Ep1 Act3: The Golden Hind

[Amanda Rose]

[Sjet]

[Sjet]

The fey quality of the light continued to diminish, and more and more of the wall space was taken up with explosive outcroppings of the black material. It looked like they had erupted from the wall, but there was no sign of ruptured bulkheads or broken wall panelling: it was like the black material had pushed out from just under the surface seamlessly.

Sjet was about to open his scanner one more time, when his combadge went off. In the cold and quiet hallway the little alert chirp it made was almost deafening. He was pleased to see he wasn’t the only one to jump.

“Sjet here, go.” He said softly, as though whispering would dispel all the fears a few millions years of evolution installed behind all the technology and culture.

“Hey…cap. It’s Gary.” Came the chipper voice of the Tim Allen’s helmsmen, an odd quality to it: the man sounded happy.

“How’s it going Gary, we’re real close now.” Sjet said, picking up his scanner again and flicking it open.

“Yeah we know. We know you’re coming to get us.” Gary said, but something in the quality of his voice had changed. The jokiness was gone, replaced instead by a darker tone of voice that still hid a sly smile behind its kind words “We know you’d not leave us like the Gorgon’s crew.”

Sjet paused, scanner opened and buzzing.

“Oh. Right, yeah. Our little secret right.” Gary made a hushing noise from the combdage as Sjet slowly began to turn towards the right hand side of the corridor “You told me that story way back when after we had that run in with the Orion pirates. Captain shouldn’t go charging into plasma fire to rescue crewmen already chard to dust and ash, I said. But you couldn’t leave them there, dead or alive. Not after you abandoned the USS Gorgon and became its only survivor. Admiralty should have benched you, should have shipped you out of the fleet.”

“But I did nothing wrong.” Sjet said quietly, closing the scanner and looking at the golden wall with its broken black markings.

“On paper you did nothing wrong. Your escape pod just happened to be turned in just such a way that the radiation pulse that atomised everyone else didn‘t get to you. You’re a lucky son of a bitch that you know that right? Of course Starfleet’s not going to put you back in charge of a front line cruiser again, so they gave you to us: the tug boat Tim Allen.” The voice was snarling now, a inhuman rage building behind the words. Sjet reached up, and tapped his combadge to break the connection.

“They gave us a jinxed captain, and they gave you a crew to kill.” The voice continued without the aid of Sjet’s combadge. Because set into the wall at chest height were the combadges of the 18 officers who had been beamed into that section of the ship. They rested flush against the black onyx cubes that were pushing out of the wall. And one by one the badges faded into the material, sinking into them like stones in dark water.

“But I saved your crew.” Came Gary’s voice once more, but not it was…older, that same heavy malevolence to its tone “I did what you were unable to do. And now they will live forever inside of me, alongside the countless others I have experienced.”

“Run.” Was Sjet’s only instruction, as a fierce clicking buzz filled the air. From down the corridor in the direction they had been going towards, a rippling wave of black cubes began to rise from the floor, rolling up on top of each other to turn from a simple tripping hazard into a blocking plug of glistening whisper quick machinery. Sjet grabbed P’Trell shoulder and threw her in front of him.

“Run now!” he barked, pushing.

TAG-P'Trell and Ryler

Jake Sjet
Captain
USS Tim Allen

[Amanda Rose]

[SabrinaPandora]

[Ciara Mei]

[Sjet]

[Sjet]

[SabrinaPandora]

[Ciara Mei]