Surefoot 77: Nightmare Fuel

She didn't stop to ensure he complied.

She listened to the door slide shut, barely waiting for it to finish before turning and demanding, "What the frick, Jim? Are you fourteen or something? You gonna have a fight with Mru after school while I keep an eye out for the Principal?"

The huge man seemed to shrink before her. "Sash-"

"I'm not done talking!" She felt her face turn nova hot as she approached, holding out her arms. "I didn't go through all the shit I have in my life just to end up in some fricking soap opera with a former and current lover!"

He frowned in confusion. "What's a soap opera?"

"I'm still not done talking! We're all supposed to be professionals here! Twenty-Fourth Century Starfleet officers! Trying to do our job on a new ship, with Squabs looking to us for guidance! I- I-" She paused, her head pounding. "I'm done talking now."

Madison's chiselled jaw moved as he ground his teeth, deflating further. "You're right. I'm sorry. Look, I know that we'll never get back together again, okay? It's just... It's not been easy, seeing you and Mori around, so close." He offered a self-deprecating smile. "You're not easy to get over, Sasha."

She remained unmoved. "Top Tip, Bubulah: blaming me for this won't end well for you."

He shook his head, his smile dropping quickly. "No, I'm blaming me. It was different before we left the Ajax, because at least the work kept me busy. But I can't hide behind that here."

His words made her start. "'Hide'? Is there something wrong with working on the Katana, Jim? Is it Maryk? Some of the new crew?"

He rubbed his eye sockets. "It's the whole dynamic here, Sasha. It's okay for a CPO like Maryk to command Ensigns because of her experience, but the only reason I was there was because Starfleet Regulations for Defiant class ships like the Ajax that have overpowered Class 7 warp drives require an officer of Lieutenant grade or higher for authorisation purposes.

But it's different here. The Katana's Class 4 drive is perfect for its size, but it makes me overqualified to serve as an Assistant CEO, and the chain of command is skewed. And it's caused problems for the new arrivals."

Sasha stared at him, knowing what he meant, having seen some of the initial reports from Chief Maryk, which Sasha had dismissed as Maryk being... Maryk. Sasha had hoped that they could make adjustments, or that maybe Jim could move into another field like Operations or Security- but no, that wouldn't be incredibly unfair on him. Jim was an Engineer, and a gifted one, too, and under other circumstances he'd have been CEO.

And now her annoyance was eclipsed by guilt, as she began doubting her own motivations for wanting to keep as much of the Ajax crew together in general... and Jim in particular. Whatever they had been in the past, he remained a friend now, and she wanted to take care of him. She relaxed her stance. "I should have seen this as a possibility, Jim. I'm sorry."

But he shook his head again. "No, Sash. You had enough to worry about, getting a new ship and crew together... and I could have seen this coming before now. "

Before she could reply to that, the intercom interrupted her chain of thought, as Holtzmann reported, "Lieutenant Commander, I think I might have discovered something."

"We'll be right there. Hrelle out." She looked to Madison. "I'm gonna do right by you, Jim, I swear it."

He smiled back. "I believe you, Hellcat."

She scowled. "I'm gonna court martial the next person who calls me that, I swear."

As they returned to the Bridge, Holtzmann turned and looked up at her, smiling. "Ma'am! The chronitons are being generated by a molecular phase inverter! It's a device capable of altering the normal structure of matter-"

"Enabling it to become intangible and pass through matter and energy on normal phase frequencies," Sasha finished, seeing it now.

That made the younger woman blink. "You know about them?"

Sasha nodded. "I've encountered the technology before." She remembered her time on Vulcan years before after graduation, and her encounter with a Romulan Tal Shiar agent who used molecular phase emitters to create a field that let the agent pass through solid walls undetected. "But what is it being used for here?"

Now Holtzmann grinned, as if glad to offer something to her superior officer as she pointed to the scans of the Incubus' Vault. "The configuration they've set up in the walls, floor and ceiling can alter the structure of anything within it, not only cloaking it from view, but making it intangible."

"The perfect hiding place," Mori noted, impressed. "You could walk around inside the space afterwards and never know something was technically still there, just out of phase. But if such phased matter was intangible, wouldn't it now just pass through the hull of the ship and out into space?"

"Gravitons still have an effect on them," Holtzmann informed him. "The Enterprise-D had two officers accidentally phased by a similar device about ten years ago; they were able to walk around the decks of the ship because of the artificial gravity in the floor plating and drop out into space."

Sasha nodded in comprehension, peering at the screen, as if she could see through the deception before her. "And how do we bring the matter back to normal phase frequencies?"

"Well, if you're patient, you could analyse the equipment and try and locate the specific phase frequency the machinery specifically used to convert the matter within... if you're impatient, a high-intensity anyon beam projected into the room should bring it all back in seconds. Which would you prefer, Ma'am?"

"Impatient," Madison and Mori answered for Sasha simultaneously.

Sasha shot them both dirty looks, before admitting, "They're right."

Mori stepped closer. "I'll go over and take care of it-"

"No you won't." She looked to Madison. "Equip yourself with a tricorder and anyon beam emitter, corral some of our Security for backup, just in case. I'll update the Captain."

*

Weynik stepped up to Hengist's desk and picked up the swagger stick. "What do you have this for?"

The Rigelian held out the second drinks glass to Weynik, then lowered his hand. "It's a prize, won in fair combat from a Klingon merchant foolish enough to judge on appearances. Why?"

Weynik pointed it in his direction, his mouth curling into an angry scowl. "Do you use it on this dog?"

Hengist smirked. "Why the Hell do you care about some dumb animal?"

"I asked you a question, Mister."

Hengist's face paled as he saw the rising anger from the Roylan, and set aside his own drink now. "No! Of course not! It just sits on my desk, a souvenir! I barely touch it!"

Weynik glared at him some more... then turned to the bulldog and smacked one end of the stick into the palm of his free hand, making a short, sharp snapping sound.

The dog whimpered loudly in obvious panic and struggled to get in hiding under Hengist's bunk.

Weynik turned back to Hengist. "He knows that sound. He knows what usually follows it." Then the Roylan took the swagger stick in both hands and snapped it in half.

The trader's jaw dropped. "What the Hell did you do that for?"

He threw the pieces of the stick aside. "Giving you a sneak preview of what I'm going to do to your arms and legs..."

His combadge chirped, and without taking his eyes or scowl off the Rigelian, he reached up and opened a channel. "Weynik here."

Sasha responded. "Are you free to speak, Sir?"

"Go ahead."

"Captain, the chronitons we detected from the freighter's Vault are a by-product of a molecular phase inverter, letting them temporarily conceal things within it out of normal phase. I've sent Lt Madison over to find out what they're hiding over there. What's your status, Sir?"

As his First Officer spoke, Weynik watched Hengist's reaction to the news. "Condition Green, keep me updated. Weynik out." As the combadge chirped again, he asked Hengist, "Anything to say?"

The Rigelian stared hard at him... but nodded over Weynik's shoulder. "There's five hundred bars, gold-pressed latinum, in a shielded container in the wall directly behind you. Take it, keep it for yourself or share it with whomever you need to, to cover this up. Just leave what's in the Vault alone."

Weynik nodded with grim satisfaction. "Thanks for that. Now I can charge you with Attempted Bribery of a Starfleet Officer, on top of Animal Cruelty and whatever else we discover in your Vault."

Hengist reacted again... looking disturbed now. "Leave it alone, Captain. Seriously. You don't want to awaken what's down there. We barely managed to get it secure!"

*

At that point, Madison stood outside the open door of the Vault, peering inside, his tricorder running on Maximum, while Jor-Dakk and several of his people stood behind him. The interior of the room reminded him of a deactivated Holodeck, all black with white gridlines running everywhere.

"Empty," Jor-Dakk commented.

"So it appears, Lieutenant," Madison muttered, confirming the frequency he needed, before holstering the tricorder and picking up his anyon emitter gun and making adjustments. "I have an uncle who enjoys performing magic tricks, sleight of hand. He used to fascinate me with how he could make a coin seemingly vanish." Now he raised the emitter like a phaser. "But, like he always told me, 'Don't believe everything you can't see, Jimbo'."

He fired, slowly sweeping the emitter from one end of the room to the other and back again.

As he did so, he felt the air charge with ionisation, making the hairs on his arms and neck stand up, before a large black featureless crate, looking disturbingly like nothing more than a three-metre-long coffin appeared.

Madison smiled. "Abracadabra."

Beside him, Jor-Dakk raised a huge hand and warned, "Wait-"

Bur Madison was returning to his tricorder, confirming there was a biological lifeform inside the container, with an environmental unit-

Then all Hell broke loose.

*

In Hengist's quarters, the Rigelian collapsed, along with Weynik.

In the rest of the Incubus, Madison, most of the rest of the Starfleet Security Team and all of the freighter crew fell.

On the Katana, everyone who was awake dropped to the floor, Sasha grasping the Bridge railing to control her descent, as she stared up at the viewscreen, trying to speak, to voice Emergency commands to the computer, to do something, anything.

But all she could do was stare at a violent miasma of violet and white and black webbing, centring towards some sort of living organism that looked like nothing more than... than...

Well, a huge erection: a bulbous head on a long vertical shaft. A head with glowing eyes that bore into her judgingly.

The Counselor was going to have a field day when she hears about this-

Aliens

Her head filled with a booming voice, a voice in English... and Federation Standard... and Old Caitian and Yiddish? What the Seven Hells-

You are Outside

No, wait-

You are Disease

Who are you- what's going on-

The Disease must be destroyed

Then she plummeted into darkness and disruptor fire.

*

At the outside of the Vault on the Incubus, Jim Madison was trapped in a Jefferies Tube, trying to escape, unable to escape, as he felt the walls slowly crush him. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't escape. He couldn't beam out. His arms were pinned to his sides. This shaft would become his tomb. He would die alone, uncared for, forgotten. Panic was overwhelming him.

Nearby, Jor-Dakk stared down at the officer, lowering himself and checking the human's bioreadings, shaking him slightly for a response, receiving none. He moved over to the others, finding them in a similar state. Then he rose again, tapping his combadge. "Katana?"

No reply.

He tapped again. "Captain?"

No reply.

He tapped again. "Anyone?"

No reply.

He scanned the environment for chemical or biological agents that might have been responsible for this, but none were detected. He peered inside the Vault, scanning the newly-apported object with his Security tricorder, detecting a powerful neurogenic field being generated from within. The box was a medical stasis unit, occupied. He couldn't determine the specific race of the opponent.

But it was definitely dead.

And Madison was beginning to thrash out.

"Hmm..." Jor-Dakk declared, overcome with emotion.

*

Back on the Katana, in the Main Engineering section, Master Chief Petty Officer Helga Maryk clung to the edge of an ice-coated cliff face, the cold wind cutting into her face as she tried inching her way to safety... but she didn't know where that was, anymore than she knew where she was.

No, that wasn't true. She knew this place: Dinope, the moon she'd crashed on when she was a crewman on the Archimedes... forty years ago. So, so many died that day. She nearly died.

She had come back to die here, too. The cold... the cold would cut into her, slice and dice and leave glistening shards of the woman she was...

*

In Sickbay, Dr Jiyajh barricaded herself within the Isochamber, her heart pounding until it was ready to burst out of its own accord, as she pushed every movable item within against the door.

For all the good it would do. The transparent walls were lined with other Klingons, pounding incessantly on the surface with gloved fists, daggers, batleths, mekleths. Klingons she knew: brothers, nephews, uncles, cousins. Her father.

She dropped to the floor and curled up into a ball.

They had found her. And now they would kill her for dishonouring their House with her perversion.

*

In her office nearby, Dr Vestri struggled to meditate, to gain focus and control, and ignore the spiders. They weren't real. They weren't real. They weren't real.

Not even the ones burrowing under her skin to lay their eggs and produce millions more to eat her alive from within.

Especially not them.

She had experience with telepathic violence, both as a Counselor... and as a victim, eight years ago, when she was stationed on Hurada III during a medical conference involving a group of Ullians - one of whom turned out to be a serial telepathic memory invader. She had dealt with the trauma... and learned to recognise the signs.

And this memory, from a horror video she had caught her son Yolen watching years ago when was far too young. Then she watched it herself.

But that was years, decades ago, back on the homeworld. She was in deep space, on the Katana, in her office, doing her job.

Except she wasn't. She was in the Spider Catacombs in that idiotic video.

They weren't real. They weren't real. They weren't real.

She screamed as she watched the spiders move under her skin.

*

In their quarters, Professor Tallus, and Weynik's children Naida and Jaxan slept after a vigorous morning exercise session in the Holodeck. Already in a subconscious state and not perceived as a potential threat, they, and everyone else sleeping at that time, remained untouched by the telepathic attack.

*

On the Bridge, Lt Grel sat on the floor of his bedroom back home, staring in horror at his hooves, and how the Gheraach's Blight, the disease that struck and killed his father and grandfather and uncle when he was a pup, had finally caught up with him, despite the reassurances from all the doctors over the years that they had caught and treated it.

He watched himself crumble and boil away like some pot of stew left too long on the stove.

Nearby, Mru Mori was back at the Ferasan death camps on the Motherworld, pulling disfigured, emaciated survivors of their enemies' hideous machinations from the rubble, from the experimental labs. And they were all condemning him, condemning him for not saving him sooner, for not saving those who had died before he had finally arrived to help them.

Beside him, Lt Holtzmann was falling through the sky, passing through thick wet clouds to see the spectacular Canadian wilderness below: endless hectares of thickly-packed trees of dark green, framed by tall, craggy, snow-capped mountains. She should have been marvelling at the view. Instead, she was panicking as her orbital skydiving suit controls failed her, again and again, despite her frantic efforts. She couldn't activate the emergency transporter unit or the parachute. She couldn't call for help. She could only fall helplessly, count the seconds until she struck the Earth. And thanks to her damned brain, she could estimate it to the millisecond...

And at the centre of the Bridge, Sasha stood in an arena, lifted up her black Kaetini sword and swung it out, not knowing how she had found herself here, attacked from all sides by Ferasans, Jem'Hadar, Cardassians, Klingons, Romulans, creatures she didn't even recognise. Never ending. Never ending. Kill or be killed.

And all the while, she felt her body wasting away from within: withering, cracking, like fruit left out under a merciless sun. It hurt. It hurt just to breathe. Just to go for a day, an hour, without something to take the edge off of living. Alcohol. Painkillers. Sex. Bingeing. Purging. Gambling. Something. Anything.

But she had nothing. Hellcat Hrelle was dying, and now it was a question of whether it would be fast, or slow, quick and painful, or slow and painful.

She should just drop her sword, her defiance, and let it all wash over her, and end this pain right here, right now.

Yeah.

That sounded real good to her...

*

Back on the Incubus, Weynik looked up at the wreckage of the ceiling of the Bridge of the Ajax, his lungs breathing in smoke and fumes and the scents of the dead around him. He tried to shift himself, to get to an escape pod, but his leg was trapped beneath a fallen bulkhead. He reached up, tried shifting it with all his might.

No.

"Lieutenant Hrelle!" he called out, his voice barely heard over the Red Alert klaxon. "SASHA!"

No, this wasn't right. This happened weeks ago. Sasha cut off his leg and saved him. He had been fitted with a biosynthetic leg, had recovered... at least, physically. He had a new ship, new mission. This wasn't real.

Pain shot through him as he struggled to escape again.

This wasn't real... It was a nightmare. It had to be.

Unless... unless everything he thought he had experienced since this happened, up to the encounter with Hengist on the Incubus, had been the nightmare, some horrible wish fulfilment, like in that old Terran short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. The crew had abandoned the ship, and him.

Good. He was ready for this. Dying alone was no problem. He knew that his children, his crew, would be taken care of. And, knowing how his life would turn out for him if he survived, it was for the best-

A bark made him jump.

He turned his head to see the bulldog, Hengist's bulldog, toddle up to him, yapping anxiously, his stubby tail wagging behind him.

Bloody Hemra, what was going on?

The dog kept barking, turning and moving as if showing him the way out, and then returned and repeated the process.

Weynik coughed. "You- You want me to follow you, boy?" He chuckled, wincing in pain. "Sorry, but unless you can chew through duranium like they were slippers, you'd better get out of here. No need to die here alongside me."

The bulldog whimpered, dropping to the bulkhead on his belly and crawling towards him, slobber coating his muzzle, big bronze eyes pleading along with his whimpers.

Weynik felt a pang of empathy. He had read about Terran dogs, their historical popularity because of their intelligence, their playfulness, their loyalty and tenacity. There was nothing like them on Royla, and those few times he had encountered others with canine pets, he couldn't help but feel jealous.