Nursery Rhymes

Posted on Jan 24, 2016 @ 7:03pm by Lieutenant James Barton
Edited on on Jan 24, 2016 @ 7:04pm

Mission: Promethean

“Nursery Rhymes”

(Continued from 'Double')


=[/\]=


Little Miss Muffet

Sat on her tuffet

Eating her curds and whey.

Along came a spider

That sat down beside her

And frightened Miss Muffet away.” -Children's Nursery Rhyme



=[/\]=


LOCATION: LAVENZA II Facility

SCENE: Exhaust Vent Collection Area


“So,” Kass said, lighting a cigarette with a match and shaking it out. “What, you reckon, is our next step?”


Jim Barton heaved, bending over and putting his hands on his knees. Even with his prosthetic lungs, genetic therapy, and grueling workout regiment, the flight from the pack hunters had winded him. “Breathe, I think,” he panted. “Better than...dying...from...not breathing... You okay?”


“Mostly,” Kass said, massaging her chest with a grimace. “Scootin' through that air duct knocked three hells outta mah' tits. You?”


He was breathing easier now. He stood and looked pointedly at her. “My hair hurts.”


“Poor princess,” Kass cooed. She turned to look at the various exits out of the room. “You figure the others are lookin' for us?”


“Either that or looking to press into the facility. I don't know.”


She glared thoughtfully at the various shafts leading out of the collection chamber and puffed on her cigarette. In the darkness, even with his augmented eyesight, the glowing red cherry was a firefly. “I'm thinkin' they probably went the same way we did. Biggest shaft. Most invitin' lookin'. Part of why ah ran that way in the first place.”


He frowned in the general direction of the corridor. “Could be.”


“Then we should follow.”


Barton shook his head. “No chance.”


She turned to him. “Why not?” Her voice took on a hard edge.


“We just got ourselves turned all around and back again in there.” He thrust a finger at the shaft. “Going charging back in, probably with more of those things waiting for us? I don't think so.” He said this last with a definitive shake of his head.


“So you just wanna leave the others on their own? You scared that bad?” She didn't mean for it to sound so accusatory, but neither did she exactly regret it.


He snapped his gaze towards her, but managed to bite down his first response. After a moment's pause, he replied. “No. But going wandering in the woods looking for them isn't smart either. We need to find a security station or a command and control room. Something with comms. Something that I didn't see anything like when we were racing around in there. I didn't see that path leading anywhere useful.”


“Why are you looking for comms now?”


“We already know that this place's communications will ping our communicator frequencies. We can reach the others that way. I'll bet we can find sensors, too.”


“What good'll that do? All this interference.” She waved her cigarette at the empty air around them.


“You think they're gonna build a base they can't even use? I'm sure their equipment is calibrated to get past the interference.”


She smoked in silence for a moment, considering what he was saying. “I dunno, Jebediah. This place is big, and we don't even know where to start looking.”


“Exactly. It's big. Too big to run without working communications and a way to keep an eye on what's going on. I'm not saying we need to find primary security controls or the central facility hub – even though you and I both know that's where Jos is probably heading - but we can't go too long without finding *something* that leaves us less blind than we are now.”


“If that was a joke, I'm gonna kick the shit out of you,” she said as she dropped her cigarette and ground it out under her heel.


“It wasn't.”


“I don't think we should leave the others. If they're marking their way, we can follow the markers.” She took a step towards the largest tunnel, but Barton stepped quickly in her path.


“And what if they're not? What if you're misreading what that scrap of cloth means? Or that you're right about what direction they went? Or, even if you're right, and even if they're able to continue marking their path, what if we go in there and get turned around? Then we can find the markers and follow them the wrong direction. Trust me, nothing I want more than to find the others, but the quickest way to do that's my way.”


“Instead of marching off blind in the direction we know Jos and the others went, you want to go marching off just as blind, only specifically away from them? I ain't sayin' there ain't a comm station or a security room somewhere out there, but even if there is, what makes you think you'll find it? Or that you can run it if you do? You sure you ain't just spooked 'bout whatever those things were?”


“Spooked? Damn right I am. Next time if you wanna do the running and the getting cornered and I'll fire from an elevated position, maybe you'll see why. Also, that's the second time you've all but called me a coward and I'm already fuckin' sick of it. Especially when, yeah that was scary shit, but I'm still right.”


She looked chagrined. Just a little. “Ah'm sorry. That was outta line. But I don't think you are right.”


“Well, we've gotta do *something*.” But they didn't. Both were too convinced of the wisdom of their own plans, and unwilling to be moved without evidence the other didn't have, so they simply returned to staring at each other. Finally, he sighed, shrugged and held up an extended fist towards her.


“Ya wanna fight it out,” Kass asked with a certain amusement in her voice.


“No, you little psycho. Rochambeau. Rock Paper Scissors. Let's settle it like grown ups.”


“Yer not serious.”


“I figure it's either this or we keep talkin' about it.”


Even in the near darkness, he could see her roll her eyes. With a heavy sigh, she held up her fist. “Fuckin' boys,” she muttered.


“One-two-three shoot, right? Not, one-two-shoot.”


“Who the hell does one-two-shoot?” She sounded offended at the very notion.


“Okay,” he said, squaring his shoulders. They each started waving their fists at the other, and Barton counted down. “One-two...Wait,” he dropped his arm. “Don't read my muscles.” He glared with open suspicion at her flashing sensor nets.


“I wasn't going to,” she protested.


He snorted. “Yes, you were.”


“Okay, so I was,” she conceded without even a pause. “So what?”


“Don't.”


She sighed loudly. “Okay. Whatever.” They raised their hands again. “Baby.”


Barton began to count. “One-two-three...”


=[/\]=


SCENE: Corridors

TIME: Ten Minutes Later



“What Ah'm asking is, 'What kinda' sick mind throws paper four times in a row?' Like, Ah really don't mind losin' and followin' your dumbass plan so much, but Ah'm honestly curious about what that says about your mental situation.”


“It worked.”


Kass was on point, rifle raised, sensor nets cast as far as she was able. Barton trailed a handful of steps behind her, crabwalking so that he could sweep his phaser back and forth, alternating between looking down the hall before them and ready to fire backwards at anything that might sneak up from behind. Their steps echoed flatly in the still air of the corridors. Darkness hung on them like a smothering blanket. Occasionally, when the pressing of the cold dark began to press too greatly on her, she would mutter at him. For his part, Barton was more laconic, though if asked, he'd admit he was glad of the moments of chatter.


A handful of more minutes passed. The air around them had been stale since they entered the tunnels, but now it was beginning to take on a sour tang as well. They'd unzipped their thermals, but both were already sweating heavily. All in all, a thoroughly miserable experience, and one that conjured longing thoughts of their showers back on the ship.


“I should have cheated,” she muttered.


“I guess you should have cheated,” he agreed without sounding particularly agreeable.


“I *should* have cheated. That's what I'm sayin'.” They continued down the hallway, wrinkling their noses at the smell. The interference in her sensor nets was starting to give Kass a headache. She couldn't be entirely positive, but it sure as hell seemed like the static was getting worse. Fighting the haze, looking for their crew, the pirates, or more of those monsters, and finding nothing was maddening. Once or twice, she caught herself wishing for something to jump out, just so she'd have something to shoot at, but she chastised herself for those thoughts and kept them to herself. More minutes passed. “You getting any sense of where the hell we are?”


“No.”


“Oh,” she almost pouted. “Ya don't see, ah don't know, some kinda'...*security terminal* or maybe a *command station?*” He swallowed his response in his best deadpan and hoped the interference would keep her from sensing the impact her digs were having on him.


“No... I don't.” He wasn't just playing calm out of pride, but because he could feel his own terror whispering at him, and he was doing his best to reassure himself as well. He hoped he sounded like someone who was taking this all with some measure of good humor. If he could just act like someone who'd already lived through this and gotten his crew out safely, maybe he could actually achieve that seemingly impossible task.


“Huh,” Kass grunted. “Cause someone said that there'd be somethin' like that pretty close by.”


“We'll find something.” She snorted and they lapsed into silence again.


The next time she spoke, long moments later, wasn't to deride him. “Jesus, it stinks. What do ya think that is?”


She wasn't wrong. The scent had become a smell minutes earlier and was now rapidly moving into 'stench' territory. The sour flatness felt like it coated his tongue, and there was a cloyingly sweet and unpleasantly familiar undertone to it all. “Atmospheric controls on the fritz. Maybe waste evacuation. I don't know.”


Suddenly, an echo rolled down the hall at them like a languid wave. “...andeverywherethatmarywent...”


Barton swung the phaser back and forth, unable to tell where the sound was coming from. Then it was gone as quickly as it had come and he was left to question his own ears. Before, they had spoken in low tones; now he whispered. “You heard that, yeah?”


Her own whisper was grim. “Ah heard.”


“Survivor?”


“Pirate, most like.”


They stood stock still for six or seven tense breaths, waiting for further sign of whatever it was they'd heard, but nothing came. Finally, at the same moment and unspoken, they each decided it was time to proceed forward. They went forward, slower now, about thirty meters when the sound came again.


“...puddingandpiekissedthegirls...”


It was a man's voice, low and sonorous. But flat, and listless, as if the speaker cared none at all for his own words. Again they paused, and again they waited, and again they pressed forward, each secretly wishing that they could forgive themselves for turning and running back where they'd come from.


Further down the corridor, Kass frowned at her boots.“It's sticky.”


Barton spared a glance at the floor. It was tough to make out in the dark, but he could see the dark puddles of liquid that now dotted the floor. “There's blood.”


“Just great.”


There came another sound now, clearly coming from behind them. It was a terrible hurrying clatter of clicks. SKITTERSKITTERSKITTERSKITTERSKITTER


“What the fuck was that, Chastity?”


“Let's go a little faster, yeah?”


“Yeah.”


The smell was overpowering now; they each pulled up their facemasks as they hustled, trying to block out the worst of it. The bloody puddles had given way to an overall gooey and congealed mess that carpeted the entire floor.


“...pie!...pie!...” They both started at the vehemence in the shout, but when the voice came again, it had returned to its previous tonelessness. “...kissedthegirlsandmadethem...”


*Damn it, where was that COMING FROM?!* Neither voiced the thought, though they shared it. This hallway was the stuff of nightmares and it didn't help that they'd already had to fend off impossible terrors once in the last hour.


“Do you even know where you're goin'?” There was no doubt about it now. The interference was getting worse and Kass was only getting the barest usable glimpses of data from her nets. She was able to keep from walking into walls, but her bag of tricks wasn't much deeper than that. She felt like someone being forced to navigate by a series of photographs, or pilot a landspeeder through traffic in the grips of a sneezing fit. It took a white-knuckled mental effort to function. She found herself unwillingly reminded of the days before she'd ridden out the worst of her depression after losing her sight.


“No. I'm mostly running away now, just trying not to look like it.”


SKITTERSKITTERSKITTERSKITTERSKITTER. Behind them again. Closer now.


“Maybe let's not worry so much about keepin' up appearances.” They broke into a run.


“...whowalkedacrookedmile...”


“You're not seeing anything on your nets?!”


“The damned interference! What is it? Where is it?”


They passed a four-way junction and the SKITTER came again, this time from their right. Kass bolted to the left and Barton stuck close behind her. He threw desperate glances back over his shoulder, looking for the source of the clattering sound, but saw nothing but empty hallway.


“...ashesashesweallfalldown...”


He followed her around another corner and they both drew up short. The corridor emptied into a large chamber, the floor crowded with a variety of large glass tubes. Those that hadn't been smashed, relatively few, were filled with a clear viscous fluid. The rest had been reduced to shards littering the wet floor, along with a horrible strewing of dead creatures. This was the source of the smell, he knew at once. Viscera and waste was strewn everywhere. High above the floor, stretching from one wall to another was a giant web, crimson and dripping with gore. There were three child-sized cocoons mounted to the bloodweb, each looking like a giant blood clot.


“Jesus, Jim! This can't be right!” Kass was trying to be certain that her nets were malfunctioning, that the interference was now sending her false readings, but she couldn't find it in herself. Try as she might, she knew this nightmare was real.


From above, SKITTERSKITTERSKITTERSKITTERSKITTER


“Oh fuck me, it's not. It's not at all.”


It dropped from the ceiling, landing in the center of the floor. It was a spider, that much was obvious. But it was also obviously something else entirely, something monstrous and something that no evolution would devise anywhere. It was about ten feet across and ten feet tall. Instead of a typically shaped body, the abdomen looked like a gigantic mass of impossibly knotted muscle. Four of the legs sprouted from near the top of the body and looked like typical spider's legs. The other four grew from lower, near the bottom of the abdomen, and they were horribly twisted and misshapen. They looked like humanoid limbs, with overgrown knees and elbows crowning their tops. At the bottom, there were the bloody, smashed remains of overgrown hands and feet, crushed beneath the weight of the legs they supported. Tiny shards of pulverized bone protruded everywhere from the ruined appendages. On it's grotesque head, two rows of vertically arranged black eyes ended in two mismatched pairs of dripping fangs.


“Shoot it!” Barton was bringing up his phaser as Kass readied her rifle to follow her own advice. She beat him by just an instant and sent a blast from her pulse rifle tearing into one of the beasts legs. It hissed and darted forward, lashing out with another of its giant legs and knocking her flat.


“Kass!” Barton spared an instant's glance to ensure his phaser was on its maximum setting, then let it speak. Three lances of red fire arced from his weapon, then a fourth, as he began to run, trying to draw the creature's attention.


His plan worked almost immediately, and the giant beast shivered as the phaser beams struck home. The security chief couldn't see any visible damage left by his fire, but he'd clearly managed to piss it off. With an inhuman screech, it took two quick steps away from Thytos and sent itself arcing into the air. It was impossibly fast. Barton had thought that he was prepared, ready for the nightmare's assault, but before he knew what had happened, he was on his back with the looming fangs descending toward him.


He fired the phaser twice at the creature's maw in desperation, and was gratified to see the way the thing recoiled from the energy blasts. Then it reared up and all satisfaction bled from him. Barton got a good look at the thing's underbelly and felt his bowels turn to water. Terrified gibberish tried to crawl up his throat and spill out of his mouth. He felt his mind begin to shut down, trying to preserve itself from madness.


He was staring at most of a Klingon man. It looked as if the Klingon had grown naturally out of the bottom of the beast, though it was also nauseatingly obvious that he hadn't. The head and torso were clearly defined, though fully embedded within the spider's underbelly. The spider's legs which resembled humanoid limbs grew from near where he was enmeshed in the larger body of the beast. It was the most horrifying vision Barton had ever seen. It got worse when the Klingon opened his eyes and spoke.


“...fiveandtwentyfiveandtwentyfiveandtwentyblackbirds...”


The eyes were wide, unfocused and unseeing, and the voice was as lifeless as before as it intoned the nursery rhymes in a rich, deep voice that resounded in the laboratory.


“Jim!”


Kass' shout drove him from his reverie and he raised his phaser again, preparing to destroy whatever remained of this person. He had no doubt within him that it would be a mercy.


Suddenly, before he could fire, the eyes focused on him. For just an instant, they were wide, terrified, pleading...and plainly begging wordlessly for help. It startled Barton enough to force him to pause. Then, they took on a manic shine, more awful than before. “...jackspratcouldeatnofat... eatnofat... eat... eateateateateateat...” As if in response to the command, the spider's head came towards him again.


Three meters away, Kass had regained her feet and her grip on her rifle.“Fuck. This.” She triggered the firing control once, then again, and again. Each pulse slammed against the beast's head, and with each shot, Barton could hear the sickening crack of crunching cartilage.


The beast skittered backwards, away from him and from Kass' rifle. It moved with a hesitancy now that it hadn't before, all of it's expressionless eyes focused entirely on the diminutive woman. Barton pushed himself backwards just a few feet, then pushed himself upright. Mercifully, the Klingon was dragged from his sight as the beast moved away. Once he'd regained his feet, he trained his weapon on the creature again, but he didn't fire. If Kass' rifle wasn't enough to punch through the beast's outer shell, his phaser certainly wouldn't do the job. He was about to suggest focusing her fire on the underbelly when a roar at the other end of the lab stopped them all.


The roar was repeated, and a moment later, another impossible terror lumbered out of the shadows. It was, even to Barton's eye, grotesquely muscled. It moved in large, intimidating hunched strides like a gorilla, naked hate on its almost human face. It sniffed the air in Barton and Kass' direction, but it was apparent that it was mostly interested in the spider monstrosity. For its part, the spider reared up and screeched at the newcomer.


Barton chanced a glance to Kass, trying to see if she had any notion on how this new arrival should impact their 'kill-it-with-fire' strategy. Through the static of her nets, she saw his move and answered with a mystified shrug.


Suddenly, after another roar, the grey creature lunged forward, sprinting toward the spider. The spider backpedaled another step or two, then charged forward itself. A few yards before they would have met, as the spider moved to chomp the beast, the monster dropped his shoulders and rolled forward. In a fluid move, he was on his feet again under the spider and had buried his claws to the muscled forearm into the Klingon entombed in the beast's underbelly. With a gruesome twist of his waist, the beast ripped the head and torso out of the spider. The spider screamed and reared backwards, exposing the bloody hole in its underbelly. Kass decided not to wait for a prettier invitation and thumbed her rifle twice, burying two full power blasts into the the bloody chasm. The wet squish of the impact was only just less satisfying than the mournful shrieks of the beast. It collapsed backwards and fell in a smoking heap.


Then the monster with the man's face was staring at Kass, and judging by his expression, he was no happier with her than he'd been with the spider. He growled low at her and took a step at her.


“Oh, Ah got plenty for you, too, you ugly mother-”


Before she could finish the word, the thing was airborne and descending towards her, claws outstretched. Kass blinked and tried to retrain her rifle on the creature, but there was no time. Before she could react, the thing had landed on her, driving her to the ground.


“No!” Unthinking, Barton lowered his shoulder and charged into the creature. He hit the beast hard enough to knock it off balance, putting himself between it and Kass. It toppled over, twisting as it fell, and completed a single fluid roll back to its feet. Barton raised his phaser, leveling it at the beast's face, but before he could fire the creature smacked the weapon from his hand, leaving a long bloody swipe on the back of Barton's wrist.


They stood staring at each other. The creature huffed, its torso heaving as it sniffed the air around it. Barton stared, trying to measure his chances. The thing was stronger than he was, faster than he was. It had an armored hood that protected its neck from fracture. It had armored scales around its joints, no exposed genitals – all in all, no vulnerabilities that Barton could identify. This would be a short, humiliating fight before a brutal death. He waited for the creature's charge.


But it didn't come. The creature took a step towards him, then leaned in and sniffed deeply in the direction of Barton's wounded hand. It eyed the human with what looked like absolute confusion. Then past Barton at Kass, who had struck her head when she fell and was trying to shake off the feeling of having her bell rung. It took a step, as if to move around Barton, and the Security Chief stepped again in front of the monstrosity, his self-preservation howling in protest as he did so. The beast looked back at Barton and made a low, keening noise in his throat. It looked at Barton, waiting quietly as if in expectation. Then, not receiving whatever response it was expecting, it turned and thundered back into the shadows from which it came.


Barton blinked, not quite certain that he'd actually escaped the reaper again and that these weren't illusions his mind was showing him while the monster, in reality, was eating his brainstem. Behind him, Kass was rising again. “What was that thing?”


Repeating his now-familiar refrain, Barton replied, “I don't know.”


“Why didn't it kill you?”


“I don't know.” He moved off in the direction of the broken tubes, looking for anything of note.


“What is this place?” She headed off on a search of her own, still shaking her head.


“I don't know.”


They fell into silence again as they looked over the gadgetry and equipment. Without acknowledging it, they each made efforts to give the spider creature and the bloodweb a wide berth. After a handful of minutes, he whooped.


“What do you have,” she asked moving towards him.


“It's a live console. Most of the commands are locked out, but not all.”


“How is that possible?”


“Secondary network, maybe. Shielded protocols. I dunno. But it's not dead.”


“Well, it's a start anyways. Communications?”


“Shit,” he muttered. “No. No comms. No command functions.”


“Well, what *do* we have?”


“Log files. And a system marked BioTrac.”


“Logs on what?”


He thumbed open a log file. A hiss erupted from a vent in the floor, and holgraphic display screen rose into the center of the room. When it was in place, the screen activated. The bottom right hand corner displayed a stardate time stamp and what looked like a serial number. The rest of the screen was dominated by a close up of a translucent slug. A nasal voice intoned over the footage.


{{The carrion slugs are a mixed bag, results wise. They're certainly voracious enough, and the corrosive digestive fluids are fully integrated into the biochemical profile. However, the ammonia smell they give off is entirely foul and they're far too hostile for any carrion species. I wasn't looking to create predators. But, even still, they've given me some ideas that I think might prove useful. So I'm going to call them a success.”


The video cut to a shot of five of the slugs racing towards a small, big-eyed mammal. It was adorable, and huddled in naked terror against the corner of a lab cage. “TURN IT OFF,” Kass demanded. With a start, Barton complied before the slugs on the screen reached their prey. He pulled up another log.


{{The arachnid project was an unmitigated failure. And it was going so well at first! I implanted the arachnid metamorphic code into the test subject without too much difficulty, and it really seemed like I was on the track to full integration. Watching the subject's limbs grow and realign themselves to the arachnid blueprint was...well, it was beautiful, if I can be forgiven for indulging in poetry. But then it all went wrong. The integration broke down entirely, and it stopped rewriting the test subject in line with the new template and just became some stupid spider growing out of him. As if that offers any viability for future experiments at all. Worthless! And, frankly, the screaming. Oh my lord, the screaming! Like a toddler, honestly, with all that carrying on. So I tried playing a recording of nursery rhymes to calm it down. Doesn't seem to work too well, but it's better than nothing. The test subject is, of course, frustratingly ungrateful.}}


“What kinda sick fuck,” Kass groaned.


“More?”


“No. Hell, no.” She paused, considering. “How many more are there?”


His voice was tight. “A lot. There's a lot. They were up to some bad shit here.”


“What's the other thing?”


“BioTrac? Not sure. I can pull it up.” Barton activated the BioTrac protocol and the screen changed to an internal schematic. He realized it had to be a blueprint of the facility itself. A moment after the blueprint appeared, it was overlaid with a series of colored dots. Then more. Then more. There seemed to be no end to them.


“Are those all biological signatures?”


“I think so.”


“Hell. This entire facility is overrun.”


“There's a ton of data coming in here,” Barton said, reading the display. “I think that might be a big part of the interference in here. There's so much data on a lower-band subspace frequency than our sensors use coming in this way that it's overwhelming our stuff.”


“Can you disable it, you think,” Kass asked, allowing herself to enjoy the idea of having all her senses returned to her.


“Might be able to, but I don't know if we want to.”


“Why the hell not?”


“Because,” Barton said, zooming in on one room in particular. “Look. I've got an Andorian, a Cardassian, and two Human signatures right here. Either it's a hell of a coincidence, or I found them.”


Kass paused. “Two humans?”


He paused. “Yeah.”


“BaShen, Perry, and Crichton. Should be three. Where's the other?”


For a long moment, Barton didn't speak. When he did, he didn't answer her question. He moved toward the display and copied the diagram into his tricorder's memory. It didn't seem to be a full schematic – he didn't see any of the inevitable maintenance tunnels and hatches marked – but it would give them at least a general idea of where they were at in the facility. Plus, they knew where Jos, Dalziel and...whoever...were now. He didn't see a straight-line path to their location, but it wasn't too far away. If they had taken Thytos' tunnel, they'd looped around back towards he and the Marine Commander. It was a start. “We should go.”


=[/\]=


NRPG: Hmm... As it turns out, horror is a difficult thing to write. Anyway, Kass and Barton are now aware of the general scope of the monster problem and have a rough schematic. Also, Bronski, right? Why isn't Barton totally dead?! I know! What's going on with that? (I'm not telling...)


JEROME: I was hip deep in this before I remembered Conniston's line about Bronski being the only humanoid test subject. So...well, he's not humanoid any more, so it doesn't count!


ALIX: Tag! You're in now!


=[/\]=


Dale I. Rasmussen

~writing for~

Lt. James Prophecy Barton

Sec/Tac USS PHOENIX