Digging Up the Past (Part IV of VI)
Posted on 06 Nov 2017 @ 5:22pm by Ensign Miraj Derani & Commander Marisa Wyatt
Edited on on 03 Dec 2017 @ 7:09pm
2,284 words; about a 11 minute read
Mission:
Episode 15 - Emanation
Location: Mirzcek III
Timeline: MD 79 1700
Previously on Digging Up The Past
They got within fifteen feet when all the dead bugs on the floor began to move. They didn't seem to be moving under their own power, but were flowing further into the chamber as if sucked by a huge wind, or washing down by an unseen current.
They turned, to see the robot rising to its feet. It was moving in a stilted fashion, the joints moving awkwardly as the tiny creatures it was absorbing into its body were synthesised into repairs.
Miraj's draw dropped in disbelief, "I thought you killed it!?"
"I did!" Marisa looked around for something she could use, "Fire. We need fire," she added, half to herself.
The robot whipped around, and saw them.
"Run!" Miraj gasped. "Run, now!"
And now the continuation
[ON]
They stumbled towards the chamber entrance, but to their horror, as they approached the tide of bug shells changed direction, filling up the doorway, the surface melting and melding together in a solid mass. They were trapped.
Marisa stopped and turned to the robot. She still held the rod in her hand. He wasn't as far away as she would have liked, but maybe, just maybe, she could do something to at least deter the robot for a few minutes. Using the rod like a javelin, she took aim and threw it with all her Vulcan strength, piercing the robot through its chest.
It staggered back, eerily silent, the pole protruding six inches front and back, hands going to grab the metal bar. It looked down at the bar then back up at them, its strangely organic eyes full of hate. It reached out, touching a part of the wall. Several sections crumbled away, revealing they were made of more of the tiny bugs, and it staggered away through one of the created archways, the space beyond shrouded in darkness.
Miraj turned and pounded on the wall in front of them one handed. The doorway remained stubbornly closed. She was relieved that the thing had wandered off, but how were they going to get out? "Now what? How do we get out of here?"
"Can we go up?" Marisa asked. "We either do that, or follow the creature and hope he doesn't attack us again." She mentally went over the explosion and its location, and then their current location. Were they close? Close enough? She looked up. "There's gotta be another way out." She felt for her tricorder, but it wasn't on her belt.
Miraj cast about. "There," She pointed awkwardly, still holding onto the wounded Bolian. The tricorder was lying on the floor a little way away, but it also showed burns, like it had caught fire. A thick dusting of singed bugs lay on top of it. "Hm. Use mine. She shrugged her day sack off her back as carefully as she could and held it out. "See if it survived. I don't want to follow that thing. But I don't want to go anywhere in this place blind either."
Marisa took it gratefully. "Thank you." She said, taking the tricorder and carefully scanning the area. "There is a corridor that leads to the site of the explosion, by the dig. We can get there, if we can get out of this room." She pointed to a wall. "Behind there is the corridor."
Miraj helped the wounded Bolian to take a seat and joined Marisa at the wall. "But how do we get it to turn into bugs? Or at least knock it through?" She rapped her knuckles against it. It sounded completely solid.
"No idea," Marisa admitted. She pulled out her phaser and shot at the wall. It seemed to move back and let the beam through, then closed up again. "Fascinating." She tried several other spots on the wall, with similar results. If they got through this, she would have to let Pete know about the bugs and their properties.
Then she tried the ceiling just above the wall they needed. This time, it cut a hole that stayed. "Maybe we can go up and over the wall?"
She glanced at the Bolian. "I can lift you, but you'll have to pull yourself up."
Marisa turned to Miraj. "Could you climb up and see if we can cut a way to the other side of the wall?"
Miraj looked doubtful. "I can try." She tightened her day sack on her shoulders. The bas-relief the Robot Thing had stood in front of didn't offer many foot holds. She put a hand to the strange, crusty porridge wall. Her fingers sunk in slightly. And it felt just like putting her fingers in warm but crusty porridge. "Ewww."
She heaved herself up, pushing one booted foot against the slight give in the wall. It was so weird. Immune to phaser, yet would give enough to let her get the tiniest of hand holds. Her muscles strained to pull her body weight, slight as it was, towards the hole in the ceiling. She balanced precariously from a toe hold that supported her left foot, supported by a couple of fingers sunk in only a couple of centimeters. Further up the wall it was harder to dig in.
She stretched out, but couldn't quite reach to the ledge of the hole Marisa had made. She was going to have to jump. Miraj took a deep breath, tried to swing back as much as she dared on the tiny ledge, and threw herself sideways.
Her fingers grazed the gap, her right hand slipped. But her left held. Arms and shoulders screaming as her unready fingers held all her weight for a moment, and then she got and arm through the hole, and heaved, hauling the rest of herself in after. Her feet scrabbled to get her all the way in, she managed to get one planted firmly, pushed with all her might.
And tipped herself head first through the opening
She fell with a sharp shout of surprise, managed to slow her descent from hanging on the edge of the hole, and landed feet first, her ankle making a nasty crunching noise. She yelped as the pain and shock shot up her leg, and she leaned back against the wall, trying not blubber like a baby.
After a moment she pulled another lightbar out of her day sack, and switched it on.
"Miraj!" Marisa yelled. She went up to the wall and put a hand on it, feeling the odd half-solid, half thick quicksand nature of the wall.
"Don't go in there," the Bolian cautioned. "You don't know how thick it is, or if the pink-haired one is alive." He hobbled over to her. "I'll go through. You hold on to my leg. If I come out the other side, I'll give you two sharp tugs. Then you can let go and follow. If I give you one sharp tug, pull me back."
It was the most logical option, so Marisa nodded. "Okay. But if a minute passes and nothing happens, I'm pulling you back anyway."
The Bolian nodded and slowly made his way through the wall, one foot trailing behind. Just before it disappeared into the wall, Marisa grabbed it and held on.
The Bolian stopped moving. A shudder went through his body, and then she went still. Marisa pulled with all her strength, but the wall held him fast. "Miraj! Did his head come through? Can you talk to him?"
Miraj had been watching with surprise and concern as the strange wall in front of her began to ripple and then one, two three, blue fingers poked through, twitching spasmodically, like trying to grab something. The rest of his arm began to follow, and then a leading knee, raised in step, and then a pinched nose, and then a furrowed brow, and the weakened archaeologist tried to press her way by force through the strangely yielding wall.
And then he stopped coming. His eyes went wide and wild, mouth opening and closing, gasping silently. Miraj dashed forward and grabbed his hand, straining with her already aching muscles to try and pull him further in. "He's stuck!" she shouted "Push!”Then she turned to the Bolian. "Keep moving. We'll get you out, keep moving!” She turned, pulling his arm over her shoulder so he would have been draped across her back, and dug her heels in and heaved with the little strength she possessed.
Marisa let go of the Bolian's foot and pushed where his chest was to help push him through. But instead of the quicksand-like substance, she met a solid wall. "I can't," she called to Miraj. "Let me try something else." She ran to a section of the wall farther down to see if she could push through it, but it, too was solid. That left her two options if she wanted to save the Bolian before he suffocated. She ran back to where his foot protruded from the wall and pulled out her phaser. She aimed at the top of the wall by the ceiling and shot. As before, the beam went through but left no hole. "Try it now," she called.
Miraj heaved with a strength born of panic, but the Bolian stayed put. His eyes weren't focused now, the wheezing breaths now a thing whining sound. "Marisa, he's dying!"
Marisa kicked the wall behind the Bolian with all her might. She only succeeded in jarring her leg. "Let him go!" she shouted. "If you have a problem with us, you need to tell us why. We aren't going to go away just because you kill people. We'll only come back in larger numbers."
At this point, all Marisa had left was reason. She just hoped that the robot and its creatures listened.
For a moment nothing happened. Then the wall dissolved and the Bolian fell forward, dragging in huge gulps of air. He put his hands underneath him trying to struggle up. "Thank you-"
The wall flowed out like quicksand, smothered the Bolian and like lightening, dragged him back, sucking up into the substance of the wall in a blink of an eye. The wall reformed around him, his form barely visible, no more depth than the bas-reliefs seen earlier.
"Let him go!" Marisa shouted. She ran back to the sarcophagus and looked inside for something to help. There was a tiny hole in the back, almost too small to be seen. She felt around it to be sure it was artificial. What was it for? She had no idea, but at this time, she was going to try anything. She pulled out her phaser again and shot down the hole.
She heard the sound of something shorting out and then the wall collapsed into a thousand tiny bugs again. "Grab him and run!" Marisa shouted to Miraj. I don't know how long we have."
Miraj helped the Bolian up, and waved her torch at the chamber they had landed in. It seemed to be a simple corridor, angled slightly down. Down was not out. She turned to go down, limping along as best she could on her sprained ankle. "I hope you have a plan. I don't think what ever it was is going to sit still for that."
Marisa sprinted for the opening, jumping over the pile of bugs in case she triggered them to reform the wall. "Plan?" She didn't really have a plan. When she was safely on the other side, she pulled out the tricorder and scanned for the opening. "Climb out of the hole, if we can. If not, come up with a new plan."
The corridor took them to a pile of rubble. With a sigh, Marisa pulled out her phaser and disintegrated it. "At least it's just a pile of rubble." She wasn't sure where the robot was, and right now, she didn't want to find out.
Miraj stared at the rubble. There was no more corridor. "You don't build a corridor that just ends. There has to be an exit, or a trap door, or something." She kicked at seemingly solid walls, and stamped on the floor. "What did you do just now?"
"I got rid of a pile of rubble," Marisa said, just as baffled as Miraj. She walked around the walls, gently pushing at them to see if anything moved. Then she pulled out the tricorder and scanned. "It says the corridor continues." She put the tricorder back on her belt and walked forward, one hand extended so she wouldn't hit her head on anything. Her hand didn't encounter anything. "I guess we just walk." She hoped.
She kept going until she was in what looked to be a wall, but she kept moving forward. Finally, she came out into a corridor that seemed to appear out of nowhere. "Well, at least this is something."
Miraj and the Bolian limped through a moment later. "It's just a hologram!" the pilot exclaimed, turning to see the corridor they had come down as if through a sunscreen, details mostly lost in the darkness.
There was light ahead, but it had a dark yellow tinge to it, rather than the more whiter light she had hoped to see. Still, the only way forward was, well, forward, and they started to move towards it.
The light was coming from an archway at the end of the corridor, and through the archway could be heard metallic grating sounds, regular, repetitive, industrial. Miraj looked to Marisa, uncertain. The question was unspoken. What on Earth is that?
To Be Continued
[OFF]
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Ensign Miraj Derani
Lieutenant JG Marisa Sandoval