The Beginning

Posted on Oct 24, 2017 @ 11:25pm by Commander Jacob Crichton
Edited on on Oct 24, 2017 @ 11:27pm

Mission: Fear Itself

= The Beginning =

(cont'd from "מקום חשוך")

LOCATION: Elsewhere

SCENE: A Dark Place

STARDATE: [2.17] 1024.1744

It persisted, no beginning and no end, always only now. Its existence stretched endlessly forward and backward, such that, if it could travel along the length of its experience into the past or future, it would always find only itself there, waiting. No beginning and no end, always only now. And always, the now brought the hunger with it.

There were others here, others like it, though it couldn’t always be sure of that. Maybe these others were only itself, endlessly tracking along that sweet lie known as time, looking for something other than the now. It was pointless to consider the question; there were no others, no whens and thens, always only *now*, and always the hunger.

And yet… there had been something else. Another place, filled with beings that seemed to shine against the darkness. Their minds were so unlike its own, seeming always to exist outside of the now, choosing instead to live in what had come before or what may come to pass. And in those others places, it found images; shadows of what had been or may still be, that these simple beings either could not or would not exorcise. They lived with these terrors, visited them again and again. And in the end, it had been a simple thing to pluck these images from their minds, to make real what they had dared to imagine, and at last it had found a way to slake its hunger. It eagerly gobbled up these morsels of fear, plucking them at will like fruit from a vine.

And then… nothing. Only itself again, only the *now* again. Questions of when and where meant nothing, it literally did not have the vocabulary to express such abstractions. But inside, beneath the hunger that rumbled endlessly within, it *remembered*.

=[/\]=

LOCATION: USS PHOENIX

SCENE: Bridge

“What the hell is happening?” Kane demanded.

Byte had already risen from the captain’s chair. It turned its cornflower blue eyes to Kane and stared at him impassively.

{{Sensors detected a quantum distortion field from within Main Engineering,}} the android reported. {{The field measured at 22.7 megacochranes in strength. I ordered the ship moved away from the station perimeter as a precaution-}}

“The ship didn’t move,” Kane said. “I have the bruises to prove it.”

{{No sir,}} said Byte. {{The field appears to have anchored our ship to its current position. Our inertial dampeners were damaged during our attempted acceleration.}}

“Status of the quantum distortion?”

“It’s gone, sir,” Silsby said from tactical. As Kane watched, Silsby wiped a stream of blood away from his nose with the back of his hand.

“Get that looked at, mister,” Kane said, nodding at Silsby. The tac officer nodded and stepped away, as another officer took up the tactical position.

Kane turned to Byte. “Any idea what caused the distortion?”

{{Not at this time, sir,}} Byte said. {{We know it originated in Main Engineering. Given the strength of the distortion, the most likely hypothesis is some kind of adverse reaction with the PHOENIX’s warp field.}}

“An adverse reaction with *what*?” Kane muttered.

[[Lt. Von to bridge.]]

“Receiving.”

[[We’ve, ah… had an incident in one of the engineering labs.]]

Kane frowned. “Have you now.”

[[I think you should see this, sir,]] said Von. [[It will be easier to explain in person.]]

Kane sighed, then nodded. “Very well. I’m on my way. Bridge out.”

As Kane started for the turbolift, the new officer at tactical looked up.

“Sir, Starbase 56 is hailing us. They want to know our status.”

“Advise them we’re okay for now,” said Kane. “Inform Admiral Stiles I should have a more thorough report for her shortly.”

The tactical officer nodded as Kane stepped into the turbolift.

=[/\]=

LOCATION: Elsewhere

SCENE: A Dark Place

Now there was something new. Not itself. Not the hunger, or the endless now.

What could it be?

An opening. A way *outside*.

And beyond, a thousand minds. Beyond that, even *more*.

It remembered.

And eagerly, it stepped through.

=[/\]=

LOCATION: USS PHOENIX

SCENE: Engineering Lab

The music box sat on a small pedestal behind a shimmering blue containment field. The lid was closed, so that it looked like little more than a nondescript wooden case. As he looked at it, Kane had trouble believing something like this could have nearly destroyed the Federation flagship.

“Whatever it is, it was emitting an incredibly powerful psionic field,” Von said. “I could feel it even before Chaucer turned it on.”

Kane turned to Von. “And after?”

“It’s… hard to explain.” Von’s eyes drifted back to the box, and Kane noted he was staring at it with a combination of wonder and dread. “I wasn’t here anymore. It was a dark place.. I remember lots of wind. And a building, a tower maybe, with red lights.”

“That’s all?”

“Not exactly,” Von said, letting out a shaky breath. “I can’t be sure, it’s all very jumbled now, but… I think something else was there with me.”

“What was it?”

“I couldn’t say,” Von said. He let out a weak laugh. “All I can tell you is I don’t think I’ve ever been more afraid in all my life.”

Now Kane turned to Chaucer and Malin-Argo, who stood nearby.

“And what have you lot got to say about this?”

[[My name is Chaucer,]] Chaucer’s Vox trilled unhelpfully.

Malin-Argo gave the Gorn an annoyed sidelong glance, then turned back to Kane. “I can’t speak to what Lt. Von claims he encountered. All I can tell you is that an unexplained quantum distortion reacted with our warp core, resulting in a power surge that could have destroyed the ship. This distortion also anchored the ship when we attempted to accelerate away from the starbase… if we had gone any faster than one quarter impulse, we would be probably all be dead right now.”

“Three cheers for Mr. Byte,” Von said sardonically.

“Do you have any theories about what could have caused this?” Kane asked.

Malin-Argo sighed. “There are examples of warp energy reacting with psionic fields, but I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

“Can you stop it from happening again?”

Malin-Argo looked frustrated. He gestured to Von. “You’ll have to ask him. I still don’t know what happened in the first place.”

Kane turned to Von. “Lieutenant?”

“I think it’s safe now, sir,” Von said.

“Why?”

“Because,” Von said, staring at the box. “The psionic energy I felt from the box before… it’s not there anymore.”

=[/\]=

SCENE: Sickbay

“Only one on duty?” Silsby asked.

Sofia Andersson waved the dermal regenerator lightly over Silsby’s pulped nose. “Quit talking, or you’ll wind up with a scar.”

“Women like scars,” Silsby grinned.

Sofia sighed. “Tch. If you must know, Dr. Jos was called to deck three to attend to some injured crew.”

“Anyone else take a header into their console like me?”

“I heard there may have been some broken bones,” said Sofia. “Perhaps if you bridge folks were a little more careful with the impulse drives…”

“Can’t take the credit for this one,” Silsby said. “Talk to the geeks in Engineering. Malin-Argo probably left a potato in the microwave.”

Sofia blinked. “What?”

“Nevermind,” Silsby said. “So! Come here often?”

Sofia turned off the dermal regenerator and stepped away. “There. You’re all done.”

Silsby looked disappointed. “Already? But it still hurts.”

“That’s likely psychosomatic,” Sofia said. “Medically, you’re in perfect health.”

“Great, so I’m clear for social outings,” Silsby said. “Why don’t we celebrate with a trip to the holodeck? There’s this lovely little beach program I found, beautiful moonlight-”

“No thank you,” Sofia said.

“I keep asking you out,” Silsby said. “You never take me up on it.”

“You’d think you’d take the hint,” said Sofia. “Now if you please, I have work to do.”

“Alright, I can be patient,” Silsby said, putting up his hands. “Sooner or later you’ll see this is true love.”

“Out, Mr. Silsby,” Sofia said.

Virgo Silsby gave another grin (he could be very handsome if he’d only cut his hair, Sofia thought absently) then turned to leave. Sofia went back to her desk, grateful to be alone in sickbay at last. There had been blessedly few injuries after the ship’s sudden acceleration and braking, and Aerdan had said he could tend to them all. This left Sofia free to continue to peruse the notes that Starbase 56’s Dr. Stell had sent over.

They were the autopsy notes for Lt. Ezra Greer, the crewmen who appeared to have mutilated himself to death aboard the Starbase the evening before. Stell had come to some strange conclusions after his examination, and Admiral Stiles had recommended asking the PHOENIX if they could have one of their officers go over Stell’s findings. Sofia had been looking for something to do, if only to take her mind off the situation with the Romulans, and so she’d volunteered.

As she dug into the notes, however, she wished she hadn’t been so eager. Greer’s injuries were extensive - a search of the KING MIDAS had found the jagged bits of glass that the young lieutenant had used to mutilate himself, and the images included in Stell’s notes conveyed just how thorough a job Greer had done. What Stell had found more curious than Greer’s wounds, however, was some underlying damage done to Greer’s subdermal tissues, mainly his muscles and in some of his internal organs.

“Damage does not fit with known cause of death,” Stell’s notes said. “Data inconclusive at this time.”

But Sofia recognized the damage. It was caused by a kind of parasite, an alien hookworm native to Greer’s homeworld of KELLA IV. The Kella hookworm started its life cycle as a microscopic egg, waiting to be consumed by larger beings via food or drink. Then it would spread, infiltrating the host’s muscles and organs. If left untreated, the worms would eventually breach the skin, a hundred tiny, hooked mouths grasping at the air around them.

Such complete infestations were rare, though. Signs of infection were easy to spot, and treatment was routine. A brief look at Greer’s medical records showed that he’d suffered a small hookworm infestation in his early teens, but it had been treated long before it had become severe enough to cause the kind of damage Sofia was seeing in his autopsy.

Sofia’s eyes traced over a section near the end of Stell’s report. It was a sentence she’d read again, and again, and that her eyes kept coming back to:

“Eyewitness reports subject’s final words were ‘I got it out’.”

Other than the damage to the musculature and organs, the autopsy had revealed no signs of Kella hookworms anywhere inside Greer’s system. But it was easy to put the pieces together to form a particularly grim picture… Sofia couldn’t shake the idea that Greer had spent his final moment trying to cut a hundred waving appendages out of the skin. And when he had finished in one area, it seemed, those tiny hooked mouths would only move on to another…

Sofia shuddered. Suddenly, she didn’t want to be alone in sickbay anymore.

She stood and went to the replicator. She ordered herself a glass of water, and drank it three long swallows, grateful for its coolness. Behind her, something stirred. Sofia turned.

“Hello?”

No answer, only the empty bio-beds and the blinking lights of the medical consoles. Aerdan wasn’t due back for at least half an hour anyway. She decided she was imagining things. She turned and headed back for her desk, intending to put the files away and focus on something else for awhile. Maybe she would play some music.

“Sofia…”

She whirled. Nothing moved in the room behind her, but something had changed. The bio-beds weren’t empty anymore. Figures covered in white sheets lay on each one, figures that definitely had not been there only a moment before. Sofia blinked, and blinked again, clenching her eyes more tightly shut each time in the vain hope that, when she opened them, those white shapes would be gone. It didn’t work.

The figures rose. The sheets fell away. Sofia couldn’t move.

“Sofia…”

The figures underneath were twisted, their skins a ruined mass of burns and trauma. They had no hair, no lips, only the most ragged remains of muscles of clothes. Their bones were blackened, yet shot through with the faintest hints of green. Even as her mind began to shut down, Sofia could hear a clinical voice crying out again and again somewhere inside her:

“Damage consistent with exposure to thaleron radiation. Damage consistent with exposure to thaleron radiation. Damage consistent--”

The figures were advancing now, their blackened, bony hands reaching for her. Her paralysis broke, and Sofia ran, nearly tripping over her feet as she went. Her hip hit the corner of her desk hard, sending a bright flash of pain shooting through her. She pushed it aside; she had to get to the door, to the corridor. There were people out there, only a few yards away, and they would help her, they had to help her, they were her crew…

The doors to sickbay would not open. Sofia fell against them, her terror exploding out of her in a mewling squeal. She pounded her fists; someone would hear her. They had to hear her, had to help--

“Sofia… you… did… this…”

Sofia knew who they were now - they were the lost souls of Paris, the souls of those she had unwittingly helped Richard Edgerton to murder, and they had come for her at last. Somehow, she’d always known they would. She turned to face them, her face twisted in fear, as scorched hands closed themselves around her throat.

=[/\]=

TIME INDEX: Half an hour later

Aerdan Jos stepped into sickbay. He was distracted - there had been several junior officers injured during the recent excitement with the ship’s warp engines, and it had taken him longer than he’d expected it would to set and bind their broken bones, or to repair the abrasions to their skin. It was good work, but also methodical, tedious, and the “gee whiz” expressions and sob stories of the injured officers had only made the work take longer. Two of the officers had clearly been involved in coital activity during the time of the incident; Jos was a doctor, and an adult besides, but they’d insisted on playing off the locations of their injuries as some kind of elaborate accident. Jos had played along, mainly to expedite matters, but that kind of thing had a way of weighing on one’s good humor after a while.

Jos rounded the corner towards Sofia’s office, intending to relieve her of duty. But when he came around the bend, he stopped.

He’d found Sofia, seated in the chair behind her desk, her held lolled back at an unnatural angle. Jos noticed was looked like ligature marks on her neck, ugly purple bruises lined with what looked like… burns?

“Sofia?” Jos asked. Sofia did not answer.

He stepped forward, reached out a shaking hand. Her head lolled forward now. Her face was covered in blackened burns, shot through with green. One of her eyes had ruptured, and runnels of viscous fluid spilled down her cheek as her head shifted. Her other eye bulged, seeing nothing. Her lips were twisted up in a silent scream.

Sofia Andersson was dead.

=[/\]=

Shawn Putnam

A.k.a.

Jake Crichton

Executive Officer

USS PHOENIX