Frustrating.

"Are you claiming ownership of the ship?"

"Are you just curious?"

"No."

Lucien puts his thoughts in order and sighs.

"The available evidence indicates that there might be weapons onboard thee ship that could be really important in the war against the Borg - plausibly saving billions of lives by making a critical difference in a battle to defend even one planet. It's really not clear what sort of decision we should make if it's just you asking us to leave it alone without any clear reason."

"It doesn't belong to you. The ship's details are extremely sensitive, and we have only your word to go on about the stakes, to say nothing of whether we have any obligations to any of those people."

"Do you know owns the ship?"

"Not you."

...

"I'm really not sure what sort of decision we'll end up making if this is an you tell us. I'd consult with Leadership, tell them that my best guess is the oracles claim it but that it's unclear how much effective control they have, or whether their control is in the best interest of the inhabitants of Samaria."

"I'd suggest that active boarding of the ship to investigate or taking control ourselves would be a clearly aggressive action likely to spark resistance should resistance be feasible by the Samarians. But that this isn't certain and the current evidence suggests it has technology relevant to the war with the Borg."

"Um, I don't want to sound mean about this but that's probably what I'd report. I'd like to avoid this since it seems likely to result in contentious future interactions."

"My expectation," says Alleluia, "is that if you attempt to take the ship, you'll get yourselves killed. I don't know that it's in the interests of Samaria to tell you more than that about exactly why and under exactly what theory of property you shouldn't steal the ship. I'm telling you it's not yours and you may not have it and it will not go well if you try it."

He's sort of skeptical they'd get killed taking the ship - it's very hard to destroy amaliens and they have a lot of diff-erent tools.

He takes a deep breath. This is not at all an easy mission.

"Is there anything the Amalien Alliance can provide of equivalent value to you as the ship?"

"I am not offering to sell it to you for any price."

This isn't very productive...

"Um. Aside from anything in-volving the ship are there problems we can help you with. Our help is not com-tingent on any of this."

"That part you can hash out with the Archangel. I'm only here because you need to leave the ship alone."

"We'll take it under consideration, but I can't truthfully give you any guarantees under these circumstances."

"Um. Evidence that you do represent the best wishes of the Samarians and that your authority on this sort of thing is acknowledged by others would be helpful for making the case to Leadership as to why we shouldn't int-erfere with the ship."

"You are welcome to ask Archangel Linus if he trusts me and recommends that you follow my advice."

"What, if any, context would you be okay with me providing?"

"Suppose I come with you and repeat what of this conversation I feel he should know, and then you can confirm that if he wants you to, and he can confirm that you should do as I recommend."

"That sounds like a good idea."

"Um. I also do have to say that I don't know how much we're gonna be able to obey these wishes but it's good to know and we don't want to upset you."

He can follow her to the Archangel now.

"Linus," says Alleluia, when they find him, inclining her head.

"Oracle Alleluia. I see you went straight to the visitor."

"Jovah's wisdom was too urgent and too complex to do otherwise. I believe Penninah and Emmanuel will send the same message back to you. The visitors must not interfere with the craft they found above Samaria, not for any gift nor bribery."

Linus nods solemnly.

"I hope that you'll be able to convince them. It doesn't seem that they know much about Jovah or his oracles where their people are from," Alleluia says.

"Well, I can do my best." He looks appraisingly at Lucien.

"Alleluia also said we should talk to you about plans for helping that don't involve the ... craft."

"Jovah didn't speak on that?" Linus asks, looking at her.

"All the usual cautions about warfare and weaponry, but less emphatically than the matter of the craft."

Maybe now they can actually have a discussion about how they can help the Samarians?

Even the Borg were quicker to tell the Amaliens how they could help them than the Samarians have been.

(Admittedly the request in that case had been for complete surrender to assimilation.)

"If you were hoping to - buy this thing off of us - I'm afraid we won't be able to oblige you," says Linus, sitting down on the nearest narrow-backed chair and inviting Lucien and his security to sit opposite him. "We serve Jovah here on Samaria before whatever material interests you might be able to satisfy."

"We want to help you regardless of anything involving the craft or anything you can give us."

Alleluia hovers, a little nervously, but Linus takes it from here. They could use some engineering knowhow - nothing for combat, they're not interested in doing any war, but things for building bridges or spinning fibers or things like that.

They can definitely help with that! The Amaliens can provide guides specifically on those things that will work for current Samarian tech levels from what they've seen. Also, they can probably import some machines to help with some things where only a small number of advanced machines would help on a large scale? Machines for digging tunnels through mountains are quite popular. And obviously vaccines and GMO seeds, which they have on their ship ready to go. 

Also! Here's a step-by-step tutorial to having a pleasant and successful industrial revolution - with videos and diagrams on a bunch of different things (they have tablets with the tutorial pre-loaded). The main focus is on how to climb the tech tree while being able to hit the important benefits along the way without most of the drawbacks other speeches encounter with industrializing naturally - based on the time various species have taken for different stages of the tutorial, it'll take them anywhere from 50 to 150 years to catch up to the Amalien Alliance's tech level.