She eyes the chief of security. "I assume you trust him implicitly."

"Definitely."

"With information and judgment as well as your personal safety?"

"Yes. He's my chief of security because I trust him to be reasonable and make good decisions even in tense delicate situations." 

"Very well." She leads them to - the music rooms, actually.

Lucien and Kurm follow.

(Lucien is a bit less tense given that Kurm can join - it narrows down the possibilities of what this could be about to be safer and less immediately dangerous.)

She picks an empty music room at random and shuts the three of them in.

"You must stop asking about the spaceship."

"Um."

Well, that's confusing!

"That's likely a thing we can do but I'd need to understand why."

"Why? The spaceship isn't bothering you, so far as I'm aware. You can just let it be."

"Well, absent a claim to possession of the spaceship we'd likely move on to exploring and attempting to establish control over it so its technology can be studied and used."

"But we want to make sure that no one is going to be upset before we do that. That's why we've been asking about it."

"You can't have it. But it would also be best if you also did not go around asking."

"Um."

This is clearly a sensitive subject.

"Backing up a bit, do you have all the context about the Borg?"

"I have what the messenger told me."

"I'm not sure what that was. Would you be okay summ-arizing what you know? Or I could go over the si-tuation from the start again."

"You are having a vast war with other offplanet powers, who are very dangerous and unlikely to overlook Samaria as too backward to bother with. You still can't have the spaceship."

Well that's a decent summary at least.

"... can I ask why?"

"Not just to satisfy your curiosity."

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."