Chapter 7
“Stop.”
The Away Team stopped, looking for a threat. A lesser dome connected to the main complex dome via a tunnel was nearby. The landscape between them and the lesser dome was flat, except for a series of what looked like mounds of dirt, perhaps fifty.
“They’re just rocks,” the medic scan.
“Scan again,” Kletsova said. “They look Horta.”
“Confirmed…”
“I have never heard of Horta assembling on the surface like this.” “They don’t,” Kletsova said.
“What could have scared them out of the earth?” the medic asked.
Kletsova looked at him, repressing the temptation to say something sarcastic. She advanced, slowly. “We’re Star Fleet. We are not going to harm you.”
The closest Horta was wearing a Star Fleet issues translation device. She became aware of other translators due to softly blinking diodes. The first voice that spoke was female. “Kill I.”
“What?” Kletsova asked.
Before it could answer, the medic hit it with a phaser set for disintegrate. It became an orange glowing mound that disappeared.
“What the hell?!” Kletsova asked.
“It asked for death, I provided it,” the medic said.
“We don’t know enough…” Kletsova said.
“We know…”
All the Hortas on the surface began chanting ‘kill I,’ their translation boxes LED’s sparking across the open space, suggesting more than fifty. And then they had confirmation. A creature emerged from a Horta, ripping it apart as it pushing up and out as easily as through a mushroom, issuing its hideous birth cry. A volumous amount of viscous liquid and parts exploded out with it. It pulled itself free and jumped towards the Away Team. Kletsova hit with a kill beam, which caused it to squeal and retreat, but didn’t kill it. It began to glow, dived into the earth, and disappeared. More creatures were emerging. Kletsova set her phaser to disintegrate even as her team were firing Gorn weapon. The medic, perhaps out of curiosity, took out his bat'leth and charged one of the mounds even as the creature was emerging. His swung intercepted the creature as it began to glow, and it melted through his blade, and then dived right through him, melting a hole through armor and chest and out the other side, through the earth. A hole opened up under one of the away team members and one of her legs went in. The remaining male Klingon, Ur’Ozo, pulled her out. Her leg gone to the knee, with the stump charred solid.
“To the dome, now!” Kletsova said.
They ran through a field of exploded Horta, across earth covered with Horta organs and blood, firing their weapons, covering Ur’Ozo as he carried the wounded member of their team. Kletsova but got up with a creature emerging from the ground in front of her. It’s head was blown off by a Gorn weapon… the one being carried was still shooting. She got up and joined them in their mad rush for the domes entrance. Once inside the smaller dome, they took time out to reassess. They had emptied several Gorn clips of ammunition. Kletsova’s phaser had enough charge for one kill and several discrete stuns, and was presently charging using the complex wireless supply.
“These wall and floors aren’t going to stop them.” “No,” Kletsova agreed.
“How many Hortas on this planet?”
Kletsova nearly did the math, assuming a breeding pair were brought in on establishing the complex, availability of food and no competition… “I don’t know. Millions.”
“We’re screwed.”
“We need to get off this planet, that’s for sure,” Kletsova said. “Any other life signs?”
“No.”
“This way,” Kletsova said.
“Wait.” Hilkav stopped at a replicator terminal. She punched up a request for crutches and one materialized next to her.
“Can you access a transporter from this console?” Kletsova asked.
“No, but get me a computer terminal, or a PADD, yes,” she said.
“Eyes alert,” Kletsova said, and led the way.
The fastest way through the smallest dome was across the center garden/park. They were immediately given pause by giant spider webs strung between trees and jungle gyms and swings.
“This is not…”
“It is not,” Kletsova interrupted. “They could have unleashed a thousand horrors…”
“Life signs,” Misha said. She stepped forwards, spinning, looking. A geometric dome jungle gym, enmeshed with web, with a solitary figure hanging from it. She was wrapped up to her forearms, with her arms pinned at her side. “Not human,” Misha was saying, even though they could see that for themselves. Her face was covered with the softest of down, and a tuft of bluish green feathers, with pink tips fluffed out at the top of her head.
The Away Team approached, cautiously.
“There should be more here. I see a dozen life signs…”
Kletsova stopped them. She looked up. Hanging from the top of the lesser complex dome, were maybe a hundred fully web encapsulated people, adult and children size. A noise from a nearby merry go round startled them. A spider, hitting hits head, scrambling around blindly due to the fact it held a face-hugger alien gave them an explanation as to why this bird creature was left practically unfinished.
“Fuck,” Kletsova said. Her phaser had built enough charge for one disintegrate shot, and she took out the spider.
On doing that, the ceiling shadows began to move, as spiders fled for safer terrain, and echo location was incompressible with pinging, except for three, that started down, falling while creating a web behind them. The away team fired Gorn weapons and two of the spiders retreated on being harmed. One fell, dead, detaching from the line it was making. It was big enough it would have killed them had it landed on them.
“Help me,” said the avian.
“We got to get out of here,” Ur’Ozo said.
“We’re going to help her,” Kletsova said.
“We can’t help everyone. What about them?!” he argued pointing to the ceiling.
“We’re helping her,” Kletsova said.
“Because she has a face?! She’s compromised,” he said.
“We’re helping,” Misha said, putting away her weapon and prepare to climb through the web.
“Wait,” Kletsova said.
It was too late. Misha had taken hold of a strand and found herself suddenly stuck. “Don’t touch any other threads,” Kletsova said. The ground was covered with mulch, and she used this to find the threads that weren’t sticky. “Find something to neutralize this glue.”
“I am not a medic…” the remaining male, Ur’Ozo said. He removed his bat'leth and took one swing at the web. It was like hitting a steel wire. It took all his strength to pull it free.
“Cut my hand off,” Misha said.
“We’re not there yet,” Kletsova said. She took Misha’s phasers and using a fine beam cut either side of the web.
The lowest line of web around the base of the geodesic gym lacked the glue that would catch something, and so Kletsova dug out enough of the mulch that she could in order to pass under. Misha followed, mulch sticking to the spider web attached to her hand. She helped ease the captured creature down. Her cocoon web wasn’t sticky, and made it easier to work with, and fortunately, the strands were not as thick. While Kletsova used a laser scalpel to peel away the layers of webbing, Misha sorted through the medic bag for the ingredients to a cocktail that would free her hand.
“Thank you,” the creature said.
“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” Kletsova said.
“We are not invaders. We just want to understand,” it said.
“I thought you guys were much smaller,” Misha said.
“Your form was too volatile, too alien. We made this form to better relate and interact, but it may still be that we are too disparate to ever understand one another…” Outside the jungle a gym, a toy art PADD was found, a crack in the glass, but otherwise functional. Hilkav put down her crutch and started working her way through firewalls, the first of which was a child lock on the wi-fi. Misha gave up on finding a solution, and using a cloth to hold one end of the strand, she jerked it off hard and fast, like ripping a band aid. Her palm was left bloody. She sprayed on new skin, and used the medic’s tissue generator to accelerate the cohesion.
“We would never have been able to do that,” the creature said.
Kletsova freed her an item near her hand and pulled out what appeared to be a witches wand.
“Is this…”
“A transmuter, yes,” the creature said.
Kletsova stood up and broke it in half.
“Why did you do that?!” the creature asked shock. “Now we’re stuck here.” “When Kirk broke it, all the illusions went away,” Kletsova said.
“We corrected the design flaw of the previous system that led to Korob and
Sylvia’s death. These creations are permanent,” the creature explained. “Even with Kirk, they were not illusions. They are as real as anything you replicate…”
“Fuck,” Misha said.
“Echo that,” Kletsova said. “This can’t be all the colonist. Do you know where the others are?”
“Different domes had different Thanos tangents. When we lost control of the situation, we took as many of your kind back to our galaxy as we could to preserve them while we tried to remedy the situation,” the creature said.
“When did you lose control?” Misha asked.
“When the Pa Nun brought the unseen,” it said. “You didn’t have to make it real,” Kletsova said.
Echolocation went crazy again, as the spiders that had escaped to the periphery of the domes tops scurried back to the center, piling up on each other. Some fell. Few survived the fall, but the few who did, limped away.
“We should probably leave,” Ur’Ozo said, firing at a spider that was climbing the gym.
“Save your ammo,” Kletsova said.
The spiders weren’t interested in them, but only interested in fleeing a greater threat. An adolescent size creature emerged from the ground, almost comically, like a jack and the box, and might have grabbed Kletsova from the behind, except Misha sprang, tackling it and taking it back against the inner webbing that crisscrossed the geodesic gym. Kletsova fell and rolled going for a phaser. The creature’s interior teeth went through Misha’s neck. The creature dropped Misha’s dead body, squirming to break free of the sticky web, glowing, only making itself more entangled. Tatyana noted the greatest heat seemed concentrated to the creatures head and shoulders, not along its back and body, filing it in case the information would be useful later; it’s limbs remained dark, cold. A face hugger, outside the gym, jumped towards Kletsova, and was also caught by the web, it’s snake like implanted reaching for her, as versatile as an elephants trunk. Ur’Ozo was captured by a spider and carried upwards. The last thing Kletsova saw before she was transported was Hilkav surrendering to a face hugger, it’s tail securing her neck even as she raised her knife to cut at it.
The avian creature and Kletsova found themselves on a transporter pad, top of the tower. She cut the avian the rest of the way out the webbing and helped her up.
“You don’t mourn the loss of your peers?” it asked.
“I will morn later. My first duty is to get us off this world. I should be able to beam us to a shuttle from here. From there we will go into orbit and wait. My kind want to talk to your kind,” Kletsova said.
“You cannot leave this world,” the avian said.
“Why?” Kletsova asked.
“We erected a containment field around the planet,” the avian said.
“To keep anything from escaping,” Kletsova said more than asked. That made sense.
“No,” the Avian said. “To prevent any of your kind from adding more darkness.
Out of all the galaxies we have touch, human are the substance of our worst nightmares.” ♫♪►
The Pathfinder arrived via transwarp jump. No human would likely have noticed the subtle nuance of micro-meteors fluorescing against a planet size shield, but Losira did.
She over-rode the helm’s input, and swung them around hard to port and away from the planet, faster than the best of their pilots could have responded. Once the ship’s safety was secure, she returned the helm. And to help them understand why, she released a probe that exploded on impact with the near invisible shield, luminescing in waves that rippled out from impact point.
Garcia came out of the command chair and approached the science station. Sendak didn’t look up.
“You will not beam through that with Fleet tech,” Sendak was saying.
Garcia processed the conversation Losira was having with Tuer. “Life signs?”
“Indeterminate, interference from the shield.”
Garcia was headed back to the chair and the Kelvan tech option when Tuer announced. “Our Kelvan shielding has automatically engaged. Kelvan ship coming uncloaked.”
“Onscreen,” Losira said, making it so herself. A Kelvan ship, an older design, but sparkling white and new as if it had just come off the manufacturing line. It reminded Garcia of a mushroom that had mated with an old Earth orbiter, the dragon space x..
“We’re being hailed,” Trini announced. “It’s Kelinda.”
Losira looked to Garcia, a knowing look with information exchanged, and if any of the other crew members caught it, there were no tales. “Accept the call.” Kelinda was there, shimmering like a hologram. She wasn’t a star fleet issue hololgram, but she was being manifested and was as solid as any of them. Her manifestation orb made her more substantial, but she liked making herself brighter, and apparently, taller. Garcia and Losira were likely the only ones who noticed she had increased her size. For whatever reasons, the gods like being giants.
“Hello, Tam,” Kelinda said.
“I don’t have time for you, grandmother,” Garcia said. “This is a rescue mission.” “I know. Lower you Kelvan shields and commence,” Kelinda said. “You will have to use your Kelvan tech, want you. I want to watch you in action. How many female colonist do you suppose are down there?” “What do you want?” Garcia asked.
“The same thing I’ve always wanted, to rule the galaxy,” Kelinda said. “And, have a legacy. I promise not to interfere with your rescue.” She laughed at the face he made. “You don’t trust me. Tell you what, promise not to shoot at me, and I will lower my shields and rescue them for you.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Garcia said.
“Then I guess, we’re at an impasse,” Kelinda said.
“If I agree to go with you, will you allow them to complete their objective?” Garcia asked.
Losira gave him a cross look that he ignored. Garcia stepped closer to screen. “I no longer want you,” Kelinda said. “You’re much too disagreeable. Throw yourself on your sword, and have your crew float your carcass over and I will consider once I am satisfied you’re dead.”
“With me dead, you won’t have hope of more progeny,” Garcia said.
Kelinda laughed. “You don’t think we have your genome in store? I could fast clone a hundred of you, just to spread your seed.”
“If you could do that, you would have,” Garcia said.
“What makes you think I haven’t? You’re not special, son. I made you. I can make more like you. Improved versions,” Kelinda said. Kelinda’s eyes dipped down, as she became aware of an alert.
“Incoming torpedoes from planet,” Tuer announced.
Garcia waved a ‘kill’ the transmission sign to Trini.
“Brace for impact,” McKnight at helm said.
No impact came. The illuminated orbs that were as fast and bright as photon torpedoes shot by, swarming around both the Pathfinder and the Kelvan ship, and shot off around the planet.
“What was that?” McKnight asked.
“Foo fighters,” Garcia said.
“It’s World War Two all over again?” Losira asked.
As always, the crew seemed mystified by Losira and Garcia’s conversation. Sendak looked up Foo Fighters and found a reference.
“They’re back on sensors,” Tuer announced.
They came around from the other side of the planet, having made a complete orbit. Some slowed. They passed through the shields of both ship as if they weren’t there. There was evidence that they passed through both ships.
“Probes?” McKnight asked.
An orb arrived on the Bridge. Tuer immediately drew his weapon.
“Take no action!” Garcia said. He stepped forwards the orb. “We come in peace.” The orb manifested a voice, its illumination sparking with each syllable. “How is it you can harbor such darkness and speak those words without duplicity?”
“I don’t understand,” Garcia said.
A creature appeared on the Bridge, standing alongside the Orb. Garcia extended a hand, wanting to test if it was a hologram. It brought a hand up, a gesture that suggested ‘don’t touch me.’ The creature wore a simple tunic, white, outlined with gold trim. It was clearly feminine. Its eyes were huge, making it more endearing from a human standpoint, as if it were a child, except it had other tales that clearly suggested it was an adult.
“Does it have a natural predator to keep it in check?” its voice was crisper, human.
“I don’t understand,” Garcia said.
“You are the origin of this thought vector,” it said.
“That didn’t help,” Garcia said. “You’re the Korob and Sylvia species.”
It blinked. “Yes.”
“But your form…”
“Some of us agreed to live our lives in this form in order to better relate to the life forms in this galaxy,” it said. “I have been transcribed, and can return to my natural form. My offspring cannot. I have decided to maintain this form for the remainder of my life, even though it has been greatly shortened. I have limited time to explain sufficiently to secure your cooperation. We require a resolution set. It is imperative you assist us. Will you join with me?”
“I don’t understand what you’re wanting,” Garcia said.
“Place your hand on the orb, opposite mine,” it said, placing one of its hands on the orb.
“It’s a vehicle?” Garcia asked.
“It is mind,” the creature said. Garcia looked to Losira.
“Maybe I should volunteer,” Sendak said, standing.
The creature raised a finger and everyone was suddenly immobilized, except Garcia and Losira.
“That wasn’t necessary,” Garcia said.
“They are unharmed. I cannot stay the Losira mind without harming the ship.
Only you will be allowed access,” the creature said.
“Why?” Garcia asked.
“Because you are the vector of the present thought contagion. Also, you are minimally skilled in lucidity,” the creature said.
“Do you have a name?” Garcia asked.
“Vidi,” she spoke. “Join me, while there is still time.”
Garcia reached up and touched the orb. On the Pathfinder, he remained facing Vidi. The light pulsed with their heartbeats until they were synchronized. From Garcia’s perspective, he was now standing in empty space. This was not unlike the whitewashed room he sometimes found himself in with Amanda Q, but there was some differences. He and Vidi were there alone. He found himself aroused and then he was inspired.