Cave Terrors (Part 6 of 8)

Posted on 07 Aug 2014 @ 3:55pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Commander Scarlet Blake & Lieutenant Commander Dea Mialin & Commander Norvi Stace & Commander Andreus Kohl & Lieutenant JG Delainey Carlisle & Lieutenant Commander Amynta Markos & Commander Luke Wyatt & Lieutenant Oren Idris Ph.D. & Chief Warrant Officer 3 Alexion Wylde & Chief Petty Officer Lyras Ueda

2,300 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: Lyshan III - Uridium Mine, Central Matrix Station, Section LV881-LV900
Timeline: MD 07 - 1050 hrs

Previously, on Cave Terrors (Part 5)...

With Tratar and his two security officers in the lead, the combined Federation-Cardassian away team hustled their way through the dim and musky corridors of the uridium mine on their way back to the lift. Without comms to their starships, their only salvation was to pile into the shoddy elevator contraption and hope it ascended before a multitude of denotations collapsed the entire underground mine and sealed their fates.

Rounding the final junction which now put the lift in sight at the end of the tunnel, the team continued to move swiftly until suddenly Tratar's scanner began to register a series of biological entities and beep furiously. The first glinn and his men stopped in their tracks and Tratar held his hand up indicating for the rest of the team to hold position. Unholstering the device from his belt, he held up the tricorder in front of them and swiveled it around in circular motions. "They are here!" he yelled over his shoulder after interpreting the reading, then began to backpedal while the other two Cardassian security officers followed suit and nervously pointed their rifles in front of them while looking around.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

Blake instinctively lifted her rifle and followed suit, prepared to fight alongside them if they had to. She didn't like Cardassians, and she didn't trust them either. But she couldn't deny they were good fighters and tacticians and if a man like Tratar was getting ready to fight, that was a good enough signal for her.

Given their current situation Dea knew they wouldn't be able to hold out long. While she had her own issues with the Cardassians their survival depended on working with them. Focusing her attention on the more urgent matter at hand.

Following closely behind Dea, Kohl was breathing far too heavily for far too short a sprint. For a couple of gasps, he tried to control his breathing, but he kept his eyes trained on the movement of his team. When he saw Blake prepare herself, Kohl wrapped a gloved hand around his type-II phaser.

Stace saddled up next to him. "What took you so long?" she asked with a half-smile, nodding to Kohl's phaser, brandishing her own hand-phaser already.

At the end of the tunnel directly in front of the lift, four hidden silhouetted shapes dropped down from the ceiling onto the ground below them. It was hard to discern their shape, but they appeared to begin to crawl on all fours towards the away team. Their torsos were bulky and fluids could be seen dripping from their heads onto the ground, and it wasn't until a light was shone on them that their identity could be discerned.

They were...Cardassians. Soldiers, apparently, still dressed in the same armor as Tratar and his men. A deep bass-ridden sound emanated from one of their mouths, an alien vocalization unlike anything that registered as a semblance of language. Two of the other Cardassian creatures barked their own reply in a similar tongue, then they all began to move forward towards the away team. The hollowed out eyes of each of them began to glow bright red as wispy tendrils of crimson energy extended and searched the area in front of them, then recessed back into the heads of their bodies.

Slowly and with audible cracks of bone and tissue from their joints, the figures began to stand albeit somewhat awkwardly. Their motor skills were jerky and imprecise at first, but slowly smoothed out as they began to walk bipedally towards the away team. Their motions became faster and faster as they approached.

Tratar eyed the scene with urgency and quickly ran up to his two point men, giving each a tap on their shoulder. "Fire!" he yelled, then followed suit and aimed his own phase disruptor rifle at the figures and pulled the trigger.

Three streams of blistering orange weapons energy cut through the darkness and impacted the figures squarely on their chests. One of the shots fired, on maximum setting, burned through the chest armor of its foe and melted its flesh leaving a visible hole where it's heart should have been, but it did little to stop their advance. One of Tratar's men moved forward and aimed another shot at the same figure's head, but before he could pull the trigger, his neck was clasped by an extending stream of red energy from the eyes of the lead creature.

"Tratarrrrr!!!" came the desperate yell which was suddenly silenced as the tendrils tightened and decapitated him. The Cardassian's head flopped down into the muddy ground with a sickening squish, and his lifeless body was quickly wrapped up by more energy tendrils then dragged towards the side of tunnel where it was briefly shifted out of phase and pulled halfway into the rock formation before being released.

The second of Tratar's men was less fortunate. From the opposite side of the tunnel's wall on his flank, another, larger mass of non-corporeal red energy emerged and darted towards the man. It swiftly penetrated his armor and delved deep into his body causing the officer to begin to jerk violently and drop his weapon. He spun around and looked at the away team with horror as his skin began to glow, then his eyes exploded from his head which were soon replaced by the same glowing, unboldily energy. Melted brain matter began to leak from his ears and out through his nose as he dropped down on all fours, then he rose and began to awkwardly walk towards the away team in tandem with the rest of the creatures.

For a moment, Alexion just stared with absolute shock at what he was witnessing, his hearts racing his chest. They were Cardassian. Those things were definitely Cardassians. Just some hideous nightmare form of them. The final screams of Tratar's man shook him out of it and he lifted his phaser, shooting fast.

Dea was already shooting at the unknown creatures. The result happened to be very unsatisfying. Losing focus now wouldn't do Mialin or the rest of her crew mates any good. Things happened extremely fast and furious in combat.

Like Alexion, something didn't quite click in Andreus Kohl's brain. He couldn't register, couldn't understand what he was witnessing. He couldn't fathom the origins of the creatures moving against them, and even their bodily movements and interaction with the environment resonated as unnatural to Kohl. Fortunately for Kohl, he was standing behind Dea, and he kept close behind the slighter woman.

Like all the others, it took Carlisle what felt like an eternity for her shock to catch up with her brain. When it finally did, she too reached for the only thing she felt would be of any use to her at all in the moment, as she began taking scans with her medical tricorder. "Jesus!" Carlisle muttered, struggling to make sense of what she was seeing and praying for the team the entire time.

Oren stared in shock at the scene unfolding in front of him, one part of his mind fighting against panic as another ached with fascination and curiosity at what was happening.

Feeling absolutely useless without any kind of weapon, Oren did the only thing he felt he could do in this situation - he grabbed his science kit and pulled out a wide range scanner. Taking a few seconds to calibrate it for an in depth scan of the area, Oren activated the small device and hooked it up to his EVA suit so it wouldn't get lost if they had to dump the kits and run. His mind skirted on the edge of panic but he closed his eyes, trying to imagine something else over the phaser fire and the terrible noises emanating from the rabid things in front of them.

True to his word before they beamed down into the mine, Lyras tugged at Oren, gesturing for him to join the Vulcan on the other side of the rock formation he had found. He had taken to shooting at the zombie creatures, to little effect, as his shots either missed or hit ineffective areas. "What is it you're trying to do? I hope you have a plan in that mind of yours'. No amount of language training or diplomatic know-how has trained me for... creatures."

"Really?" Oren asked, staring down at the sensor. If he could just focus on the scanning and not the actual creatures, and kept his mind working, Oren knew he'd be fine. "I would've thought 'Reanimated corpses 101' would be required at the Academy," he said with a small laugh, which sounded a little hysterical. "As for a plan, I don't have one. I have an idea though," he admitted, waiting for a reading on the creatures.

"I'm going to jump to a conclusion that those red things inside the bodies are non-corporeal beings. From what I know, non-corporeal beings are energy more often than not. First law of energy, we can't destroy it, but we can move it. So if we can somehow find a way to move them out of the bodies and into something that is preferably not us, those bodies should drop dead and we can make a dash for the lift. Unfortunately, I'm an archaeologist, and I have absolutely no clue how to do that." As he explained, Oren listened to the sensor finish it's sweep and begin to analyze the data. He looked down at the kit and groaned in frustration. "A minute, are you kidding me?!" he said in exasperation over the equipment's clear obliviousness to the situation.

"The question then becomes whether the energy has sentience or if it is just acting upon-" He paused, looking over Oren's shoulder. "What did you find?... Ah... well, that may be an issue."

"Oh hell no, this is not happening," Markos sneered, lifting her phaser rifle. She took a deeper breath, clearly taking it a in...before opening fire, a sneer twisting her lip.

Luke fired along side his fellow team members but quickly saw that thier weapons done nothing against the reanimated corpses, quickly observing his surroundings whilst he slowly fell back facing the corpses. Seeing that they were just behind a set of support struts. "Commander I suggest we use our grenades to unsettle the cave roof here and block the way" he knew it was a mediocre idea at best but it was better than becoming a mindless, red tentacley walker thing.

"That's a no go!" Blake shouted above the noise, staring with horror at whatever the hell was in front of them, but still shooting with her rifle and not missing a beat. It was all she knew. "That tunnel to the lift is our only way out of here!" And she had the horrible feeling that they...whatever they were....knew it.

Luke turned and looked at Blake a slight Fury and aprehension. Shaking his head he turned his attention back to the cardassian who had lapels gained more ground only this time luke stopped moving back and held firm. Knowing that an advance would mean casualties he tried to think of way to get past but didn't have anything to mind. Picking at his belt he held a grenade firm but setting of one could possible distance the struts. Luke hadn't ever been scared before but he was at this moment at time, making sure he didn't show it to the others.

Amid the chaos Dea heard Blake's response. It certainly didn't help their situation that the only way out of the situation was through that particular tunnel. Continuing to fire hoping they would make it out of this one alive.

Finally, or eventually, Kohl raised his own phaser, and he began shooting low-stun blasts in the general vicinity of the attacking Cardassian-things. That resounding dumbfounded sensation numbing his brain was interfering with his targeting, and Kohl focused, rather, on coordinating his firing pattern with Dea's. He attempted to follow her lead, and cover for her while she re-targeted.

Stace had already secured a space behind a hip-heighted boulder and was darting back and forth from its cover to lay down fire at the approaching bodies. They reminded her of the Pah Wraits of Bajor. Non-corporal energy taking corporeal form. And it frightened her. Whomever (or whatever) she shot at barely winced. They just carried on gaining ground nonetheless. "This isn't helping us!" she bellowed over the din.

"Then bloody aim better!" Amynta shouted at Stace, shaking her head. "Unless someone has a great idea for headshots. I seem to remember things like that working in the old movies..." she took aim, breathing with her shots. Maybe there was a part of her that was messed up, but firing her weapon certainly made her feel like she was doing the universe a hell of a good turn. Or maybe that was because she was shooting at what looked like Cardassians.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

First Glinn Tratar
Chief of Security
CDS Aldara
[PNPC Saalm]

LTCMDR Dea Mialin
Chief Flight Control Officer/Second Officer
USS Galileo

LT(JG) Luke Wyatt
Acting Chief of Security
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Andreus Kohl
Assistant Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

CMDR Scarlet Blake
First Officer
USS Galileo

SWO Alexion Wylde
Doctor
USS Galileo
[PNPC Blake]

Lieutenant Norvi Stace
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

PO 1rst Lyras Ueda
Diplomatic Officer
USS Galileo
[PNPC Kita]

Oren Idris, Ph.D.
Archaeologist/Anthropologist
USS Galileo

LT Delainey Carlisle
Counselor
USS Galileo

LT Amynta Markos
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Galileo

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