Chapter Eleven
Captain's Log: Supplemental
We have three more hours before the Fen Domar are out of range, and the number of mineral-based creatures surrounding the ship continues to grow. They haven't made any threatening moves as of yet, but I can't shake the feeling that they are only the curious beings they appear to be. Lieutenant Torres assures me that they are not affecting any systems, while Ensign Kim confirms that they are only sitting outside the ship, and have not tried to land on its surface. Based on an idea from Ensign Cavendish, Mister Kim and I are working on finding out what sort of stimulus these creatures respond to, in order to create some sort of a distraction that will draw them away from the ship to avoid hurting any of them when we leave. Or to keep them from hurting us, if need be. But so far, nothing works.
The tension among the crew is stifling, and is only getting worse. I had hoped to leave a buffer of a few hours before we melt our way out of here. But with our present company, that might be asking for a lot.
B'Elanna was the first one awake in their quarters. She and Tom were both due at a staff meeting in an hour, and she wanted to have a little bit of time to have breakfast with her family before they dropped Miral off with the Wildmans. Instantly craving raktajino, she put on her robe and crept into the living area, mindful of the sleeping figure on their couch. As she waited for it to materialize, she looked at the sleeping Cavendish, smiling to herself when she thought about how in less than a day, he was making her closest friend a lot happier than she'd been in years. You'll do, she thought kindly.
The movement of the creature that was still hanging outside the window over him was faint through the shading in the transparent aluminum, though it seemed to be fluttering at a much faster rate than usual. She was about to pay it no mind until it red luminescent streaks started to suddenly shoot across its body, and a breath later, the room shook hard as it impacted with the window. Automatically reaching for her commbadge and finding nothing there, she dashed over to the desk as she hollered, "Tom!" A second later, her finger was on the comm console. "Torres to bridge!"
"Janeway here."
The panic in her voice had rousted her husband immediately, and he was in the doorway to the bedroom in an instant. "What's wrong?"
"Get Miral!" she yelled at Tom, just as the creature hit the window again. Paris didn't need to be told twice, and raced across to his daughter's bedroom. "Captain, one of the creatures is banging into the viewport in our quarters," she shouted as she dashed for the phasers that they had stashed out of Miral's reach. Another hit, and she saw that Cavendish still was trying to wake up. "Lionel, get out of there!"
On the couch, Lionel was slower to wake up. "Huh?"
The creature's lighting pattern seemed to explode, and just as B'Elanna leapt forward to grab him, a flash of energy threw her backward as the alien merged with the matter of the window, and then burst into their living area.
"B'Elanna? What's going on?" the captain called. "Respond!"
With a groggy Miral on his shoulder, Tom had just re-emerged to see what happened, and he ran to his wife, who was now just picking herself up off the carpet. "Intruder alert!" he shouted. "One of them is in here!" A scream filled the room just as he reached down to help her, and he looked up to find the creature had moved to envelop the man on the couch. "Lionel!"
On the bridge, the captain's head had snapped up from her work at Ops at the first call, the sound of Cavendish's scream going through every person there. Tuvok had immediately left to go deal with the intruder. "Captain, the entire group appears to be moving in on us," Ensign Kim reported, putting the external sensor feed up on the viewscreen. Like the one that was now inside the ship, the creatures were lit up and grouping together. "I'm getting reports of at least half a dozen more trying to get in."
"Where?" she demanded, noticing that Chakotay had just arrived on the bridge.
"Crew quarters…and the ready room."
"Captain, two more breaches on Decks Six and Eleven," Ayala reported from Tactical. "Sending teams now to intercept."
"Evacuate those areas." She punched a button on her console to open a ship-wide line. "Janeway to all hands. The creatures surrounding the ship appear to be able to get inside. Arm yourselves. Repeat, arm yourselves."
Baytart had left the helm to access the bridge weapons locker, and he tossed the captain's preferred phaser rifle to her before reaching for another to throw to the first officer. "Captain, we have no idea what phaser fire will do to them," her first officer warned.
Janeway's thoughts went back to the creatures that had nearly destroyed them when they'd encountered the Equinox. She certainly didn't want a replay of that event. "I know, but we don't have much choice." A million thoughts were flashing through her head. "Harry, anything common to the areas they're entering through?"
He shook his head. "None that I can see, Captain."
"See…" His words triggered something in the first officer's brain as he looked at the image of the closed ice cave on the viewscreen. "Harry, are those windows currently shaded?"
Checking his readings again, Kim confirmed, "They are, sir."
They may not have thought much alike anymore, but the captain thought the same thing the second Chakotay mentioned it. Their conversation was cut off by a loud bang that came from the ready room doors. Both whirled to face it, rifles lifted and ready to fire. "Harry, remove the shading on those windows now!"
The next bang dented the ready room doors, but the creature was still held back from the bridge. "Window shadings removed, Captain."
The shaking of the ship stopped almost immediately, but now the creature on the other side seemed to step up its campaign to escape. "What are you thinking, Commander?"
"We closed them in," he quickly explained, lifting his rifle at another hit on the doors. "What if they think the dark windows are a hole back into space?"
"It would be like closing off a cave full of bats," Ayala added, his own phaser trained on the ready room doors as well. "They'll try to find any avenue of escape."
"If we punch a small hole in the ice wall, maybe they'll use it to get out," Chakotay finished.
The captain looked at her security officer. "Do it."
"Tuvok to Bridge. Three more creatures have broken through the viewports and are currently uncontained. We require reinforcements to keep them confined."
The captain looked to Chakotay, who headed off into the lift just as Tom and B'Elanna came out, Miral still clinging onto her father's shoulder. "Don't let them touch you," Torres warned her friend as the doors closed.
Another bang drew their attention back to the ready room doors. "Ayala?" the captain questioned.
"Firing."
Keeping one eye on the intruder, she watched on the viewscreen as Mike aimed short, sharp bursts of phaser fire through an infinitesimal gap in the creatures. His efforts left a hole about twenty metres across in the ice, through which they could see the carbon dioxide jet that had helped them hide in the first place. While the creature in the ready room continued to slam into bulkheads, the luminescence of those outside the ship shifted. The blazing red subdued, spots of blue filtering through the changing pattern as they seemed to still.
"They've stopped whatever they're been doing," Kim announced.
"What about the ones trying to get in?"
Harry checked his readouts again. "They seem to be losing interest." A beep on his panel made him look down, and then back up again. "Captain, the ones in the far wall…"
They all saw that a number of creatures that had still been embedded in the cave wall were on the move toward the hole they had just cut. Everyone held their breath as they seemed to hover around it, giving the captain serious doubts as to whether or not this ploy was going to work. For a few agonizing seconds they did nothing else, but then in a burst of now yellowish flashes, they poured out into the comet's dust tail.
"Thank God," Baytart mumbled, his rifle sagging along his body.
"Are the ones around the ship moving?" Janeway asked.
"Negative."
"Maybe they need some encouragement," Paris suggested.
Harry frowned at him. "What do you mean?"
"When I was a kid, my grandmother had a barn cat that used to always sneak into the house when she wasn't looking," Tom explained. "She'd get so mad that most of the time, the cat was ushered back outside with a broom under his backside."
If things hadn't been so dire, Janeway would have laughed. "We're fresh out of brooms."
B'Elanna's brain moved faster than any other. "Maybe we can use the tractor beam. Reverse the polarity, and with a wide dispersal, use it to push them toward the hole."
"Do it," the captain said again, lifting the tip of her rifle as B'Elanna passed before leveling it back at the ready room doors. The noise had subsided, but the creature was still in there. "How many are still on board?"
"Three," Ayala reported. "One in the ready room, one in Tom and B'Elanna's quarters, and one in Lieutenant Marin's quarters."
"Janeway to Tuvok."
"Go ahead, Captain."
"Tuvok, what is our visitor doing at the moment?"
In the abandoned Paris-Torres quarters, a semi-circle of phasers and rifles had formed around the creature, which had ceased its attack on Cavendish a few moments after the window shading had been removed. "It appears to be stationary for the moment, Captain, but no indication of its intentions." On the couch, Cavendish's writhing cries had dulled to moans, but nobody could get near him as the creature would move toward them whenever they took a step forward.
"Standby." The captain turned toward the engineering station. "B'Elanna?"
"Almost got it." Her fingers flew as she reconfigured the beam, and Torres was thankful in the back of her mind that this modification was an easy one now. A couple decades ago, doing what she was doing now would have taken hours to set up. Now, it just took a few minutes and calculations. Everyone waited with baited breath until she finally called out, "Got it! Initiating the sweep now."
The mingling green beams of the tractor shot out from the ship, producing an instant result. The creatures' colouring shifted to white and red stripes indicating some sort of distress, but they seemed to get the idea and started to move away from it. Controlling it manually, Torres slowly swept it metre by metre across the cave, driving them toward the hole in the ice, which was now completely empty of their brethren. As they neared the exit, their dancing colours changed to the yellow of their cousins, and they seemed to clamor over one another to get out. The creatures on the far side of the ship seemed to get the idea, and they shot across the cave and joined the mad rush.
"It's working," Ensign Kim reported, a note of relief in his voice. "It might take a while, but they're making their way out into the dust tail."
The captain's tense shoulders dropped a little. "Bridge to Transporter Room. Can you lock onto the creature in the ready room and beam it off the ship?"
"Negative, Captain."
Another shudder shook the ship. "We may not have to, Captain," Ayala told her. "It looks like the one in the ready room is trying to leave the way it came."
Down below, the creature that Tuvok and Chakotay were guarding jumped back to life, fluttering wildly as it turned back toward the viewport. Without warning, it took a wild circuit through the living area, knocking the first officer aside when he couldn't get out of the way fast enough. It seemed to need to gain speed, and took another lap before it ran directly into the viewport, throwing off a massive burst of energy just as it had on the way in and knocking the security team to the floor.
Tuvok was on his feet immediately, running the few steps toward Chakotay and checking for a pulse, finding it strong. Then he moved to Cavendish, whose grey pallor and shallow breathing told him all he needed to know. Tapping his commbadge, he called, "Medical emergency in Lieutenant Paris's quarters."
