"As I've said, we didn't know there to be any such thing.

"Our ancestors came to Samaria fleeing war and sought at great price to be free of it, and see their descendants free of it. We cannot lightly and on the word of strangers enter a new era of warfare."

"That's extremely reasonable and responsible - I'd be a bit worried if you did lightly go to war."

"We hope to be able to give you the tools and information that you can verify for yourself the threat we all face."

Lucien pauses for a bit.

"Also if no one actually claims ownership or control of the ship, we could attempt to acquire it ourselves. But I'd really rather not rush into that for fear of upsetting someone. We'll prob-ably want to search for anyone who claims the ship is there's for a bit longer before doing anything like that."

"My fliers visiting the oracles will surely bring it up. Perhaps with some lengthier attempts they'll be able to divine Jovah's will in the matter."

The amaliens have encountered quite a few religious societies at this point, and they have learned a few major things:

1) Don't assume there must be substantial truth to their religious beliefs, no matter how much people may believe it.

2) Don't dismiss them - religions often have very important societal functions.

3) Don't try to make a three hour long presentation in which you prove thoroughly using twelve different disciplines, four experiments, and a novel combination of anthropics and simulation theory, that a religion must be less than 3% likely to be true.

4) No Vira, that clever exception to lesson number three doesn't count.

5) If you crash on a planet and are very obviously immune to death, you might start a religion on accident. Don't do this.

These lessons aren't really very helpful in the end - dealing with religions is complicated and the Federation doesn't have policies they can copy on account of how warp capable civilizations are usually pretty secular.

So, Lucien is going to have figure this out himself....

Hopefully asking questions isn't a bad thing here, he really would like to understand what's going on.

"How does that work exactly?" he asks.

"The god hears all our prayers, of course, but some better than others, and the oracles are privileged to receive his replies."

"Ah."

Where does he go from there.

"And. You listen to the replies the oracles get?"

"Yes. I don't need to consult them for every day to day thing, but this isn't one."

"Of course."

So... Probably oracles are the real power here?

"Will they need to talk to me?"

"I don't know. It's possible."

"How are oracles chosen?"

"Oh um. I should clarify - my home planet didn't have oracles or talking to Jovah, though some other planets have things that sound similar. We've had some mis-under-standings before about the sim-ilar things so I'm tryin' to be extra careful and might be confused about some things that seem obvious to you."

"I've heard the Edori hold that every star in the sky has its own god and Jovah is only one of these."

Hm... pro'bally good to not underplay di-versity of beliefs. Would be sorta dis-honest and also make confusion later more lik-ely. Better to say things now than wait for things to be found out later.

"There's a lot of different things people believe about gods, which can make getting a-long hard some-times. Some planets have their own gods, some have a bunch of gods for just the one planet, some get very angry if anyone else says they have a different god then theirs. Um. One of the most co-mmon beliefs a-mong the people in the Amalien Alliance is ac-tually that most gods are just so-cial phe-nomena and not as li-teral as places of-ten think they are."

He smiles nervously.

"I'm saying this this all now so it won't come as a surprise and cause um. Sometimes people just assume that other people have the same important beliefs they do when they first meet, and then later get angry when they find out this isn't true and feel misled." 

"We want the best for people no matter what they believe about these things."

Linus smiles gently. "Perhaps all those other gods aren't as good to their people as ours and have lost their love. At any rate, heresy is not illegal and people can say whatever outlandish things they please so long as they are aware that we're devoted to Jovah and our prayers will go to him."

"I'm... happy to hear that you're so understanding..."

"I think you might be the first place I've heard of that consults with religious authorities on important decisions but doesn't criminalize heresy." It's honestly very re-freshing. 

"- how curious. I'm not sure why that would be, but perhaps it's not pertinent. Would you like to come to a meeting room?"

Yes, he would like to go to a meeting room!

(He is actually pretty happy about getting invited to a meeting room, but he doesn't let it show too much.)

In they go. In addition to Linus the meeting room contains a human woman, an older human man, and the servant from earlier who is putting out snack trays and pouring glasses of water.

"So. Formal introductions. I'm the Archangel Linus, and this is my angelica Tabitha, and my uncle and advisor Joash. How do we address you?"

"I'm Captain Lucien, and this is my Chief of Security Kurm."

Kurm is humanoid, with skin that looks like it's covered in a thin layer of grey sentiment, as if he rubbed chalk over his entire body. Unlike Lucien he appears to be an adult.

"The rest of the crew of the Starship Bridget is orbiting your planet overhead, very high up."

"Pleased to meet you," says Tabitha. "I hope your visit to Samaria finds you well."

"Thank you. I hope we are able to help you in our time here."

He awkwardly pauses for a moment. 

... He can't think of what he should say next so maybe he will just let them speak more.

"Help us with what? Is something the matter?" asks Joash.

"That's what Captain Lucien and I were just discussing," says Linus. "Apparently this is a friendly visit, but there are unfriendlier visitors in the offing."

"The ... unfriendly visitors - the Borg - are not the only way we'd hope to help you. We also have lots of technology for things like curing the sick, enabling faster transportation, or preventing famine. Though you do seem to be good at the famine prevention bit yourself."

"But yes, we are also here because of the Borg."

He considers showing them holograms of the horrors of the Borg... probably not a good idea right now. Too much like... trying to take advantage of emotions.

"The Borg is an omnicidal mega-civilization* that searches for life in order to assimilate it - where assimilation roughly entails murdering and puppeting the corpses of their victims to turn them into more Borg. The vast majority of sentient warp-capable** civilizations we know of in this section of space are working together to defend against the borg, under an agreement known as the Pact - the most prominent such groups being the Amalien Alliance, which I represent, and the United Federation of Planets."

"This agreement first came about when the Borg discovered a wormhole*** to this portion of the galaxy and poured through. A lot of planets were lost - over 75 billion people. We've managed to keep them from spreading, and are working to expel them and close the wormhole. We think we've stopped their invasion through the wormhole. We hope that they won't find another one - if they do it's likely they'll overwhelm the immediate area before we will be able to stop them."

"But. Even if all of that goes fine. The Borg don't need a wormhole to get here. They're on the other side of the galaxy, but we're pretty confident that they're moving towards us, via warp drive rather than wormhole. If they sent a fleet towards us when they first made contact they could possible be here in as few as 50 years if they went full speed. We think they're probably taking their time, assimilating anyone thye find on the way to us. Our best guess is they will be here in 110 years. At the most, 200."

"We need to be able to stop them by the time they get here. And ... we don't have a good a idea about how to do it."

"Part of the mission of the Amalien Alliance is to find civilizations like yours, and give them warning and aid. So even if the Borg do find a wormhole, maybe you will be able to flee or stand your ground until help comes. And maybe you'll help find a way to stop them completely."

"I ... don't want to come across as if I'm trying to scare you. I tried not to high-light the scariest bits, cause I don't want it to seem like I'm trying to use 'motions to get you to make a really really important decision."

*mega-civilization translates as "something larger than an individual civilization typically is". The three known mega-civilizations are: the Amalien Alliance, the Federation, and the Borg.

**warp-capable translates as "able to travel between stars quickly" 

*** translates as "shortcut through space"

The locals exchange looks.

"If what you say is true this will certainly be the most pressing issue in our grandchildren's time," says Linus.

"Um. Unless the Borg find another wormhole. That could be sooner."

He represses the instinct to apologize for seeming scary. 

He remembers the pictures he saw of the barely pre-warp Ment the Amaliens had found a few dozen lightyears from the wormhole. Just three Amalien ships had tried to hold out long enough for larger ships to come and evacuate people. Lucien had studied videos of the Amaliens trying to convince the leaders of the planet, and later the populace, to drop everything and prepare to buy time and then to evacuate. He'd seen as the videos of the panic and chaos in the Ment's legislature as the first Borg vessel landed, in the middle of a last plea by Captain Eema. 

The only surviving Ment were those few who had fit onto the single Amalien scouting ship lucky enough to survive. 

(He doesn't cry in front of the Samarians - it hadn't helped Captain Eema when she cried.)

"Of course, while you know that you're telling the truth, we don't, not yet," says Joash. "If you could be a little clearer about what you want us to do, other than being frightened..."