Infiltration (Part 3 of 3)

Posted on 15 Sep 2024 @ 10:52pm by Chief Warrant Officer 3 Lamar Darius & Ensign S'Ers-a M'Lyr'Zor & Chief Petty Officer Afthinam Naime

2,764 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 20 - Reconstruction
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 7, Main Engineering
Timeline: MD 02, 2303 hrs

Previously, on Infiltration (Part 2)...

"My mind to you mind...my thoughts to your thoughts..." he whispered while pulling the engineer closer and pressing his fingers deep into her cranial tissue. How he knew to perform this process? He had no idea. His chin suddenly raised as his gaze glossed over and he left the present world.

And Now, the Conclusion...

[ON]

Sera lacked the imaginative capabilities to have anticipated such a response from the human. His grip on her wrist was electrical and she gasped her surprise at the sensation his touch elicited. Before she could even protest Darius' audacity, Sera was yanked forward and barely kept herself from crashing physically into his chest. However, what he did next…should not have been possible.

His fingertips were suddenly on the side of her face, having found the appropriate position in such a way that denoted he was familiar with the process. That alone was scandalous enough given that no permission had been given for such an intimate act…but the look…the look he gave her? Another had looked at her that way, once, right before they devoured her.

Eyes widened and her mouth formed a small ‘o’ of surprise as this human who should have not been able to perform a meld was suddenly everywhere in her mind, having bulldozed his way through her already strained controls from the current verbal sparring. He had no tact, no skill. His presence was a sticky tsunami wave of chaos that felt like it stuck to everything as it swept her away.

~~

Red alert pulses flooded the interior of the compartment in which Lamar sat alongside 41 of his fellow marines. All of them were in full combat gear which by itself weighed no less than 70lbs each, and the atmospheric shaking and trembling resulting from orbital insertion was taking a toll on everyone's bodies. The 185th was dropping directly into Jem'Hadar lines and there was no turning back now.

The young lieutenant who stood next to the shuttle's exit ramp steadied himself with a hand on one of the top rails then spoke loudly over the thunderous roar of external cacophony. "..Dominion lines are as briefed and we're dropping two kilometers behind them!" he shouted. "Two of our Vulcan regiments have been pinned down for over a week so it's up to us to break the lines! We're first wave and the rest of the battalion is following behind us! Remember your training, and you will make it back alive!"

Darius tilted his neck from side to side which produced a soft crack in his upper musculature, then he bit down on his mouth guard. He performed a final check of his phaser rifle then looked to his left and right before slapping his best friend, Kobas, on his chest armor. "Good to go?!" he yelled to the Andorian.

"I've waited for this payback my whole life..." the blue-skinned soldier smirked back to Darius.

The large transport shuttle descended then landed atop the rocky terrain of a barren world. The interior lights turned green and rear hatch quickly descended, then all of platoon rose from their seats and sprinted out of the vulnerable craft into the dark, rocky and barren wasteland.

"First Squad, with me; Darius, Second Squad to the left! Third Squad, cover our right flank!" called out the lieutenant.

Lamar nodded then gave several hand signals to his men before raising his rifle and entering the battlefield. All squads proceeded to move forward at a rapid pace while intermittently taking cover, but when they approached the pre-briefed point of contact with the enemy, none were to be found. It was quiet and the alien moon's air was still. Too still.

From 50 meters away, the lieutenant ordered a scout to move forward, which the young Vulcan did. Slowly and methodically with his torso leaned forward, the man advanced for several meters until his body suddenly exploded in a mixture of bright sparks, green blood, and limbs.

"Houdini!!" yelled the LT. But it was too late. A large response force of Jem'Hadar de-cloaked within 30 feet of the entire line and began to fire upon their position with accurate and intense polaron weaponry. Kobas' head was instantly disintegrated from a direct shot and Lamar ducked down behind a small rock as ensuing rounds screamed over his head.

"Maneuver right! Get out of the kill box!" he screamed to his fellow squad mates. An artillery explosion detonated just in front of him and the shockwave blew his concealed body backward and knocked the air out of his lungs. He gingerly wiped his eyes while his ears rang, then saw a shimmering Jem'Hadar figure above him materialize with his rifle pointed to his head and a satisfied smirk on his disgusting alien face.

~~

Split across time or realities or whatever was occurring, somehow the conn officer had felt compelled to share this unique experience with her at all costs. It was a necessity - an obligation which permeated across time and space he couldn't avoid, and one which he somehow knew she was familiar with. His fingers then started to release the pressure along her temple while he became catatonic. A reciprocal vision then ripped though his thoughts.

~~

The flooring was a generic metal often found in deep space stations. Heavy, panicked breathing sounded out from the shadows, and rapid footfalls slapped out from someone obviously exerting themselves to get away, and a sense of heart pounding terror surged. A skittering sound echoed in a hair-raising manner. Then an alien screech rang out and a male's scream rolled down the blacked corridor before it was cut off. "S'Ers-a!"

~~

She remembered this. This exchange happened before, but it was different. Oh Gods…her mind offered up fevered memories of acts not performed and yet…she had somehow melded with him! And now…now? They again shared – and Sera experienced a most distressing sensation…fear.

"Tell me what you want, Lamar. I will do whatever you want..." Her voice…a phantom memory…rang out in the space they now inhabited.

Vulcans did not just go willey-nilley into other’s minds, especially not multiple times!

”Nirsh!" She yanked herself away from him, uncaring of the phantom pain and disorientation tearing herself out of the unasked for mind-meld would cause. She had to get him out of her mind, she simply had to. This had somehow gone from a major annoyance to somehow courting utter disaster.

Darius stumbled backward in a stupor while new droplets of moisture descended from the outside edges of his brown eyes down across his cheeks and to his jawline. Corporeality slowly returned and he blinked several times in rapid succession while trying to make sense of what just transpired. His short-term memory remained hazy and he struggled to remember what he'd done, let alone how. "I..." he muttered, "...need to go..." Something was wrong. It quickly dawned on the conn officer that he somehow wasn't in control of his actions and thoughts, and that revelation unsettled him even more than the contents of the visions themselves. He took a few steps toward the exit while stumbling as the world started to spin then knelt down on one knee and dropped his head into his hands.

He was in some sort of distress, obviously. That her first instinct was to go to him and render aid...well. That particular idea was most assuredly not logical. "How..." Instead she began, "How did you do that? Humans are not telepathic." Sera began a slow circle around him, while unconsciously gripping regulator still in her grasp.

Her question made no sense to him. It was illogical. It wasn't a matter of how he'd been able to do that, but why. Darius shook his head before slowly pushing himself back up to a standing position. His soft yet distressed eyes trained themselves on those of the Vulcan engineer. "...You tell me," he weakly countered. "What did you do to me and why do I have these visions of you...visions of us?"

Sera tilted her head and looked at him in befuddlement. "I didn't..." but she did not complete her statement. No doubt the conn officer would say she was lying to him. She could feel it.

"I do not have an acceptable response. I met you for the first time yesterday, and yet..." She cradled her forehead with her empty head unsure whether she wanted to revisit the 'hallucinations' she had been experiencing again or if it would be best to banish them completely from her consciousness.

"Perhaps we should...visit sickbay?" It was an olive branch of sorts. Obviously something had affected them both and Sera was willing to overlook his irrational aggression as a sequelae of whatever had been affecting a number of the crew since the systems' test. That she felt 'concern' for him since his fingers graced the neural nodes of her face was not anything she wanted to consider further in the moment. Sera was concerned that somehow all the meditation in the world could not reconcile what had just occurred.

Sickbay. Flashbacks of his recent tenure in the medical ward as a patient following his 'episode' in the wake of Cold Station 31 exposure resurfaced. His gaze lowered to her thighs then black Starfleet-issue boots while he groggily shook his head. "I can't. They'll think I'm crazy." Flight status revoked, mandatory counseling assigned, and even a restricted flight status could spell the death of his immediate career. "I need to," he tightened his brow while confessing an urgent desire in a lowered voice, "...be with you. Somewhere alone. Not here." He couldn't articulate the intrinsic emotions flooding his cerebral cortex.

Sera's eyes dropped immediately upon his unexpected request. Being alone with Darius, in his current state, and given what had just occurred, possibly again?, was most unwise. However, she understood his statement. Many months were spent in a rehabilitation center to heal after the loss of Viruk, and she too understood the inability to speak due to concern that others would think she was psychologically unwell.

"I am on duty..." Was her soft reply. It was meant to be a refusal. It should have been a refusal. "We can converse in my office." She added. Fvadt!

"Thank you," he mumbled with his head down on his way into the small administrative alcove. It only took a few paces followed by rounding a small corner until the two of them entered the LCARS-filled engineering office. The multitude of visual technical display panels and intricate ship-wide diagnostic screens cast bright yellow, blue and silver hues against the darkened ambient lighting. Darius found the nearest chair then sat down in it and rubbed his temples with fatigue. "What's happening?" he finally asked, looking up to her.

"That would be a more appropriate question for the scientists on board Galileo. I do not know. The hallucinations are rather peculiar. They carry the same details as a memory, but they are of events that have not happened." She answered while walking around the desk and standing at the wall in order to remain a 'safe' distance.

"They haven't happened?" He revealed a rare vulnerable and sincere expression to her. A private one. "I remember you somehow." He glanced up to her attractive face then gestured across her lithe frame. "This can't be a hallucination like the captain said. I...I saw you naked while we were together." More than just nudity, he could still see, smell and hear her vocalizations when they'd become one. "I can feel it. And I'm not crazy."

His topic of conversation was a rather intimate one. Sera looked away in discomfort, and she could feel her cheeks flush. "Ah..." Fvadt. Were these now shared hallucinations? That did not comfort her. She did not know this male, and they...they...

Not Crazy? Sera almost brought up the fact that he had chosen to steal engineering tools instead of asking, but that was not a strategy that would yield any meaningful data. "I feel quite unwell in these episodes, and with each additional one, somehow the difference between real and potentially imagined has begun to blur. The visions feel quite tangible.

He rapidly swayed his chin from side to side in a shake of his head. "The science officer and captain told us to be aware of these visions and document them," he recalled from the officer briefing the previous afternoon. "What did one of them say? The Romulan? A temporal event theory?" His breathing became uneasy while he further pondered this dilemma. "...Is it true? Could we - did we - do what I'm remembering?"

"The simplest solution is often the correct one. I can think of no other reason how we would have similar...recollections." Sera managed to say it without looking at Darius; Her inability to look him in the eye all but screamed how uncomfortable she was with all of this. "One of the episodes...I was told I was likely suffering from temporal psychosis. I have experienced a number of incongruous scenes in why my behavior was...aberrant."

Darius frowned to himself but this time with skepticism surrounding her elaboration, the gist of which was all-too familiar to him during several of his previous 'relationships'. "So you're saying we did get intimate...? But only because you were temporally psychotic?" Really? He rolled her eyes at the pseudo-excuse. Even in supposed time-altered visions, he apparently couldn't maintain a relationship without the woman disavowing it.

Sera saw the derision in his reaction. That was an expression she was familiar with. Something 'clicked' inside of her.

"I am not saying anything, Mr. Darius. I am only endorsing that I too have had similar hallucinations and the only theory that fits currently is that of a temporal event. Rest assured, it would not be an act I would ever consider, given that I am in control of my mental faculties. You are a most...distasteful human. You remind me of Viruk."

Given the loathing she felt for her deceased mate, Sera could think of no worse of an insult than that.

"Now, have you satisfied whatever irrational urge that overtook you to behave in a most incongruous manner so that I may begin my shift?" Her expression did not change, nor did she shift in her stance, or raise her voice. Nonetheless, Sera all but radiated the fact that she was utterly pissed off.

Viruk... He couldn't place the name but somehow it was familiar to him. Why and how he had any knowledge whatsoever of the individual was beyond him, but her comment somehow stung his heart. "Well I'd never give you the time of day either, so...that makes two of us," he petulantly countered. It was clear the sands had swiftly shifted and she didn't want him lingering in her office anymore. Or most likely anywhere in main engineering. He walked away toward the exit of the cubicle then glanced over his shoulder one last time on his way out. "And I'm not incongruous, you're incongruous."

On his way out through the center of the warp core bay - not the Jefferies tube this time - he passed the Farian chief petty officer and did his best to ignore her when he walked by. Outnumbered two to one in hostile territory wasn't the best turf to keep fighting on.

Try as she might Naime had not been able to completely avoid overhearing everything contained in the rather fraught and personal conversation that had been going on. The intruder left through the front doors and not knowing what else to do Naime poked her head round the alcove and with a little nod offered what little reassurance she could "Don't worry sir, you're not incongruous."

Sera looked up from her hands at Naime's voice and saw her poking her head through the doorway. Outstanding. She had heard at least some of their exchange. How much more...lateral could this day go?

[OFF]

--

Ensign S'Ers-a M'Lyr'Zor
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo-A

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

CPO Afthinam Niame
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Ullswater]

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