WRONG PLACE, WRONG DIMENSION
by ardavenport
- - - Part 1
Jean-Luc Picard lay curled up on his side on an unidentified soft/hard surface. It was an undignified position, but he didn't move. He wasn't on the Enterprise, no one to see him, anyway. All around him was glaring white. There were no shadows at all, not even under him. Whatever he lay on shone as mercilessly bright as the rest of the echoless void around him. Even with his eyes tightly closed he could still see a dim glow from the glare. The only sounds he'd heard for hours was a faint white-noise that may, or may not, have been of his imagining, his own utterances (not all of them pleasant), and the energy crackle of the creatures that had apparently abducted him.
He peeked out at his surroundings. No change. He rolled over onto his other side. The burns on his head, neck, and back where his captors had stung him were really hurting him now. He gingerly touched a blister, on of many, forming on his cheek. It was impossible for him to rest his head anywhere without putting weight on at least one of them, but it didn't quite hurt enough yet to force him to get up.
It was insufferably hot. He was thirsty and his mouth had a vile acidic taste that he wished he could wash out. Clearly, the creatures of this place only had the vaguest idea of the proper environmental conditions for a human. At least they'd gotten the gravity, and especially the atmosphere, about right. But there was too much visible light and no telling how much other radiation as well.
Finally, after he felt he'd recovered enough, he got up. Along with his other injuries, he was getting a dreadful headache.
He stood.
Head down, squinting, protecting his eyes with his hands, he paced out a large oval path. When he completed one circuit he walked out in a straight line perpendicular to the oval's minor axis. At the end of the line, he turned left a few paces, took a step away from the imaginary oval, then walked towards it and back and then returned to the original line out from the oval. He repeated this secondary line in the opposite direction.
He sincerely hoped his captors would get the message. He went back to where he'd started the oval and began tracing out the figure of the Enterprise again.
In spite of all that had happened to him, he didn't think his captors were hostile. In fact, they seemed to be trying to communicate with him. Unfortunately, their 'speech' seemed to come only in the form of bolts of high voltage static electricity. They clearly had no idea of the needs and vulnerabilities of the human body. But they were surely able to detect the electrical activity of his brain and nervous system which would explain why all the marks they'd left on him were about his head and spine.
Sound had been a miserable failure for him when he tried to talk back to them. Speaking, yelling, clapping, tapping. all proved utterly useless; he wasn't even sure if they needed an atmosphere at all. They were spherical, no wider than his shoulders, and floating at about eye level. Random shapes of blue and pink radiance flitted over them and even the dark patches of their bodies seemed to glow. Arcs of pale yellow energy lanced out from them when they tried to 'speak' to him. He counted himself fortunate that they had not touched his eyes and ears. Perhaps they had understood his body language when he so consistantly covered them when they approached him. He was hoping that they would comprehend the body language of the figure he now traced.
He finished his second oval and continued the pattern trying to carefully retrace his steps. It was very difficult. He could barely see in the blinding glare around him and even if he could his surroundings were featureless, with no reference points at all.
And his headache was getting worse.
Since these beings had whisked him off the bridge of the Enterprise, they had appeared to him several times. They used some form of matter/energy transport that had left him hideously nauseated and disoriented. The first thing he'd done after arriving was to vomit up his lunch. Almost immediately he'd been bombarded by three of them, stinging him from all sides. But after several minutes of him frantically trying to get away from them, they finally stopped.
He finished his second outline and started a third. He squinted at his surroundings and hoped again that one of the creatures would appear and take an interest in what he was doing. But he appeared to be totally alone. He'd tried exploring his surroundings, but it seemed to be endless as well as barren. He couldn't even be sure of where he was, having lost his only reference point; the place where he'd retched when he'd arrived. He noticed that his hands, half covering his eyes, appeared a bit pink.
When they came, the energy creatures appeared in twos and threes. They would sting him, he would duck and move away, they would approach more cautiously, and then sting him again. His one and only success in communicating with them had been during their last visit. He'd found that lying down, curled up on his side, would stop them from trying to 'talk' to him. They would come very close to him, so near he could feel his skin tingle, but nothing else.
They did understand motion and maybe even shapes. Perhaps they would understand the outline he was tracing and that that was what he wanted.
Unless something changed, his prospects for survival were not good.
o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o
First officer's log. It has now been five hours since Captain Picard was taken from the Enterprise. We have been unable to locate him with ship's sensors, though Counselor Troi feels that he is alive somewhere.
\The alien . . . . . . ship, such as it is, has not changed position since its initial attack on us. We have been unable to communicate with it since our first encounter. Efforts to do so are proceeding, as are repairs to the ship's bridge and engineering sections.
Commander Riker looked down the table at the assembled officers in the observation lounge. Seated at the head of the table, where Captain Picard normally sat, he stroked his beard and mulled over what he'd just heard.
"You're trying to tell me that they were just looking us over, Mister Data?" he asked a little incredulously.
"Yes, Sir," the android answered placidly. "We have had great difficulty with our own scans of the alien craft; it appears to exist in multiple dimensions. However, their actions upon boarding the Enterprise were not inconsistent with what activity we have been able to discern aboard their ship. And the pattern of their movements and the manner of their arrival and leaving are more consistant with reconnisence rather than attack."
"If that's what they do all the time, I don't know how they keep anything running," Geordi LaForge interjected. "We're still replacing burned out-components down in Engineering."
Riker glanced at the amorphous cloud visible outside the room's wide view port. The alien 'ship' didn't even have a definable outline. "Status in engineering, Geordi?"
"We're functional, Sir. We should have the warp drive up and running any time now, though don't ask me why it didn't blow up after those things got into it. Sciences is still doing double shifts, trying to make some sense of what happened to us and get a handle on that ship."
"Why did they take him?" Doctor Crusher asked the room in general.
"Doctor?" Riker returned.
"Why did they have to take the Captain?" she repeated.
"Presumably they wished to study him, if we are correct in assuming that their actions are motivated solely by curiosity," Data answered her calmly, "It would appear that the abduction has no relation to his position as Captain." He activated the view screen behind Riker's chair and they all turned toward it. A yellow-on-black diagram of the bridge, with blinking white circles indicating crew positions appeared on it.
"Lieutenant Worf and I have studied the initial analysis of the incident." A blue circle appeared in the center of the diagram and began expanding. "This particular energy discharge began in the exact center of the bridge. It then proceeded outward, equally in all directions, until it encountered something. In this case, it was Captain Picard, who was standing at the time." The perimeter of the blue circle touched one of the white ones. It broke and reformed around it's target before they both vanished from the picture.
"Red alert!" Lieutenant Worf's voice filled the room. "Commander Riker to the bridge." The red alert klaxon started up. In the room's view ports, the alien ship was already noticeably closer and advancing.
Riker tapped his comm badge as he hurriedly stood up with the others. "Shields up, Mister Worf."
Riker, Data, Troi, and Crusher entered the bridge at a brisk pace. Lieutenant Commander LaForge had already disappeared in a turbolift, heading for engineering.
"Status Mister Worf?" Riker demanded, taking the command chair.
"The alien ship is closing at point six three light speed, Sir."
On the main view screen, the picture of the alien craft grew, shimmering silver in some places, glowing dull white in others, nearly transparent in still others.
"Take evasive action, impulse power," Riker ordered. The alien ship slid off the screen for a moment then reappeared. Its cloudy form filled the screen.
"Geordi, we need the warp drive, now."
Back in Engineering, seconds after arriving, LaForge cursed the readings he saw. One of his assistants, Ensign Leflar, shook her head. "Sorry, Sir. It's no go. I can give you more power for the shields."
"Do it!"
"Six seconds to impact," Worf reported.
"All hands, prepare for collision," Riker announced. The ship shuddered under them.
"The shields seem to be holding them." Worf checked the readings at his station behind Riker. They had had no warning the last time and no time to bring up the shields. The ship shuddered again. Down in Engineering, LaForge and his staff frantically adjusted the shields, filling in any weaknesses, quelling instabilities caused by the engulfing alien ship and its shifting energy patterns. All over the ship, people waited at their red alert stations or at their assigned positions, some of them monitoring ship status from where they were. The starship shuddered again, the lights on the bridge flickering.
"Commander," Data said from his station. "We are experiencing an energy surge . . . ."
"The engines?" Riker asked.
"No Sir, the energy build-up is in the shields . . . ." Data's voice trailed off as he followed an ominous bulge of power on the shipwide control pathway network. His hands swiftly flew over the controls, trying to cut it off.
"Commander . . .," was as far as he got. The Ops station flashed a bright, pale yellow. Lightning arced out to his midsection. His internal, upper thorax sensors dispassionately registered an unmeasurable energy increase. Overload Danger -EMERGENCY SHUT D-
Data stiffened, and rigid, fell to the side.
"Data!" Riker bolted up out of the command chair, just before similar energy twisted up from the control mechanisms of the command chair's arm rests. The room's lighting ceased to have any meaning. Pale yellow and pink energy snaked out from every control on the bridge and illuminated the room with its eerie strobe effect.
"Data!" Riker had nearly reached the fallen android when a new, steady, glow washed out the other flashes. Riker turned back to see a wall of blue light coming straight at him . . . .
. . . . . reaching the place where Doctor Crusher stood, centimeters before it would have touched him. She vanished, surrounded by the blue glow that instantly enveloped her. Riker took a step toward where she had just stood. A whirlwind of light so bright it didn't have any color dazzled him; the smell of ozone hit him the same time as a charge of pain touched his temple, his whole head.
o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o o*
Picard cursed.
He was literally cooking in this empty hell. The skin on his hands and face had reddened and was beginning to hurt him along with the burns he'd acquired earlier from his hosts.
His attempts at communication had yielded nothing. Presumably his captors didn't understand him. He thought it was a stupid way to die, from their ignorance.
He sat, knees up, hands tucked in next to his body to protect them, face down. For once in his life, he could have wished for a little more hair on his head.
Thump. 'Wheeeeet, eeeee."
He looked up. In front of him were two enormous feet, flat like flippers, and wide, covered with tough leatherish, gray-tan skin. He looked up the legs, the torso and finally to a wide, flat 'head' tilted down at him. It had no recognizable human features. It spread outward to either side like a huge rigid manta ray, but with a subtlely ridged and fluted skin. Blunt horns lay in front, underneath the forward lip of the top, and a 'fin' crowned its top. The whole stucture seemed to be uniformly made of the same material as the rest of the creature.
"Eeeeerrrrr, breeeetteettttteeeeet, tck, tck"
The noise came from a large black hole between the horns under the forward edge of the head that towered over him.
'At last,' he thought. He held his empty hands up. "I'm Captain—-"
Something whipped out from the hole in the creature's head, entwined his wrists and jerked him to his feet and off the ground. The creature smelled of must and methane and decay and he turned his head aside, away from it.
They vanished from the white plane.
o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o
Lieutenant Worf picked himself off the deck, forcing himself to his hands and knees. He looked up in time to Commander Riker step towards him, his head colliding straight into a glowing ball of yellow and pink energy. The human's body convulsed and hurtled to the side, out of Worf's line of sight.
Worf reached for the phaser concealed in the Klingon sash he always wore. He actually spared a second, while adjusting the phaser power, to acknowledge his Starfleet training that said that one should always carefully consider the consequences of firing a phaser. Even amid the confusion and ominous crackle of power above and around him he had no trouble targeting the intruder that had just attacked Commander Riker. He aimed, allowing himself another half-second to savor the intense pleasure of engaging an enemy in combat.
He fired.
o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o o*o
Beverly shakily sat back and hugged her knees. Another wave of nausea hit and she fell to the side, retching. But her stomach was empty now, so nothing more came up. She spit again and again, trying to rid herself of the after-taste. After a time, she rolled back up into a sitting position and wrapped her arms around her knees again. She tried looking about at her surroundings, but it was useless; she couldn't see a thing in the blinding heat and whiteness around her.
Was this where the captain had been taken? She again looked about in the glare, carefully searching for any variation at all in the totally uniform horizon.
"Jean-Luc?" she tried calling, with no answer. She called again, louder. She heard no answer, not even an echo returned to her in the heat. Her words fell flat in the air, deadly still and rank from her illness.
Thump.
Beverly whirled about, looking upward. A great creature stood over her where only seconds before there had been nothing. She stared straight up into a gaping hole, like a cave, under a wide, flatish 'head' atop a featureless body. It looked as if it were made of stone.
"Wheep!" The almost electronic-sounding noise came from the depths of that great maw.
"Uh, ah, I...," She gulped unintelligibly. I must sound like a fool to it, she thought. But she never finished her half-started introduction. Long tongues, like vines, slurped out and down at her from the maw, wrapped tightly around her wrists and lifted her upward.
The world around her suddenly went black and her stomach lurched. It was even worse than when she was snatched from the bridge. The horrible sensation that space itself was somehow wrong inside her body was magnified from the first trip. It was only remotely similar to the disorientation of a very bad free-fall. Other than that pale association, she had noting else to compare it with.
Then it was gone. Gravity returned. The grip on her wrists loosened and fainting, she fell forward.
- - - End Part 1