captain explains.

"We're engaging transporters now. Those imprisoned spacefleet officers better be in perfect shape or else", Thompson says.
The captain of the Four does not respond to that but a minute after Moira initiates the restoration of the Verons, your sensors pick up that the Veron shuttle is moving back out of the hangar bay and the Veron captain speaks up: "The revivification of the first group has been successful, although my doctors tell me they are in bad shape. Your engineers calibrations must not be exactly right, commander. We will take care of the revivified and compile some information you can use to adjust the transporters. We can continue with the next group in fifteen minutes."

"Understood. That is a shame. I was hoping we could improve the conditions for the next group of our people. But if that is not the case, then we will proceed like this. They will recover. We will send out the next two shuttles as soon as we can. Please monitor the next revivification closely. Maybe you will be able to pick up some way to improve the conditions before we restore the Second Generation."
He interrupts the connection for now. Thompson speaks up before you can do anything else. "Okay, listen up, Junior. We got four people in here. Two ensigns, one Lieutenant, one civilian. They're still being treated by medical staff but the preliminary report is in. They're malnourished and seem to have some psychological issues but my doctors say they'll be fine in a few days. There's no indication of abuse or physical torture yet but we'll keep looking. And we still have our security teams ready to deploy if there's anything fishy going on."

"No androids here, unless you count the civilian's artificial leg. Why? Anything you're worried about?"

"Oh, don't worry, Junior, I won't let anything happen to your ship" You can practically hear the smug grin in his voice.

A few minutes later, you reestablish communication with the Four and again, two shuttles leave the Veron ship. You can't tell if they're the same or different ones as before but either way, they're the same designs.
Again, one ship makes it's way to the Potential's hangar bay and one stays outside in open space.
"Beaming over the prisoners now", Thompson announces.
The Veron captain explains: "You can start the procedure for the second group now. Again, four people, and don't restore the Second Generation yet."

The procedure repeats itself, identical to the first time. The Dove beams the humanoid prisoners over and Moira engages the rematerialization of the Verons onto the shuttle. The shuttle leaves the hangar bay and moves back to the Four.
Moira uses the time between this exchange and the next to look over the scan results and transporter logs for the second restoration, checking to see if she can improve the procedure.She manages to make some tweaks to the system that should improve the condition of the next group of Verons to be revived.

The next exchange goes off without a hitch too. Thompson beams out the prisoners, Moira restores the Verons, the shuttle moves them to the Four.

A few minutes later, two shuttles emerge from the Four again. Your scanners pick up that the larger, Veron design shuttle has four lifeforms on it while the smaller one, which should carry the humanoid prisoners for the exchange, only has one. You also read that there are two spacefleet commbadges on the shuttle, however.
The captain of the Four, who has been mostly quiet until now, speaks up again: "Commander, the exchange has gone off without difficulties so far. I hope we can continue like that. All our people have been revived, except for one, the one that matters the most. Please, restore the Second Generation Veron onto the shuttle now. The other shuttle holds both prisoners we have taken from your vessel, the human and the robot. We apologize for the condition that the robot is in but he attacked us and we had no other choice. Because of that, we are trading them both for just one of us."

The crew of the Potential finishes up the exchange, successfully restoring the last of the Verons onto the shuttle and recovering their last missing crewmembers. M1-K3 is severely damaged as he had not been willing to surrender to the attackers. It is possible to repair him and the restoration will be initiated but it will take time during which he will be unable to serve on the Potential. After the exchange concludes, Cass and the Veron captain agree to postpone further negotiations until after Kot, the assigned diplomat arrives. Since the situation has been momentarily resolved, Captain Thompson is soon asked to engage with another crisis somewhere else, removing him from the situation before he could do any damage to Consortium-Veron-relations.

For a few days, there is radio silence between the Potential and the Four until Kot arrives.
The Potential crew introduces the diplomat, who appears to be very competent and due to his unique situation as a joined Grall especially suited for this task to the Verons and after another day of observing to look for any signs of imminent trouble - of which they find none - the Potential finally hands off responsibility for this situation to someone else and leaves the system.

The crew is exhausted, injured and some of them have seen things that have left them shocked and possibly traumatized - But they were successful. Even though they had to work without their captain, they have managed to turn an extremely hostile first contact with an aggressive alien race into peaceful negotiations. Only time will tell how these negotiations will end but the Potential has done all they could to set them up for success.

The Potential now continues its way to Starbase 279, where Captain Darcy will receive the medical treatment he requires and the bridge crew will debrief with a group of admirals that are already on their way to the starbase.

After that, while the damage to the ship is being repaired, the spacefleet officers of the Potential will finally be able to recover from the stress of the mission as the entire crew has been scheduled for two weeks of additional shore leave...