Enter the Furnace

Posted on 20 Sep 2020 @ 11:38am by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Lieutenant Commander Ryan Alexander

2,394 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 17 - Crystal of Life
Location: Latari A III Orbit - Tholian Frigate
Timeline: MD 01, 0750 hrs

Previously, on Livian Sacrifice...

"I am Captain Lirha Saalm, commanding officer of the USS Galileo," she spoke, then flicked her green eyes to Ryan. "and this is Ensign Alexander. We have come with information for you...in exchange for a cease-fire." It was a bold offer considering the circumstances and their current lack of negotiating power.

The two Tholians slowly stepped forward on their multiple legs then stopped mere feet away. The lead one spoke and ear-splitting harmonic shrieks started to be translated by the UT.

"Federation...captain," it started, accompanied by more shrill sounds. "You are our property now. Do not resist. Or we will," it trained its weapon on Saalm's chest, "...kill you."

A deep chill ran through Lirha's body. The Tholians were much more intimidating in person than she'd anticipated. Hesitantly, she pulled her hand phaser from its holster and tossed it to the ground, then stepped forward to surrender. She looked back to Ryan to do the same, giving him a reassuring nod.

Ryan followed Lirha's lead, making slow movements and throwing his phaser next to where Lirha's had landed, and moving to stand next to her. The Tholian's before them were imposing, if not a little intimidating, to say the least. He couldn't help but wonder, since the Tholian's needed environmental suits to beam aboard here, if they themselves would need environmental suits of there own.

One of the Tholians tapped its sickle-shaped finger to a small device attached to its upper forearm. In unison, a cluster of bright blue transporter particles materialized within each of the four occupants then consumed them, leaving shuttle Livia now empty.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

Slowly opening her eyes, Lirha Saalm found herself sitting on the cold metallic floor of some type of small cell. The Orion captain re-gained her consciousness over the course of the next few minutes while warily observing her surroundings. She was seated on the ground leaning against a wall in a small cubical chamber, and the only light source was a bright yellow-orange slit on the far side of the room which glowed and pulsed with thermal radiation.

To her right, she suddenly noticed another figure next to her, comparable in size and also slumped against the same wall. The captain inhaled sharply to oxygenate her senses, then slowly reached over to the one next to her as her memory returned.

"Ryan?"

Ryan winced at the sound his name, his head pounding. He mumbled something before feeling Lirha's hand touch him. "Ugh-" He managed before a wave of nausea threatened to surface and bring up what little he had in his stomach. After a few heart beats the feeling passed, and Ryan slowly opened his eyes only to shut them again.

Ryan took a couple of small, then deep breathes before responding. "Yes, ma'am. Are you ok?" He asked, as collected his thoughts and fought the urge to curl-up and go to sleep.

"Yes, terrific," she mumbled in return trying to shake the fogginess from her thoughts. She slowly looked around to take in their sterile environment. "Where are we?" she asked, wondering what'd happened since her last memories aboard shuttle Livia. "Is this the inside of a Tholian ship...?"

Ryan spent a few heartbeats longer clearing his head and taking in his surroundings before focusing his attention fully on Lirha. "I...I think so. Well, the inside of a Tholian holding cell." He replied as he slowly looked around.

Lirha also observed the cell chamber now in more detail. The walls were geometrically identical and composed of solid metal, of which type she was uncertain. Each piece was seamlessly cut and polished silver with the only light source coming from a small three-foot wide observation slit on the left side. It contained a small viewport to whatever was on the other side, which appeared...cosmic.

Crawling on all fours toward the small window, Lirha reached up to grasp the slim indent with her green fingers then pull her head up to look more closely. What she saw was incomprehensible at first -- intense orange and yellow flashes combined with a notable radiation burst forced her eyes tightly shut. Her fingers let go of the windowsill and she collapsed on her back.

While the captain's corneas recovered, what appeared to be a large orange figure slowly moved across the viewport from one side to the other. Thick thermal shimmers distorted the appearance of the entity but it was definitely not humanoid in nature.

Ryan had been looking away from the view port when the flashes occurred, and the sound Lirha hitting the floor caused Ryan turn abruptly and rushed to her side. "Are you alright Ma'am?" Ryan asked before the movement drew his attention to the view port. He watched the Tholian for a few moments, and angled his head to see if he could get a little better view to see what the Tholian was doing.

"I'm fine," she grimaced, sitting up. She had a rectangular-shaped sunburn around her eyes but disregarded the discomfort. Her first thought was to figure a way out of their apparent captivity since it was obvious they were unequipped to by themselves. "Where are the Tholians?"

"There is one, just outside the view port." Ryan said, before making sure that Lirha was alright, and moving back to the viewport. Ryan tapped, then banged a fist on the viewport trying to get the Tholians attention.

Lirha moved next to Ryan and observed shimmering figure on the other side. She had no idea how much time had passed since their capture but knew every second was of the essence and being wasted sitting in a holding cell.

Tilting her head up toward the ceiling, the captain called out, "I know why you are here. And I know about the Genesis device. I have come to apologize and...assist in your efforts."

There was a long since then the blurry figure behind the viewport reappeared and stopped in the middle. A piercing set of shrieks suddenly blared into the holding cell. The captain covered her ears, obviously unable to understand any of the silicon language, and glared at Ryan. How rude of them.

"We...can't..understand you!" she yelled back.

The noise stopped and Lirha could feel her head throbbing. So far this was a terrible life experience and a poor decision on her part. A synthetic voice started to speak over the comm, this time in Federation standard.

"..Starfleet officer. You have created...proto-Tholian. Death."

It took a moment for Ryan to recover from the Tholian's first attempt at communication. "I don't quite understand, ma'am. Are they referring to what happened on the planet?" Ryan said to Lirha, hoping that she would understand his inherent vagueness for the Genesis briefing.

The Orion nodded to the Human. "I believe so." Lirha re-focused on the viewport and replied to explain her presence. "The life-form, the one you call 'proto-Tholian'...is it related to the protomatter signature coming from the third world of the second star?"

A short screech was the single answer. "..Yes.."

Ryan nodded in understanding, remaining silent to not interrupt his captain and the Tholian.

"The protomatter signature," Lirha delicately began, "has also been detected by us, at the site of one of our colonies. It is," she paused to glance to Ryan before admitting the truth, "..of Federation origin."

The captain prepared herself for another series of Tholian verbal shrieks but none came. Instead, the blurred figure behind the viewport shifted slightly. Then it let out several deeper shrills. "We know. You have...created death," came the translation.

Lirha glanced at her Ops officer and gave him a confused shrug. She wasn't sure what the Tholian was specifically referring to, but wanted to know more. "The proto-Tholian is death? Or, our technology?" she asked in return.

"...Yes..."

The revelation didn't really come to much of a surprise for Ryan. He had been able to piece together a fair, at least at what he thought as was a fair amount, of information from all the cryptic briefs. "Yes to both questions?" Ryan asked, wanting to clarify.

Another pause ensued. One longer and more statistical than displayed before by the silicon captors. "You are ignorant," started the translator, "of yourselves and others... dangerous to all life."

Two invisible panels on opposite sides of the cell's smooth ceiling suddenly opened, and two small silver boxes attached to a long rod lowered down to eye level next to both Saalm and Alexander. The foreign technology then rotated on its lateral axis to point directly at each of them.

"Now you must see," the Tholian instructed. A soft audible whine started to increase in pitch and each of the hanging boxes started to glow. The captain barely had time to process the repercussions of what was about to happen, but knew it was the only solution to avoiding war.

"I think," Lirha suggested to Ryan, "we're meant to look into the light."

Ryan shrugged before nodding, waiting to follow her lead.

Hesitantly, the Orion captain turned her head and green eyes towards the nearest bright light. What Lirha saw inside the blinding flare suddenly took control of her motor functions - she inhaled sharply and her body became tense as her eyes dilated.

Saalm's senses were completely overcome by a technology she didn't understand. She continued to stare, hypnotized, at the glowing Tholian device, now completely unaware of her physical surroundings. Thousands of spatial images and Tholian data streams projected into her irises every second from both past, present, and future. The Tholian technology interfaced directly into her cerebral cortex but the sheer volume of what was being transmitted threatened to overwhelm the captain.

Lirha's body started to tremble more violently the longer she stared into the light. Her brain was now receiving teraquads of data which no humanoid could conceivably process all at once with an organic brain. Her eyes became bloodshot while streams of tears now uncontrollably dripped down her face.

What she saw was both enlightening and terrifying. Projections of the early Milky Way galaxy permeated her visions and she witnessed hundreds of planets in their geomorteus evolution suddenly populated by prehistoric Tholians -- the proto-Tholians. Large worlds once destined to evolve into Class M terrestrials were now devastated by the silicon creatures' parasitic nature which fed on their molten cores. Carbon life was annihilated in favor of silicon propagation, eventually leaving each world geologically barren and nothing more than a dormant rock in space.

Then, once a world was sucked dry of all its natural resources, the proto-Tholians would reproduce to spread their seed across solar systems. They harnessed a planet's geothermal energy to reproduce by forcefully ejecting their offspring into planetary orbit, hoping it would eventually be captured by another planet or celestial satellite which wandered too close. In this way, over billions of years before humanoid life began to form, the proto-Tholians became the dominant life form in the galaxy.

Like Lirha, Ryan too received a brain dumb of information. Images flashed through his mind. The Milky Way formed, before shifting to a world that was well on its way to becoming a class-M planet, only to fast-forward in time and space before turned barren by these proto-tholians. Ryan couldn’t tell how many planets flashed through his mind, before the images returned to the Milk Way. What appeared in his mind was both awe-inspiring and terrifying. Stars flashed to brown when occupied by the proto-Tholians. For what seemed like an eternity, stars slowly changed from bright pinpoints of light, to brown before cascading to countless numbers.

The bright lights suddenly terminated and the Tholian's optical devices retracted from Saalm and Alexanders' field of view. The Starfleet captain painfully shut her eyes then panted to regain her breath. Sweat dripped down her forehead and sides of her green cheeks. She put both of her hands to the sides of her head.

"...This lifeform," she weakly spoke, "...Ryan, what have we done?" It was both an honest and rhetorical question which questioned not only the nature of Starfleet science and policy, but also the revelation of a biologically superior lifeform which threatened all carbon life in the galaxy.

Ryan sat quietly. The information that he had consumed seemed almost to much to comprehend. "I...I don't..." Ryan trailed off, not really knowing how he could answer such an open-ended question. "What...what can we do to stop this?" Ryan asked to no one in particular, still stunned it all.

It was the ultimate question which now superseded any other personal or Starfleet directives. Lirha had never been faced with such an adversary of this nature nor had she discovered something so sinister in nature. What could they do? There was only one option she could think of.

"We destroy it. Them. All of their worlds," she answered, "...before they expand and it becomes too late.."

It was almost a bit of a shock to Ryan, as he listened to Lirha. It took him a few moments to process what she was saying. It didn't entirely sound like something that Starfleet would do, but at the same time, what right did they have to decide, what could be the fate of the galaxy. Ryan slowly nodded turning to look at her. "I am with you, one-hundred percent, ma'am."

The ensign's support was a welcome reassurance to Saalm who also struggled with her own conscious. She remembered her oath to Starfleet many years ago to protect all lifeforms from harm, and the thought of purposefully destroying new life made her nauseous.

Yet, while her heart processed the situation with compassion, her brain understood the terrible, most logical course of action. There was too much at stake and she'd been shown more than enough evidence of the impending destruction which would be unleashed on all habitable worlds if they failed to act.

Lirha looked towards the small viewport in their cell and observed the shimmering Tholian figures on the other side of the compartment.

"Yes. We will help you."

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CAPT Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-A

ENS Ryan Alexander
Chief of Operations
USS Galileo-A

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