A Captain And A Madman

Chapter Four: Technobabble

"Worf, release him."

As the Klingon's arm fell away, the Doctor tumbled rather unceremoniously onto the floor in a heap, but was on his feet again in a flash, straightening his jacket and trying to catch his breath. Lifting a brow, still simmering with anger, Picard's arms crossed over his chest as he gestures for the Time Lord to continue.

"Your plan," the Doctor panted, "to help the colonists compensate for the heightening levels of radiation emitted by their sun? It's going to end in horrific, all-encompassing destruction for every life down there."

"How do you know about our mission here?" Picard asked slowly, eyes narrowing as he glanced towards Troi; but she shook her head, denying that she had shared any details.

"Because," the Doctor replied, exasperated. "I overrode all your security measures and extracted the information from your computer core."

"You WHAT?"

"That isn't the bloody point, Captain!" The Time Lord continued, steamrolling right over the wide-eyed Captain's anger. "I know what you think you're here to do, and I know you have the best intentions, but I studied all the data you assembled, and the sun is going wibbly, almost to the point of going wobbly!"

"We are aware that the sun's emissions are intensifying," Picard snapped, "And if you studied the restricted files more closely, then you would be aware that we intend to provide the colony with shield emitters and metabolic stabilizers to assist them in adjusting to the change, until a proper evacuation fleet can be assembled to take them to a more suitable world."

"But that's a terrible plan!" The Doctor protested, throwing his hands out wide. "Sure, you might have saved the colony, hugs all round, but most of the planet's biome'll be wiped out by the ensuing solar radiation! That's hundreds of species of animals, plants, all irrevocably lost!"

"We are aware of that, Doctor," Picard replied tersely. "But we are left with little option. There are over twenty thousand people down there, too many to evacuate in time."

"Well, seems a bit of a bittersweet win, then, doesn't it?" the Time Lord snapped, "And that's only if you saved them, which you wouldn't, because it isn't even going to bloody work, because you're wrong, entirely wrong, horribly, embarrassingly wrong about the sun's behavior now, and even MORE wrong about how it is going to behave in the very, very near future!"

"And I suppose in the handful of minutes you had with our data, you've formulated a superior theory?" Picard retorted.

"Of course I have! Why else would I come up here?!"

Picard was about to order the man thrown bodily from the bridge if need be, but his conversation with Counselor Troi brought him up short. So, instead, he counted to five, then asked as calmly as he could manage under the circumstances; "Have you really?"

"Captain," the Doctor said, trying not to sound patronizing and failing utterly; "A simple examination of the sensor data makes it abundantly clear that the rising radiation and photon levels that have been sporadically emitted from the system's sun are caused not, as your people have theorized, by a natural stage in its development, but are rather the result of a large chunk of phased protomatter, likely a small planetoid, that is interacting with the sun's magnetosphere and causing, as a natural result of such an interaction, an electromagnetic surge that is disrupting the inner composition of the corona, resulting in uneven stellar mass consumption and, as a natural byproduct of such consumption, vastly varying the output of the sun. Even worse, the planetoid is being drawn deeper and deeper into the sun with every moment, which will exponentially increase the electromagnetic fluctuations until stellar mass consumption reaches a critical point that cannot be regulated by stellar osmosis. A coronal mass ejection is imminent, one that will wipe that colony, and everything else I might add, from the surface of the planet, no matter how much shielding you stack on top of them. But disaster can still be avoided if we move quickly enough."