The Other Side (Part 2 of 6) [18+]

Posted on 30 Mar 2023 @ 6:20pm by Chief Warrant Officer 3 Lamar Darius & Commander Scarlet Blake & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Lieutenant JG Sofie Ullswater & Ensign Amanda Turell & Petty Officer 2nd Class Donald Andrews & Petty Officer 3rd Class Constantin Vansen
Edited on on 30 Mar 2023 @ 6:23pm

3,461 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: Episode 18 - Cold Station 31
Location: Cold Station 31 - Level 3
Timeline: MD 10, 0848 hrs

Previously, on The Other Side (Part 1)...

"WARNING," blared the station's computer voice again. "Reactor containment failure in 30 seconds. Evacuation protocol initiated. Emergency lockdown activated." All doors and compartments within the cold station began to permanently seal. The Jefferies tube hatch suddenly hissed closed behind the operations officer cutting him off from the rest of the away team. "WARNING. Unknown anomaly detected."

A series of consecutive structural shudders were suddenly felt from within the facility. In space, the secretive station's escape pods jettisoned themselves from their hosing and launched to get clear of the impending blast radius. Each one of the five small modules were empty and devoid of life, leaving anyone still remaining within the asteroid to meet their fate.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

With the winged-doctor draped over his shoulders, Lamar ran at his fastest pace to catch up with the operations officer who was already inside the maintenance hatch. But then, the sudden warning from the station's computer caused his eyes to go wide when the contingency procedures initiated. Lockdown?! The Jefferies tube - their primary escape route - quickly sealed shut. Evacuation protocol?! The soft lurches within facility caused Darius to come to a halt and bend down to deposit Warraquim on the corridor. He frantically looked around while absorbing the entirety of their situation. "We're cut off and Vansen's gone!" he yelled to the rest of the team.

Only a few seconds behind Vansen, Donald had just reached wide open access hatch of the Jefferies tube when it suddenly slammed shut; only a very quick movement saving his fingers from a very traumatic amputation. "What the hell." He called out before trying to push the hatch back open.

"As you humans used to use a phrase, between a rock and a hard place." Allyndra quipped. She stood up and tried to flex the wings. *Soon enough Gerrin my love, we shall dance with the Twins among the stars*

Still running through the vapours, her vision blurring and her lungs starting to burn from holding her breath while sprinting Amanda finally caught sight of the exit door. Only a small gap remained until the door closed and sealed her in and that gap was getting smaller by the milisecond. Letting out a aggressive roar psyching her body up to take the intense stab of pain she knew was going to hit her despite the painkillers coursing through her body she held her rifle tightly against her chest and dived for the deck having no choice but to land on her still dislocated shoulder in order to roll under the doorway. She passed under the door with only inches to spare, the door slammed shut with a loud thunk moments later.

As the closing door rang out Ullswater gave an enumerating glance around at the others. With Turell through that made the last of them through those doors but with nothing ahead she couldn't fathom what might happen next. She wiped her face with her sleeve, tears and sweat soaked into the Starfleet uniform cuff. Between laboured breaths the ensign glanced up at the hatchway that was meant to be there escape.

Vansen swore, his eyes dark as he watched the now closed catch of the Jefferies tube exit to Engineering. He let out a breath, grabbing the medkit and his bag, making his way to the junction, his eyes adjusting to what was around him. First things first. The good thing with Jefferies tubes was that there was always a way out, somewhere, unless forcefields were in place. If that was the case, he'd have to disable them somehow. He touched the metal of the tube, feeling it for a moment, before looking around. And he needed to find out if the rest of his team had escaped Engineering. He tapped his combadge. "Vansen to away team? Anyone there?" he asked, waiting for a reply. He rested his head back, and grimaced when it made contact. Yes, he was still wounded. He'd have to deal with that.

"WARNING," the facility's computer voice reminded again. "Reactor containment failure in 20 seconds. Evacuation protocol complete."

Vansen's eyes widened at that. A reactor containment failure would mean they'd all be pretty dead, pretty quick. At least that would be it. Quick. He looked around the Jeffries tube, desperately looking for a solution. There was none. "Never did get that other date," he whispered to himself. What ties did he really have? Friends. Gabriel. But that was it. Not too many who would miss you, Vansen. Sorry. But hopefully, those that do will understand that this is a risk of Starfleet. And I've had a good run, really. He closed his eyes suddenly, his breathing speeding up with his heart rate. He didn't want to die. But he was going to.

"Twenty seconds huh." Amanda said from where she sat against the bulkhead trying to catch her breath, she lay her phaser rifle across her outstretched legs . "Not quite the blaze of glory I was hoping for but a nice big reactor explosion would make a good funeral pyre."

"Isn't this the part in all the movies where the ship returns and beams us all away at the very last moment?" Donald said with a chuckle. "Always said that was way too cliche."

Allyndra stood up finally looking at things with the idea of transporter. "Power's on until the reactor goes. Think we can activate the transporters to get us all to the shuttles. Put the shields up, we might just make it. Vansen made it to the tube."

Ullswater pulled out a tricorder but it was only a moment before she shook her head "Can't access the transporters, it must be-" she interrupted herself with a series of throaty coughs, tripping over her own breath. She composed herself slightly and finished "Must be the emergency lockdown." She didn't need to speculate why the lockdown would block transporters, the images of what they'd seen were still vivid in her mind.

The final countdown commenced. The tragedy for both away teams was that in their final moments, they would not hear the voices of their loved ones or colleagues, but that of the station's computer. They would die alone. In the depths of space hundreds of light years from their homes. And their story - as it really occurred - would never be revealed to the greater Federation. "WARNING. Reactor containment failure in 10 seconds," the soulless computer announced. "Nine...eight...seven...six...."

Darius threw down his phaser with anger in preparation for the inevitable. He didn't want to die. Not now and not like this, in a remote space station devoid of any means to fight back and control his destiny. "F--- you!" he yelled back to the facility's computer. In the final seconds of his life, he recalled flashes of his existence. His mother, father and brother; Starfleet Marine Academy and his Dominion War tours of duty; Galileo and his time served as chief of the boat; Allyndra and her warm company and fluttery wings; Kreanus and Captain Saalm; Latari and Regula I. Every adventure had an ending.

Sofie screwed her eyes shut as the numbers counted down. She tried to feel calm, it only took a moment. She'd faced death before, but this time she didn't have anything to be afraid of. This time it was an ending.

Inside Cold Station 31's sealed-off engineering bay, the deuterium flow within the impulse reaction chambers overwhelmed the generator's containment capacity. High-energy plasma - unable to escape through the exhaust manifolds - burst free from its confines and super-heated the surrounding atmosphere, instantly melting and disintegrating metallic and organic material alike. The chain reaction took less than three seconds to fully realize. "...Two...one--"

The away teams' vision quickly flooded with blinding white light. Then came silent darkness. Consciousness became an abstract entity in the absence of proof. Were they dead? Another blinding flash of white light shattered the eternal void. It slowly started to fade and their vision returned. The visceral shapes of the cold station's Jefferies tubes and corridors reinstated themselves. The ringing in their ears slowly subsided and their bodies and equipment all appeared to still be intact in the same locations they previously inhabited. Main power was offline again. It was cold, dark and damp. Just like the away teams had originally found the facility.

Amanda screwed her eyes shut as the blinding light overcame her vision, she let out a heavily sigh of relief as she welcomed death. When the light and noise faded away she opened her eyes and looked visibly confused. "Well....." She said looking at the rest of the away team as she tried to blink away the white dots in her vision. "That was underwhelming, either nothing happened or the afterlife is extremely similar to reality."

Allyndra expected to be with Gerrin in the stars instead she found herself on a cold gritty floor not much different than before. "What in the sweet Twins eternal dance just happened?"

"..Uhh.." Darius looked around, sweeping his head from side to side. His eyes processed the familiar shapes and images surrounding him as if he were still alive. His skin felt cold and when he finally let out a tense breath, it moisturized in a small cloud in front of his face. This couldn't be the afterlife, he thought to himself with severe confusion. "...Are we dead?" he hesitated to ask.

"We aren't dead you idiot." Ullswater snapped back, her voice lashing out like a whip. She fumbled to pull out her tricorder trying to find out what had happened. She knew she maybe shouldn't have snapped at the Darius like that but given the circumstances she didn't have the energy for an apology "Main power is offline," she reported and then glanced back at the readings "I have no idea how to interpret what just happened."

"Rather than worrying about that, I am going to say that we start to figure a way out of this place. Ideas?" Allyndra asked the group.

With a flick of her head Ullswater indicated the Jefferies tube hatch. "With power down maybe the emergency lockdown has cancelled. If Vansen is still on the other side..." She trailed off and looked down at her tricoder again for some assurance as to what was going, she wasn't sure what she was saying. A mere moment ago they had all been heading for death but now she was still here and somewhat unfairly there was still a job to be done.

Inside the Jeffries tube, Vansen started breathing again as he opened his eyes. He frowned, looking around with some confusion. Okay, he was alive. He thought. Or maybe his brain was shutting down and this was just a projection, a weird thing synapses just did? But whatever it was, there was a problem before him. He was inside a Jeffries tube, with no power, away from the others. He could stay put, but he didn't know how the others were. Were they alive? So. Return to where you last saw them. He crawled through to the door, frowning as he considered his options. If the power was done, so was the lockdown, so he could try and force it. He grabbed his bag, getting out a tool to open the panel, smiling at the lever there. "Okay, sweetheart...be good to me. Trouble solve this..."

Vansen took a moment to brace himself, feet against the bulkhead of the Jeffries tube, one hand on the ceiling before he pulled the lever, hard. He had no idea what was behind it now. It opened, but only a little bit, so he had to lean forward and pull it open enough to crawl out.

He saw the others, letting out a breath of relief. "At least wherever I am, I got you all still alive..." he said, crawling out before he took the medkit, offering it over to Allyndra when he stood. "This is yours, Commander."

A subtle tremble manifested within the deck plating throughout the station. The facility's emergency lighting suddenly came online and doused the deck in deep crimson hues. "WARNING," exclaimed the familiar computer's voice. "Unknown lifeform detected. Initiaaaaaatttttttee--" The automated voice stuttered while its pitch lowered, as if it were speaking in slow motion. Then suddenly the red alert klaxons sounded. The vibrations within the superstructure increased and the lighting started to flicker. The science officer's tricorder began blaring.

For a moment Ensign Ullswater stared with a puzzled expression at the readings on her tricorder. It took that whole moment for her to make sense of what was being displayed and as soon as that moment was over she jumped up terrified from where she was leaning against the wall. "They're in the walls!" she blurted out, scrambling to be in the centre of the room. "They're coming from the bulkheads. There are too many!" The fear was obvious in the ensign's voice and the tricorder kept beeping as more and more of the signals manifested around the trapped away team.

Amanda quickly got to her feet; as quickly as she could with one good arm. She groaned as she lifted her phaser rifle resting its barrel in the crook of her still dislocated arm. "I don't see anything." She said checking the targeter on the rifle it appeared to only be semi functional but it and her own eyes saw nothing that the Ensign appeared to be panicking about.

The cold station's tritanium walls briefly fluctuated, barely discernible to the naked eye. The solid-metal structures subtly warped for unknown reasons before quickly returning to their normal shape. Within seconds, artery-like tendrils of organic matter suddenly grew out from the metallic surfaces. From above, below and all sides, the eerie sound of emanating life revealed itself to the away teams. The squishy sounds of internal flesh functions dominated the silence while red vine-like veins continued to spread. Within ten seconds, the corridor was consumed by a new species of entity. A sinister one.

A decomposing arm quickly pushed its way out through one of the walls and towards Ullswater in an impossible fashion. What it was attached to remained a mystery, but its blood-soaked fingers rapidly escaped from the confines of its captivity. A second arm appeared. Then a third, and fourth, and fifth. All around the away teams, appendages manifested through the bulkheads as they began to break through the metallic barriers.

"Use weapons if they are working, bits of anything if you have to!" Allyndra knew the only indicated way was up the tube that Petty Officer Vansen had managed to open again. "Go! Go! Move it!" She wished she had her wings working properly those would take time even with an injection to heal. The best she figured she could do was an Earth chicken flutter.

Vansen swore, quickly moving to get the hatch all the way open for them to fit through easily. "Come on!" he shouted, but moved to the side. It would need to be sealed...it meant either he or Andrews, realistically.

A skeleton arm with rotten skin dangling from its wrist quickly extended and wrapped its blood-soaked fingers around Ullswater's leg. From a different section of the walls, another appendage snapped towards Warraquim's position and embedded its fingers through the medical officer's uniform and into her shoulder where its flesh started to merge with the Akkadian.

Sofie felt the grip on her ankle. She felt it tugging her down, down to somewhere else entirely. She felt the place it was dragging her to looming at the edge of her perception and with stomach churning dread she realised she recognised it. The air started to feel hot, the tugging grew sharper. She tried to hold on. As that place began to consume her whole perception she shouted out to the rest of the away team, desperately flailing to get out of the grasp, with all the energy her lungs could muster "I don't—"

The air was hot. The familiar smell of the fire assaulted Sofie Ullswater's senses. This was Nightmare, to be back here as she had been on so many restless nights. She heard shouts from down the corridor, the shouts of her friends who she needed to save. The fire had started so suddenly and like it did every night it had trapped people in their rooms. Their lungs would fill with smoke and their skin would burn and as she tried to save what she could Sofie Ullswater would hear their screams. This was her nightmare, she knew her part.

But as the young musician started to take in her surroundings something wasn't right. Gone were her nightclothes, instead she wore an officer's uniform and the wooden facades of the old building were replaced by the anonymous bulkheads of some starship. As she stumbled out of her room, getting on her hands and knees to avoid the already massing smoke cloud, it wasn't the unfinished wooden floor giving her splinters but a grey carpet. Someone had spilled coffee.

She looked at her hands, wet with the brown liquid. It wasn't right, she knew it wasn't. The first of the cries of her friends sounded out from down the corridor but she didn't recognise it. Looking up a wall loomed above her. Something told her she should be afraid of the wall. Something was right, the heat was unbearable and it was coming from that wall. Sofie Ullswater stared at the wall.

The wall stared back. The two of them looked at each other for a moment, fear in the musician's eyes and fire in the wall's. Then the wall opened.

Fire rose from every direction, the smoke clouds grew pushing her further and further towards the coffee stained floor and out of the wall stepped the flayed man. Except she knew him. This was Sofie Ullswater's nightmare so she knew who he was. Despite the lack of skin, the trailing intestines and sagging jaw, she could tell who he was meant to be. He should have been Arthur but instead she was other faces in that gap where there was none. He was Callin, he was Aria, he was Nesh and Mimi and Poln'rean and Saalm and Navrin and Lamar and all these other people who she hadn't met yet. All of them torn apart and leaking organs on the coffee stained floor. The fire closed in.

She screamed because there was nothing else to do. Sofie Ullswater's nightmare but somehow worse. The flayed man stood over her, entrails clawed at her ankle. The smoke had pushed her so far down that she started to melt into the carpet, becoming one with Matt's spilled coffee. The heat had never stopped and she could fee her skin begin to peel and burn.

The all consuming heat and smoke smothered her until she could scream no more. Only then did the flayed man kneel down next to Sofie Ullswater and say—

"I don't—" the ensign mumbled, barley audible above the din. Seemingly unaware of her surroundings and caught off balance by the hand at her ankle she swayed for a moment before toppling to the floor.

Again Allyndra was standing on the burning and falling sky ship. The flames licked the wood and up the masts the sails already sheets of flame. The ship was listing as well and she could not maintain her balance.

She tried to fly, to escape the ship and grab her husband but her wings refused to work properly. She hopped trying to get closer to him, trying to make it when with a crack one of the masts with the sheets on fire came down on top of him. Flame leapt and pieces of burning cloth flew every where. Bits begin to catch her clothing on fire and she screamed as her dress begin to catch fire and her skin blistered along with it.

She crashed back to the deck writhing in agony and went to scream again but only fire was the only thing her lungs could suck in.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CWO3 Lamar Darius
Conn Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Saalm]

CMDR Scarlet Blake
First Officer
USS Galileo-A

CMDR Allyndra illm Warraquim
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo-A

ENS Sofie Ullswater
Deputy Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

ENS Amanda Turell
Security Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Mimi]

PO2 Donald Andrews
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Mimi]

PO3 Constantin Vansen
Operations Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Rice]

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