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Forward by Vakash: I handed this story to Saurex as a broken mess. Why was it a broken mess? Because when I conceived it and started writing down notes for it back in the late 90’s, I never got around to completing it. It was supposed to take place after The Nebulous Imperative originally, but it didn’t. Then Season One was mostly done, and it didn’t get written. Then Season Two started and I wanted to get this out as material, but I couldn’t. The problem was it was originally supposed to star Land and Terri-Lu, but we’re all aware how that ended up. I tried to knock it out back in mid 2003, but I met my future wife at the time and life happened. When I found it again I saw the problem, so I recast it. Saurex, at the time, was in the dumps about his writing, mainly from stress from his job and other things and he showed some interest in doing another story, but he couldn’t come up with anything. I basically handed him this broken mess and told him good luck as I kept working on Season Two. I worked with him a bit and after some gentle coercion drug a preview out of him. It looked fine, then I got a draft and finally I got a second draft after I helped him get unstuck. Personally, I feel that this is an improvement as his second effort at the wheel overall, even with the difficulties he encountered. He contributed a lot more to this than I did. I hope you all enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed working on it with Saurex. -V ________________ Don Rivas drummed his fingers against the thigh harness that held some of his servos in place. Water cascaded off his fingers, racing in snake-like trails down the titanium apparatus that made it possible for him to stand in the shower. An identical harness was bonded to his other leg, with veins of metal lacing up his hips and back. The tiny motors whistled as he shifted his weight, his eyes boring into the dull metal as though he could will it to cease existing. It wasn’t as though this were his first serious injury. As he rubbed conditioner into the fur of his chest, he could feel the scars across his torso. Each one was its own little saga, some testaments to a deed that had cost him a little flesh, others memories of poor choices. Some of the new, raw wounds—mostly the ones he couldn’t see on his back and the ones he could see on his face—were not old stories. Shrapnel wounds were, according to Doctor Okan, one of the ugliest wounds to treat. The jagged nature of the material, its often-bizarre trajectories, unpredictable speeds, random side effects if not removed properly or promptly, the sheer amount of tissue damage, all of it made for a brutal injury. Rivas shuddered, the hot water cascading down his back, making the servo’s connections on his spine tingle. He was lucky to be feeling anything at all. If it hadn’t been for Doctor Okan’s painfully earned experience dealing with shrapnel—given how often things exploded around the crew of the Raptor—there would have been little hope of even the most basic motion from the chest down. Rivas shut the water off and toggled the shower over to its dryer function. Hot air twisted around him, flinging water in all directions as pressurized air pressed its way down from his head to his feet. Once the dryer was done, Rivas stepped out and glanced in the mirror. In spite of himself, he smiled. “I look ridiculous.” he chuckled. He picked up a large brush to start the process of de-floofing his fur. As he worked, he could hear the servos whistling, helping his recovering legs and back hold him up as he twisted to brush his tail. If only idly, he wished this particular curse would go away. The constant reminder that he was damaged, somehow less useful, was becoming aggravating. Survival Instincts Episode –23 By Saurex Conoway Editor/Consultant (the real hero): Vakash Darkbane 2003, 2022/23 The Raptor had been at Starbase Altairia for almost three months, undergoing the second major refit of its life. The battle with the Borg had taken its toll on the ship. The crew hadn’t fared much better. So, with the ship in hock, the crew had also been put up for repairs, physical and mental. Don had spent a lot of that time with Michelle. Recently he had been helping her prepare for her big day at a Fleet hosted science conference. Public speaking wasn’t really O’mara’s strong suit and her stutter had reared its head during practice runs of her speech, but with a lot of practice–and encouragement from Rivas–she had improved. Eventually, she had to leave for the conference. Her absence left Rivas grumpier than usual. There were already too many missing faces from the ship. Having O’mara gone, even temporarily, left a sour taste in his mouth. Gradually, as personnel trickled back from leave, from traction, from therapy, and as replacements were posted to the Raptor, things started to return to what could pass as normal. As Don walked through the corridors, he nodded at the few new faces, enjoying the smell of newness in the air, and noticed how the formerly maroon and orange corridors now resembled the grays standard to most Fleet vessels. He chuckled inwardly, imagining the hell Fara had given the Yardmaster about the new color scheme. Fara was one of the “old” faces he hadn’t seen yet. He figured she was doing her usual, obsessive examinations in search of something to complain about. Glancing at his data pad, Rivas sighed. To get the crew, new and old, back into the swing of things, the Raptor had been sent back to Starbase 186 for a rather routine mission: a cargo escort. The freighters the Raptor had been assigned to babysit departed from Starbase 186 a few minutes ahead of schedule. As the chunky vessels blinked into warp, the Raptor followed close behind. Harry watched the stars on the view screen deform as they rushed past. It didn’t feel quite natural to be doing something this mundane, not after everything that had happened. Yet there they were, following four squat little freighters full of medical equipment on their way to Tyran 6. “Anything interesting out there?” Harry asked, inclining his head slightly towards Jakar. “Nothing,” Jakar grunted. “Scanners are clear. All systems show green.” The door to the bridge hissed open and Rivas stepped onto the bridge. He spotted Ensign Rosa already at the Ops station and went to look over her shoulder. Harry knew there wouldn’t be anything to critique, but also knew that Don wouldn’t leave it alone until he was personally satisfied that there was nothing to critique. Ensign Rosa kept her eyes on her instruments as Rivas hovered. With a slight nod, he stepped away. With Rivas in traction, Ensign Rosa had been compelled to fill his shoes. No one had been certain if she would handle the pressure. So far, however, she had performed very well. During his last evaluation of her, Rivas had noted that Rosa was a fast learner and with a little more time on Ops she would be able to competently handle the post. It had been agreed among the senior staff that she would take the helm once Rivas was back at Ops fulltime. They wanted to keep her on the bridge one way or another. “Bored, Rivas?” Harry asked with a slight grin. “Cagey,” Rivas corrected, coming to a stop next to the chair and facing the view screen as well. “And antsy, sir.” “Anything in particular?” Harry asked as he looked over his reports. “No.” “You know, Rosa is doing an excellent job,” Harry noted. “It’s a good thing too. It’s eventually going to be her posting.” “Captain?” Rivas said, a bit irked. “Relax.” Harry chuckled, handing him a data pad. “They’ve got a new bridge module for us that’s going to be installed soon. I guess Fleet HQ wants us to be more like the other ships. You’ll have a bit less work on your hands.” “Really?” Don said, his angst diminishing slightly as he took the datapad and glanced over the schematics. “Why didn’t they do it during the refit?” “I have no idea,” Harry admitted with a shrug. “Delays? Overdesigning it? Who knows.” The schematics on the pad showed a slightly larger, spherical bridge A Captain and First officer chairs were side by side, with the tactical station directly behind them in a command pit. Engineering and Science stations were located on the starboard and aft bulkheads, respectively. Opps and Communications were to the port and starboard, in line with the Commanding officers. Flight control was still the most forward area in the command pit. It was a different configuration and somehow gave the impression that it would give them more room while still taking up the same amount of space as the current bridge. “I guess we’ll have to get used to it.” Rivas shrugged as he handed the datapad back to Harry. Harry nodded in agreement. “I don’t know about you, but I wouldn't mind not whipping my head around so much. Gives me a damn migraine sometimes. Anyways, I think I have a special assignment for you, if you don’t mind piloting a shuttle craft?” Rivas raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And what would that be, sir?” “A certain bird needs a lift,” Harry said with a glance at the Science station. “Apparently her fungi were a smash hit, but now she needs to get back to us and none of the eggheads want to get within a lightyear of us. Apparently, we have a reputation.” “Michelle did mention that even in the research community the Raptor has become synonymous with disaster.” Rivas noted before quickly adding, “She did also say that her data has been the envy of lesser science officers for a while now. Apparently they think she’s spoiled, since we have an Engineering Chief who can power any scanner we stick on our hull and a captain that lets the science team get away with anything if they ask nice.” It was Harry’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “She said that about me?” “Yes, sir,” Rivas smirked. “The Commander said you’re an absolute pushover.” “Well now you’re definitely going to pick her up.” Harry chuckled, shaking his head. “We’re stuck keeping an eye on this caravan, so we’ll be dispatching a shuttle to pick up Commander O’mara from Cameron 4. It’s sorta out of the way, which is why we’re using a shuttle instead of detouring the entire convoy.” “Could I take the Talon, sir?” Rivas asked. “I would say yes, but it’s currently back on Starbase 186.” Harry said. “Fara apparently neglected to check the operational hours log. We had to put up with the computer locking out what it considered nonessential functions until maintenance could be performed. All she did half the time we were on Termia was tinker with the damn thing.". Harry sighed. "I guess I shouldn't expect her to be in top form so soon." “She has a lot on her mind sir, we all do. But I’d be happy for an extra distraction, sir,” Rivas said, his tail wagging ever so slightly. “Talon or not.” “Excellent,” said Harry. “Head down to the shuttle bay. Fara’s down there doing God knows what to the shuttle, so it’ll make the trip a little quicker. From Cameron 4 to Tyran should only take four days, barring any disasters.” “Don’t jinx this,” Jakar grumbled from his station. “Anything else I need to know?” Rivas asked, turning to leave. “Pick up Commander O’mara, come back, that’s all, Commander,” Harry replied. From the bridge to the shuttle bay was an uneventful trip. It wasn’t just the bridge of the Raptor that was still a little short-staffed. Engineering was still looking for candidates and so was general ops. The result was that the ship felt a little more ghostly than usual. With the new gray interior, it felt particularly tomb-like. Rivas entered the shuttle bay and found Fara sitting on the warp nacelle. Her head was drooping, ears sagging as she leaned dangerously forwards. “Hey, you alright?” Rivas asked, trying to rush forwards but finding himself hindered by the servos. Fara gave a little start, sitting up, blinking furiously. “Commander! Sorry. I think I nodded off for a sec there.” Rivas sighed as he drew even with her. “Everything good to go, Chief?” She nodded as she grabbed her homemade cane from atop the nacelle. “It’s good to go. I swear I just sat down to catch my breath! God this leg is taking a lot out of me!” “How’s the leg doing?” Rivas asked. “Not well today, stupid thing. It’s stiff as all hell.” She hobbled about, snarling as she forced her knee to bend, trying to get some movement back into her damaged limb. “Okan insists I keep stretching it out.” Rivas just “hmm-ed” his condolences. Although his own mobility was returning, he had been informed that the carapace would be with him for quite a while longer. While he was not ungrateful to the thing strapped to his body, he was also looking forward to never having to wear the contraption again. He was also looking forward to the end of physical therapy. “Well, it could be worse,” he said as Fara wobbled to a stop in front of him. “You could be me…robo wolf!” Fara rolled her eyes as she chuckled. “You, sir, got bit by the ship. It happens to all of us. I got stabbed by a psychotic bitch. Believe me, I'm pretty sure yours hurts less.” “It hurts in a different way, when you put it like that.” Rivas smiled as he looked over the shuttle. “Anything I need to know about? Anything you’ve done?” “I modified the shuttle’s systems a bit,” she said matter-of-factly. “I know it’s supposed to be a routine trip, but you never know. A little bit of extra speed doesn’t hurt.” “Speed is good,” Rivas replied. “Anything else?” Fara glanced around. “Well, since we’re both walking wounded and could use some extra support, I’ll tell you a little secret, but don’t you dare tell Harry, yeah?” “Oh? What secret?” “Last time I took this shuttle out for an inspection with….” She caught herself, tensing momentarily before letting out a long breath. “Nevermind! Anyway, I tampered with the replicator. It makes booze now. If you don’t need it to help with your busted body, you might need it for your passenger. O’mara can be a bit much when she’s going on about something. I imagine she’ll be all a-twitter. Be a pal and try to get it out of her system before you get back?” Fara said, giving him a nudge. “I’ve heard enough about those damn spores to last a lifetime.” Rivas chuckled, shaking his head. Booze wouldn’t be necessary for distractions during this trip, but he wasn’t about to admit that to Fara. “I’ll keep the modification quiet.” he assured Fara. “Just don’t be doing that all the time, understood?” Fara gave her characteristic shrug. Rivas gave Fara an incredulous look. “I am sure we’ll be fine. I happen to enjoy those little rants she gets on.” “Sure you do.” Fara said as she hobbled away. “When Harry asked if someone would go pick up O’mara, we all volunteered you by the way. I’m guessing he asked if you wanted to do this little run?” “He did,” Rivas said, glaring at Fara’s back. “Called it!” Fara crowed triumphantly. “Don’t break my shuttle while you’re out there!” “I assure you there is nothing to worry about.” Rivas said as he popped the gull wing hatch in the side of the shuttle. “I’ll see you in four days and hopefully you’ll be in a less spiteful mood.” “You’re stealing my booze maker!” Fara called over her shoulder. “I’ll be in a better mood when you bring it back, yeah?” “Noted,” Rivas called back as he pulled the hatch shut. He entered the cockpit and slid into the pilot's chair before starting up the shuttle's engines. Once all systems finished their startup sequences, he tapped the coms and hailed the Raptor. “This is shuttle Durden, requesting permission to disembark,” he said. “Permission granted, Durden,” Harry replied. The shuttles bay doors opened. Beyond the retention shield that was holding the atmosphere in, the blazing stars came to a halt. The Raptor could have sat there for hours and still caught up to the freighters it was shepherding, but it would only take a moment for the shuttle to slip away into the void. Rivas activated the shuttle's anti-grav coils and it floated gently off the deck. A gentle nudge from the thrusters propelled him forward and out of the ship. He swung around to the bearings that would take him to Cameron 4 and started prep for the jump to warp speed. The Raptor loomed before him when he chanced to glance through the forward viewport. Rivas paused, looking over the vessel he knew so well from the inside, but rarely got to see from the outside. She was an intimidating lady, to be sure. “This is shuttle Durden,” Rivas said, tapping the coms again as he returned to his preparations. “I am clear, Raptor. See you in a few days.” “We’ll meet you at Tyran 6 in four days, Commander.” Harry replied over the speaker. “Have a safe trip, Commander.” The Raptor’s nacelles glowed a bright blue and its form seemed to elongate as it entered warp space, then disappeared in a blink. With the course laid in, Rivas pushed the throttle up. The shuttle let out a slight whine as it wound up the nacelles and then it too flashed into warp space. Rivas set the sensors on active sweep. He was traveling through Confederation space, but the border was close enough to present a threat. It was best to keep one’s guard up. Once he was sure the computer was doing its job, he clasped his hands behind his head and let go of some of the tension in his muscles. Cameron 4 was 18 hours away, so he had time to kill. In his head, he mapped out what he would do with this time. He would, of course, do his daily exercises…though jogging a mile was out of the question in the shuttle. After that he would see if the replicator really could produce a decent shot of whisky, and then he would sneak in a nap. He smirked to himself. Once O’mara was aboard there wouldn’t be much opportunity for rest. “Yeah…it’ll be nice to be away for once.” he said to himself, closing his eyes. “Just Michelle and me, by ourselves, in a warm, cozy little box with nothing but lightyears between us and the next soul.” He couldn’t contain his grin as he entertained ideas of how they would put all that time and space—and drinks—to good use. “This is going to be great!” * * * Starbase 118, on Cameron 4 O’mara watched the shuttle approach and land. She started lugging her duffle down toward the landing pad of the Starbase. It had been a long, albeit enjoyable, symposium. She had soaked up so much new information, made a few friends, even managed to spend the last night of the symposium sampling some of the nightlife of the Starbase with her new friends. She was ready to get back to work though. While the entire experience had been refreshing, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t getting anything useful done. The shuttle’s hatch popped open as she reached the base of the landing pad. Panting as she hefted the duffle up the steps, she looked up. She fully expected to see Fara’s friendly scowl or some unknown ensign nervously scurrying towards her. Instead, her heart skipped a beat as she dropped her duffle. “Don!” She sprinted up the stairs and threw herself into his waiting arms. Faintly she could hear his carapace whistling as its servos took her weight, but she wasn’t too worried. She had put all of her weight on those little motors a few times now and she knew they could take it. “Well hello, pretty birdy.” Rivas grinned, holding her out at arm’s length. “I am so glad they sent you!” O’mara gushed, practically vibrating as he held her. “I’ve got so much to talk about and I’m sure I would have bored or scared any ensign they sent and Fara gets so annoyed when I start on a roll about something but I wasn’t really sure who else they would send because I figured you’d be busy and so would the rest of the bridge staff and there’s no way they’d let Harry get away for something like this, especially now since we’re short an officer at the moment but then I thought—” Rivas pulled her close and kissed her, banishing her words instantly. O’mara did her best not to melt in his arms as she kissed him back. “Glad to see you too,” Rivas whispered as he pulled away. “Grab your bag and let’s get out of here.” O’mara skittered back down the stairs, scooped up her duffle, and bounded back to the shuttle. The duffle was now heavier than it had been when she arrived, but it felt light as she rushed up the steps with it. Rivas took the bag out of her arms as she approached the shuttle again. “God!” he gasped, staggering a little under the sudden weight of the bag. “What is in here?” “My stuff…and maybe a few souvenirs?” O’mara said with a guilty smile. “Mostly things from friends I made here, extra samples and supplies to try out, that sort of thing. Oh! I’ll have to show you the shirt I found for Fara! I know she likes to wear those long shirts with the short sleeves when she sleeps and I found one with this grumpy little fox on it holding a wrench and saying “I fix shit, but I can’t fix stupid”. You think she’ll like it?” Rivas chuckled. “Sounds like something she’d say. How’d your presentation go?” “I almost threw up on stage.” O’mara admitted as they boarded the shuttle. “But after a second, I was able to swallow my nerves and just present. It all just sort of fell into place after that, just like you said it would.” “When did I tell you that?” Rivas asked as he closed the hatch behind them. “When I asked what you would do if you had to present to a roomful of experts about the theoretical application of the voluntary transudative ability I found in one of the xeno-fungi I cultivated in creating more reliable water purification systems to be delivered to colonies on worlds with heavy organic or parasitic contamination in their water supplies, who also have power supply issues.” Rivas blinked, utterly blindsided as he stowed O’mara’s duffle. “What?” “You made that same face the first time I said that,” O’mara giggled. “The fungi I’ve been growing filter their water supply through their vascular systems, then they draw out pure water by creating a negative pressure deeper inside themselves. In your or me, transudate means fluid is leaving our blood vessels due to internal pressure problems in the body cavity, like a collapsed lung. Okan can probably explain it better than I can, but the idea is that these fungi can change their internal pressure to draw fluid through their circulation systems. The particular fungus I found has a whole system that does nothing but collect contaminated water so it can be filtered like this and now you look bored.” Rivas laughed as O’mara folded her arms mockingly. “Not bored. This just isn’t my field of expertise. Fungi that filter water sounds cool though.” O’mara rolled her eyes. “We could create filtering systems that work on this vascular pressure principle which could run without power is what I’m getting at.” “Now that I understand.” Rivas said as he slipped past O’mara and settled into the pilot’s seat. “You wanna ride copilot or relax in the back?” “Can I ride the pilot?” Rivas felt himself blushing under his fur as he recalibrated the shuttle’s systems for takeoff. He was very glad he was sitting on his tail, otherwise it would have been waving wildly. “Later,” he said. “Definitely later.” * * * The shuttlecraft Durden idled along, computer chirping softly, the purr of the engines creating a gentle vibration through the frame of the vessel. They had been underway for two days now and Rivas was almost bitter that they only had two more days of this peaceful existence. Rivas had his eyes closed, a glass of brandy in one hand, swirling the contents gently, the other hand softly stroking the feathers on O’mara’s bare back. For most Starfleet personnel, shore leave was vacation. Rivas couldn’t honestly say he’d ever had a shore leave this nice. Two days with O’mara by his side and in his arms, neither of them really taking the time to get dressed each day, access to any libation they could dream up, nothing but time to spend with each other…it was like a dream that could make one not get out of bed when the alarm went off. O’mara sighed, nuzzling against Rivas’ chest, her talons dragging through the fur of his neck. For a day and a half, she had been talking almost constantly. Rivas had enjoyed hearing about the conference, seeing how giddy O’mara was about the success of her presentations and the positive reception her concepts had received. Seeing her so happy, so full of energy, it made Rivas smile. The fact that someone so bright and vivacious as her would ever love a lunkhead like him always baffled him, but he wasn’t about to complain. He flinched as O’mara traced one of his scars. It was an old one, one he couldn’t remember the story behind. For all he knew it was the mark from his appendectomy, but it was hard to tell what was medical procedures and what was battle damage these days. O’mara picked her head up off his chest, her beak almost touching his nose. “Your scars still bug you when I touch them?” she asked. Rivas shrugged, eyes still closed as he took a sip of brandy. “Call it instinct.” he muttered, sighing and relaxing again. “Most of the time it’s like an itch, one that can’t be scratched. But…I actually like it when you touch them. It feels different…like you’re reading a book…understanding me.” “Very poetic.” O’mara thrummed, rubbing her thumb softly over the scars on his face. “I don’t need to read you to know these ones.” She took his free hand as she rolled onto her side and pressed his hand up under the feathers on her stomach. “You can read me, if you want?” “Laceration of the frontal abdominal wall, caused by an eight-inch-long piece of durasteel from the Science console’s probe control panel.” Rivas muttered, reciting what he had read in the incident reports as his fingers took in the feel of the scar beneath O’mara’s feathers. “Guess that’s how the ship initiates all of us, huh?” “She’s a bitch,” O’mara said, “but she’s our bitch and we love her, even when she bites.” Rivas opened his eyes, eyebrows raised, a startled smile on his face. “Did you just say bitch?” O’mara blushed, quickly burying her face in his neck. “No?” she giggled. Before either of them could do anything, the computer began beeping. Rivas growled. O’mara sighed and kept to the side of the bunk as Rivas pulled himself to his feet. The computer was flashing a warning on the sensor array. He frowned at it. This sector was mostly Class D and F planets drifting between unstable stars and gas giants that had vicious gravity wells. There were no bases, no mines, no research stations, just a quiet hole in the galaxy where the planets danced. With it being so empty, it was a prime hiding spot for brigands and runaways. There were also a lot of dead vessels and trash clusters that were ejected into this sector. Those were prone to triggering sensors. Rivas ran through the readout, brow furrowed. The sensor had pinged what it thought was a live vessel, but now it was saying that it was just a metallic asteroid. Rivas set his glass down, sitting in the pilot’s seat and bringing up the full readout. O’mara leaned against the back of the seat, reading over his shoulder. A single feather landed on Rivas’ shoulder. He glanced up at O’mara. “Nervous?” “They say there’s a lot of pirates out here.” she muttered. “Are we sure that was an asteroid out there?” “That’s what I’m checking.” Rivas said. “How far is the border?” “Just a few lightyears off starboard.” Rivas replied, still going over the readout, trying to pick out any anomalies that would give him definitive answers. “But even if we bump into Urthean ships, they’ll be gas sniffers siphoning hydrogen or vaporized minerals from one of the giants. We could also encounter scrap barges looking for ghost ships. Either of them’ll just glare at us as we go by.” O’mara opened her mouth to reply and the shuttle bucked forward, nearly throwing her over the seat and leaving Rivas draped over the controls. Shaking his head, Rivas clambered back into the seat, the emergency restraints grabbing him almost immediately. O’mara scrambled into the copilot seat, pulling up the auxiliary systems on her side as Rivas regained manual control. The ship rocked forward again just as the restraints secured O’mara in her seat. Rivas threw the ship out of warp and on high impulse he dove. He caught just a glimpse of a bright yellow compression beam passing over where the shuttle had been a moment before. In the corner of his eye, he could see O’mara deftly setting up scans, raising shields, and diverting power away from nonessential systems. He couldn’t help but smile. She would have made an excellent Ops officer. Flipping the shuttle over, twirling past a huge asteroid, Rivas let out a steady breath, his tongue pressed to the back of his sharp teeth. It had been ages since he flew anything this small. The handling was smooth, everything tight and responsive like a fighter craft. It made his fur stand on end. His blood started pumping hotter. The asteroid split in half as a compression beam crashed into it, but the shuttle was already out of the way. There was plenty of debris to play hide-and-seek with until they knew who was taking potshots at them. “Urthean Scutta, unknown serial number and hull mark,” O’mara reported. “She’s not on our registers. Could be a newer ship…or one that hasn’t come over the border before.” “We have weapons on this tub?” “We have one pod of M.I.T.E. [Mini-Ionic Torpedo-Mounted Explosives] torpedoes and a single wide band phaser on the nose.” O’mara said, already diverting power to the weapon modules. “You’d make a great Ops or Tac officer, you know that?” Rivas smirked as he wove around a small debris cloud. O’mara winked at him. “Weapons online. Fire when ready.” Rivas whipped the shuttle around and let a volley of torpedoes out. The Urthean ship passed right over them. The torpedoes struck the hull just before the larger vessel vanished from view again. “Minimal damage,” O’mara reported, then frowned. “They’re hailing us.” “Put them through,” said Rivas as he looked for his next piece of cover. “Confederation vessel, this is the captain of the Centurion.” a harsh voice said over the com. “Surrender your vessel or be destroyed! How do you respond?” “Bite me,” O’mara snapped into the com, then added, “bitch!” Rivas snorted, trying hard not to laugh as O’mara closed the channel. “We are piloting a marked Confederation vessel, Commander.” O’mara’s eyes went wide. “Oh! Um…oops?” “Don’t worry about it,” Rivas said as O’mara molted a few feathers. “We just need—” There was a boom that shook the entire shuttle. The vessel spiraled out of control as Rivas snarled, his bones aching from the concussion of the hit. O’mara shook her head, blinking furiously, trying to focus as the lights flickered. “Critical damage to port nacelle,” she reported. “We’re venting plasma, no antimatter yet…there’s a seized plasma junction valve. Not sure if we can jump to warp now.” “That’s not good news,” Rivas said, pulling the shuttle up hard. The Scutta suddenly came into view, upside down. The shuttle shot over the top of the much larger vessel, slipping between its hulking nacelles as it peppered the top of the Urthean vessel with a second volley of torpedoes. “Only one volley of those left,” O’mara noted as she worked to reroute systems away from the damaged nacelle. “Okay…that’s all we’re gonna get. Warp core is destabilized, but I can help the computer hold it together as we go. Punch it!” Rivas threw the throttle up. The entire vessel shook and shrieked as it lurched into warp space. “What the hell is that?!” Rivas yelled over the shuttle’s scream. “The core is unstable,” O’mara growled, eyes fixed on her readouts as she helped the computer hold the warp core in alignment. “I’m doing what I can…but she isn’t going to hold together for long. Looks like the mixer is going bad. I’m having to manually feed it data. We’ll have an antimatter imbalance soon. I…I can’t keep it going for more than a couple minutes! I’m not Fara!” “All good, all good, we just need a few minutes.” Rivas said, teeth chattering just a little as he tried to think. “Keep calm. We’re alright for now.” He glanced at his console. “We aren’t gonna get far at warp 4.7 with those guys behind us. Is there a planet nearby where we can ditch?” “Standby,” O’mara said, pulling up the planetary register. “No…no…uh…n-n-no…there! Uncolonized Class M, about two minutes out at current speed! Oh god!” Rivas took one hand off the controls, reached over, and squeezed O’mara’s thigh. She gasped, feathers molting from her shoulders. “Breathe for me.” Rivas said, putting both hands back on the controls. “You’re doing great. Get the emergency beacon ready, set everything up for ditch, get the decoys ready to fire. Can you do that, Commander?” “Aye, Sir!” O’mara nodded, her talons flying over the controls. Rivas set the computer to guide itself to the planet in question. He frowned. This ball of rock hadn’t even been surveyed properly. All that showed in the register was a location, the designation “2243554-T-T-M” and a note that Confederation scans had initially missed this planet due to some sort of magnetic interference from nearby stars. They had heard about it from scrapper vessels passing through the area and the planet had been visually cataloged, as scans of the area were deemed unreliable. With the course set in, Rivas released his restraints and scrambled to the back of the shuttle. He pulled a tunic on, grabbed O’mara’s duffle from the compartment over the bunk and threw it onto the transporter pad. As he was pulling pants on, O’mara joined him. She grabbed her clothes as he stepped onto the pad at his side. The computer announced that they were entering transporter range of 2243554-T-T-M and it was ready to deploy decoys. “Activate!” Rivas barked. For just a few seconds the ship dropped out of warp and spit two pods in opposite directions—each of which was mimicking every possible signature the shuttle could give off—beamed the two passengers, the duffle, and an emergency crate down to the surface, and then started accelerating again. The ship limped back into warp. It was whining and shrieking, mourning the fact that O’mara’s talons were no longer cradling its shaky core. But, like any machine, it was bound by the unkind laws of mechanics to fulfill the will of its operators to the last possible measure. Warnings started blaring. The entire vessel began heating up as the core slipped out of alignment, overwhelmed by the volume of antimatter that had been dumped into the system by the damaged nacelle. Antimatter bled into the plasma exhaust conduit, which couldn’t properly ventilate, and with a final wail, the shuttle exploded. * * * The color green demanded attention from all sides as Rivas’ vision cleared. As he looked around, taking a deep breath, he felt the fur all across his body stand on end. All around him there was nothing but forest, dimly lit in mottled tones of green filtering through the canopy of the tall, spear-like trees around him. Rich scents of earth and stone, the musk of bark, the tang of wildflowers lurking somewhere in the midst of this savage landscape, all of it pressed against his senses, stirring something restless in him, like an animal that knew it was close to home. O’mara let out a startled little chirp and Rivas turned, reaching instinctively for a phaser that wasn’t on his hip. He found Michelle quickly pulling her clothing on, feathers molting from her head as her beak chattered. “It’s cold!” she gasped, wrapping her arms around her chest as she turned to Rivas. He frowned, looking around at the trees again. They were evergreens, tall and straight, sporting long needles growing in bushy clusters on gangly branches, with scaly bark the color of rust. Moss cankered one side of almost every tree. The rocks were overgrown with lichen. Plants with long, spindly fronds clustered together amid some of the trees while vines did an honest job of strangling smaller plants they could overtake. “We must have hit the temperate part of the planet,” he said, finally becoming aware of the dampness in the air as a breeze pushed up under his fur. “Ooh! Yeah…that’s got teeth! Here.” He took his tunic off and held it out to her. “Are you sure?” she asked, but one hand was already creeping towards the offered clothing. “Back home it’s winter right now,” Rivas explained as O’mara took the tunic. “Your body never really forgets your home, so I’ve got my winter coat on right now.” “Ooohhh! That’s why you’ve been so fluffy lately,” O’mara said, nodding before pulling the tunic on. “Makes sense. I was born on the coast, but it was the sunny kind of beach, so I’m not exactly made for this.” “Shame we didn’t get dropped in a tropical sector then,” Rivas noted, looking around now for the emergency supply crate and spotting O’mara’s duffle instead. “We could have camped on the beach, gone fishing, soaked up some sun, ordered imaginary garçons to get us fancy drinks with lots of ice.” “And you would have started shedding worse than I’m molting!” O’mara chuckled as she followed him over to her duffle. “This place is still nice, it’s just a little chilly is all…oh Don! You didn’t!” “What?” “We should have left that!” “And lose the shirt you got for Fara?” Rivas asked as he slung the duffle over his back with a grin. “Not a chance!” O’mara rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Fine! Odd…the crate isn’t right here…and we landed over there…the duffle was here. There must have been some interference as we came down. Let’s go find the crate. That’s where the important supplies are.” “Sounds good to me,” Rivas said. It took them a few minutes to find the crate in the midst of the trees. The entire time, Rivas found that he couldn’t relax. This place wasn’t just stirring up his body. His mind wouldn’t stop racing. Every smell, every sound, all of it was bombarding him, but there was something else, a lack that he couldn’t place his finger on until O’mara made a comment while unloading the crate. “It’s really quiet here,” she said idly as she stacked up the rations. Rivas glared around at the trees as he crouched next to the crate, a ration pack still in one hand. She was right. It was very quiet for a forest nearing twilight. There were very few bird calls, no sounds of movement other than the hiss and murmur of the trees when the occasional breeze would pass over them. “Don? What is it? You’re making the face.” “What face?” Rivas asked, trying to smile. “The ‘we’re all gonna die’ face,” O’mara clarified, setting down one of the emergency beacon components and sliding over to him. “What’s wrong?” “We’re stranded on an uncharted planet.” Rivas said with a slight sigh. “We have limited supplies, therefore limited time. There is a hostile ship in the area. We can’t just light up the beacon because they’ll get to us long before Starfleet does. And…something about this place…it…it….” “Feels like home?” Rivas finally looked into her eyes. “Yeah…a little bit. It’s spooky…how it feels, even smells, familiar, like I belong here.” “I’m sure your ancestors are excited you’re back in a habitat similar to theirs,” O’mara said, pulling Rivas close. “Nothing wrong with that. I mean…as long as you don’t turn into a savage or something.” Rivas chuckled. “It isn’t that. Something feels off about this place too. It is quiet, but the wrong kind of quiet. There should be sound out here…more birds or small fauna…something. But there’s nothing.” “So, you think that means danger?” “Danger stalks with quiet paws.” O’mara shivered. “Cut that out! Save the campfire stories for a time when we aren’t trying to survive a ditching!” “Sorry,” Rivas said, kissing her on the top of the head. “Let’s get everything kitted out and set the tent up for the night. It looks like we’ve got maybe 30 minutes of daylight left.” While Rivas got the tent set up, O’mara went about getting the crate converted. The rations and other gear from the kit would go into packs they could carry. The crate itself could then be rebuilt into an emergency beacon, water purifier, and small-scale synthesizer that was mainly designed to produce medical supplies. All of this ran on a small solar cell that folded in and out of one side of the crate. The angle of the sun was already too severe to allow the solar panel any power, so O’mara stowed the converted crate next to the tent. As she did so, she spotted a small spike of crystal sticking out of the ground. When she tugged on it, the little shard came free from the soil. Smiling, O’mara brushed the loam from the small stone, rolling it over on her palm so she could look at it more closely. It looked like quartz, but when she held it up to the light she gasped. As the last of the day passed through the little spike it bathed her in shifting colors. O’mara stared, transfixed, as she turned the spike in the light. Flashes of yellow and stabs of green danced on waves of blue as forests of red rose and fell from the ridges of the crystal. Vague shapes of mountains and rivers and strange beasts flickered in and out of view, mocking the mind, daring the viewer to make sense of them. When O’mara lowered the crystal, she was met with another surprise. The little spike was still dancing with color and emitted light. Realizing that she might be exposing herself to heavy isotopes, she quickly dropped the crystal. It bounced on the bed of needles on the ground and lay there, still glowing, its light dancing across the ground around it. O’mara called over her shoulder. “Don? Where’d the tricorder from the crate go?” Rivas appeared a few seconds later with the tricorder in hand. “What is it? Whoa! What’s that little thing? Is that dilithium?” “No,” O’mara said, taking the tricorder and scanning the small stone, “but it behaves like dilithium…maybe. I think it captured a bit of solar energy. I held it up to the sun so I could see what it looked like and now it’s glowing.” Both of them watched eagerly as the tricorder began giving a readout. The stone was a silicate, similar to quartz, but it had an unusual heavy metal content in it, running through it like fibers in a com cable. These filaments were made of an unknown amalgamation of minerals—and the tricorder seemed to be glitching the longer they scanned the stone. These “fibers” embedded in the crystal were giving off a very low power isotope that was being bent by the crystal it was passing through. “Radioactive decay triggered as a response to sunlight and modulated by crystalline structure?” Rivas whistled. “That’s different. Never heard of that before.” “Look at this,” O’mara said, moving the tricorder closer to the glowing stone. The tricorder began to flicker as pieces of the readout disappeared. As soon as she pulled the device back, everything stabilized again. “It can’t just be radiation. It has to be putting off something else as well.” “There was something in the register about how the Fleet didn’t scan here because of a magnetic problem,” Rivas noted, frowning. “If there’s a lot of this stuff here, could that have kept deep range scans from working?” “Maybe,” O’mara admitted. “Looks like the other emissions are some sort of microwaves…like a com relay dish’s transponder. There Are some isotopes too.” “Is that radiation going to be a problem?” Rivas asked, glaring at the stone. “No no…I hope not. I mean…it isn’t behaving like an isotope. That’s just what the tricorder called it. It’s…it’s almost like a radio wave, like a transmission, the kind we use for short range subspace communication.” “You held it up to the sun and it turned into a radio?” Rivas asked, causing O’mara to giggle. “Find me a bigger one and maybe we can make it play music.” “Maybe not music we’d understand,” O’mara said, “but it would be fascinating to see what sounds it is trying to make with the wavelengths it’s producing.” “Hang on…if it’s harmless….” Rivas mused, picking the stone up. He took it inside the tent and turned the small lamp off. Instantly the tent was filled with a vibrant storm of shifting colors. “There, now we just look like a pretty rock, should prying eyes pass over.” “The frequency seems to mess with scanners too,” O’mara noted, crawling inside and zipping the tent shut as Rivas balanced the little stone on the lamp at the peak of the tent’s roof. As she turned back to him, she shivered. “Still cold?” he asked. “We have to be on a m-mountain range or at high a-a-altitude.” O’mara said, her beak chattering around her words. “It-s-s-s s-s-so cold!” Rivas opened up both sleeping bags fully and connected them together using their fasteners. “Get in here and I’ll warm you up.” He grinned. “Just remember, you’ll be warmer if you’re wearing less.” O’mara giggled as she pulled off both tunics and her pants. She crawled into the slightly larger sleeping bag and curled into Rivas’ chest. He wound his arms around her, draping a leg over her hip to warm as much of her as he could. It was quiet for a while as they lay together in the dancing glow of the crystal, the sun finally setting outside. Rivas was already plotting. If deep space scans had been thrown off by a natural phenomenon on this planet, then there was a good chance that keeping close to a deposit of this glowing crystal would keep them safe from the Urthreans. That could be a blessing or a curse. They would have to be on the lookout for these crystals. If they found one big enough, perhaps they would carry it with them, discarding it only when they were ready to send out the call for help. They would, he realized, need to move once it was light again. As soon as the Urthean’s caught onto their deception, they’d be scanning this planet looking for transporter echoes. With those echoes, they’d be able to quickly spot where the shuttle had dropped its cargo. Even staying there for the night was a risk. The crate had two phasers and three extra charge packs for both, but that wouldn’t be enough to hold off a squad of Urthean Drop Troops. The Urthean’s were made for war in a very literal sense, if Confederation intel about their cloning programs was correct. To say that their ground game was better than the Confederation’s was an understatement. Ground itself pressed to the front of Rivas’ musings. This planet was so remote it hadn’t even been properly surveyed after it rebuffed the long-range scans. The registry of planetary surface maps stored in the crate’s tiny computer was utterly useless. They would be navigating this world blind. He wasn’t even sure where the cardinal directions were. They could follow the sun, but who knew which way that was going. As the rainbows from the crystal played out on his eyelids, Rivas realized that there could be an error in the registry regarding this planet. There had to be better records of this world somewhere. Someone must have tried to survey this planet from orbit. If they were following the sunlight side of the planet, and if there were large, exposed faces of this weird radio crystal—Rivas nodded gently as he decided he would call them Radio Crystals from now on—then they could easily block or possibly damage scanners. That would leave dark side surveys from orbit, visual surveys on the daylight side, and ground teams armed with tricorders for everything else. It was an extensive process. Even imagining it seemed daunting. But why had no one dropped a survey team here? Or, at least, where were the records of such an expedition? Someone should have at least dropped mineral probes because, if they were indeed on temperate mountains and if the planet’s “T-T” designation—meaning “Temperate-Tropical”—was accurate, that meant the planet had multiple biomes. That kind of diversity required dramatic and diverse geological activity over long periods of time. It was likely that this was a resource heavy planet. The tricorder scan indicated that this planet had 1.29 G, so it likely had a very solid core. There were a lot of people out there that saw nothing wrong with extracting heavy metals from planet cores if they could do it without getting caught. Surely there had to be renegade prospectors somewhere on this planet? But, if there were renegades, why were the radio crystals unknown to Starfleet? Someone would have at least brought them back as an oddity. They would have been popular in black markets, or even in open markets as cute, harmless charms that glowed after being exposed to sunlight. A fleeting thought about making Radio Crystal jewelry made Rivas smile to himself before his mind wandered back into more practical ponderings. Rivas glared at the ceiling of the tent. What if the Radio Crystals were a secret someone already knew about? Why keep a glowing crystal secret? All it did was emit harmless microwaves, an inert isotope, and some wide spectrum light. At best, it could provide some interesting new concepts for energy weapons, or energy storage and conversion in shipboard systems. At a minimum it could make a clean light source for colonizers. All of this was just speculation, but it sounded good in Rivas’ head. O’mara stirred in his arms, causing him to flinch. He had become so engulfed in his thoughts that he had almost forgotten where he was. When he refocused on her in the dancing light, he found that O’mara had already drifted off. As he watched her sleep, she started snoring, one hand clenching reflexively on the thick fur at the back of his neck, her beak twitching a little as though she were trying to mutter but couldn’t. “I’ll get us out of here,” Rivas whispered, pressing his forehead to hers. “I promise.” * * * The Ready Room chime dinged. Harry lifted his eyes to the door and called out, “Come in.” Jakar stalked into the room. “Sir, we have a problem.” Harry sat up, pushing his reports away and straightening his uniform. This small, ritualistic approach at forcing calm was only mildly effective. “What is it?” he asked. “I’ve been keeping track of subspace transmissions from the Durden,” Jakar explained. “The Durden just missed its hourly ping. I tried manual contact and got nothing, so I had coms try to raise the Durden and we got nothing back. Given the proximity of their route to the border, I am not willing to assume less than the worst.” Harry was instantly on his feet, motioning Jakar to follow him as he strode towards the door. “You think Rivas and O’mara got blasted by a rogue ship?” “I would hope not, but it is likely,” Jakar replied as the two entered the bridge. “It could also be a mechanical failure onboard the shuttle as well.” “That is not a risk we’re going to take,” Harry snarled. Jakar went to his station and he stopped behind Lt. Perry. “Perry, open a priority channel to Starbase 118.” “Aye, sir.” Lt. Perry replied. “Commander, Starbase is responding.” “On screen.” Harry ordered turning to face the viewer The Admiral appeared on the screen. She was a stern looking female Cabarran who seemed perturbed that a lone starship captain was disrupting the relative quiet of her sector with a priority call. “This is Admiral Hayase. How may I assist you, Captain Martinez?” “Admiral,” Harry began, “I appear to have two crew members and a shuttle missing. I was wondering if your facilities had detected anything? They seem to have disappeared.” “What shuttle are we looking for, Captain?” “The Durden,” Harry replied. “Commander Rivas and Lt. Commander O’mara were supposed to have been on board. We’ll send you the hull marks.” “One moment if you please, Captain.” The channel switched to a logo of the Confederation. Harry paced slowly as he waited. When the Admiral reappeared on screen a few minutes later he snapped to a stop, holding his breath. “Captain, I had our boys on long range sensors do a search, but all they found was the shuttle's warp trail and it is on a bearing and heading consistent with the flight plan filed before they disembarked.” Damn! Harry thought. If for some reason they’d taken another route that would have put his mind slightly more at ease. “Very well. Could you send the flight plan to us? We can check their trajectory from our end.” “Of course, Captain,” the Admiral nodded. “Is there anything else?” “No, sir. Thank you, sir.” Harry replied. “Good luck, Captain.” Admiral Hayasse said. “Starbase 118 out.” “Telemetry received, checking it now.” Ensign Rosa announced as her console chimed at her. Harry loomed behind her, arms folded, one foot tapping gently on the deck plating. “That doesn’t help.” Ensign Rosa said without breaking her concentration, before adding, “with all due respect, sir.” “Just do your job, Ensign,” Harry snapped, but he did press his foot to the floor to keep it still. After a pause that felt like an eternity, Ensign Rosa nodded. “The flight path of the Durden is consistent with what Commander Rivas had initially filed with us. We’d have to get within range of the trail to track it properly, but according to this they were passing through a rather sparse part of the quadrant. There is one inhabited world in the area…2243554-T-T-M…a class M planet that looks like it has not been properly logged into the system,” she reported. “We’d have to physically be there and investigate if you want more.” “How long until those freighters are unloaded?” Harry demanded. “They’re offloaded, but they are restocking for their next run.” Lieutenant Perry reported. “They’re going to be heading deep into Confederation space from here, so we don’t have orders to escort them once they’re underway.” “That’s what I like to hear,” Harry said. “When will they be underway?” “Captain Wright estimates that they’ll be underway within the hour,” Perry replied. “Call them and tell them they have 20 minutes and then we’re going to leave them here,” Harry said before turning to Ensign Kyle at the helm. “As soon as we can start moving, set a course straight for the last known position of the shuttle, maximum warp.” “Aye, sir!” Ensign Kyle nodded as he started plotting the course. “Run full diagnostics on weapons and shields,” Harry ordered Ensign Rosa as he settled into the captain’s chair. “If something is waiting for us out there, we’ll tear it apart.” “Yes, sir,” Rosa replied as she set to work. Harry drummed his fingers on the chair’s arm, glaring at the chronometer on the wall. He should have known better. Letting O’mara go to the symposium in the first place had left a bitter taste in his mouth as it was. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. It was supposed to be a good thing for O’mara. But no, Harry thought, clenching his fists, we can’t have nice things! Sending Rivas to retrieve O’mara with a shuttle? That was just plain sloppy. If anything happened to them, he would be down two officers…down two more friends. “Not again…not so soon! Can’t those damn freighters just get going already?” he growled into his hand, hoping the comment would go unnoticed by anyone but himself. * * * Rivas groaned. His back was stiff, both legs ached. Everything felt like it was made of wood as he rolled onto his back and slowly, haltingly, sat up. The servos in the carapace trilled away as he moved. He growled, licking his lips, rolling his shoulders, trying to get his body to stop fighting back. It had been a while since he had woken up this stiff. As the stiffness wore off, something new set in. Rivas scratched at his arms, then his legs, then his chest, then every other spot on his body he could reach. The itch just kept moving, fleeing his fingers to settle on some new spot. Grumbling, he chased after the itch as it ran across his back and down his tail. The carapace made it difficult to twist around to get to his tail. He didn’t hear the tent flap open as he twisted on the floor, snarling and trying to get to his tail. “If I make a comment about chasing your tail, is it racist?” O’mara asked, grinning guiltily as Rivas spun to a stop, staring up at her as though she had caught him doing something naughty. “I think they call that speciesism, but I could be wrong,” he admitted, still holding his tail firmly in both hands. “I had an itch.” O’mara chuckled as she knelt next to him, gently taking his tail. She ran her talons through the fur, quickly eliminating the itch. Rivas sighed contentedly as she ran her hands up his back as well. “The sun is just about to come up,” O’mara said softly, rubbing his shoulders. “We have to move, right? I can pack everything up if you want to take your time. I can only imagine how brutal sleeping on the ground was for you.” Rivas opened his mouth to respond, but he stopped. Waking up stiff was nothing new. The itch was new, but that wasn’t what suddenly had his attention. Normally he had limited range of motion for several minutes when he woke up. Today, he had immediately started chasing his own tail and he didn’t feel the worse for it. Crawling out of the tent and standing didn’t hurt. Rivas twisted, stretching his back, rolling his shoulders, feeling more limber than he had in weeks. The air was thick, heavy with the scent of trees and foliage. It was damp, cool, invigorating. His ears twitched at the sounds around him, at the drip of dew falling from the trees, the rustle of something small moving through the undergrowth, a bird taking wing with a sharp cry. His heart started beating a little harder as he closed his eyes, lifting his nose to the sky and taking in as much of that glorious morning as he could. He turned back and started helping O’mara pack up the crate and tent, noticing that she was still wearing both tunics. Even now, at the coolest part of the day, Rivas could barely feel the chill. As they worked, O’mara recovered the little crystal and set it on a stone that was basking in the newly risen sun. Occasionally, Rivas would glance at the little spike. In the sunlight, it was starting to glow. By the time they had packed completely and were ready to move, the crystal was throwing little rainbows all over the stone beneath it. “Hey, are you usually that itchy in the morning?” O’mara asked as she strapped the converted crate to the pack that had come with the emergency crate. “Not usually,” Rivas admitted, picking up the crystal. “Why?” “I’ve got an itch too,” O’mara said, then giggled as Rivas smirked at her. “Not that kind of itch! It’s here.” She lifted her double tunics, pulling up her feathers to expose her stomach scar. At least, that was what should have been there. Rivas stared in shock at the faint, nearly invisible, remnant of the scar. O’mara craned her head down so she could see why he looked so startled and let out a screech as feathers fell from her head. Before either of them could say anything, a small bulge appeared near the left edge of the scar. It split the skin and something popped out, falling to the ground with a few drops of blood. Rivas just stared, stunned as O’mara lowered the tunics and crouched down to examine the odd little ball that had popped out of her. She pulled the tricorder out of the pack and scanned it. “It’s a cyst,” she announced, frowning at the tricorder. “There is a piece of touchscreen in it…probably from my console…must be something Okan missed.” “Do cysts just…pop out like that?” “No…no they do not,” O’mara said, grabbing her duffle and opening it up. “I think…I think that crystal might do more than emit radio waves. There’s a couple of studies out there speculating on the curative properties of things like radiation and microwaves, depending on a lot of factors…but I’ve never heard of a successful application. If that crystal is transmitting an unrecognized frequency….” Rivas raised an eyebrow. “Healing crystals? Really?” “Don’t give me that look!” O’mara chirped. “This isn’t some pseudoscience nonsense! My body just pushed a cyst out! The only difference is that we just spent several hours with the crystal in the tent. Hold on.” She pulled Rivas close, gripping his face, turning it from side to side. “My god…Don…your scars! They’re fading!” “What?” Rivas pulled his head from her hands and started examining his torso. The scars on his chest had faded, just like the one on O’mara. “Oh…that’s…that’s different. What does that mean?” “Not sure yet,” O’mara admitted as she pulled a small container out of her duffle. “We’ll have to work on it later though. Do you think if we carry that crystal with us, we’ll be harder to scan?” “This one might be too small for that,” Rivas admitted, watching O’mara deposit her cyst in the container and then put the container back in her duffle. “If we had a stone the size of my fist that might do it, but I know the tricorder is going to struggle to find them, since all they do is scramble signals.” “About that,” O’mara said, picking up her duffle as she stood, “I did some recon while you were still asleep. We’re on a mountain. Downhill from us in any direction we’ll hit a body of water. That being said, there’s geothermal activity east of here. Crystals might grow better there and I might want to take a dip in a hot spring.” “This isn’t shore leave,” Rivas noted. He grunted, servos humming, as he slung the emergency pack onto his back. “I know,” O’mara sighed, “but based on how things look, the way the plants are, this is either spring or fall. These mountains are just going to stay cold and the valleys are going to be about the same, maybe even a little worse. I know you can’t feel the cold, but I can. I don’t want to go through that kind of cold again…please?” Rivas sighed. He adjusted the straps on the pack, weighing the options. Geothermal activity was not always the safest option. The ground itself could try to kill you, swallowing you whole or exploding randomly or dowsing you in acid. Not only that, food options could be limited. He still hadn’t seen any signs of large game. Hunting would be difficult, if not impossible. They would have to rely on flora for food once those rations were gone. They would also need to find a supply of water, just in case the emergency crate failed or broke down. “It isn’t ideal,” he finally muttered, “but if you think that’s our best bet, we’ll go.” O’mara nodded. “I think that’s our best bet.” “Okay…let’s get moving then.” Rivas took her hand, smiling as they turned in the direction O’mara had indicated. “Keep your eyes open as we go. We have rations, but we’ll need to figure out what we can and can’t eat around here, just in case.” “I’ll keep the tricorder on my belt,” O’mara said brightly, pulling it off the pack and tethering it to her side. “If we find something that looks edible, we can check it.” “This might not be shore leave, but we can at least have fun, right?” Rivas looked around to try and find something to serve as a distraction. “So, if no one lives here, that means everything we’re seeing doesn’t have a name, right? What should we call these?” “What?” O’mara giggled as she took his hand again, watching him point to a nearby tree. “Oh! That’s a tree.” Rivas laughed, shaking his head. “But what should we call it?” “Hmm…how about the Rivas Spruce?” “That’s terrible,” Rivas sighed as they walked. “That’s what it is now. I’ve named it!” O’mara chirped triumphantly. “That particular evergreen from this planet is now the Rivas Spruce, named for my big, strong, tall man. Deal with it.” She bounced up and gave him a little peck on the cheek as they started down the slope. The sun struggled to punch through the canopy of the forest as they walked. They took turns naming things as they went. O’mara excelled at this, at least that’s what Rivas told her. She had spent years cataloging things and it showed. If he pointed at something she could come up with a name for it on the spot. Her names were even clever, usually incorporating scientific facts about the things they were looking at. Once in a while they would pause so O’mara could scan something for its edible potential. They came across a lot of things that were budding or flowering, but there wasn’t a lot that was bearing fruit. She did find that the Rivas Spruce needles were sprouting, producing fresh tips that were high in vitamin C and she speculated that they would make a good tea. The terrain didn’t change a lot as they continued downhill. Around midday—which was five hours after sunrise—the trees changed. Conifers covered in tiny buds or newly sprung leaves started popping up between the evergreens, the undergrowth got taller, more shrub-like. Everything around them that O’mara scanned was surprisingly loaded with vitamin C. “We could call the whole planet The Lemon,” O’mara suggested as she scanned yet another shrub that had high levels of vitamin C as well as a surprising amount of sucrose. “Maybe Orange World?” “We’ll name the stuff, not the world.” Rivas chuckled, his eyes focused further down the ridge they had been following. “I just had a thought. If it’s spring, then a lot of critters could still be in hibernation, right? Like bears?” O’mara shrugged. “Could be. Maybe this world hasn’t evolved anything large yet? But…to be fair…the rocks here are old, so are the plants. This world should have made something big by now. Lots of rodents on the scans…some small birds. There’s a ton of bugs too, all burrowing though. Looks like I’m not the only one that doesn’t care for the cold. Maybe you’re right? If there are big things, they might be asleep. Oooh! I’ll call this the Woody Citrine!” “Woody Citrine? Isn’t citrine a stone?” Rivas yelped when he turned around. O’mara had a leaf from the plant she had been scanning in her beak. “Don’t eat that!” She stared innocently at him as she chewed. “But they taste like lemon drops!” Rivas sighed, trying his best to contain his laugh. “Is this what a science expedition looks like?” “You should see what the geo survey guys do,” O’mara said, picking a leaf and holding it out to Rivas. “They lick rocks.” “Pass,” Rivas smiled, closing her fingers over it. “We need to keep moving.” They walked through the changing forest, still naming things, encountering more small animals now and getting more sunlight as they progressed. Cresting a ridge gave them a clear view down into a basin. Rivas’ limited knowledge of geology kicked in for a moment. “Caldera” wasn’t a word he had used since he was in the Academy in a planet surveying class, but that was what he was looking at now. The entire caldera showed the scars being geothermally active. Trees grew in patches, some of them dead, others alive and vibrant. Colorful pools of steaming water would occasionally erupt, blasting steam and scalding water hundreds of feet into the air. Yellows and reds and deep browns stained every exposed surface they could see. O’mara was on the verge of saying something when a roar shook both of them all the way through to their boots. Without thinking, Rivas grabbed O’mara and pulled her into a big Woody Citrine. Urthean Scuttas were nimble warships, but once they were in atmosphere, they were surprisingly clunky. This one seemed to be on the verge of crashing as it wobbled overhead, approaching from the direction they had come from. Taking a second look into the caldera, Rivas felt his fur stand on end. The colors he had noted moments ago were shifting, dancing all across the caldera. Some of what he thought were geysers were not moving. They were building-sized pillars of Radio Crystal. “They’re in trouble,” Rivas muttered, eyes flicking back to the Scutta. As if his words were a command, the Scutta dropped, freefalling 200 feet before its engines bellowed, pulling it desperately up. There was a high screeching as the ship swung wildly to one side, then back the other way. The Scutta dropped again as it lurched to port, listing badly toward the west side of the caldera, passing right over Rivas and O’mara. There were scorch marks on the hull—the kind left behind by M.I.T.E. torpedoes. At such close range, Rivas could see fractures opening in the hull plating. Their integrity field had collapsed. The starboard nacelle flashed, exhausting a cloud of smoke and plasma as it imploded on itself. O’mara gasped. “Antimatter breach!” Rivas held his breath. If antimatter touched the surface of the planet, the entire globe could explode, implode, burst into flames, or undergo any number of unpleasant fates. It all hinged on how much antimatter was left when it came down. As the Scutta spiraled down towards the north slope of the caldera, four separate objects came flying out of the ship. Scuttas had four small antimatter cores instead of a single large core. It was a risky design, but it was an efficient set up that had served the Urthean fleet well. All four of those cores were now tumbling to the ground. The cores, as far as Starfleet intelligence knew, were heavily armored. Even if they hit the ground, they shouldn’t rupture. It was safer than leaving them in the ship where they would be connected to their plasma systems. With a nearly feral scream, the Scutta heaved itself heavenward one last time, lifting it above the tree line of the peak that formed the north wall of the caldera. The Scutta smashed into the unyielding granite slope, destroying the remaining nacelle and caving in the entire portside of the ship. Fire and smoke boiled out of the hull as all of it teetered, presumably caught on a ledge, then tilted slowly down. The wreck slid down the stone face of the mountain, gathering speed as it careened towards the forest and the caldera. Rocks began to follow the dead ship, battering against it, exploding against its armor, showering it with dust and gravel as it reached the trees. In a cloud of stone, dirt, and fragments of timber, the Scutta was launched end over end, clearing a large section of the forest before tumbling into the caldera. The battered carcass slammed into a spire of Radio Crystal, impaling itself on the spire, finally coming to a stop as boulders the size of shuttles continued to tear through the forest and into the caldera. Both of them were quiet as they gaped at the wreckage. O’mara flinched as the cores crashed into the caldera one at a time, two falling into pools and sinking, one shattering a spire of Radio Crystal as it came down, the last one disappearing into the woods just a hundred yards below where they were hiding. “Do…do you th-think anyone….” O’mara shuddered, unable to finish her question as she stared at the impaled Scutta. Rivas shook his head. “Not after a crash like that. The captain did the right thing though. Once they started bleeding antimatter he jettisoned the cores. The crew though…if they’d gotten stuck on the mountain, maybe someone could have survived. That tumble though…that killed anyone left.” “Should we g-go check?” Rivas tore his eyes off the crash and looked at O’mara. Her eyes were fixed on the wreck. She was shaking, tears dripping off her feathers, her beak quivering. “If they are alive, they’ll start shooting the moment they see us,” Rivas said, rubbing her back. “No one survived, I guarantee…not after all that. But…” Rivas glared at the wreck. “Throwing the cores to make sure they don’t damage the planet? Never thought I’d see a Urthean do something that noble.” “Could we hook up to one of those jettisoned cores to power our beacon? Maybe then we could punch through the Radio Crystal interference?” “You noticed the big ones too,” said Rivas with a slight nod as he eyed the spire the Scutta was impaled on. “That’s not a bad idea, but we’d need their beacon. Ours isn’t designed to take a full core’s worth of power like that. If we use their beacon, we’d have to reprogram it so it doesn’t bring in their ships. We’ll head for the south rim of the caldera. You get your hot springs, we can use the ridgeline of the caldera as a high point to set up our beacon, and we’ll be far enough away from the wreckage, just in case someone survives.” “Or if the Radio Crystal spire revives someone?” Rivas felt the blood drain from his face. Overnight exposure to a small spike of Radio Crystal in their tent had erased scars and pulled a cyst. A starship-sized chunk of the stuff in full sunlight? Was that enough to save someone from a mortal wound? “Let’s move,” Rivas said, standing and pulling O’mara to her feet. “The quicker we get off this rock, the better.” “How did you know this place is a caldera?” O’mara asked. Rivas chuckled. “I had to take a geo survey class at the Academy.” “I declare this place Scutta Buster Caldera,” said O’mara as they moved along the ridge towards the south. “I like it,” Rivas grinned as they moved. * * * The sun was angling towards the horizon by the time they reached the southern ridge of the caldera. All afternoon they had been traversing terrain that was surprisingly easy going. Trees and shrubs in this area were spaced further apart. Everything here was a little shorter too, more windswept, making it easier to navigate. The diminished vegetation allowed Rivas to keep peeking over his shoulder at the Scutta’s wreckage. By the end of the day, however, he was convinced nothing was going to happen. A few yards from where they began to establish camp for the night, O’mara found a small pool. It was only about six feet across, but after a brief shelf it dove down at least 15 feet to a gravel bottom. The water was crystal clear and warm to the touch. Despite the heat there was a swarm of small, brightly colored fish cruising around the pool. It was a textbook example of a hot spring, complete with a small rivulet escaping from the downslope side and trickling away to join larger pools deeper in the caldera. Scans showed no presence of carbon monoxide or any other off-gassing that could prove dangerous. “This is going to feel so good!” O’mara sighed as she pulled her tunic off. Rivas just grunted. His attention was on the tent. Once the tent was set up, Rivas checked the emergency beacon. It was still showing massive interference, even on this ridge. The furthest Radio Crystal spire had to be at least a mile away. Either the crystals put out more interference than he had initially anticipated or there was a big one buried right beneath them. Whatever the case, the charge the solar battery had managed to build up today would be wasted on an attempted broadcast. With a little growl, he powered the beacon down. Glaring down into the caldera, Rivas paused. Shadows crept over the caldera, cast by the brow of the ridge he found himself crouched on. As the darkness deepened, Rivas felt his jaw going slack. Crystal after crystal seemed to ignite as the shadows touched them. Some were mere pinpoints in the growing well of gloom. Others were blazing pillars of multicolored light that seemed to dare the darkness to swallow them. The edge of the shadow swallowed up the destroyed Scutta and the spire on which the ship rested on flushed with light, but it was different. The spire burned almost pure white, a sharp departure from the soft, scattered colors of the crystals around it. He turned to see if O’mara had spotted the difference and was met with a sight nearly as majestic as the caldera. O’mara was standing, hip deep in the water, on the shelf of the pool. All of her clothing was resting in a crumpled pile on the rocks nearby. She was testing the water with her hands as she crouched, submerging herself up to her shoulders with a sigh. Teeth clenched, Rivas glared back towards the Scutta. He knew what he wanted to do, but he was no longer convinced the Scutta’s crew wasn’t a threat. Between O’mara’s question about survivors and the Radio Crystal’s abnormal color, Rivas couldn’t shake a sense of danger. The gentle sound of water being disturbed pulled his eyes back. O’mara smiled at him as she drifted in the deep end of the pool, treading the water lightly. “You know…there’s more than enough room in here for two.” she cooed. Praying that he would not regret his decision later, Rivas turned his back on the Scutta. He was a soldier. He knew what the body could handle. Even with the best harnesses, a stabilized anchor, and the best cushions to pad the chair, no one could have survived that crash. It simply wasn’t possible. Perhaps there were magic crystals on this planet. They were surrounded by unknown plants and animals. Yet, so far, nothing bad had happened. For just one evening, he decided as he approached the pool, he could afford to relax. This wasn’t exactly the vacation he had imagined, but he also wasn’t about to complain. It was several hours later, as both of them slept, that Rivas was torn back to consciousness by a sound. At first, he was sure O’mara was having a nightmare. The cry that pierced the dark sounded like the screams her memories-turned-dreams could rip from her. But O’mara was also sitting bolt upright, eyes wide, shaking as feathers drifted from her head in the glimmer of the little Radio Crystal hanging from the tent’s ceiling. “What was that?” O’mara squeaked. Rivas checked to make sure his phaser was next to him before he answered. “I don’t—” The cry came again and both of them froze. Each of them was beset with images of pain, of death, of torment as the echoes of the scream faded away. Rivas was certain he looked comical with all of his fur on end, but his blood had gone so cold he couldn’t muster the energy to make a comment. “Should we hide the c-c-crystal?” O’mara asked. “No,” Rivas whispered back. “It’s a natural light source around here. If nothing else we just look like a big lump of crystal. That stupid little rock just keeps getting more and more useful.” “What do you think that s-s-sound is?” “Aren’t you the ecology expert here?” O’mara swallowed. “I mean…sort of? Ecology and…and zoology aren’t quite the s-s-same. I couldn’t tell you the first thing about that sound. It…it sounds like someone being—” Another scream vandalized the night and O’mara let out a startled gasp as she clung to Rivas. “Like someone is being tortured to death,” Rivas said, venturing a guess at what O’mara had been about to say. “I don’t like it. Too many unknowns out here. For all we know, that’s a monster out there…a real one. But we can’t both be wiped out when the sun comes up. Try to go back to sleep. I’ll keep watch for now. I’ll wake you in a couple hours so we can both at least try to get a little rest.” O’mara nodded, sending a cloud of feathers into the air as she curled up next to Rivas, who remained sitting upright. He picked up his phaser and did a quick field strip on it as another scream rolled through the caldera. His heart was beating hard against his ribs as O’mara shuddered next to him. He had no way of knowing what was out there. Insects could make sounds louder than that, so there wasn’t a way to judge this possible threat just by the power of the sound it was making. For all he knew, it was a mating cry, or even just some sort of benign noise meant to spook predators. After stripping, checking, and reassembling the phaser, Rivas fixed his eyes on the tent flap. The little shelter was robust, but it wasn’t a fortress. While it was supposed to stand up to the elements, if something came at it with claws or horns or fangs, there would be nothing it could do to protect them. Thousands of scenarios were swarming Rivas as there was yet another scream. He began counting, trying to keep a rough idea of how long it had been between screams up to that point. He repeated this process several times over the next hour, growing more frustrated the longer he listened. There was no pattern. The screams, however, didn’t seem to be moving. It was difficult to locate the sound as it bounced around the caldera, but Rivas was certain it was coming from somewhere in the direction of the wreckage. Each time it split the night, it echoed in a similar pattern. At least the monster making those noises wasn’t coming closer. Mere minutes after the Radio Crystal began to fade, the world outside began to turn gray. Dawn was plastering the world in pasty tones as a thought hit Rivas. There were at least four distinct tones he had been able to pick out in all the screaming. It was perfectly possible he had been listening to scavengers all night. There was a ship on the other side of the caldera that had at least two dozen fresh corpses on it and more than enough holes to grant easy access. If there were carrion eaters in these mountains, they would certainly be arguing over the prize that had crashed into their territory. Fatigue gripped Rivas by the spine and he felt his head drop. Silently he chastised himself. He really had intended to wake O’mara at some point to take watch. Instead, he had sat for hours, staring, body tensed, waiting for an attack that never came. With all the caution his nearly numb limbs could manage, Rivas opened the tent flap. None of the nightmares he had pictured were waiting for him. Instead, he found the caldera shrouded in little patches of mist. The pool nearby was steaming gently in the predawn light. All around now he could hear the chirp of insects and the rustle of small creatures getting their day started. There was no evidence of anything monstrous. At that point, two hours had passed since the last scream, leading Rivas to slip out of the tent and look around, phaser in hand, eyes wide in an attempt to force himself into alertness. His growling stomach and the chill of the morning air was enough to bring him back to an alert state, despite his fatigue. They would need to start supplementing their rations soon if they wanted to avoid malnourishment. Assured no monsters were afoot, Rivas quickly began digging into the survival kit and found the thermal jacket, gloves, multitool and fishing line. He checked the tricorder, keeping a wary eye on the parameter of the campsite, keeping his phaser at the ready. He recalled seeing the spring did have a tributary that ran down the hill a ways. Perhaps there was a body of water nearby? Maybe he could find some fish or something with some protein on it for them. The plants they had found so far had a lot of good nutritional value, but he was craving some meat. He grabbed what he needed and set out. The morning was tranquil, softly vibrating with low sounds that cut the morning chill. He followed the water as it made its way down towards a larger pool. He kept his head up, looking for anything out of the norm. As he scanned, a boulder moved. Rivas tensed, waiting for it to scream at him. Instead, the mossy boulder shuffled around on four thick legs to face him. The thing was covered in coarse, long hair, save for its weird pug-like face. Rivas stared, dumbfounded. The thing looked like a shaggy boulder as it stared at him with massive, watery eyes, its tongue still hanging partially out of its mouth. Both of them stood there, staring, neither one seeming to know what to do. “You aren’t the screamer…are you?” Rivas asked, one hand on his phaser. The pug-faced mossy boulder creature made a snuffling sound, finally turning its head. It started stripping lichen and moss off a rock with its huge tongue. “Okay…good enough.” Rivas said quietly as he turned and continued to follow the water towards the large pool. He stopped again, realizing that there were at least a dozen of these mossy creatures nearby. One was even at the pool, lapping at the water. “Shit…why? Why is everything so bulky here?” Deciding he wasn’t going to surrender so easily, he set about creating a makeshift fishing pole. He looked around for a rock to make a sinker and kicked over some rotted logs to find some grubs for bait. He walked down to the pool, pulling out the tricoder and scanning the water. The water in the pool was slightly alkaline, but it was filled with life. Rivas nodded, put the tricorder on his belt, got his hook baited, planted his feet, and cast his line. The mossy creature across the pool looked up as the sinker splashed into the water. It stared at Rivas, then slowly shambled away, its sheer bulk making the ground under Rivas’ boots tremble with each step. “Mossy Stompers,” Rivas muttered, finding a rock to sit on. “That’s what you smash-faced guys are now. Deal with it.” He waited patiently for several minutes before he felt something tug at the bait. He waited until he felt it really pull and then he started to drag it to shore. He laughed triumphantly. There was a brightly colored 12 inch fish on the hook. He grabbed the tricoder and scanned his prize. It was very edible. Grinning like a madman, he headed back to camp, waving farewell to the Mossy Stompers. They watched him as though pondering a confusing piece of modern art. Although he was excited, Rivas suddenly realized he had left O’mara alone. He knew he wasn’t that far from camp, he could see the tent the whole time after all. He still hustled uphill as fast as he could, his imagination flooding with horrors and guilt that he didn't want to fathom or experience. But there was no horror awaiting him. Everything was exactly as he had left it. He looked around the caldera. All the crystals were as they had been, albeit they had all gone dark after so many hours without the sun. The sky was still blue as the sunlight blazed over the crown of the mountain, casting the caldera in a cold shadow. He could even spot some Mossy Stompers, now that he knew what he was looking for. Nothing had changed. Just as he turned to enter the tent to get the crate out so he could get the fire starting equipment out of it, something bigger than a rodent moved behind him. Rivas whirled, snarling, eyes wide as he brought the phaser and his fish to bear on something crimson. He froze, his eyes taking in the muzzle of a blaster rifle, running down the length of the weapon, and then locking on the wielder. She looked like a zombie from one of the tacky old movies Land used to watch. Her uniform wasn’t just crimson, it was soaked with blood and tattered to the point of being rags. The fur bristling across her body was just a few shades less crimson than her uniform, her bright gold organic eye wild as she snarled at him, her finger on the trigger. Her finger drew more of his attention than he wanted. It was bright, clearly made of metal, as was her entire left arm. They stood there, glaring at each other, but neither of them fired. Inwardly, Rivas cursed his time with the Confederation. In another life he would have pulled the trigger with no hesitation, ended this enemy before she could pose a threat. Now he was stuck in a standoff with someone carrying a weapon that had a lot more power than his. As they remained frozen, Rivas tried to identify this Urthean. The rank insignia that should have been riding on her left shoulder—along with the entire left arm of the uniform—was missing, but he felt sure she was wearing an Ops pin on her lapel. A quick glance at the marking on her metal arm confirmed his suspicions. Reading Urthean was difficult, but he could pick out the word “officer” among the gibberish. Something else caught his attention. There was symmetry to the damages of her uniform. She was breathing heavily, shaking, her organic arm trembling as it supported the rifle. The injuries to her torso looked like massive claw marks, not the doing of shrapnel. Blood was still oozing through the fabric of her uniform in a few places too. These were not all injuries from the crash, especially if the Radio Crystal had had time to work on her. Some of these were from just a few hours ago at best. The ”pew!” of a phaser made Rivas’s heart stop as the insides of his thighs tingled. Instantly, he was sure he had died. He had hesitated too long and the enemy had pulled the trigger. That was it, the end of his story. Instead, the Urthean keeled over, stiff as a board. “Are you alright Don?” Rivas turned, eyes still wide, heart beating somewhere in the back of his head, to find O’mara lying in the mouth of the tent. She had her phaser trained on the inert Urthean and had, apparently, shot the surprise visitor from between Rivas’ legs. “Thank god your aim is good,” Rivas squeaked. He swallowed, clearing his throat as O’mara crawled out of the tent and both of them turned their attention to the stunned Urthean. “I thought you were still asleep.” “You know I wake up whenever you get out of bed,” O’mara said. Her voice was steady, but she couldn’t hide the feather that molted from her shoulder as she shook. “How did she get here? Wait…is that a fish?” “I went down to that pool there to see if I could catch something other than packaged rations. I imagine she walked across the caldera…must have seen me down by the pool and followed me back up here.” Rivas replied as they both moved towards the Urthean. “She might have encountered whatever was screaming though. See those marks on her?” Rivas felt a little silly for pointing out the claw marks. They were so massive that only a blind person would miss them. Still clutching her phaser, O’mara crouched by the Urthean and pried the blaster rifle from her stiff fingers. A soft growl came from the Urthean as the weapon was pulled away. Rivas felt his finger tense on the phaser trigger. If anything happened, he wouldn’t hesitate this time, and his phaser was not set to stun. O’mara held the weapon out to Rivas, who took it. “Claws,” she breathed as the Urthean’s eyes followed her. “Gods! They’re…they’re huge! Don, get me the Radio Crystal. We can charge it in the sun and get her healed up.” Rivas raised an eyebrow. “Or we could just leave her here and let the screaming things find her.” The Urthean writhed, causing O’mara to leap away with a startled chirp as Rivas turned the blaster rifle on their guest. Her mechanical arm was working again, but the rest of her was still partially stunned. Moving like a damaged marionette, the Urthean sat up, angled her head so she could glare at Rivas, and said, “If you will leave me to face them again, give my rifle back.” “That wore off a lot faster than I thought it would,” O’mara muttered, keeping her phaser trained on the Urthean as she lurched to her knees. “They’re tougher than they look,” Rivas growled. “You’re bleeding all over the place. If there’s something out there looking for meat, it’ll be coming for you. Rifle or not, you’re not in fighting shape.” “I’ll die fighting, weapon or no!” The Urthean spat at Rivas’ feet as she wobbled to a crouch, then slowly stood, her body shaking as though lifting a massive weight. “Unlike you, I need no weapons, no! I can fight!” “But you’re hurt, b-b-badly,” O’mara noted, drawing the Urthean’s glare. “We’ve got a medical replicator and the glowing crystalline structures around here accelerate tissue repair. If you’ll let me, I-I-I can at least get you patched up…if that’s alright with you?” The Urthean’s glare deepened. “Why is her voice broken like that? Are all Confederation grunts made of such poor quality?” “Hey!” Rivas barked, stepping towards the Urthean. “Watch your mouth you bitch! O’mara! Start packing camp! I’ll keep an eye on this little fascist. Once we’re ready to move let me know. We’ll stun her again and get out of here.” The Urthean chuckled, shaking her head, a feral smile curling her lips. “It is as they say. You people are as bloodthirsty as we are! Leaving me here, knowing, yes knowing, that my blood will draw the monster? That you will escape? Oh…how cruel you are!” She punctuated her last statement with a wicked little laugh as she grinned at Rivas. “We aren’t going to do that.” O’mara said firmly. “You can start breaking down camp. I am going to patch her up. You!” O’mara pointed her phaser at the Urthean’s face. “Sit!” Rivas could see his own confusion and startlement reflected in the Urthean’s face as she slowly complied, seating herself on a rounded stone. Once the Urthean was seated, O’mara turned to Rivas. “Camp, break it down…please. Oh! Can you bring the crate over and the crystal? Also, fish does sound good and she’ll need energy. Can you cook that up?” “I…we…I am not making her breakfast!” Rivas said in a pained tone. “I’ll do it then, once I’ve patched her up,” O’mara said flatly. “Please, help me. She isn’t that dangerous. If she’s anything like you or me she’s lost too much blood to put up a fight. Didn’t you see her shaking when she was pointing that blaster at you? She’s probably been up all night after surviving that crash and running from monsters. So, you can help or I can do it all myself, but I will help her.” Rivas sighed, holstering his phaser. “Alright…you win. But if she hurts you—” “You’ll blow my head off,” the Urthean said, grinning at him again. “You two are a sight, yes. One so saintly, one ever the soldier. What a pair!” “You hush.” O’mara ordered as she holstered her phaser and approached. “We need to get that uniform off and clean your wounds. Let me know if anything hurts too much.” “I don’t feel pain.” O’mara frowned. The Urthean’s body was clearly in distress, but she was either hiding it well or was telling the truth. “Well…I don’t know if that’s true or not, but you’re still badly wounded.” O’mara finally said. “Let’s get you out of that tunic and go from there, okay?” O’mara was now kneeling directly in front of the Urthean. Rivas still watched, unmoved from his spot, blaster in hand, fish still dangling from the line wrapped around his fingers. For a few seconds no one moved. O’mara seemed to be waiting for some sign that she was allowed to get closer as the Urthean sat there, glaring at her. Slowly, the Urthean’s shoulders slouched, her ears drooping as the fire that had been burning in her eyes faded away. Suddenly she looked just as tired as Rivas felt. “Though I deny it, I am without strength. I am at your mercy. Do what you will to me.” the Urthean grumbled. “Lucky you, I’m the saintly one,” O’mara said brightly as she began examining the wounds. “I’m O’mara, and that’s Rivas. What is your name?” “Operations Chief Orlax,” the Urthean replied. * * * Breaking camp took much longer than usual because Rivas would spend several minutes at a time watching O’mara work on Orlax. By the time he had gotten the tent packed, rations sorted, and had everything packed and ready to move, O’mara had managed to remove what was left of Orlax’s uniform and was picking debris out of the massive lacerations on the Urthean’s sides. If Rivas had to guess based on the injuries, it looked like whatever had been taking swipes at Orlax couldn’t break through metal. Orlax’s left side, which she would have been able to defend with her mechanical arm, was less tattered than her right. O’mara suggested they should eat before they left. Begrudgingly, Rivas started a small fire, then cleaned and cooked the fish. He was irritated that they had to split the food three ways instead of two, but O’mara wouldn’t hear otherwise. She kept working on Orlax while he prepared the food. Once everything was ready, Rivas loomed behind O’mara, eyes fixed on Orlax as he held their breakfast. While waiting for the fish to cook, he had checked Orlax’s blaster rifle. It was completely discharged. Orlax’s hesitation to fire made sense now. She had been trying to bluff him. To his chagrin, the bluff had succeeded. From the ground around them, O’mara had scraped together a handful of Radio Crystals. She was layering them into basic gauze bandages the crate’s medical replicator was steadily spooling out. “What is the meaning of these stones?” Orlax demanded as O’mara slipped several into the bandage in line with some of the cuts. “Well…we’re not all that sure,” O’mara admitted. “But they emit a sort of microwave radiation that appears to accelerate tissue regeneration. Or they bend time around areas of distress and slowly move the distressed material forward through time…it’s hard to tell.” Orlax frowned. “Both theories sound ridiculous.” “More ridiculous than you surviving that busted carnival ride of a ship?” Rivas asked. “Do not speak of my lady like that!” Orlax snapped back. “She was no carnival ride! She was our home! You and your trickery brought us here! Your deception brought us down! Confederation ships are crewed by cheaters and thieves and—AH!” “Sorry,” O’mara said in the least sorry tone Rivas had ever heard her use as she tightened the bandages. The bandages, Rivas realized, were now the only top Orlax had on. Her tunic and jacket were on the ground in fragments. O’mara had taken special care to wrap the bandages the little replicator was churning out so that they covered the Urthean from her collarbones down to her hips. Orlax glared. “Your actions are purposeful, you tufted wretch! If I had my strength, I’d have your hands for this!” “Or you could just point an expended blaster at her,” Rivas said, setting the weapon down next to Orlax. He held her portion of the fish out to her as well, which she gingerly took from him as he asked, “So, care to tell us what you were shooting at last night?” Orlax shuddered, her fur bristling as she cringed. “I…I don’t know what it was. I awoke to the sound of flesh leaving bone. There was some light in what remained of the bridge, but so little of this beast’s form was visible. I knew I was wounded, but I knew I had to flee. If this beast was there, consuming the captain’s carcass like a biscuit, then my meat could be next, very next. I thought to stay on the Centurion, but she is so badly broken, nothing is where it should be any more in that place. I grabbed what I could find, that rifle, and exited from where our lower core once was. The beast…it followed me…preferring live game to mangled meat. “It is large, twice the size of the three of us combined. Thick fur covers its powerful, lumbering shape, like a bear but it only walks on two legs, just the two. The arms, the long and powerful limbs that bear its weapons, they lash out with mechanical speed. The claws…” Orlax rapped a knuckle against her metal arm. “The claws are sharp, but our steel is stronger. It followed, screeching, hungry, weeping for a taste of my soft flesh…until the inklings of day began to appear. It skulked away, sorry to see the face of the sun, I believe, yes. This beast has no love of the light, perhaps because of its eyes. They are large, they are dark, they are two points of the void, yes, meant to consume the soul as its twisted teeth consume the flesh.” Rivas stared, his hackles on end, every inch of skin tingling with a sense of danger he hadn’t felt in a while. It wasn’t just Orlax’s words that made him nervous, it was how they were delivered. They were cold, so clear and yet so cryptic that they conveyed the image and the terror of the screeching beast that had pursued her through the darkness until the daylight had driven it away. “Ah! Food!” Orlax said, possibly with more enthusiasm than she had intended as she turned her attention to the fish she was holding. “S-s-so…it’s a bi-biedal beast, very large and somewhat ursine?” O’mara asked, her hands shaking as Rivas numbly handed her her portion of the fish. “Your description is boring,” Orlax remarked coldly around a mouthful of fish, but then nodded as she swallowed. “You are, however, correct, yes. It appears like the black forest bears of my home world, but it is much larger, the face more like his.” She pointed at Rivas. “There are many teeth to accompany its many claws.” “Well, that’s as patched up as I can get you.” O’mara said with a little shiver as she stood up. “The crystals had plenty of charge in them, so they should help. If you can spend time close to one of the big crystals that’ll help you heal faster too.” As O’mara quickly ate her fish, Orlax asked, “Your beacon, it does not work here, does it?” O’mara froze. Rivas suppressed a sigh as he swallowed the last of his fish. He knew that tone, that type of question. Orlax had a way to get the beacon to work and also did not want to be left alone if the bear beast came back. She would do whatever she had to in order to keep him and O’mara nearby, even if that meant calling Star Fleet for a ride home. “The magnetic field of this planet is considerable,” Orlax continued, stripping the power cell out of her rifle. “Yes…our deep space scanning record mentioned we could see nothing on this planet and that ground missions would not be attempted, no, because it was too far from the border. So, that means that when the Centurion’s coms failed, I can then guess that your coms failed too, yes?” “You want to help with that?” Rivas asked in as hostile a tone as he could manage. He wasn’t a fan of this kind of game. If Orlax could help, he wanted to get the interaction over with as quickly as possible. The less time they had to deal with an Urthean, and whatever this bear monster was, the happier he would be. “Our cores are designed to act as emergency generators for ground forces that survive crashes.” Orlax explained as she shakily got to her feet. “The Centurion’s beacon is now likely guarded by a beast, so going back is unwise, indeed. Even unguarded, too much damage was done. But your beacon, paired with one of my lady’s cores? Yes…that would work nicely.” “You can hook our beacon up to your core?” O’mara asked, the prospect of interacting with a Urthean core pulling on her curiosity. Orlax grinned. “I could. Your transponder, some modifications, a good power connection and, yes, we can connect your little beacon to a core of the Centurion.” “And when Star Fleet shows up?” asked Rivas. Orlax and O’mara both looked over at Rivas. His face was unreadable as he stared at Orlax, measuring her response. “They come, we are saved.” Orlax said as she casually tossed the spent power cell over her shoulder. “I am deported to my people; you reunite with your brigands. It is, as they say, a happy ending, no?” “I think it’s worth a shot.” O’mara added, doing her best to smile. “That one core fell on the west ridge, remember? Right by where we were yesterday. It’s definitely close. We can just head back the way we came, set up the beacon, and we’ll be off this rock in a few hours!” Rivas ground his teeth, tail flicking agitatedly as he tried to calculate daylight hours in his head. If the bear beast didn’t like sunlight, they needed to get all of this done before night fell again. Midday was five hours after sunrise. The sun had been up for at least two hours at this point, meaning there was about seven hours left in the day. That wasn’t enough time to get back to the core and get the beacon rigged to it. Running his hands down his face, Rivas sighed. The other options before them weren’t any better. Heading away from the caldera in hopes of finding a place where their signal could punch through felt hopeless. With the bear beast pursuing them there was no telling how far they would get or even if there was a place within walking distance that would allow them to get their signal out. “I don’t like this,” Rivas admitted, picking up his pack, “but you’re right, Commander. The problem is that we won’t get there before dark.” “What about that core?” Orlax and Rivas looked down into the caldera at what O’mara was pointing at. One of the cores was lying in the middle of an ash-colored field, surrounded by fragments of the Radio Crystal spire it had smashed on impact. “The beast is in that direction, I believe.” Orlax said, shaking her head. “It is closer, much closer, yes, but there is danger there.” “It’s 5 kilometers away,” O’mara said, glancing down at the tricorder. “I can’t scan it from here because of all the crystal bits around it…but that’s a doable distance…right?” “5K is about an hour and a half on foot in terrain such as this.” Orlax rattled the information off like a machine. “We would have more than enough time…this may be the better plan.” “The bear?” Rivas snapped, causing O’mara to flinch. “A tactical risk,” Orlax replied evenly. “A stupid risk!” Rivas growled. “You’re the one that left a blood trail here! We could just leave you here and—” “Do you know which circuit seal you’ll need to breach to access the low voltage jumper lines? Do you know the difference between a pin-valve and a junction port?” Rivas frowned as Orlax turned slowly to face him. “No,” he finally grumbled, “I don’t.” “Attempt to tamper with the core yourself, and you will be bathed in boiling plasma or in antimatter…along with this world.” Orlax snarled, teeth bared as she clenched her side. “Ah! These crystals! Why do they shock me?” “I thought you didn’t feel pain.” Rivas groused as O’mara swooped down on Orlax to look at the bandages. “The Radio Crystals are working.” O’mara reported as she scanned her handiwork with the tricorder. “It looks like something is conducting energy from them though…oh my…your ribs are….” “Metal, yes!” Orlax snapped, shooing O’mara’s tricorder away. “So, your little glowing rocks do conduct power then? What odd little things. I will have to take some back with me.” “Let’s get to the core.” Rivas said, his mind finally forcing him to admit that this was their best chance. “The longer we stand here, the closer we get to nightfall. I don’t want to be here when that bear thing comes looking for its missing snack.” * * * The trek down to the core was just shy of two hours. Orlax was silent the entire way, bushing away O’mara’s hand any time she tried to help her. Rivas kept scrutinizing the Urthean. She had taken the power cell out of her rifle and tossed it. To Rivas, that meant she had another cell somewhere on her person. Whether she was saving it for the bear or for them was the question boring into his brain now. Midday was fast approaching as the three of them stepped around the larger pieces of Radio Crystal surrounding the jettisoned core. In broad daylight, it was hard to see the iridescent patterns being made by the crystals, but they were still there. The core was nestled amid a small mound of upturned earth on one side and the shattered stump of the crystal it had hit on the other. Rivas watched closely as Orlax scurried around the core. She had stated that they would need to abandon the project if the core showed any signs of leaks, radioactive decay, or other serious malfunctions. Watching the Urthean as she scrambled to get on top of the core, Rivas frowned. He set the pack down, still watching Orlax as she knelt and opened a panel. She had barely been able to move when she reached them that morning. Now she was moving like someone simply suffering from mild hunger and a little dehydration, not someone who had nearly been torn apart after being part of a shipwreck. The Radio Crystals, it seemed, worked faster on fresher wounds. At least, that was what Rivas was assuming as he began rummaging through the pack looking for tools. After ensuring the core’s integrity, Orlax slid back to the ground. She nodded curtly as a sour-faced Rivas handed her a toolkit. Rivas turned to find O’mara already scampering towards the core to help Orlax with the modifications. As much as he wanted to keep an eye on them, he knew he had other priorities. The Radio Crystal fragments around the core ranged in size from boulders down to dusty flakes. Picking a particularly large chunk that the falling core had thrown about 20 yards from the stump, Rivas began setting up the tent with one wall up against the Radio Crystal. If he had more time and more help, he would have liked to have used longer pieces of broken crystal to make a sort of spike wall around the tent. The ground was ashy and he was able to easily drive the tent’s supports in. Setting crystals up as spikes wouldn’t have been too hard. Creating areas that were difficult to traverse was important when setting up defenses. It made the enemy easier to contain or direct as needed. He picked up several smaller pieces of crystal and tried tapping them against each other. They were hard to break, but when they did crack they would splinter along straight lines that led to soft edges. While they wouldn’t make any sort of cutting tool, they did splinter into fine points. Rivas grimaced as he gently tapped one of these glassy spikes and it immediately drew blood. The pinprick, however, healed almost instantly. Nodding, Rivas tossed the shard away and went back to accessing the larger fragments while looking for any other things that might help them defend against a possible bear monster attack. Every once in a while, Rivas would glance up at the sun. It was moving steadily across the sky. Over at the core, O’mara and Orlax were busily swapping out wires, prying open panels, consulting the equipment on the beacon, then redoing components on the core or changing settings on the beacon. They didn’t notice Rivas as he wandered around, probing the ground with a long, thin spike of crystal in search of soft spots or any other terrain features that could be turned into traps. “We only have one attempt, yes,” Orlax reminded O’mara as she stared at the power cable from the beacon. “If we overload your equipment, there will be no more tries. We must be sure, yes, certain, that what we do is done well.” “Why do you have metal bones?” O’mara asked as she stripped the ends off of a wire harness. Orlax raised an eyebrow. “Why do you not have metal bones?” “I guess…because I don’t need them?” O’mara said, smiling timidly as she held the prepped harness out to Orlax. “They were more than a need.” Orlax snorted as she took the harness and began crimping on the connector she had been working with. “I, all of us, must be strong, stronger than anything. We remove weakness from our bodies, whatever form it may take.” “Pollain Bone Rot.” Orlax froze, her eyes burning as she tightened her grip on the crimping tool. When she said nothing, O’mara continued. “It’s a viral infection that settles in the subject’s bone marrow. Most often it’s found in those who mine for corundum or cobalt in the Pollartis Reach, but you only get it if you’re in the mines without proper safety equipment. But you’re red. You shouldn’t have been anywhere near the cobalt mines, at least, not long or close enough to catch Rot.” “You ask too many questions.” Orlax snarled, pointing the crimping tool at O’mara in a semi-menacing way. “And what do you know of my purpose anyway? Well? You Fleet brats are ignorant, yes very much so, as to the what and how of us.” “Red Urtheans are warriors, leaders, the best of the best,” O’mara replied evenly. “Scuttas are throwaway ships, meant to harass and patrol, not win battles. What were you doing on that ship? Did you make someone mad?” “You still ask too many questions.” Orlax growled as she returned to crimping wires. “I just want to know who you are,” O’mara muttered. “Shut your beak!” Orlax threw the crimping tool down and thrust the finished connector at O’mara. “You do not, no, do not need to know me! I have no desire, none, to know you! Plug your damned beacon in so I may be free of you all the sooner!” O’mara reached out to take the connector, but stopped. Rivas, who was returning from inspecting a small pool nearby, raised an eyebrow at the scene, as did Orlax. “Do you see a mistake in my work?” the Urthean asked sourly. “May I…touch you?” O’mara asked. Orlax’s brow furrowed as she slowly pulled her hand back. “What sort of asinine question is that meant to be? You think I would let you, yes you, a Fleet brat, touch me? A Red? Know your place, little garbage bird!” “Hey!” Rivas barked from where he was digging through the pack in search of the tricorder. “Watch your tone bitch! I don’t care what color you are. You talk to her like that again I’ll stun your ass and leave you for the monster!” Orlax glared at Rivas, but nodded slowly. Turning back to O’mara, the Urthean held the cable end out again. “Why, little bird, do you think you have the right to ask such a stupid thing?” Orlax asked as O’mara took the cable. “Well…it’s hard to explain,” O’mara admitted as she examined the cable. She glanced over Orlax’s shoulder to make sure Rivas had gone back to his explorations now that he had the tricorder. Once she was satisfied that he was out of earshot, she continued. “If I touch someone, and if they let me, I can understand them…if that makes any sense.” “You are a telepath?” Orlax looked suddenly curious as she stepped up to O’mara, examining her closely. “Odd…yes…strange. I was told that your Fleet does not pursue such bedtime story powers.” “It was more of an accident,” O’mara admitted, keeping her voice low. “No one knows what happened though. I…well I don’t really understand it all myself yet, but I…I just want to understand you better, that’s all.” “You mean steal any secrets I may have?” Orlax snorted, the curiosity vanishing as she leaned back a little. “I see it now, yes, I do. You, little bird, are the interrogator, yes? The prisoners come to you and are stripped of their secrets and souls? Their bodies are broken?” “What? No!” O’mara chirped alarmedly. “I’d never hurt anyone! I’m a scientist, that’s all. You…well, I’ve never met an Urthean that wasn’t trying to kill me, so I just thought it would be nice to know more about you. And I can do that in a way that others can’t overhear anything you don’t want them to, that’s all.” Orlax’s head turned, eyes searching for Rivas. He was over by a pool, intently watching the tricorder. Still frowning, Orlax regarded O’mara, eyes running over every inch of the innocent looking Avian. Sighing, Orlax held up her hand. “It is just as well that, ironically, I have no great knowledge to keep.” She said with a bitter smirk. “Have a look, little bird, if you can. I don’t believe you have such a power, but try, if you insist on making an ass of yourself.” O’mara set the cable down, checked one more time to make sure Rivas was still busy, and then gently took Orlax’s hand in hers. For an instant, nothing happened. Orlax was on the verge of making a snide comment through her smirk, but both the comment and the smirk were obliterated as both O'mara and Orlax both felt the distinct pressure on the frontal lobe of the brain caused when two minds suddenly come into contact. There was a vision of fluid, some sort of machine—a cloning tank in later memories—and haze, pain, then rushed memories, things that had long since blurred into muscle memory and subconscious routines. Most of it was combat training, some was academic. A faint hint of inquisitiveness was quashed into the back of everything, a desire and need to know more. That desire was held prisoner by the carefully programmed notion that asking questions was bad. O’mara saw a flash of a ship, but it wasn’t the Centurion. On that ship there was purpose, drive, secrets that had been literally stripped out of Orlax’s brain since then. A ground mission…no…an accident that left her stranded. There was another Urthean, a purple one, one she looked down on, but he was kind. He had helped her despite her knowledge that he and her were enemies of the most bitter kind. Memories of shame swirled around this purple Urthean, but there were also memories that made O’mara blush and quickly move past them, worried she would see something too private. Then there was fear, more pain—in fact, all the things she saw were lightly varnished in pervading pain, an ache in the bones and heart—and then she clearly saw the bridge of the Centurion and its crew. There were fleeting bits of information about medical procedures, about bones infected with Rot after a failed attempt to rescue someone from a corundum mine. Pain, more pain, more punishment…shame…endless, pervasive shame…shame that led to more work…more metal bits, things being torn out in penance and punishment. The clear memory of purple stained with blood…of her own hands stained with blood…the blood they made her spill to atone for her “indiscretion” and failure to hate the enemy, for daring to love. “Out!” Orlax screamed. “Begone!” O’mara realized that she was crying as Orlax shoved her away. Sobbing uncontrollably, O’mara landed on her tail and sat in the ashy soil, crying as the pain—that endless, damnable pain—continued to prick her mind. Shaking, Orlax sank to her knees, eyes wide, fur on end as she stared at O’mara like she was some sort of eldritch horror come to harvest Orlax’s soul. “What…what sort of dark spawn are you?” Orlax whimpered as she shook. O’mara wiped her eyes with her sleeves. “I wish I knew. I…I’m so sorry for what…what they made you do to him.” Orlax stiffened, eyes blazing with anger for a moment. Shakily, features twitching as emotions that were thought forbidden tried to express themselves, Orlax went slack. Her head drooped, eyes brimming with long overdue tears as she trembled. “I too, am sorry,” she whispered. “What is done, is done. I defiled myself with…him…and for that he was taken, as were my sullied organs. But I could not set him aside, so I once again committed to foolish actions. This time…the problem was solved permanently. They bid me slay him to redeem myself. I did their bidding, but even then, I…yes…I was given a lesser purpose.” Her glare returned as Orlax looked up at O’mara once more. “There, little nightmare bird…you know me. Connect your damn beacon.” Still beset by sniffles, O’mara picked up the cable and gently plugged the beacon in. “We’re all hooked up. Shall we see if we did this right?” “Your turn.” Orlax said, crouching, eliciting a confused stare from O’mara. “Tell me what you are, little nightmare.” “I…I can’t,” O’mara muttered. “R-r-really, I don’t know how to explain any of it.” “Tell me what you are,” Orlax growled, her hand straying for a pouch on her thigh. “Tell me! Or by the Emperor’s righteous wrath I’ll make a new hole in that feathery head of yours!” “There it is.” Rivas said, suddenly looming behind Orlax, startling both her and O’mara. He kicked Orlax in the back, flattening her to the ground. After seizing one of her arms he pressed a knee onto the small of her back, drawing a pained yelp from her. He ripped the pouch she had been reaching for open with his free hand and a power cell fell into his waiting palm. “Why would anyone keep lugging around a useless blaster rifle?” Rivas growled as he pressed the core against the back of Orlax’s head. “Huh? Guess it wasn’t so useless after all, was it?” “I swear on the Emperor’s blood I was conserving power for if we could not finish by nightfall!” Orlax snarled as she did her best to throw Rivas off. Her wounds, however, were hindering her movements. “Your companion, she is not what she seems! There is something wrong with her touch! She was in my head! She spoke to my mind! She…she….” Orlax stopped struggling, her eyes falling on O’mara. “She felt me.” “The fuck are you talking about?” Rivas asked as he shifted, his knee sliding to Orlax’s neck and pressing down hard. “She’s touched me plenty without any spooky shit happening! You were gonna blast her, then me, then use the beacon to get out of here! I’m not gonna let that happen! I’ll kill you first!” “Don! Stop!” Rivas looked up at O’mara. She was reaching out for him, but she wasn’t close enough to be in danger of getting caught up in the struggle. “She’s just scared…like me,” said O’mara. “She wants to go home! Don’t hurt her!” “She was gonna hurt you!” Rivas objected, pressing his knee deeper, drawing a strangled gasp from Orlax. “She’s the enemy!” “I said stop!” Every fiber of Rivas’ being shook as O’mara screamed the words. They reverberated on a cosmic scale, shaking him to his very soul. Eyes wide, he looked up at her. She was standing, her shoulders taught, the palm of one of her taloned hands outstretched towards him in a strange, almost grasping gesture. Something small—a little red paw print—was glowing slightly on her palm as she glared at him. Almost as soon as he noticed it, the paw print was gone, but the feeling that the weight of infinity was being pointed at him remained. It was as though all O’mara had to do was flex her talons and he would be crushed under a power no one could ever dream of restraining. As gently as he could, he let go of Orlax, stood, and backed away a few paces, both hands raised over his head. “Michelle,” he muttered as Orlax coughed violently on the ground. “What…what’s going on?” O’mara quickly pulled her hand back, her eyes darting nervously to anything that was not Rivas’ face. “It’s…I can’t…I’ll tell you later.” she finally said. “We need to get the beacon up and running.” Rivas opened his mouth. He had so many questions, but all of them just caught in his throat, trembling in fear. The lingering feeling of inescapable doom was still fingering his spine and he couldn’t shake the notion that if he pushed O’mara, she would snap and he—along with everything else—would simply vanish in a flash of unbridled power. The worst of it was that power felt…familiar…too familiar. “Fine.” Rivas glared, first at O’mara, then at Orlax. He waved the power cell at the Urthean. “I’ll be holding on to this for now.” Cramming the power cell in one of his pockets, he stomped away. “Are you alright?” O’mara asked, holding out her hand to help Orlax up. “Get away from me!” Orlax snapped, swatting O’mara’s hand away. “We have a mission to finish, yes? Let us finish it then, abomination! Wait for my signal, yes? I will switch power to the beacon.” O’mara looked hurt and then resigned. “I”m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” Orlax made a hissing sound as she dusted herself off. “Get to your position!” O’mara retreated to the beacon. Rivas noted how she rubbed her hand, the one that he thought he had seen something on. The action seemed contemplative, as though O’mara didn’t quite know what her own hand had just done. Orlax barked out orders and O’mara complied. Orlax would dictate a series of codes, which O’mara would enter into the beacon. The Urthean then instructed O’mara to switch the beacon to run. For an instant, Rivas held his breath. If this worked, someone would come for them in just a few hours. They would avoid the bear-beast, be free of Orlax, and he could get back to the usual nonsense of daily life. He had never thought of himself as a bridge fly, instead thinking he was a soldier, always ready to be on the ground, always capable of doing what was right no matter the situation. Now, he just wanted to get as far from the ground as he could. He was no soldier, not any more. As the beacon chirped through its startup sequence, Rivas could feel the weight of the Urthean power cell in his pocket. Orlax had made the right tactical decision by not revealing her rifle had extra power. This allowed her to keep a weapon she was familiar with, a weapon neither Rivas nor O’mara were familiar with and would struggle to use if they needed to. Orlax knew that she couldn’t fire the beacon without their help. Even if she killed them after they got the beacon running, Rivas doubted Jakar or even Harry would let her live long enough to explain what had happened. She simply needed to keep the blaster and make sure she could power it if danger presented itself. Her reward for her good tactical decision had been nearly being choked out. With a cheerful “bleep!” the beacon powered on. O’mara quickly set about tuning the transmitter while Orlax monitored the patch-job they had done to the core. Rivas glanced at what now felt like a silly project: his tent surrounded by spikes of Radio Crystal, none of which were bigger than a few inches. “Am I that useless?” Rivas muttered to himself, softly tapping the pocket holding the power cell with a finger. “We’ve got a signal!” O’mara crowed, clapping her hands giddily. “It isn’t going more than a lightyear away, but that’s more than far enough to reach Confederated ears! We did it!” “Good…our little rig job is holding, yes.” Orlax noted as she gently closed a junction panel, which they had left open. “I…we…have done good work.” “Now we wait,” Rivas said, striding over to Orlax. She stood, feet braced, arms tense: the stance of someone with the knowledge and power to destroy another person with just their bare hands. He couldn’t be mad at her for taking a defensive posture at this point. “Here,” Rivas grumbled, holding out the power cell and the rifle. “If you’re gonna shoot me just do it. Otherwise save the cell for tonight…just in case. If that blaster didn’t kill the beast, our phasers won’t do shit. We’ll…need you…if that thing shows up.” Brow furrowed, Orlax slowly reached out and gingerly took the rifle and cell. “What game are you Fleet brats playing with me?” she growled, stowing the power cell in its pouch again as she clung to the blaster. “I don’t have the patience for games.” Rivas said shortly, turning and walking towards the tent. He didn’t have a reason to go that way except he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. “That’s true,” O’mara chimed in. “I can’t even get him to play Cobbles with me.” “What are these ‘cobbles’ you speak of?” Orlax asked. “It’s a really old game from my home world!” O’mara chirped, practically bouncing to her feet. “Do you want to play it? I can show you! We just need some stones and—” “No.” Orlax said flatly. She turned away and walked to the back of the core, head turning slowly, eyes fixed on the terrain around them. “There are shallow caves nearby, ones we saw on our scans before our lady crashed. The beast likely shelters in these places, yes, to avoid the day. We must be on our guard. How long before we lose the light?” “About four and a half hours,” Rivas reported from where he sat on a Radio Crystal shard, idly rolling a small fragment of the stone in his hands. “You…um…established a perimeter, I see,” Orlax noted as she and O’mara both walked over to Rivas. Rivas gave her a look somewhere between a frown and exasperation, but said nothing. The way Orlax had said it almost sounded like she was trying to say something positive, but couldn’t think of anything other than that weak comment. “That is good,” Orlax continued, nodding at Rivas’s little forest of Radio Crystal stakes. “If nothing else these may hinder the beast.” “So…now we wait?” O’mara asked as she sat next to Rivas. “Yup.” Rivas grumbled, tossing the Radio Crystal fragment as far as he could. “Now we just sit here and wait.” Orlax sat down heavily on the ground in front of them. “We have some time before night falls. We are safe now, yes, so we must rest.” The sounds of insects buzzing past filled what would have been an awkward silence. What Rivas assumed was a Mossy Stomper bellowed in the distance, causing them all to jump slightly. The moment was quickly becoming painful. Orlax eventually broke the tension. “So, nightmare bird, the “cobbles” you spoke of, is it a game of wagers?” O’mara brightened up. “It is!” “And you said stones were needed, yes? What more is required?” Orlax demanded. “We’ll have to draw the board in the dirt,” O’mara said, hopping up and beginning to snatch up stones. “Don! You can finally learn to play too! It’s better with three players!” Don gave Orlax an incredulous look, shaking his head slightly. Orlax just sneered wickedly at him. “For my first wager, I want you to catch me another fish, Fleet brat.” she grinned. “You have no idea what sort of hell you’ve unleashed.” Rivas sighed, slipping down so he could sit on the ground as O’mara scampered back with her hands full of stones. “When she’s done explaining the rules, she’ll tell us the full history of the game.” “You love exposition,” O’mara said quickly as she set the stones next to him. “Sort those into light and dark colors for me. Alright! Here, I’ll explain as I draw out the board.” * * * The Raptor clipped along at maximum warp. Fara was just as worried as the rest of them, but refused to push the reactor past 100% capacity. Harry knew he shouldn’t be mad about the precautions taken by his Chief Engineer, but the situation warranted a little recklessness as far as he was concerned. The Raptor had leapt in the direction of the suddenly silent shuttle before the freighters could get underway. Harry felt certain that someone would lodge a complaint with Starfleet, but at this point he didn’t care. A handful of freighters, now mostly empty, heading into Confederation space were in absolutely no danger. His crewmates, however, could already be dead. “Dropping out of warp now.” Ensign Kyle announced, pulling the throttle down. “I have three distinct trails,” Ensign Rosa announced as a planet came into view on the screen. “All three head off in random directions. There’s another signature here too…possible Urthean ship.” “Three trails,” Jakar grunted. “Means they must have ditched to lose a ship tailing them.” “Or fired decoys that didn’t work.” Harry grumbled. “Ensign Rosa, can you tell me which trail is the actual shuttle?” “Afraid not, sir,” Rosa admitted as she continued watching the scanner readouts. “The beacons are designed to be perfect little mimics. It will take time to lock it down which is which. I’d have to get the prefix codes from the database and–” “Just get it done, Ensign,” Harry said, holding up his hand. “Yes sir,” Rosa nodded as she set to work. As softly as he could, Harry thumped the arm of the chair with his fist. They didn’t have time to check out every trail. If the shuttle was damaged, or disabled, or under attack, there was no telling how long Rivas and O’mara had. Wasting time on cold leads wouldn’t help them. “Sir, if I may?” Jakar asked. “What is it?” Harry snapped. “There may be a way of pinning down which trail is the right one, but it would have to be off record.” Harry turned to face Jakar. “Excuse you, Chief?” Jakar sighed, his usual closed expression shifting a little towards shame. “As an added security measure, I had the shuttles fitted with third party beacons. They broadcast on a frequency not commonly used by Starfleet. If you allow me to retune the scanner, I can try to find that beacon’s trail instead of what our equipment is set for on standard sweeps.” “And why am I only hearing this now?” Harry demanded, one eyebrow raised. “This was a decision I made.” Jakar replied evenly. “I take full responsibility for it. Frankly, sir, with our various incidents, I’m trying to anticipate problems before they happen. For instance, when the Raptor was hijacked. If I had had similar equipment installed on the Talon, or any other shuttle or the Raptor itself, the Falcon would have found our trail sooner.” “What good would that have done you?” Harry snapped. “You were stuck on the Raptor! Same as Fara and I!” “I made Commander Rivas aware of this equipment as well, as I would have done if I had done so sooner. He agreed with my decision. Nevertheless, I wanted to make sure I could find any of our shuttles, no matter where they ended up.” Jakar replied, nonplussed, his usual scowl returning in full force. Every bit of training Harry had received demanded he reprimand Jakar and toss him in the brig. He couldn’t make those words come out. Whether Jakar was being honest about his motives or not didn’t matter. Right now, Jakar’s motives matched Harry’s, and that was more important. “Do what you need to,” Harry said. “We’ll discuss this in detail later, with Commander Rivas…when we find him.” “Understood, sir,” Jakar said before stepping over to the Ops station and shooing Ensign Rosa aside. Harry turned his attention to the planet on the viewer to distract himself as Jakar recalibrated the scanners. On any other occasion, Harry would have made note of the charm of this world, which sported a belt of equatorial islands dividing large landmasses in the northern and southern hemispheres. He had half a mind to beam down to one of these islands and see if the beach was as nice as he imagined. “I found it,” Jakar grunted softly. “The real trail runs right in front of us. There’s a pause near the planet, then it carries on until it abruptly stops. There’s…a debris cluster drifting along what would have been the shuttle’s continued trajectory.” Harry felt his fist clench, his jaw stiffening as his teeth ground together. “Can you tell if—” “Sir!” The startled yelp came from the Ensign at the science station. “Sir! There’s some sort of signal coming from the planet! It is badly scrambled and I can’t pinpoint it with the scanners yet, but it’s there and it’s got Confederation markers embedded in it!” “A beacon?” Harry asked as all eyes fell on the Ensign, a really skinny Cornerian rat, one of the new staff who had been roped into a job he had openly expressed he didn’t feel qualified for. “It very well could be, sir,” the Ensign squeaked. “I’ll need more power to the scanners to tell more though. That planet puts up a lot of magnetic fields and some really weird microwaves, sir. It’s really inhibiting—” “Engineering, this is the bridge,” Harry barked, tapping the comm on his chair. “Dump every scrap of power we have into scanners. There’s a possible distress signal coming off the planet nearby and we need to find it, now!” “On it,” Knackt replied. “What kind of interference are we dealing with here?” Harry asked over his shoulder. “It's mostly electromagnetic,” the Ensign at the science station reported–Harry finally remembered this Ensign was named Riggs. “It…almost sounds like a single-note radio signal actually. There’s just a single note running constantly when I point any sensors at the planet. Here.” Ensign Riggs flipped a switch and the speakers on the bridge were filled with a haunting, reverberating note that was not unpleasant, but it felt as though it loomed behind the ear, whispering of adventure laced with danger. “Deep space scans likely ignored or misclassified this planet.” Jakar noted as Ensign Riggs cut the sound off. “That would at least explain why we don’t have good records on it.” “Kyle, get us closer,” Harry ordered. “Jakar, help Ensign Riggs retune the scanners to cut through that damn sound!” “Engineering to bridge,” Fara’s voice came over the comm suddenly, startling Harry. “What?” he asked. “As soon as we dropped out of warp a whole bunch of systems slipped out of range,” said Fara. “It’s getting worse now that you’ve got us getting closer to that planet. I’ve got power fluctuations all over the place and things trying to move when no one asked them to. Whatever this ball of rock is made of, it is seriously screwing with us.” “Establish a distant orbit,” Harry said to Ensign Kyle before turning his attention back to the coms. Harry heard the bridge doors open and Fara appeared on the bridge. “Fara, do you think we can send down a shuttle?” “Harry, don’t you dare,” Fara snapped firmly. “If we’re getting this much shit from this far away, a shuttle will just explode. If you want to use the transporter it will need to be tweaked too. A magnetic field this aggressive could give us problems.” “What about shields?” “Unreliable until we know how to tune the planet out.” Fara took in a deep breath and let it out before leaning forward on her console. “Give me time. I’ll figure out something, okay?” Fara locked eyes with him. “They’re my friends too.” The trilling of the bridge systems filled the air for a beat as they glared at each other. Finally, Harry slackened a bit, nodding. “Understood, Chief.” said Harry, turning his glare to the planet. He couldn’t help but feel that the sphere was holding his officers hostage. “Sir,” Ensign Riggs squeaked. “I think we got it! I’m getting a steady signal from the beacon now anyway. We may need to make a few passes to get the exact location pinned down though. It keeps moving when I try to lock onto it and I doubt our people are making 200-kilometer jumps around the surface.” “Send coordinates to the helm once you have them,” Harry snapped. “Ensign Kyle, as soon as you have the coordinates, you hover over that spot like we’re chained to it.” “Aye sir,” Ensign Kyle nodded. “With this kind of interference, how are we gonna get our people off the surface?” Ensign Rosa asked. “I don’t know yet,” Harry admitted softly, steepling his fingers in front of his nose. “We might end up having to just lock onto a small area and send back any debris we pick up in the process. Do what you can to help Engineering from here. If our people ditched, it means something was after them. I don’t want to be here when whatever it was comes snooping.” “Understood, sir,” Rosa replied. “There I think I’ve got it.” Fara whooped. “I’ve got our shields adjusted to give us a bit of protection, but I can’t guarantee how long it will work.” “Thanks Chief. Helm, once you get those coordinates take us in.” Harry said, smiling at Fara. “What would you do without me?” Fara asked quietly, smirking at Harry. It took Riggs several minutes of muttering before anything happened, but eventually Harry saw Kyle come to life at the helm. Gently, the Raptor swung to port, following the rotation of the planet for a few moments until slowing to a stop. There was a small dance as Kyle finagled the ship into a position over a forested mountain region on the largest continent they had yet to see. As the ship settled into orbit again, Harry noted that they were almost on the twilight line of the world as it turned. “That’s as close as we’re going to be able to get sir,” Ensign Riggs said apologetically. “Even with additional power, readings are only accurate in about a 50-meter radius. There’s just too much interference, sir. I’m sorry, sir.” “Good work Ensign Riggs,” Harry said. “Hold us here, Kyle, no matter what. Riggs, talk to the transporter room too, give them everything you can find. I don’t want to pick up anything other than our missing crewmates.” “Yessir,” the Ensign replied, hastily linking into the conversation between Knackt, Fara, O’bren, and Ensign Rosa. “Any idea what forced them to ditch?” Harry asked quietly as he felt Jakar loom behind the chair. “There is some evidence to indicate severe damage to the shuttle; debris trails and some radiation consistent with a nacelle breach,” Jakar whispered. “Someone attacked them.” Harry ground his teeth. “Where’s the attacker now?” “Unclear,” Jakar admitted. “It looks like that trail also ends at this planet. If it was a smaller vessel, they may have landed and deployed a search party.” “But it’s our distress beacon that’s running,” Harry reminded him. “A possible trap,” Jakar said evenly. “A risk we’re going to take,” Harry corrected. “We’re not leaving them down there, Jakar. Go see if you can spot anything else useful. Oh, and Chief? Don’t you ever hide something like those third-party transponders from me again. Is that understood?” “Understood, sir,” Jakar grunted as he returned to his station. * * * They had finished playing Cobbles, Orlax had one two extra ration bars and O’mara had three. Rivas had to bow out, as he was down to one bar. O’mara was good at it and Orlax had picked up the game alarmingly fast. O’mara split her winnings with Rivas, since he’d haplessly lost a bar he shouldn’t have to the Urthean. Rivas wasn’t about to admit anything, but he had enjoyed the experience. Yes, it was weird to sit and play a game with someone who had threatened to shoot him that morning, but somehow it felt normal at the same time. Rivas clutched his phaser, drumming his fingers on his knees as the sun sank below the horizon. The beacon had been running the whole time they played and, so far, it had given no indication it had been heard. Rivas did his best to reassure himself that any acknowledgement of the beacon’s signal would probably not make it to them. That was cold comfort as the caldera was swaddled in deep shadows that were cut wide open by colorful swatches of Radio Crystal light. “You really should try to eat,” O’mara said for what had to be the hundredth time. “Can’t,” Rivas muttered back once more as O’mara stared balefully at him. “You are one who cannot stomach food before the fight, yes…I know that feeling.” Rivas and O’mara both looked over at Orlax as she gnawed on her winnings. “That said,” Orlax noted around a mouthful, “I am famished all the same. My stomach will decide whether to keep or reject whatever this ration bar is made of.” “You eat too!” O’mara demanded of Rivas, pointing to the bars she’d won for him, which were still sitting at his side. “There are these biscuits, back home,” Orlax said as her left eye blinked red, its internal components coming to life in the twilight as the eye began to swiveled back and forth. “They are sweet, yes, very much so. We receive two with each ration when we are in the field. I save them, yes I do. They are my victory dance.” “We’d each get a cigar at briefings,” Rivas said suddenly, eyes still locked on the beacon. “We couldn’t smoke them until after we got back from a successful mission. I hate the smell of ‘em, so I’d always just wrap mine in wax paper afterward and tuck it away.” “You have many of these…cigar…things?” Orlax asked. “Twenty-seven of them,” Rivas replied, his eyes dropping to the ground under his boots. “That’s more than anyone else in my unit, in case that was what you wanted to know.” “You think like a soldier because you are a soldier,” Orlax noted. Her organic eye was fixed on Rivas now. “Yes, I see it when you look at me. You assess. You try to see my secrets, my plans, all my information. But, like all soldiers, yes, all of them, you just follow orders. You don’t make the choices.” “Don is an excellent officer!” O’mara chirped, feathers fluffing up defensively. “How dare—” “She’s right,” Rivas muttered through O’mara’s comment. As the sunlight faded, so did O’mara’s voice. She stared at him, jaw slack, trying to make sense of what he had just said. “That…that’s not true! I’ve seen you in action! You’re so decisive!” “Because he is a soldier.” Orlax said the words as though she and Rivas were privy to a secret. “Fail to follow, to decide to follow, and you die.” “So then are you a follower?” Rivas asked, his glare turning to Orlax, “or are you the one giving the orders?” Silence, cut only by the hushed rush of wind and the gentle pinging of the beacon, remained for a handful of breaths. Orlax held Rivas’s glare with her organic eye. Slowly, haltingly, she lowered her gaze with a slight snarl. “I said we should not cross the border for a mere shuttle. Your craft was not even the correct model, did not match our prey!” Orlax growled, crushing the ration package with her mechanical hand. “I was told to know my place! I said our lady could not stand the power of this damnable planet! Again, and yet again and again and again, I was told to be silent! Now we are here, all of us here, the living and dead, because those who give orders, who run things in the dark, who scheme and sneak and spy and stab and hate…they are in control of all of us! I do not, no, do not give the orders any more, brat! Now…now I just obey.” Almost as though it had been waiting for a cue, a shriek cut the air, echoing through the caldera, causing Rivas’s fur to stand on end. O’mara let out a startled chirp as she leapt to her feet. Orlax was already on her feet, dust swirling around her as she twirled the blaster into a ready position. “The beast hungers.” Orlax growled, her left eye swiveling frantically as the light continued to die. “We must be on our guard. I fear my blood will betray us, yes, and lead the beast to us all.” “You could still leave,” Rivas muttered as he checked his belt to make sure his three spare power cells were there. “And miss my one ride off of this primitive hellscape?” Orlax chuckled wickedly as she slammed the loaded power cell into her blaster. “No chance of that, Fleet brat! Either we die or escape, and both together. Those are my options.” Both of them turned to look at the beacon as it began to make a chiming sound. O’mara rushed over and crouched in front of the beacon as Orlax and Rivas followed close behind her. “They’re here!” O’mara crowed. “The beacon worked! I…I can’t really tell what ship showed up, but someone is in orbit right now and is pinging the beacon back!” “Let us hope they send no shuttle, nor attempt to land,” Orlax muttered. “Hopefully they have a transporter that can lock onto us here,” Rivas said as O’mara adjusted the beacon. “The Radio Crystals might make that sorta hard.” “I’m relaying all the information I can up to the ship,” O’mara said as she worked. “It’ll be rudimentary, but I can at least warn them not to send down a vessel and to only use a transporter.” “Wise,” Orlax growled. “Thanks!” O’mara smiled as she worked. “About earlier,” Rivas said as Orlax turned back to him, “kicking you and all? Sorry. I don’t trust you, so, you know….” “If half the stories of your Fleet and the things they hide are true, then I understand, yes, that you cannot trust.” Orlax said with a somber nod. “What stories?” Rivas asked. Another howling cry rippled through the air. Rivas could feel the fur all over his body stand on end as he turned frantically, trying to spot the beast. “We were not just hovering on your border,” Orlax said as the movements of her glowing eye began to narrow their range. “A ship was to come through here, a Fleet freighter, yes, with soldiers dressed as civilians. An escort, yes, to make sure no one found the weapon onboard.” Rivas frowned. “Weapon?” “Live, and I will tell you what I know.” A growl, deep and primal, rolled up in Orlax’s chest as her glowing eye stopped, fixating on a patch of deep shadows a hundred meters from them. “Tell that ship of yours to hurry, yes, little nightmare bird. The beast is here.” * * * “What do you mean “shotgun” a pick up?” Fara demanded. “We’re only accurate in a 20-meter area right now,” O’bren replied. “Even with extra power and computing from the bridge, the computer still wants to grab 30 or so creatures we can pick up on sensors at this range. If we can’t fix that, we might just have to drop everything in the cargo hold and send back whatever isn’t our people.” “Well make it stop doing that!” Fara snapped, eyes fixed on the constantly dancing readings from the terminals in front of her. “Oh for fuck’s sake! We’re losing power again! Knackt!” O’bren sighed loudly over the comms. “Commander, it’s not that simple.” he continued patiently. “The transporter can’t just be ordered to do whatever the hell you want it to do. It’s a delicate instrument! If you want to do this right, we need to get it right the first time.” “Fine! Whatever.” Fara hissed before hitting her combadge. “Knackt did you get that power loss locked down?” “Yeah yeah, keep your shirt on,” the rat hollered back at Fara over the coms. He was down one of the conduit shafts somewhere near the engine. “I’m running out of this aluminum tape again! I can’t shield every inch of this place!” “Make more tape!” Fara barked as energy levels stabilized again. “O’bren! How’s that?” “Better,” O’bren said over the comms. “If we feed everything back through the signal Riggs set up to punch through the interference…yeah…that’ll do it. I’ve got the beacon’s exact location now. Give me a minute and I can lock onto our people.” “Finally,” Fara sighed, turning her head slightly to address the bridge. “Transporter has a clear view of the beacon now. We should be able to lock onto our people in just a minute.” “Good work,” Harry replied tersely. “Damn ray of sunshine,” Fara grumbled before snarling as the scanner arrays started drifting out of sync again. “Stop twitching! Gods! This is worse than the original build!” * * * Rivas watched the direction Orlax had indicated, off to the west. It had started quietly at first, so softly that only Orlax could have heard it with her enhanced ears, but something large was lumbering through the dark, knocking rocks and crystals aside as it moved, panting, snarling. Rivas’s ears pulled flat to his head as the thing screamed. In the shifting light of the Radio Crystals, fragments of a beast could be seen. The body was tall, bulky, and powerful. Disheveled fur in tones of brown and gray stuck up in all directions as claws longer than knives raked over the ground, propelled by gangly arms. Massive eyes, blacker than soot yet shinier than gold, gleamed with the light of the crystals around them as the long, toothy snout of the beast floated towards them. It was moving slowly, stalking along on just its hind legs as it pulled its long arms in so the claws no longer drug on the ground. Like a marionette, the beast paused, head rotating a little to one side as the fur around its head flared as though unseen ears were perking up. Rivas glanced at Orlax as she stood, blaster raised, glowing eye locked onto the beast. Defiantly, he lifted his phaser. He could hear the beacon behind him chirping and whirring as O’mara attempted to get the crude instrument to communicate the complex information that was needed to get them all out of the situation in one piece. If someone really was ready to pluck them from the surface, then they would likely only need a few minutes more. “Garbled signal coming back in,” O’mara whispered behind him. “Oh…oh no…it’s…it’s bigger than you said O-O-Orlax!” “Hush!” Orlax ordered. “It hears as well as it sees!” The beast kept slowly tilting its head back and forth. A long, black tongue flicked out from the mouth, as though this monstrosity were part serpent. With a shriek, the beast lunged forward, clearing the distance much faster than Rivas thought it would. He fired, but the beam from the phaser simply vanished into the monster’s fur with no apparent effect. Orlax’s blaster shot connected with the inside of the beast’s mouth, causing it to veer off to the side, stumbling and wailing as it stepped on several of Rivas’s crystal spikes. “Move!” Orlax barked as she dashed away from O’mara. “Draw the beast! Make the monster hunt us while the bird works! This is our only path!” Snarling, Rivas shifted in the opposite direction, all too aware that the beast was still lumbering forward, its void-like eyes fixed on him. “Fuck you!” Rivas bellowed as he fired again. His shot grazed the side of the beast’s face as it pounced. Rivas felt the air twist around his face as he threw himself out of the path of the claws whistling towards him. He landed on his feet and turned in time to see the creature scrambling back to its feet, having fallen flat from its own momentum. A blaster shot bounced off its back as it stood, but it ignored it. Instead, it swiveled its head towards the loudly chiming beacon and the molting O’mara as she tried frantically to silence the device. Rivas took advantage of the creature’s momentary immobility and fired. It had been too long since he was in a real firefight, too long since his opponent was more mobile than a stationary target in a training simulation. But for a moment, he had a clean shot on the beast’s left eye, so he took it. The creature roared as it stumbled away, claws covering its face as it stumbled, tumbled, and then crawled away behind a large spire of crystal. Shrieking and snarling, the creature kept itself hidden as Rivas stomped forwards. “Stay away, brat!” Orlax barked. Rivas glanced towards her. She was standing on top of the reactor, giving her a better view of the situation and allowing her to cover O’mara from an elevated position. “The beast knows the power of these crystals!” Orlax called down. “I can see through the crystal, yes, with my eye. The thing has its face pressed to the crystal! It is healing itself!” “Then let’s go fuck it up!” Rivas snapped, continuing his advance. “With what? Your toy gun? Cease your yapping, pup! The enemy will return! We control this ground, so we hold here! Wait, and spring no trap of theirs!” Rivas ground his teeth, his feet aching as he forced himself to stop. Once again, Orlax was making better decisions than he was. She had taken a position that maximized the capabilities of her weapon. From there she could cover O’mara and watch Rivas, as well as keeping tabs on the beast. Not only that, she had taken the time to see what the creature was doing instead of blindly rushing in. “Goddamn it!” Rivas snarled. “Get it together! This isn’t your first rodeo, dumbass!” “The beast moves,” Orlax snapped, raising the blaster. “Prepare!” One massive eye loomed from the side of the crystal ahead of Rivas. The creature was making a strange gurgling sound, almost a rumbling chuckle, as though it were mocking him. A massive, claw-adorned paw came up and touched the side of the face, caressing it, petting around the eye as if to say “see what you did to me?” and promise vengeance. “You come to me, bitch,” Rivas muttered, “not the other way around.” Slowly, creeping on all fours, the beast slunk from behind the crystal. This time it made no noise as it rushed at him. Rivas fired, but the beast wove its head to the side, absorbing the shot in its shoulder. All too late Rivas noticed the beast wasn’t charging him. It was going after O’mara again. With a boom that shook Rivas’s teeth, a Radio Crystal exploded as the beast passed it. Rivas looked up at Orlax as the beast shrank away again, yowling and whimpering. The Urthean was calmly recalibrating her blaster, watching her fingers with her organic eye as her mechanical eye tracked the movements of the beast. “I see shards, yes, daggers of this rainbow crystal,” Orlax called as she finished her modifications. “They pierced the monster and it cannot seem to get them out, no. Additionally, 187.4 Mhz is the frequency these crystals shatter at, if your toy gun can manage that range.” “That’s a you kind of trick!” Rivas shouted back, holstering his phaser as he did so. There were several new shards from the exploded crystal. Some of them were long and came to sharp, jagged points. “This is my kind of trick.” Aware of the whistling of his servos, Rivas took up one of the spear-like shards. He hadn’t done any classical sparing in ages, but he knew his muscles would remember what to do if he gave them the right tool. If the Radio Crystals could punch through the beast’s hide, then they would have to be his weapon of choice. “Once again, the foe rises,” Orlax barked. “Prepare!” “Give me some good news,” Rivas said, directing the statement as best he could at O’mara without taking his eyes off the beast as it slank back into view. “There’s…there’s so much interference,” O’mara whimpered. “They…they’re having trouble pinpointing us! I told them we’re under attack and they acknowledged, but…oh! The messages are a mess! Something about a radius?” “Just get us off this rock,” Rivas said as calmly as he could as the beast circled, trying to flank him. He turned to follow it, eyes fixed on the enemy as he clutched his crystal tightly. “There’s the soldier.” he heard Orlax purr softly. “Fight well, Fleet brat!” Rivas grinned. “Come on, beast! I can do this all night!” The beast had barely begun to move as Rivas began to lope forwards. Howling, he rushed the creature, crystal shard poised to strike as he moved. The beast reared up, lashing out at where Rivas was as he stepped to the side and drove his makeshift weapon into the beast’s side. The creature whirled, claws whipping the air as Rivas let go of the crystal and quickly backpedaled. Wailing and thrashing, the beast toppled onto its side as it was peppered with lower power blaster shots that were centered around the crystal. Each shot that connected with the Radio Crystal shard caused the crystal to pulse brightly. Rivas wasn’t sure if this was causing any real damage or just pissing the monster off, but the creature wasn’t making any progress for a moment and that was the goal. Another pulse and suddenly his crystal spear exploded in the beast’s side, knocking it over as it tried to stand again. There was now a hole in the monster, leaving scorched flesh and torn muscle exposed to the world. The monster spun on the ground, teeth bared, eyes ablaze with rage as it faced Rivas. Rivas grabbed another spike—a shorter, thicker one he could hold more like a knife—and braced himself as the creature rushed at him. It lunged, claws extended, and he pulled to the side, slashing with the spike. He made contact, but the spike had no edge to it. Unlike last time, the beast was able to whip around and rush him again before he was ready. Despite the blaster shot to the side of its face, it was able to catch Rivas with its claws. He gasped as he was lifted off his feet and thrown. His ears were ringing as he tumbled to a stop. He knew something had broken, but he couldn’t tell what. The beast had caught him in the torso but the claws had overshot him, simply grazing him as he was thrown, tearing his tunic apart. The wind had been knocked out of him, leaving him to feebly attempt to get to his feet as he stopped tumbling. He could hear O’mara screaming, hear Orlax cursing as her blaster shots echoed through the caldera. “We tried,” he gasped, vision swimming as he kept trying to get to his feet. “We…tried…” * * * O’bren drummed his talons on the transporter console. “Say again,” Harry barked through the com. “There is something huge right on top of them,” O’bren replied. “I’ve got three bodies down there and one big…something! The way they’re all moving…it has to be a fight.” “I can second that,” Rigg’s voice said. “There are three people down there and a really big creature. Whoever is running the beacon keeps sending the words “monster” and “dead” and “help” so—” “Get them out of there!” Harry snapped. “I can’t!” O’bren growled. “There’s too much interference still to do a targeted pickup like this! I don’t have the time to filter the big critter out if they’ve got some animal trying to rip them to shreds!” “Security to the shuttle bay!” Harry ordered. “O’bren, do a site to site transport! That’s an order, Lieutenant!!” O’bren swallowed, hands hovering over the command keys. “All of it? Into the shuttle bay?” “Do it!” “Aye, sir,” O’bren said, fingers flying across the controls. “Energizing!” * * * For a moment, as he managed to regain his feet, Rivas felt sure he was covered in spiders. The spiders were warm and fuzzy though, so he didn’t mind. His head was spinning as he blinked hard, trying to see the beacon, trying to understand why O’mara kept screaming the number three, why Orlax was roaring words he didn’t know as what sounded like blaster fire echoed all around his ears. Everything went white for a moment. When the light faded, Rivas found himself staring at the nacelle of a Confederation shuttle craft. O’mara scrambled to her feet, trying to run backwards, but not gaining much ground as the beast slowly stood. The thing seemed startled, and certainly stunned, after having been transported, but its head swiveled to look at her after only a few seconds. It lurched forward, claws extended, mouth agape as it howled, seemingly intent on swallowing her whole. “Move!” She felt something collide with her as the beast screamed. She was falling, unable to keep her feet as her body accepted the fact that she was about to die. The beast, however, was not following her limp movements as she tumbled to the floor. It instead lashed out at something else, causing a spray of blood that coated O’mara’s face. There was an incredible roar, the crack of a blaster, and the cacophony of something massive flopping along on the ground. Dazed, O’mara sat up. The beast was lying a few feet away, twitching uncontrollably as a pool of black grew steadily under it. Standing where O’mara had been just a moment before, blaster still raised, frothing something red at the mouth, shaking violently, gut torn wide open, was Orlax. O’mara rushed forwards as the Urthean collapsed to her knees. She didn’t seem to notice as O’mara pulled her into her arms, trying to take inventory of the massive wound. “What…what are you doing?” Orlax gurgled. “Shush,” O’mara snapped as she began gently pushing organs and cybernetic components back into Orlax’s abdominal cavity. “I’m going to save you.” Orlax glared at her as O’mara laid her down. “You? Save me? Your enemy? Never save an enemy. Let them die!” “We aren’t enemies,” O’mara growled. With both hands applying all the pressure she could to the massive wound, O’mara tried to call up the power she knew she had hiding somewhere in her that could fix even this. “And you saved me, remember?” “Yes…perhaps I did…but…we are enemies,” Orlax said, eyes drooping as blood poured from her. “We…have to be. Those who lead have…declared it so. They…they need us to hate, to bleed…to die for them. You’ve seen it haven’t you? Their savagery, their lust for blood…more feral and…brutal than…than….” Orlax coughed heavily, spattering O’mara with blood. O’mara stared, wide-eyed, aware that she was indeed in contact with her power, but nothing was happening. Infinity was there, at the tips of her talons, but it would not touch this dying Urthean. “I…I can’t save you? Why…w-w-why?” O’mara whimpered, looking over Orlax’s wounds desperately as the grasp she had on her power started to slip. “I…I…I want to save you! I have to! You don’t deserve to die!” Orlax gripped O’mara’s blood-soaked hands fiercely, locking eyes with her. “I was prepared to die from the day I was born!” she growled. But, as suddenly as her ferocity had ignited, it vanished in a wave of primal fear. “But…but now that it’s here, now that the Ancients whisper to my mind…I…I…I don’t want to go! I…don’t want…to die!” She coughed, her convulsions slowing, her muscles going slack. Slowly, like an engine running out of fuel, she came to a stop. Her body became slack until, finally, her hand lost its grasp on O’mara’s, the lights in her mechanical eye flickered out of being, and she stopped breathing. Softly, like the hiss of air escaping a pinhole, something escaped Orlax’s limp form. O’mara watched as tears rolled down her cheeks. Energy in its purest form, as pure as the heart of a star she had once touched, drifted before her. Softly, the energy reached out and brushed against O’mara’s cheek. For an instant the energy lingered in an offer of silent praise and gratitude. O’mara pressed her hand over the energy, clutching at her cheek, desperate to cling to the energy, but it effortlessly pulled free, even from her. With a sound only audible to those that have walked outside of time itself, the energy sped away into the cosmos. Jaw quivering, O’mara sat there, frozen, suspended in silence as she held Orlax’s corpse. Tears ran down her cheeks as O’mara threw her head back and wailed, screaming with all the fury and pain she had at the unseen hands that had sent this poor soul away. * * * It had been several hours since what had been dubbed an “owl-bear” had been beamed into the Raptor’s shuttlebay along with Michelle O’mara, Don Rivas, a Urthean Ops Commander identified by the tracker at the base of her skull as Orlax Vatakosk, approximately two hundred unidentified insects, and two small rodents—which were now loose somewhere in the ventilation on the lower decks. Harry sat on the nacelle of a shuttle, watching as his crew tried to catalog the little bugs scurrying around the deck plating. O’mara had been gently pried off of the Urthean’s corpse once Okan hit her with a sedative. The commander would be spending the next several hours in sickbay, along with Rivas. Both officers, in the end, were in terrible shape. Physically they were not beyond saving, but when security had come charging in they had found O’mara in hysterics and Rivas was catatonic. This monster, coupled with whatever had happened to them and the Urthean had shaken two of his best. Harry felt a chill run down his spine as he stared hollowly at the massive corpse of the owl-bear. “Excuse me, sir,” an Ensign muttered as he gently scooped a small, fuzzy worm off of Harry’s boot and into a jar. “Carry on,” Harry muttered, eyes still on the owl-bear. The interference surrounding the planet was the result of some sort of mineral on the surface. As best the engineers could tell so far, another four minutes would have been enough to tune it all out and pick up just the three castaways, even with an owl-bear trying to eat them. But, there hadn’t been time for such finesse. So, the transporter had indiscriminately picked up anything it could define as “alive” within 30 meters of the distress beacon. Sighing, Harry got to his feet and wandered over to where Jakar was carefully disarming the Urthean corpse. “Anything interesting?” he asked. Jakar shook his head. “None of her augments are designed to detonate upon death. The blaster is spent. She dumped 72% of a cell into that last shot, blew the owl-bear’s brains out the back of its head. It was a lucky shot…or she was just that good. She got it right in the mouth.” “I’m just glad she got it,” Harry muttered, turning away from the mutilated corpse. “Have someone get a hold of HQ. We’ll have to send in our scans of the wrecked Scutta, the reports from the shuttle’s Blackbox, an incident report about the owl-bear, and a lot of other shit. Those Urtheans crossed the border, lost their ship, and then one of them died saving our science officer. Someone more delicate than us is gonna have to talk to the Urtheans.” “Understood, sir,” Jakar grunted; he motioned for two crewmen who were standing by with a gurney to take the body to the ship's morgue. Harry watched them load Orlax’s corpse onto the gurney and carefully pull a blue collared sash–the same that they used for their dead–over her. He bit his tongue to keep his thoughts in check. Even with the animosity as he had towards Urtheans, this one had helped save his people. He knew he should be grateful for that. He rubbed his head, feeling the migraine coming on. He waited to leave until the body was transported away and then excused himself. He was exhausted, even though he felt like he had no right to be. Still, taking some aspirin and lying on his bunk in total darkness looking through the small porthole at the stars seemed to be the most logical next step. In the sickbay, O’mara let out a small gasp. Her head was swimming and everything was sore. The chirp of medical equipment filled her head, causing her to sit up. Twila was standing over her, tricorder in hand. “Take it easy Commander,” Nurse Twila admonished. “You’ve been out for a few hours. We had to sedate you.” “What…happened?” O’mara asked, but suddenly the question answered itself as memory came rushing back to fill in the gaps. “Orlax! How is she? Were you able to save her?” “She means the Urthean.” Rivas said, appearing at Twila’s side. “I’ve got this nurse.” Twila gave him a quizzical look, but nodded all the same and backed away. Rivas looked terrible. His fur was matted, caked with dirt and blood. His usual mask of indifference had cracked, letting his eyes sag as he sat on the edge of the biobed with a sigh. “Orlax…didn’t survive,” he muttered. “She bled out before anyone could get to us.” The breath O’mara tried to take to steady herself immediately betrayed her, morphing into hysterics as she fell back on the bed. She could feel Don lifting her, his powerful arms holding her close to his chest as she bawled. “It isn’t your fault,” Rivas soothed. “I know,” O’mara sobbed, “b-b-but it isn’t fair! Sh-she didn’t w-w-want this! She didn’t ask to b-b-be here! She w-w-was just following orders. S-stupid, stupid blind orders given by people wh-who have no business giving orders!” “That’s what all of us do,” Rivas reminded her gently. “You and I have almost died doing exactly that. It’s…it’s really all any of us can do out here.” “I should have saved her,” O’mara gasped, wiping feebly at her tears. “I…I think I could have.” Rivas noticed she was running her fingers over the palm of her right hand. As gently as he could, he pulled her fingers back. His spine went stiff. It was back: a tiny red paw print, raised like a welt on her palm. “What is that thing?” he asked, desperately hoping he didn’t sound as terrified as he felt. “I…I can’t really explain it,” O’mara confessed. “It has to do with…something you forgot.” Rivas frowned. “I forget a lot of things. You know that.” “But you remember protocols and firing patterns,” O’mara said, taking his hands in hers as she sat up and faced him. “And you remember my birthday, my favorite colors, what kind of sorbet I like, which movies I’m scared of, how to calm me when I cry out in my sleep…you remember stuff that’s important to you. The rest, the trivial bits, you throw out. That’s not a bad thing. It’s what makes you such a great officer.” “So it was something trivial?” “No.” O’mara cringed, nearly pulling her hands away. “No no, it was actually something huge…but I made you forget it.” Rivas raised an eyebrow. “What? How? What does that have to do with—” “There are things out here that are too big,” O’mara cut in, locking eyes with him. Rivas felt his entire body tense as his most primal instincts screamed of danger. He had never seen her eyes burn like this, never heard that tone before, as though she were speaking on behalf of the void itself. “Things so massive, laws so ancient, truths so powerful that we are not able to grasp them. There are things I’ve done that I don’t fully understand yet, rules that I don’t understand and am afraid I’ll accidentally break. If I do that, if I tip the scales the wrong way, people will get hurt again. You could get hurt…or worse. Do you remember the lunar moth?” Rivas struggled to find his voice, but managed to mutter, “How could I forget that?” “That was just a fragment, a small piece of a system so huge that it’s almost invisible to us. And it was because of that incident, what I did then, that certain things have happened…and certain mistakes were made, which I had to fix. So, I made you—made everyone—forget. Please, please, don’t ask me to undo that! I…I caused so much damage! I don’t want you to have to see that…to live it all again…to see me as a monster!” O’mara shivered, her eyes finally moving off of him, her usual voice returning as she loosened her vice-like grip on his hands—which he now realized were sore from how powerfully she had been squeezing them. Rivas sat, jaw slack, mind racing. Everything O’mara had just said was like the first three pages of a sci-fi novel: all of it utter gibberish, but somehow it meant something to the author. A thought jolted him back to life and he fished in his pocket for a moment. While O’mara had been out, he had gone through decontamination to make sure all the dirt plastered on his body was free from dangerous microbes. Normally the transporter handled anything like that, but due to the hasty nature of their pickup, a decontamination was ordered just to be safe. In the process they had found a dozen small spikes of Radio Crystal hiding in folds of his uniform and in his boots. The fragments had immediately been confiscated for further study. There was, however, one he knew they would miss. Before returning to the med bay to check on O’mara, he had snuck down to the shuttlebay. In the chaos of everyone trying to wrangle bugs, he had pulled the crystal out of what was left of Orlax’s bandages. He pulled that same crystal out now—which he now noticed was the same tiny piece that had been their first encounter with the Radio Crystals—and placed it in O’mara’s palm, directly over the paw print. The moment it touched the paw print, the Radio Crystal started to glow. Questions, some terrifying and others merely curious, rampaged through Rivas’s head, but he shook them loose. It didn’t matter what he had forgotten. It didn’t matter that a freaky space rock reacted to O’mara the way it reacted to the sun. All that mattered was her, even the secret parts he didn’t understand yet. He closed her hand over the Radio Crystal. “I trust you,” he whispered. O’mara burst into tears as he pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her, his own tears threatening to escape. He was tired. He was hungry. He knew he was probably getting close to dehydration. Okan had just spent the last hour resetting broken ribs and a shattered collarbone. He was emotionally burned out after not only watching O’mara nearly die, but after hearing her talk like she was some sort of god. A Urthean he barely knew had thrown herself into death’s arms just to save O’mara, and that left Rivas feeling an inexplicable guilt. No enemies had died today, just acquaintances. It was too much, too loaded with unknown, unbeatable variables. There was nothing for him to hold onto in this new chasm of ignorance. So, for the first time in years, he let just a few tears leak into his fur. He clung to O’mara, worried that she—even with all of the recent mystery surrounding her—might be the only solid thing left he had to hold onto. * * * Rivas had been gone for just a few minutes and Nurse Twila had stepped out. Okan was down in the cargo hold helping collect the bugs that had gotten aboard. Certain that she was alone, O’mara sat on the edge of the biobed, glaring at the little pawprint on her palm. “You lied,” she growled. “Watch it, little birdy,” the Coyote’s voice echoed in the med bay, but O’mara couldn’t see him when she looked up. “I don’t lie.” “You said I could change things!” O’mara snapped. “You told me I could help! What good is this power of yours if I can’t save one life? How am I supposed to fix Land if I can’t even stop someone from bleeding out?” There was a pause. For a moment O’mara’s blood ran cold. Sassing an unfathomable entity suddenly seemed like a very stupid idea. From the air around her, there was a profound sigh. Then a profound stillness settled around her as reality ground to a halt. Nothing, not even the air, dared move. “Little bird, I know you aren’t that ignorant.” Coyote spoke softly as he appeared before her in a flash, dressed in a Captain’s Uniform. “If you split an atom, can you stop the surge of power it creates? Once you make that choice, and take that action, the consequences cannot be turned back. Miss Orlax chose. She chose your life over hers.” O’mara started to say something, but stopped. Restlessly her finger twisted together as she thought. There was something she was missing. There had to be. O’mara shivered. “Was I supposed to die?” “Oh, little birdy, you could just as easily have died.” Coyote tutted, wagging a finger at her. “You may be my little project, but you aren’t invulnerable.” “So then…someone had to die no matter what.” “That’s a finite, mortal way to put it, but you’re in the right area.” The Coyote sounded almost upset as he continued. “There are things that no one—not you nor me nor your intrepid boyfriend nor that strapping captain of yours—can change. Sorry, little bird, but that’s just the way of it. You’ll understand as you learn more, I swear it. This…this lesson is a hard one on all of us when we learn it.” “All of you? Whose ‘all of you’?” O’mara asked, glaring at him. “Oops, said too much!” the Coyote cackled, smiling sheepishly. “Oh well! You’ll be fine, little bird. Keep at it!” With that, he disappeared in a flash. O’mara shivered, eyes still darting around the med bay, noticing that time was starting to resume its course. Sounds came back. Consoles resumed blinking. He was gone though, she knew that. Despite the dissatisfaction she felt, O’mara had to admit he had answered the question she wanted to ask. But, he had given her the answer she had been afraid of. * * * A few days had passed. The owl-bear’s corpse had been beamed back to the plant’s surface, along with the majority of the insects. The two small rodents and some of the bugs that had been caught were cataloged and were being housed in the medical lab so they could be delivered to a more well-equipped lab for further analysis. There was also about a quarter pound of Radio Crystals that would be going out as well. Starfleet had made arrangements with the Urtheans for them to exchange Orlax and the information on the ship at a neutral location. All of this was information collected from mutterings Rivas heard as he passed through the corridors on his way to the cargo bay. Absent-mindedly, Rivas scratched at his thigh. He shuddered, savoring the sensation of his claws actually having an effect on his leg. It had happened after having his bones put back together. Doctor Okan had run a few tests, harrumphed in a satisfied manner, and set about removing the carapace. “I thought you said I couldn’t walk without this hunk of junk?” Rivas noted as Okan removed the synaptic transmitter from his forehead. “Well, you have done an exemplary job over the last few days.” Okan said. “The main control circuit must have shorted out shortly after you arrived on the planet. You didn’t notice?” “It was still working.” Rivas insisted. “I could hear it.” “It was malfunctioning, Commander.” Okan said patiently. “Whatever sounds you heard were in your head, probably from hearing them for too long. Those strange crystals you mentioned must do something, because you are fully healed for all intents and purposes. Now, you can sit around here arguing with me or get moving again. Congratulations on your recovery. Now kindly, get out of my sickbay. I have to attend to Commander O’mara and then get an autopsy taken care of.” Rivas’ thoughts were still dwelling on the secret that Orlax promised to reveal, but didn’t have the chance to. All of it made him feel progressively more sour. Orlax had saved O’mara. He couldn’t hold that against her. A few crewmembers that knew him congratulated him as he passed when they noted he was moving without the carapace. He gave them lukewarm platitudes and smiles as he continued on his way. He entered the cargo bay and found Jakar standing beside a plasteel coffin that had just been beamed up from the ship’s morgue. Rivas approached and Jakar handed him a data pad. “Our passenger is ready, sir,” Jakar said. "Thank you, Jakar." Rivas said, signing off on the pad before handing it back. "I'll take it from here." "You won't be joining us on the bridge, Commander?" Jakar asked quietly. “No. I'll be here unless there is an alert." Jakar simply nodded, turned on his heels, and walked away. He stopped briefly as doors hissed open. "We should be at the rendezvous point in one hour," he noted over his shoulder. "Thank you, Chief." Jakar left and the doors hissed shut. Rivas walked over to the plasteel shell that held the body of Orlax. Sighing, he dragged an empty storage keg a little closer and flipped it up on end. The servos in the carapace sang as he sat on the keg and sighed again, realizing now that the sound really was just in his head. He could still feel the shell on his body, hear it in his mind, but it was gone. He leaned forward and interlaced his fingers, eyes fixed on the deck plating under his shiny new boots. "I…don't really know if it matters at this point, but I am truly sorry.” Rivas tried to look at the coffin, but failed. “You had me pegged, you know that? I was…am…a soldier. I was just acting the only way I knew how to act. You’re the reason we survived, but I'm never going to be able to thank you for that. All I can do is keep watch for you and see you home safely. Maybe you were right. Maybe there is more going on with the Confederation and the Empire than anyone of us could possibly ever understand. I got used to hating you Urthreans…you guys don’t make it hard." He chuckled darkly at his own little joke, then continued. "After meeting you though? I don't know if I can justify that hate. I looked into your eyes and all I could see was myself. I hated what I saw." He paused, regret and grief wrestling each other for control of his soul. Regret won in the end, pulling a sigh out of him. "Michelle saw who you really were, didn’t she?” he muttered. “She tried to show me too, but I was so wrapped up in trying to be her hero that I couldn’t see it.” He put a hand on the coffin. "I'm not a bad person. At least…I like to think I'm not. I doubt you were a bad woman. We're all just puppets, dancing for our masters." He heard the cargo doors open and turned. Michelle stepped through the doors and made her way over to him. "Don, there you are. What are you doing here?" she asked. "It's called the Last Watch. It's a sort of vigil you do for fallen comrades so they aren’t alone on their final journey. It's a Cornerian tradition." "Oh," Michelle said as she sat down on an equipment trunk. "Is it okay if I stay?" "I think Orlax would like that." Rivas smiled sadly. “She seemed to like you more than me anyway.” The distant hum of the shipboard systems filled what would have been an otherwise loaded silence. Rivas left the stillness alone. He didn’t feel like he had any right to bother whatever thoughts were going through O’mara’s head. "So, what do we do?" O’mara asked. "We make sure she gets back home to her people. It's a way to honor her and send her to whatever afterlife she believes in." Rivas said solemnly. He looked over to O’mara and O’mara looked down at the ground. “Are you going to start avoiding me?” she asked quietly. “I just need a little space. You…gave me a lot to process.” Rivas said quietly. “Do…do you still love me?” O’mara asked, the first hints of a sob hanging on the edge of the question. “Of course I do,” Rivas said. He got up and sat beside her, putting his arms about her. “There’s a lot going on, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you.” “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?” The question caught Rivas off guard, but to his surprise a response sprang readily from him. “I’m not afraid of you. I’m afraid of what this secret you’re carrying is doing to you, but no matter what I’ll always be here. I’ll always come back for you.” “I could have saved her, you know.” O’mara whimpered, burying her face in his shoulder. “She…she deserved so much better! They…they did horrible things to her Don! She wasn’t allowed to be who she wanted to be…but even then, they couldn’t break her! I…she…it isn’t fair!” “I know it isn’t, but it’s out of our hands. You said there are things out there so big we can’t see them, right? This, Orlax’s fate I mean, could be one of those things, yeah?” “It is.” O’mara sobbed, breaking down as she clung to Rivas’s sleeve. “It’s just…oh! I want to tell you everything but I can’t! I just…I just know I could have saved her. I wanted to so badly!” Don sighed as Michelle sobbed into his shoulder. Gently, he took her face in his hands. “As much as we like to think that we’re invincible, with all our technology and wonders we have in the Confederation, we aren’t. Some things we just can’t change.” “I…I know that.” O’mara sighed, wiping her eyes on her sleeves. “I’ve been told. What happened isn’t anyone’s fault. It still doesn’t seem fair though.” “Orlax saved us, and that makes us forever bound to her. We should honor what memory we have of her.” “How do we do that?” “Well, I know an old Cornerian dirge that would be fitting.” Rivas said. “My singing isn’t great, but it’s the intent that matters, I suppose. Legend has it the song illuminates the path of the deceased as they travel into the great beyond. You think you can help me with that?” “Okay.” “We have to do it three times,” Rivas explained, sitting up a little straighter and realizing it had been ages since he had sung anything. “I’ll do the first round, then you join in.” O’mara nodded. Rivas cleared his throat, humming a few notes, trying to remember the tune from memory before he began. As we pass through the valley of shadow, May the bonds of fellowship never lay fallow. Ere we were to forget our common tie, The hope we strive for will forever die, Our hearts shall hold that everyone who must live, Must not hold to fear or hate, but must forgive, Lest we forget this sacred code, or the shadows we battle, forever we will abide. O’mara picked up the tune as Rivas started in on the second round. She matched his voice, though admittedly she had a more stable pitch than him. They sang in unison through the next two rounds of the chant, their voices echoing in the small hold as the Raptor surged along, bearing a warrior home one last time. The End