Star Trek Enterprise: The Long Night of Haddonfield Colony

by Komodo13

Hoshi Sato must chaperone a group of students visiting an agricultural colony that has been transplanted from Earth on the eve of Halloween. But as the holiday grows nearer, she finds herself locked in a deadly struggle with an unnatural monster from the colony's distant past. And the key to her survival may lie with a colonist with a unique family history, and who forces to Hoshi

Prologue: The Orchard

The footprints leading into the darkness were unfamiliar to Paul Harris, and they filled him with a sense of dread. No one should have been in this nursery, no one besides him. It was almost completely automated, with Paul as the only agri-systems engineer. So, who had entered this place—violated this place—and what did they want?

"Hello?" Paul called out. The footprints wove in and out of the rows of saplings and off into the dim, misty distance of the enclosed nursery. "Is someone there?"

Someone is certainly there, Paul thought, frustrated at asking such a stupid question. He received no reply. Paul closed the systems interface and hung it on his belt, then stepped out into the center row and walked toward the far end of the nursery. The lighting was set to power-saving mode, and the vast structure was inked with a crazed latticework of shadows.

"Hel-lo…" Paul called out again, singsong this time. Friendly and playful. Still nothing. Gooseflesh prickled along his arms, and his heart began to pound faster in his chest. Primal, lizard-brain fear began to bleed into the background of his thoughts, even as he knew how silly it was. There was nothing dangerous on Haddonfield Colony—no predatory life either transplanted or indigenous, and certainly no strangers—nothing to fear.

And yet someone was in here with him.

"C'mon, man, call out," he said, channeling some of the fear into mild annoyance. He didn't expect a reply and didn't get one. He followed the path of the footprints with his eyes and saw them duck into a row of saplings to his left. Paul followed them into the row where they led to the end of the line of saplings, then wound past the bank of chunky environmental-support units. The soil's edge ended here and gave way to cheap, polymer flooring, and the footprints became indistinct smudges of dirt on the greyish surface.

Paul flattened in the space between the two units, willing himself to blend in with the shadows. He peered carefully around the unit's edge, slowly poking his head out further and further, watching more and more of the nursery come into view…

Suddenly, an agitated, electronic whine split the silence and caused Paul to recoil to the safety between the environmental units. Now his heart hammered in his chest so hard he could feel the pulse throb at the corners of his jaw. He recognized the sound: it was matter-printer.

What the…?

Paul blinked in confusion, unable to move as the machine whined and wheezed through its normal printing cycle. A moment passed. Then again, and again. Paul knew he could just stick his neck out and look—the printer was in the far corner—but something held him still like a butterfly pinned to a board. He struggled to control his gasping, ragged breaths and was suddenly aware of the ice-cold clamminess that had settled like a damp washcloth on the back of his neck.

The printer stopped and powered down. Paul felt his nerves humming beneath his flesh willing him to leap, run, curl in a ball, just move! Then he heard the hiss of the nursery's access hatch open and then slam shut a moment later.

Tentatively, Paul took a wobbly step out from between the units. His hands and arms shook, but already a wave of relief was washing through him. He was alone. He could feel it in the atmosphere—he was alone!

Suddenly seized with purpose he strode to the corner of the nursery where the control network was situated. His eyes immediately went to the floor. On the ground were what appeared to be four alabaster puddles. Only when he got closer did he noticed that there was more substance to their form than a puddle would have. There was also what appeared to be hair. Paul crouched down and picked one up. The freshly-printed polymer was still warm to the touch, but not mutable.

It was a mask. They were all masks: the same featureless masks, all slightly different sizes. Paul slid his hand inside it and shook it lightly to give it some form. A blank face stared back at him with empty eye-holes, beneath a shock of synthetic black hair. Paul shivered as he realized that the intruder had kept printing them until he'd gotten the right fit.

But who…?

Paul gazed up at the control network, only now noticing the graffiti scrawled across the brushed surface of the main computer in some orange ochre. One word.

SISTER

1

Personal Log, 102578, Ensign Hoshi Sato reporting:

I am spending the next few days at Haddonfield Colony, which was established by pilgrims from Earth who fled the coming Eugenics War with the genetic material from their village (or city, whatever) on the sunny side of asteroid Cundy-63. Captain Archer has personally selected me for this very important assignment. Apparently, my youth makes me the perfect chaperone for a group of students from Earth. Because in his eyes, I am a teenager. Precisely what I need to chaperone them from is, as yet, unclear. But I remain vigilant. Not really.

The breeze that blew through the long, straight rows of apple trees was cooler than Hoshi Sato expected-cooler even than she liked-and she crossed her arms against the chill that crawled up from her exposed hands and wrists. The air didn't smell cold, though, she noted. It was rich and loamy and heavy with the fragrance of fallen leaves, browning grass, and dropped apples. It smelled like life, the point in life when the light is dimming, and the torch is ready to be passed. As if reflecting her thoughts, the sun grew orange on the horizon, and sky above purpled like a fresh bruise.

Looking down the long slope to the tree nursery, Hoshi counted off the black and orange silhouettes scattered across the hillside and satisfied herself that her interns were all present an accounted for, and none had been, say, eaten by a mutated apple tree or fallen into a sinkhole or descended into fits of space madness or anything else she could think of. At the moment, the greatest threat she could imagine to them would be the embarrassment of being shot down yet again, by Doctor Illy Adams. Even from here, Hoshi could make out Illy's long, lean shape against the setting sun. She imagined the woman laughing good-naturedly, swaying her rangy body, then politely brushing aside the pass from some dumb, horny student with the grace of a bullfighter. Hoshi had watched it happen at least a half-dozen times in the past week.

"Good sleeping weather," Groppler Crane seemed to suddenly materialize from the darkening beside her. He seemed to be an expert at that, Hoshi had come to realize. Maybe it was the preternatural serenity that seemed to swirl around him like a cloak. Or maybe it was the fact he weighed about 55 kilos soaking wet.

"Is that what this is called?" Hoshi asked. Groppler Crane dipped his head deferentially but was still a good sixteen centimeters taller than she.

"It's just a saying. After the heat of summer, the cool weather makes it easier to sleep." He chuckled lightly. "I suppose it's fallen out of use after the advent of climate-control."

"That makes sense," Hoshi felt vaguely nostalgic. "I grew up in Kyoto. We had change of seasons like this, too. I always loved that first night you needed the blanket."

"You don't encounter that sort of thing on a starship, I imagine," he smiled benevolently. He did everything benevolently, Hoshi had noted. He moved in a bubble of benevolence.

"Every so often the life-support systems get glitchy and the air doesn't circulate, but it's not the same as seasons changing, no," she replied, stopping herself before she could add there's more choking involved.

"You're deprived," Groppler Crane said with just a hint of haughtiness, then seemed to catch himself. "Listen to me, prattling on. I suppose I just get a bit house-proud this time of year. Autumn and spring are the most difficult seasons to emulate."

"Really?" Hoshi appreciated the shift in topics. "How so?"

"Well, the atmospheric shields which control the climate are relatively easy to control when it comes to extremes, but it's these in-between seasons that take true skill."

"I guess they would."

"Thankfully, Illy is just the best there is. A real artist."

"Of course she is,"" Hoshi said dryly. All roads seemed to lead to Illy Adams on this colony, and Hoshi really wished it would stop.

"Here she is now. She can explain it better."

"That's really not necessary. I know you're busy with decorating for the Great Pumpkin or whatever—"

But Groppler Crane was already calling out and waving to the tall shadow, which waved back and began to grow closer.

"Oh, super," Hoshi sighed.

"Oh!" Groppler Crane clasped two bony hands together. "I almost forgot! Please let your charges know that you're all welcome at the fall carnival tomorrow."

"Sure, I'll tell them." Hoshi said, having no intentions of speaking to the interns unless there was a planetary emergency.

"Wonderful! It's always so much fun. We have a traditional, twentieth-century fall carnival with old-fashioned rides and games, and of course a costume contest…"

"Will there be booze?"

Groppler Crane looked taken aback and began to sputter.

"Oh, plenty of booze. It's all varieties of pumpkin flavor, but it gets the job done." Illy Adams winked at Hoshi, who felt like she was party to a secret she didn't want to know. Really, she just wanted both of these people to go away.

"I do hope you all can join us," Groppler Crane recovered. "It's one of the most important traditions we've preserved from our exodus. A wonderful celebration of the harvest and the passing of summer!"

"I will definitely make sure the interns are well-represented," Hoshi said with a plastic smile.

"Speaking of," Illy said, "I believe Governor Naff's staff wished to finalize some of the details with you."

Groppler Crane held up his hands in a mock put-upon gesture. "Well, I shan't wish to keep the Governor's staff waiting. Good day to you, Officer Sato." With a final, avuncular gesture, he was gone.

Leaving her with Illy Adams. Was this an improvement, Hoshi wondered?

"Okay, that last part was a lie," Illy smiled conspiratorially. "But if I didn't say something you'd have gotten a history lesson. The most boring, inaccurate history lesson ever."

"Well," Hoshi said awkwardly. "Thanks for that, I guess." Up close, Illy Adams was even more unsettling than she was at a distance. Her height was intimidating enough, but her body—its full swells and curves—made Hoshi acutely aware of her own flat lines and planes beneath the shapeless Starfleet uniform. Illy's face was open and guileless with sparkling blue eyes and a mane of honey-blonde hair. Hoshi wondered if she hadn't been replicated from historical records for "farmer's daughter" along with the flora and fauna of this colony, with some spliced in some Klingon DNA for good measure.

"Fall carnivals were never really a thing. As near as I've been able to figure out, they're more common in media and entertainment from the time than in reality." She giggled conspiratorially, just two girlfriends sharing a secret. Hoshi wanted to flee. "But it's a fun thing to do. And the truth is: things can get a bit…monotonous around here."

"Really?" Hoshi asked, pretending to be surprised, which earned her some serious side-eye.

"Come on, we're an agricultural colony. It's not exactly exploring the unknown in the most advanced starship Earth has ever produced." She smiled tauntingly, her gaze fixed on Hoshi's. "I'd say of the two of us, you're the exciting one." She put a little extra spice in the word exciting.

Hoshi felt her cheeks flush. She wanted to run. Illy Adams was standing too close to her, she thought. And she shouldn't be staring at her with those crystal-blue eyes. It was unnerving. Didn't she know that?

"It can be…" Hoshi started, but her brain shorted out, and various words for the female body in dozen languages cascaded through her mind. "I mean, when it's not terrifying…" She shook her head, like a cartoon dog. "Exciting isn't necessarily the best word to describe it," she said, mentally congratulating herself on managing a coherent sentence.

"Maybe" Illy said, "but I'm sure if anyone could find the mot jus it would be you. And you'd do it in multiple tongues."

Hoshi was at a loss. What do you say to that? "Um, thanks," she mumbled. Then her brain seized on something. A thought, a topic, a lifeline. "So, the festival…"

Illy Adams shook her head. "Pure late-20th century hokum. You play silly games from the pre-electronics era and eat food that directly led to their shortened lifespans. It's fun, though. Especially after a few drinks."

"Of pumpkin booze," Hoshi nodded. Illy laughed.

"Pumpkin ale. But yes. You really should come. Unless you have something else you need to do?" she raised a blonde eyebrow, and the implication was clear.

"I'll have to—" she was rescued by a chirp from her communicator. She gave Illy an apologetic look and flipped it open.

"Ensign Sato…it's Tom!"

Tom Kirkis, she thought. The tall, stork-like student with the poofy hair. "Go ahead, Tom. What's up?"

"No, this is Danielle. Tom is in trouble. I think he hurt his arm!"

Hoshi shook her head exasperatedly. "How did he—know what? I don't care. Get him to the colony hospital."

"I…um…I'm not sure he can walk. I think it'd be better if Professor Adams took a look at him."

Hoshi sighed so heavily she made herself light-headed. The interns were upping their ambition level when it came to hitting on Illy Adams. She looked over at the object of their collective desire and saw her stifling a laugh with a calloused hand.

"I'm sure Professor Adams has other things to do. She's an environmental engineer and backup medic, not a first responder."

"It's okay," Illy half-whispered.

"Don't encourage them," Hoshi whispered back, but Illy was holding up her hands in a no big deal gesture. "Fine," she said crisply into the communicator. "We'll be right there. Wait, where are you?"

"The dairy processor."

"I would not have guessed that," Hoshi said and snapped the communicator shut.

"Bad babysitter," Illy said with a sly smile. "You let the little kiddoes get hurt."

"We should leave them that way," Hoshi replied, pressing the heels of her hands to her temples. The evening was getting more stupid than she could handle and now she was saddled with Illy Adams even longer…

"Shall we?" Illy said, throwing back her head, so that her heavy mane of golden hair caught the last dying embers of the sun.

2

"Professor Adams, thank goodness you're here!" Danielle Spender hyperventilated as soon as Illy's land rover got them within hearing distance. Though, even from afar, Hoshi could see the girl vibrating like a tuning fork. "Tom's in so much pain!"

"Is he conscious?" Illy asked as she effortlessly unfolded her kilometer-long legs from the rover's cockpit and knifed through the air into a standing position. Hoshi, meanwhile, stumbled out her door, having discovered her left foot had to sleep during the ride.

"I'm in here!" Tom's reedy voice wafted out from the utilitarian rectangle of the processing barn.

"He's awake, but he's trapped!" Danielle lamented, bouncing on the balls of her feet. She was a compact girl, with the short, muscular legs of a gymnast or a cheerleader, and somewhere buried in an academic personnel file Hoshi had barely read was an extracurricular activity of that stripe.

"Trapped?" Hoshi furrowed her brow, confused. "I thought he fell? What's he trapped inside?"

"Not inside. It fell on me!" Tom's voice was equal ingredients plaintive and embarrassed.

"I have the feeling I know what this is," Illy said, throwing Hoshi a conspiratorial smile—the sort that said, yeah, we're the grown-ups here. The unexpectedness of this new partnership sent a new ripple of unease through her, as if she'd just learned she'd be sharing her quarters with a jungle cat. The view of Illy from behind, the shape of her formidable body beneath her work clothes, was just one final mash of Hoshi's anxiety button.

Hoshi followed Illy through the wide opening into the plant. Immediately, the scent of grass and manure and metal and lubricant set off a war in her olfactory-memory processing centers, and nostalgic recollections of her family's visits to the countryside and her first few days aboard Enterprise incongruously shared space in her brain. In the distance a cow lowed contentedly.

"Moo," an accentless voice said with neutrality.

"Yep, this is about what I thought," Illy said as she approached the synthetic bovine that was capsized atop Tom Kirkis's lanky frame.

"It won't get off of me," Tom explained, his eyes widened frantically, his sapling-branch arms flailing uselessly at the synthbo's patterned torso.

"Moo," the synthbo repeated, it's cow-shaped head rising a bit on its neck to regard Illy and Hoshi with calm, brown visual sensor globes. The vocorder "mouth" flashed blue when it vocalized. "Moo?"

"It's not supposed to tip over," Illy said, barely maintaining her composure. "These things don't traverse a real wide range of terrain, so their gyro-stabilizers are pretty basic."

"How did it fall over?" Hoshi asked. "Atop you, of all places?"

"I just…" Tom flushed deep crimson.

"It's not his fault!" Danielle bounced into the scene like a jumping bean. "DeVonn told him to do it. They said it was fun!"

"DeVonn Gram," Hoshi tossed to Illy's questioning look. "Classmate of his on this trip. If DeVonn told me breathing oxygen was a good idea, I'd still be skeptical."

"Aw…they're good guys," Tom mumbled loudly, then seemed to find his voice.

"You went cow-tipping," Illy said, not a question.

"What?" Hoshi was well and truly lost. She knew what a cow was, of course, and had seen them in zoos and in nature preserves, but the 'tipping' part was throwing her.

"Pushing over sleeping cows," Illy explained with no small amount of mirth. "They sleep standing up, so if you give them a push…"

"What?" Hoshi couldn't disguise her utter shock at the stupidity of the concept.

"DeVonn said it was a tradition!" Tom exclaimed. "It's what rural Earthers did for fun before they invented the internet!"

"I'm pretty sure that's wrong," Hoshi noted.

"It is," Illy nodded.

"He said it was, like, getting in touch with our forefathers."

"Oh, for god's sake…" Hoshi shook her head.

"Can you get it off him?" Danielle implored. "It's crushing him!"

"They're not actually all that heavy," Illy said, lowering herself into an easy crouch. "They're mostly polymer and light alloys…" She opened a panel beneath the synthbo's 'chin,' exposing a small control panel. "Okay, let's just reset the gyro…" Her blunt-nailed fingers punched at glowing buttons, earning back quick, sharp pings, and suddenly the synthbo's legs began kicking and fanning out. Tom shouted in panic.

"Relax," Illy said. "It just needs to get its footing."

"Can it kick him?" Danielle asked.

"I hope so," Hoshi said acidly, then caught Danielle's ashen, shocked look and felt a quick flash of shame. She was supposed to be the chaperone here, no matter how dumb her charges were.

"Nah," Illy said with certainty. "Let's just…" she shifted the sythbo's mass slightly and the thing's legs kicked and dug divots in the ground, finally finding purchase. Then, faster than Hoshi would have guessed, the machine discovered its footing and pivoted its body up off Tom's slender frame, leaving a long streak of mud down the stretch of Tom's teen fashion-icon shirt.

"Oh, thank god!" Danielle heaved in relief with a sound like a malfunctioning pneumatic valve. "Tom are you alright? Does your head hurt at all?" She knelt beside him and made a show of carefully inspecting his face and head, presumably for fissures.

"I'm okay," Tom said, then fixed his gaze on Illy Adams, his eyes becoming more limpid than Hoshi would have imagined possible. "Thank you, Professor Adams," he gushed, and Hoshi did not miss the fog bank of resentment roll across her features. The poor thing, Hoshi thought with a stab of genuine sympathy. Danielle wasn't a pretty girl; instead, she was the cute one, the gal-pal, the one the boys didn't notice until one day they did and then wondered how they'd missed this cool chick who'd been under their nose the whole time. Yeah, she'd have a happy ending sometime down the road, but until then she was simply no match for the 178 stunning centimeters of Illy Adams.

"Yeah, you really saved the day," Hoshi remarked dryly. "Much longer and who the android-cow might have been tempted to take liberties with poor Tommy." Hoshi gave Tom an exaggerated pout. "And who could blame it, really?"

Illy barked a genuine and unexpected laugh. Hoshi felt triumphant.

"It's not funny!" Danielle fumed, probably hoping her righteous indignation would draw Tom's affections away from Illy and hopefully plant them on her. Please not me, Hoshi thought frantically.

"It was a little funny."

"Fortunately," Illy dragged the word out to build a sturdy barrier between Hoshi and Danielle, "synthbos are mostly built from lightweight components. Tom just happened to have this one topple on him directly over his center of gravity. That's going to make getting up off the ground a challenge."

"Not to mention, it probably won't give milk for a week from being so frightened." Hoshi extended a hand to Tom, who looked at it for a startled moment before the neurons fired and he let her help him up. He bounced upright like a sunflower with bad skin.

Illy shrugged. "Well, let's see." She produced a small control padd—not terribly different from the tricorder devices they used on the Enterprise—and casually punched a few buttons. The synthbo's enormous visual processors flared and it sidled itself around and then clomped to Illy's side, prosthetic legs whining quietly.

"Moo?" it asked-Hoshi swore it was an inquiry—and tilted its head, allowing Illy to access its chin-pad. A moment later a large panel on its 'flank' hissed open in a cloud of supercooled vapor and a rack of plastic vials slid out. Illy cocked a thumb.

"See? She's a milk cow."

"You actually make milk in them?" Hoshi blinked. "I thought that was…I don't know, euphemistic or something."

"No," Danielle protested with surprising insistence. "The synthetic bovines ingest vegetable matter and synthesize it into dairy."

"That way people can raise dairy cattle without the environmental impact of having to clear-cut a lot of vegetation," Illy explained.

"I mean, I get that cows are a huge ecological lift—they all but went extinct after World War Three—but can't a protein resequencer do the same job?"

"This is a farming colony," Illy said with a gentle smile. "It's not a farm without milk cows. It's just more fun that way."

Hoshi shook her head. "This place is a kick."

Illy laughed and threw an arm around Hoshi's shoulders. "Stick around, Starfleet. We'll make a farm girl out of you yet."

Hoshi tried furiously to resist the urge to crawl out of Illy's grip. "What, exactly, does that entail?"

Illy's smile became something else. "Just you wait and see."

3

The setting sun had pulped into a long, orange smear against a pitch-black backing when Austin Stokley got the message on his communicator.

"I don't understand," he said to the person on the other end of the line. An explanation came. "I still don't understand."

The other person became exasperated and said so.

Austin sighed and adjusted his hat. The stalks of corn surrounding him were growing dark with the coming night and becoming enclosing and forbidding. He'd be able to use the nav feature in his communicator to find his way out of the field—that wasn't a problem—but it wouldn't be a very pleasant journey. Even in an artificial ecosystem such as this, the dark could still work on the human imagination like an exposed nerve.

"Fine," he said. "I'll be there," and stowed his communicator on his workbelt. The cornfield was in the late stages of blazing from the sunset, but Austin could still tell where he was going. He'd tended these fields since he was a boy, going on some forty years now, and understood the topography of the long, straight rows. By the time he reached the edge, the sun had set, and night had come.

His residence blazed with light, but he didn't go home. Instead, he hopped in his aging, battered land rover and cruised over the dark hills and roads until he reached the edge of town. Town, was a bit of a shared misnomer, for while Haddonfield had tried to hold to as much of its heritage as it could, certain practicalities were inevitable. In this instance, it was the central hub of the colony, which, far from being a rustic American small community (with all the flags, apple pie, and racial homogeneity that suggested), was a hyper-modern set of prefab modular habitats and offices. The Starfleet Corps of Engineers had installed then about 18 months ago, replacing the broken down, weather-beaten buildings that dated back almost as far as the colony did. No one missed them.

Austin parked his rover in the rack and headed to the research lab, near the perimeter of the hub. The storage warehouse and the bio-matter repository flanked him on either side, high, dark buildings that blotted out the perimeter lights. Austin felt for a moment as if he'd been swallowed by a great sea beast.

Once inside the science module that house the research lab, Austin immediately wished he was somewhere else. The air here was filtered and carried a metallic tang. Everything was pristine, the walls and floor spotless, even the light was perfect and white. Austin hated it. He was a farmer, been raised on farms. And, true, farming was as much about science as warp travel, his end of the process was being out in the dirt, in nature, where humans could project only so much control.

"Hello?" he called out, but the long hallway that stretched before him was silent. Austin sauntered further. Every door he passed—doors to the various agricultural and hydroponic labs—was closed, and the room beyond dark. "Hey, you called me, remember?" Austin was getting irate. He hoped he was tracking in mud.

"Yes," came a voice from…somewhere. An open door near the end of the hallway maybe? From around the corner? "We did."

Austin tried to place the voice, thought he knew who it belonged to, when the lights went out.

"What the hell's going on here?" he demanded. The high window at the end of the hallway let in the purple light of the fresh night, so the hallway wasn't enclosed in total darkness, but it was still unsettling as hell.

A shape oozed from the darkness into the purple frame of the window. It became a silhouette, tall, broad, and silent. No more human in quality than a pencil sketch.

"You responsible for this?" Austin snapped as he fumbled on his workbelt for his small flashlight. He found it without too much trouble and clicked it on from waist-level. The person caught in its cone of light was no one Austin knew, nothing Austin recognized. The vast figure which blotted out the night was a man in a shapeless pair of coveralls, Standard-issue from the commissary, but it was the face that sent a shard of terror into Austin's chest. Blank. White. Clearly a mask, but the eyeholes were so dark they might have been empty.

But hands…Austin saw them hanging limply at the man's sides. They were big, strong calloused hands. Hands that saw manual labor. Hands that could break things.

"What…" Austin's mind blanked out, not knowing where to begin. "What's going on?"

The thing strode toward him with its long gait.

"Harvest festival? Doing the mask? What am I supposed to be doing here?" The shape didn't answer, just moved inexorably toward him, growing larger and larger with every step. Austin felt an inchoate terror roil within him, as if watching a tidal wave gathering before him.

But this wasn't a force of nature, Austin told himself. It was just man.

Wasn't it?

He didn't give in to the primal urge to flee until the man loomed before him, and by the time his feet moved those hands—those human hands—clamped around his neck. They didn't feel like human hands anymore. They felt like lifeless meat, only they weren't pliable at all. There was no give in them, no chance they could be dislodged. They seemed locked in place like a magnetic hitch.

Austin gasped, air caught in his windpipe and clawed uselessly at the immovable hands and the seemingly cast-iron arms attached to them. Stop it, you're killing me! His mind screamed, but the words couldn't emerge from his windpipe. You're going to kill me! You're going to kill me! You're going to…

The frantic thoughts dissipated in a wash of sweet, fruity liquid that rushed down Austin's throat as his skull was dislodged from his spine. It was the last thing Austin senses before all thoughts pixelated and vanished. He was fully dead a few moments later when the figure released its grip and the body heaved to the floor, the head rolling like a ball in a sock.

The figure regarded the corpse at its feet, but otherwise didn't move.

"Good," came the voice. "Very good."

4

"So, how'd your play to land Professor Adams work out?" DeVonn Gram taunted from behind the bottle of beer he'd smuggled into the intern's quarters' common area. He took a long pull, while still managing to leer in Tom Kirkis's direction. He swallowed loudly and lowered the bottle to chest height, so everyone could see it. "You get in her pants with that one?"

Sitting on the couch against the wall of the non-descript common area, Tom felt his cheeks grow hot. "That's not what happened." He imagined himself snapping out the words clearly and aggressively like a tough guy in a movie. The sort of character that could hold their own and dish it back out. His own words, though, when he heard them, were mumbly and indistinct.

DeVonn laughed, nearly unhinging his jaw. He was loud under any circumstances—the kind of guy who filled every room with his presence, whether it was invited or not—but he was loudest when he'd seized upon weakness. "Not how I heard it. I heard you lay under one of those fake cows and then screamed like a little girl for her to rescue you." He looked around at his audience. At the food-sequencer, Leo Bradshaw and Brody Simpson broke into rude giggles. They were almost as beefy as DeVonn, but not quite, and, lacking any real personality of their own, followed his lead to a T.

"It fell on me!" Tom's face grew hotter, and this time he managed the words more clearly.

"It fell on you?" DeVonn's grin split his face even wider. "Like it attacked you? You got attacked by a fake cow?" Now the whole room erupted into laughter—Tom imagined he could see it filling the room like foam or water, and he knew that he'd lost all control of the situation and would never be able to regain it or any small patch of dignity.

"You should talk!" Like a small high-pressure system, Danielle had stormed into the room and was now standing between he and DeVonn, chin raised defiantly, hands on her hips. "You were the one who told him to try and tip over one of the synthbos, and don't try and deny it!"

DeVonn deflated a bit, clearly not prepared for actual opposition. "Aw…we weren't telling him to…you know…like, get hurt or anything," he said, unsuccessfully attempting to cover up how cowed he was by Danielle's wrath.

"You knew what would happen, DeVonn," she accused. "You did the whole thing just so you could laugh at him, Meanwhile, you just stayed in here and drank your beer like you're some kind big man!" She used an outsized booming voice for the last part, and the room turned its taunting laughter on DeVonn. Now, it was his turn to flush and his face was almost as red as Tom's.

Tom knew he should be embarrassed at being defended by a girl, but Danielle was just so effective at cutting DeVonn down to size, he couldn't help but enjoy it. He also felt a swell of pride: a girl was sticking up for him! And she was pretty! Sure, she wasn't some statuesque blonde farm goddess like Illy Adams, but Danielle was cute and funny and, well, a spitfire as his mom would say. Why hadn't he seen any of this before?

"I wasn't…I didn't…" DeVonn stammered, his eyes flicking around the room desperately. "I was just looking up some family history," he blurted by way of a lifeline. "The legend of Haddonfield. Any of you know it?"

Tom shook his head, along with everyone else in the room. He was still mad, but willing to let it go for now. DeVonn clearly had to change his tack in order to keep his audience, and Tom got the sense that there would be no more hazing or teasing tonight.

"So," DeVonn," started dramatically, "it happened a long time ago. When Haddonfield was still on Earth. It happened on Halloween night…"

5

Hoshi turned the corner of the habitat, noting that it was unusually quiet and empty. This told her that the interns were likely all clustered in the common area. Good, she thought. This way they wouldn't roaming the colony like feral cats. Her suspicions were confirmed when she heard a collection of voices coming from the doorway to the common area. Not words, she noted, but exclamations-gasps and squeals of gleeful terror. As the corner of the hallway slid from her view, she saw that the common area was dark, and lit only by a flickering orange candle.

Her first thought was: God, I hope they burn the place down. But she remembered there were fire-suppression systems in place. She paused outside the doorway, just out of view, not certain why. She likened it to it a planetary approach on the Enterprise—the first thing they did was scan the surface and see what was what. It didn't keep Captain Archer from rushing into chaotic and often dangerous situation, but it did at least give the transporter some rough coordinates to lock on to when things went completely to hell. This seemed to Hoshi like a similar circumstance and equally worthy of some quiet surveillance.

"Why did he do that?" Hoshi immediately recognized Danielle Spender's voice.

"No one knows," came another voice. DeVonn Gram, Hoshi recognized after a moment. His voice was lower than normal, she noted. More performative, and clearly playing to an audience. "He just walked into her room with the knife in his hand and began stabbing away."

Multiple voices squealed in gleeful terror, but DeVonn continued: "The parents arrived home to see flashing lights from rescue vehicles. Someone had called the emergency services and they'd shown up by the time the parents got there. Of course the local constable…"

"Constable?" someone asked.

"Local law enforcement officer," DeVonn explained.

"Didn't they have a sheriff?"

"I mean, maybe. Whatever. Anyway, they had to hold the parents back when they saw their daughter's lifeless form beneath a crisp, white sheet, slowly being stained scarlet with her blood."

DeVonn knew how to tell a story, Hoshi had to admit. Pausing dramatically in places, drawing out words and sentences the build the suspense, and even punching out the words crisp, white sheet. He must have told the tale a few times to appreciative audiences.

"Michael didn't say a word. Just stood on the top of the porch steps, still dressed in his clown costume, his eyes blank and empty, and holding the same bloody knife he'd plunged into his sister's young flesh just minutes earlier…"

"My god!"

"That did not happen?"

"Why didn't anyone take the knife away from him?"

"But," DeVonn interjected with a verbal flourish, "the shocked residents of Haddonfield had no way of knowing that their nightmare had just begun…"

Hoshi leaned against a wall and got a little more comfortable while DeVonn spun the rest of the tale. Hoshi listened to the whole thing.

6

It was a harvest moon, a good moon, Illy Adams thought as she looked up at the full, bluish-white orb that hung like an immense gong in the center of the night sky. It was bigger than the ones her ancestors would have beheld with affection and wonder. Different color too. And smoother, this moon. Unlike Earth's orbiting globe of rock, this moon had an atmosphere—poisonous and tempestuous, but enough to appear as smooth as the surface of pudding to observers on Haddonfield colony. Even now, as dark, insubstantial clouds marred its visage, it seemed warm and benevolent.

Illy didn't feel comforted. She stood on a small ridge overlooking the hub and spokes of the colony's pre-fab structures, the machined portion of the colony which sat like a small head at the northern end of the colony, which ballooned like an amble midsection with the agricultural land—the farms and hydroponics and livestock runs. The western spokes with the labs and shops and businesses were evenly, predictably lit, while the eastern spokes with the residences were more random and chaotic in their lighting.

She felt a swell of something—a mix of pride and wistfulness. It was her home, and despite being small and remote within a rapidly-expanding galaxy, Illy felt viscerally protective of it. Each one of those raggedly-lit boxes—the ones decorated in orange and black with pumpkins and skeletons and ghosts, with jack o'lanterns on the porches and festive lights strung up along the trim—was a neighbor. They were all someone who shared with her a history and stewardship of this place, this small patch of Earth from the Before Times.

And contrary to what the rest of the galaxy might believe—Starfleet, the visiting kids, and yes, even tasty little Hoshi Sato—there were dangerous things. There always had been, and that was a truth that ran through Illy Adams like a wire in her blood.

She knew that someday the stories passed down over the generations of her family would become a real, flesh and blood thing. And she would have to face it.

Illy turned away from the town and looked at the barn behind her. In the bright light of the stupidly benevolent moon, she could clearly see the Celtic rune painted on its door.

Painted in blood.

7

Hoshi Sato shifted in the bed as she calmed her breathing, luxuriating in the ability to spread her body wide like an exploded kernel of popcorn and still have a decent amount of real estate on either side. Her bunk aboard Enterprise necessitated straightening her body like a toothpick.

She raked the back of her hand across her forehead and whisked away the slight stippling of perspiration she'd worked up while taking care of herself and used that gesture as a formal close to that particular activity. She done what she needed to do in order to sleep, and no further thought need be given to it. Certainly, she didn't need to think about how prominently Illy Adams had featured in her thoughts while she'd done it. She'd simply thought about what she'd needed to—what had reared up out of her sexual subconscious—to be successful. That was all. It was the way Hoshi had always compartmentalized those thoughts which, against all logic and reason, felt wrong and forbidden.

Instead, she thought about the boogeyman. A boy had stabbed his sister to death? Even in the wild and reckless place that was America in the 1970s, this was sheer brutality. It was the rest of the story, though, that truly unsettled her.

Firstly, just the notion that this child with what was clearly a biologically-caused mental illness would just sit in a sterile asylum for his developmental years, and this was considered care made her feel ill. She didn't know much about 20th century psychiatric practices, but certainly they must have been hopelessly primitive and torturous. Hoshi imagined an endless succession of needles and hydrotherapy and religious rituals designed to expel demons (they did those then, right? She wondered and decided that they did).

But the fact that the detention facility they'd put him in could be so badly managed that he could escape was even worse. Finally, the details of his rampage—as lovingly recounted by DeVonn—filled Hoshi with icy fear as if liquid nitrogen had been injected into her bone-marrow.

She imagined the scene: quaint, mid-century suburban teenagers' bedrooms with stuffed animals and laptop computers and those large puffy beanbag chairs that were so popular—all befouled by streaks of dried blood. She imagined the kids—the same age as the ones she was nominally in charge of—sprawled, limbs akimbo, empty eyes staring endlessly at oblivion.

Hoshi felt gooseflesh rise on her skin. She stared into the darkness beyond the foot of the bed, bisected in places by orange stripes from the slats of the window blinds. It was inky black and anything could be cloaked within it. Hoshi imagined staring hard into that emptiness, her eyes boring into the dark like the Enterprise's sensors until an in distinct image came into view…

A chalk-white clown mask.

The involuntary shudder of fear lit a fast-burning flare of annoyance within her—after all, she'd faced much worse things in her times traversing the galaxy. She'd faced down Klingons, Xindi, Suliban, aliens they didn't even have a name for yet. She'd been shot at, captured, tortured, gaslight, and maybe once even lost in a transporter stream. Why should one mentally-ill human frighten her so much?

Still, there was something in that story—more than just DeVonn's telling of it—that had burrowed under her skin. Perhaps it was opacity of the evil on display, or perhaps it was the inexorability of the killing-spree following up what had been a bloody prelude twenty years earlier. Whatever the peculiar quality that kept this particular story working at her mind, Hoshi was determined not to let it weigh on her fears any more than it already had. She had a full day tomorrow and she needed sleep.

Hoshi screwed her eyes shut and added a layer to the darkness. She mentally reviewed vocabulary words in a dozen languages, keeping her thoughts away the dark, Illy Adams, and the companionship of the boogeyman.

8

Despite the warmth of the sun, the breeze which rolled through the festival grounds had a distinct nip to it, and Hoshi suddenly wondered if any of her knuckle-headed charges had brought coats. Probably not.

The carnival grounds were a massive sprawl of lots that looked to have been zoned for more agricultural purposes, then abandoned for some reason. Now, their clear-cut grass and artificially-leveled surface hosted a maze of stalls and booths in varying states of decoration and preparation. Hoshi saw grills and fire pits being set up, as well as confectionary machines and other apparatuses for serving food. Along one edge was a bank of games and recreations, while enormous low-grav rides were slowly taking form in the center of the lot. When this thing kicked off, she thought, it'd sure be a wingding.

"Ms. Sato, can we help with the petting zoo?"

Hoshi looked over her shoulder to see Leigh Price at the tip of a rough wedge of students, with DeVonn, Danielle, Tom, as well as Marianne Blake who was entwined with her latest boyfriend, Leo.

Hoshi shrugged. "Sure. Just don't get in trouble." The group stampeded past her on a ribbon of laughter and chatter. "Just don't let anything bite you." She called after them, then thought about it a moment and shouted after them, "And don't bite anything back!"

She was startled by a deep laugh from behind her. Hoshi turned to see a handsome, young man slowly sauntering his way toward her. "I guess if you didn't tell them…"

"Yeah, it's a big question mark."

He smiled and nodded, then extended his hand. "Frank Akkad."

"Doctor Akkad?" Hoshi asked. Akkad shrugged modestly.

"I don't trot the title out much. Not much point here. And you must be the Starfleet officer assigned to those kids."

"What tipped you off?" Hoshi deadpanned and watched Akkad's eyes widen and scan her uniform before he barked out a short laugh.

"Well, I am a doctor, they don't just let you get to be one of those unless you're pretty smart…"

Now Hoshi laughed. "Yeah, I've read that. Hoshi Sato." She shook his hand. His grip was firm and cool. "So, what did you do here at Haddonfield?"

"I'm leading the research team looking into viability and longevity studies of the plant and animal life here." Akkad rubbed his palms on his wax jacket nervously.

"Viability?" Hoshi repeated. "Things seem pretty viable around here." She gestured expansively to the surroundings.

Akkad smiled. "Well, growing things is fine—I mean, it's a tremendous accomplishment—but the long-term survivability of agricultural products in this environment is a real issue. We have to deal with exponentially-fast soil-nutrient depletion, increased deterioration from cosmic rays these plants were never exposed to on Earth, not to mention cross-pollination and contamination issues. It doesn't matter that we can grow things here, we also need to be able to keep growing them."

"Wow," Hoshi said, "that's a lot."

Akkad looked chastened. "Sorry, I guess that was a bit much."

"No, it's interesting."

"Not as interesting as serving aboard the Enterprise, though," Akkad said with just a tease of a smile.

Hoshi wondered why people felt the need to keep telling her how exciting her life was. "It's not, really. Mostly it's a lot of standing around looking at a lot of empty darkness. Space, it turns out, is really boring."

"But you go interesting places. For someone living their live on an asteroid…" he shrugged. "That's pretty cool."

"Yeah, it's the part in between those places that is deadly dull."

Akkad smiled and held up his hands in mock surrender. "I guess it is. Well, it's nice having a guest here all the same."

Hoshi returned the smile. "I've enjoyed the hospitality." As if summoned by her words, she caught sight of Ily Adams moving toward them. When she got close enough, Hoshi saw her eyes fix on Doctor Akkad like a phase-cannon lock, and her walk slowed to a swagger. She reminded Hoshi of a gunslinger in an old, pre-war movie.

"Frank," she said pleasantly enough. "What do you think of the carnival so far? Will it beat out last year's?"

"It just might, Illy, it just might." Akkad's manner was as congenial as Illy's, but Hoshi could see the façade was paper-thin. "I was just discussing it with Ms. Sato here."

"Actually, we were talking about how boring space was."

"That, too." Akkad chose to take the correction as an inside joke and threw her a conspiratorial grin that was very clearly meant for Illy's benefit. Insomuch as she took the bait, Illy straightened up slightly and squared her shoulders, accentuating the height difference she had on Akkad. "But, no," Akkad said a little too quickly. "It's looking great, Illy. You and the rest of Seasonal Council did a great job. This is always a highlight."

"That's nice of you to say, Frank," Illy replied simply and let the silence hang in the air between them. Hoshi wanted to say something to break it but couldn't think of anything that wasn't an insipid pleasantry.

"Well," Akkad said after several awkward moments, "I should go. I'm helping out with the pumpkin ziggurat."

"Yeah, that sounds like something you shouldn't be late for," Hoshi said, puzzling over what exactly a 'pumpkin ziggurat' could possibly be.

"We're going for three stories this year!" Akkad held his hands up in mock celebration as he moved off, trying to seem casual and shrug off the discomfort of the last few minutes.

"Go for it," Illy said, barely keeping the sarcasm out of her voice. "Don't let anything stop you."

Akkad waved. "Good to meet you, Ms. Sato!"

"You, too!" Hoshi waved back. "Maybe I'll see you at the pumpkin pyramid!"

"Ziggurat!"

"Don't encourage him," Illy said when he'd moved out of earshot.

"You and he…?" Hoshi ventured.

"We don't see eye-to-eye," Illy said tightly. "Don't get me wrong, he's a very gifted scientist, and he knows it." She let her posture relax a measure. "Did he give you the speech about the soil depletion? The longevity of cultivation?"

"He may have said something about it."

Illy nodded and gave her a knowing smile. "He always does. Never mind the fact that we can renutrify the soil pretty easily—easier now that we have transporter technology. He just likes to make himself seem important. Frank Akkad against the universe." A sharp breeze whipped up the ends of the Illy's golden hair and for a moment she looked like some impossible ideal of rural life amid the stars. Standing like she was-impossibly tall in her boots, faded denim hugging the curves of her hips and thighs, worn at the knees, blue eyes glittering like amethysts on the bottom of a pool—she could have been a recruiting ad for the agricultural colonies.

"Well, you ran him off pretty well."

Illy smiled. "He knows better than to mess with me."

"Clearly," Hoshi smiled.

"Would you mind helping us out with the carnival?"

"I'd love to," Hoshi said. "I was going to ask if there was something you wanted me to do."

A look passed quickly over Illy's face, like the shadow of a bird flying overhead, as if she was considering a myriad of possible responses before taking the easy route. "Would you mind baking some pumpkin cookies?"

Hoshi narrowed her gaze. "How many is some?"

"A few hundred," Illy said. "But they're really easy to make when you use the protein resequencer."

"I'm not much of a baker," Hoshi said skeptically, "I can cook, but baking…"

"I'll help you out," Illy said. "It's easier than it looks."

Hoshi got the distinct impression she was talking about something else.

9

Marianne Blake ducked under a low beam as she darted around a corner toward the rear of the barn. Beneath her feet, straw crunched and slid precariously, and she had to palm the wall to keep her balance.

"Mary…wait!" Leo called from behind her. He was slower and clumsier and had already fallen a couple times into various piles of hay. "Where are you going?"

"Looking for someplace more comfortable," she replied irritably.

"What wrong with here?" Leo asked plaintively. He was blindly horny, Marianne knew. She, on the other hand, was a blend of horny and annoyed, with annoyance overtaking horniness. There wasn't any place around here that looked even remotely appropriate.

"Animals live here, Leo! We can't have sex where animals live?"

"But farm kids have sex in haylofts all the time. It's where the phrase 'a roll in the hay' comes from."

Marianne sniffed and got a heady mix of barnyard and Leo's cologne. "There's poop in it. I'm not rolling around in poop."

"Animals don't poop in the barn," Leo said. "They do that outside."

"Leo, what do you think the hay is here for?"

"Comfort. So they have a cushion when they lay down."

Marianne was getting the distinct impression that all those people complaining about how young people were losing touch with Earth's agricultural past might just be on to something.

"Oh my god, you're so dumb," she sighed. "Let's just find a rover or something with a wide back seat or…" She skidded to a stop when the reality of the sight in front of her clicked into focus and her brain was able to process it. Leo plowed into her from behind, unable to slow his momentum in time, but she barely noticed.

"What are you—" he started, and then he, too, saw the body pinned to the wall with farm tools, arms outstretched and bent at the elbows like a scarecrow. The eyes were gone, and straw had been stuffed into the ragged, blood-encrusted sockets. Marianne pulled her gaze away from the grey, wax-like death mask and down the body. The victim was dressed in typically agri-colony clothes—rugged but comfortable natural fibers, lots of pockets, but his shirt hung open like a slack pair of lips, exposing the gaping wound in his chest and the slick waterfall of entrails that cascaded out and hung to the ground.

"We need to get out of here!" Marianne gasped. But Leo had already begun to scream uncontrollably, and soon he filled the barn with his terrified shrieks.

10

"This is not my strong point," Hoshi mused sourly as she struggled to apply a recognizable layer of pumpkin-flavored frosting to a cookie. "Arts and crafts."

"You're doing fine," Illy said brightly. "It's just going to get eaten anyway."

"I can't help it. I'm a perfectionist. You can thank my parents for that."

"The crew of the Enterprise should thank them. They're the lucky ones with the brilliant linguist." Illy picked up the glass of white wine she'd been nursing and took another peck.

Hoshi felt a surge of embarrassment. "Well, I haven't started any intergalactic wars yet…"

Illy snort-laughed and looked sly. Hoshi sensed another wave of the charm offensive building and decided to cut it off. "Hey, there's something I've been dying to ask you."

"The answer is yes; I do look fantastic naked." Illy tilted her shoulders coquettishly. Hoshi barked a suppressed laugh.

"Jesus, you're full of yourself. No, your name. I've never met an Illy before."

"Short for Illinois," Illy popped a cookie in her mouth. "As in: Illinois, United States of America, Planet Earth."

"Huh," Hoshi applied more frosting. "That is…nope, I got nothing. Why did your parents do that?"

"It's where our family came from. We harken from the original Haddonfield," Illy said proudly. "Or from that area, anyway. Some of the folks on the Adams side are more from Wilmette, but still…"

"Wow, so this whole colony is part of your heritage," Hoshi suddenly had a greater appreciation for Illy's work here.

"You could say I've got a connection to this place that does back generations."

"That's really amazing," Hoshi said genuinely.

"It's somethng." Illy gestured with a spatula. "You got frosting on your uniform, Starfleet."

Hoshi cursed under her breath and dabbed at the orange stain on the front left panel of her jumpsuit. "These things are supposed to be stain-resistant. I guess—" she paused to quickly look at the label—"Jack-o-Licious cake icing has bested the finest minds in Starfleet's textiles and fabrics division."

Illy laughed and tasted a sample of the frosting with a finger. "Do you always have to wear the uniform?"

"Not sure," Hoshi said. "I mean, yes, technically I'm on duty, so I'm required to be in uniform. At the same time, this is what they call a 'detached assignment'—that's essentially when Starfleet loans you out to some other organization or something—and on detached assignments you can opt to wear any gear that's more conducive to the mission."

"Well in this case, 'conducive to the mission' would be an apron."

"Maybe a smock, given what a klutz I am," Hoshi said. "Or an environmental suit."

"Nah," The low-level panic Illy triggered from her lizard-brain had gradually been overpowered by the excitement of being around the woman. Hoshi likened it to having a large jungle cat as a pet.

"But the point is taken. I'll change into something more appropriate," Hoshi wiped her hands on a towel the threw at on the countertop, which was now cluttered with pumpkin-shaped cookies in varying states of preparation.

"I definitely want to see that," Illy said and took a long sip of her wine, then fell into step behind Hoshi on the way to the bedroom.

"See what? What I brought?" she walked into the bedroom—dim with the closed blinds—and scooped up her pack. "It's just some light outdoor gear."

"No, I want to watch you change clothes," Illy said so matter-of-factly that Hoshi could only laugh at her brazenness.

"Oh, this is the high point of your day, I suppose?"

Illy shrugged. "I've been wondering what you look like under that baggy jumpsuit for two days now. I wanna see."

Hoshi felt a vague challenge and decided to push through it, so she unzipped her jumpsuit and pulled it down past her shoulders, then stuffed it down to her waist. "Well, go nuts. I think it's gonna be a letdown…" She stepped out of the suit's leggings.

"Things are looking good so far."

"Right," Hoshi scoffed as she faced Illy, refusing to give in to rising tide of anxiety that was making her heart hammer behind her sternum. She kicked her uniform away with one foot and stood with something like defiance in front of Illy. Hoshi fought the impulse to cross her arms in front of her body; she didn't want to give Illy the satisfaction of seeing her uncomfortable. Besides, she told herself, it wasn't like she was naked. She wore her usual athletic bra and compression shorts. She could practically workout in the Enterprise fitness center in this.

"Does this approach work for you a lot? You know, the one with all the subtlety of a Klingon battlecruiser?"

Illy shrugged. "I like to be direct. Saves time."

"Can't argue with that, I suppose. Okay, your turn."

Illy blinked and Hoshi felt a measure of satisfaction in surprising her. "My turn?"

"I'm in my underwear…" Her throat has gotten dry, but she managed it with more confidence than just a croak. In the back of her mind, an alarm klaxon was going nuts.

Illy held her gaze-god, her eyes were blue!—while she unbuttoned her flannel work shirt and let it fall away like an errant thought, then pulled off her white tank-top. The mountainous swell of her breasts was barely contained by a contoured support wrap. "Okay," Illy said brightly, as if this act meant nothing at all, and that Hoshi's gaze wasn't fixed on the valley of her cleavage, "this next bit will take some time…"

She'd been kind enough to take off her boots when she entered Hoshi's residence, but the jeans looked as if they were molded to her frame. Illy unbuttoned them, then had to shimmy her hips to get them low to her thighs. Beneath them, Illy wore a pair of compression shorts like hers, but Hoshi was fixated on the slow reveal of her mile-long legs as the jeans worked lower and lower until they were a denim puddle at her ankles.

"God, I wish I had your curves," Hoshi sighed. "I traded the body of a twelve year-old girl for the body of a fifteen year-year old boy."

Illy laughed as she pulled her feet free of the denim pile. "You really sell yourself short, because from where I'm standing…"

And then he'd closed the small gap between them and was kissing Hoshi hard on the mouth, and Hoshi was kissing back, head tiled upward like she was kissing a man, matching thrusts of Illy's tongue with her own.

She knew they'd fall onto the bed, the whole act having a sense of inevitability to it. Illy's weight pinned her to the mattress. Hoshi opened her legs around Illy's, digging her heels into the back of the woman's thighs. She felt Illy's pelvis pressing into her.

All the warning klaxons in her mind screamed at her, barely registering above the heat and desire. Warning lights flashed blinding in her mind: she's a woman! I'm doing this with a woman! I'm losing control of the situation! She's on top of me! She can do anything she wants to me!

She can do anything she wants to me.

She can do anything she wants to me.

…anything she wants…

11

"Look, we can't keep this quiet, Frank!" Groppler Crane hissed so that the teenaged boy keening over in the corner of the hayloft wouldn't hear. Fortunately, the kid was teetering on the edge of tears and being tended to by his pretty girlfriend, so he wasn't much concerned with what the adults were saying.

"I'm not saying we keep it quiet…just that…look, can you slow-roll this thing? I have a plan." Frank Akkad held up his hands placatingly, as if this was an inconvenient zoning issue, and Crane was momentarily speechless.

"Slow…this…" he sputtered, then grabbed ahold of himself. "Frank, you know what we're dealing with here. How sensitive this is. On top of it we have a bunch of off-colony kids, not to mention Doctor Adams is already asking questions about our research…"

"It's fine, Crane," Akkad said, an edge on his voice. "The kids are a good thing. You'll see. Now all we need to do is keep this quiet until the carnival."

"And how do you propose I do that?"

Akkad looked over his shoulder quickly at the kids. They still weren't paying attention. The boy was sobbing, and the girl was cooing and fussing over him. "Beam it out," he said, returning his gaze to Crane. "Use the agri-systems transporter."

"The agri…? That's not designed to handle anything this complex!"

Akkad shrugged. "So, you put it outside the colony walls on the surface of the asteroid. It doesn't matter what kind of shape it's in when it rematerializes."

"And what about…about them?" Crane jutted his jaw at the teenagers.

"We tell them it's taken care of and that they shouldn't worry. If we need to, we can have medical give them a sedative and they'll be out all night. Look, by the time they can tell their story it'll all be over."

Crane pursed his lips and scowled at Akkad, then threw a fleeting glance at the kids. "This is out of control," he said in a pinched voice. "This is completely out of control."

"No," Akkad said. "This is exactly what we knew would happen."

"I never—" But Akkad put a palm on his chest.

"You did, Groppler. You just didn't want to think too hard about it. But this is what you wanted."

Crane's eyes filled as every one of Akkad's words hit like an arrow. He wished the man was wrong but knew that he wasn't. He forced himself to look at Austin Stokely's defiled corpse, and let the horror and obscenity wash over him.

In this you will be cleansed…

"All right," he said quietly. "All right. After tonight it won't matter anyway."

"See? That's why they made you groppler," Akkad said with only a hint of sarcasm. Crane scowled at him, then tamped down his distaste and stepped over to the teenagers.

"Kids, I know this is quite a trauma, so I want you to meet with some medical personnel—just to make sure you're okay…"

12

"I can't believe it…I can't believe it!" Hoshi exclaimed lightly, clapping a hand over her face, and rolling back and forth on the bed. It caused her to bump into Illy's body and spend a rejuvenating moment in the woman's coronasphere of body heat and sweet scent before exiting it for the cooler terrain of the sheet near the edge.

"That never…I never did that…" she stammered. She felt Illy's long fingers playing with her hair. She was long past jumping at the woman's touch, though she did respond to it.

"Never did that with a girl?" Illy finished the thought.

"No…I mean, yeah, no I never…with a woman. I meant I never…I never came that many times," she suddenly felt lighter, as if simply saying the words had expelled some heavier-than-air gas from her lungs.

"No?" Illy sounded surprised.

"I didn't…no. Usually, I'm a one-and-done girl."

"What?" Illy stifled a laugh.

"I usually have an orgasm and then…you know think about other things until he's done doing whatever. Like, I conjugate verbs in other languages until he finished."

"And guys don't mind this?"

"Well, I don't do it out loud," Hoshi laughed rolling into Illy's shoulder and staying there. She felt like she could stay there forever, or at least a long while, secure and comfortable nestled in the folds and valleys of the woman's endless body. Illy put an arm around her bare shoulders to keep her from rolling away. Hoshi took a moment to appreciate the feel of Illy's skin against hers.

"I just mentally practice until the guy is finished and then I make myself a snack while he falls asleep."

"Post-coital snacks are the best snacks," Illy ruminated.

"But I never—and I mean never—had multiple orgasms."

"Really?" Illy seemed surprised. "You never had…"

"I halfway doubted they were even real," Hoshi nuzzled Illy's muscular shoulder. "Just a legend invented by women to convince other women they were having better sex than they actually were."

"Well," Illy said reticently, "I have to admit you…"

"What?" Hoshi's lifted her head and looked at Illy, a flood of worries suddenly crowding her thoughts. "I what? What did I do?"

"You went off like a string of firecrackers. It caught me by surprise."

"What?" Hoshi felt her cheeks burn.

"Hey, I'm not complaining, Starfleet. There's nothing wrong with an enthusiastic reaction."

Hoshi palmed her face again. "I can't believe it."

"Don't make a big deal of it. It was a pleasant surprise." Illy tweaked Hoshi's ears with her nose, sending shivers down that side of her body. "Everyone wants positive feedback."

"Sounds like I have that covered," Hoshi sighed, her mind going back to the rapid succession of spine-curling, breath-stealing spasms that had begun when Illy's fingers found her most sensitive places and rose and crested with the feel of the woman's lips and tongue in those same places. Hoshi had the sudden, exciting image of Illy's azure gaze, her head bracketed by Hoshi's tan thighs. Another wave of lust rolled through her.

"I never came like that," she sighed. "God, I never came like that! What the hell? Why did I have to be almost thirty before I could feel something like that? I should have been having orgasms like that in college."

"Well," Illy cocked an eyebrow, "you didn't know me when you were in college."

"I wish I had," she said. "I wish…I wish I hadn't wasted almost a decade on subpar lovers who didn't know how to…do what you did."

"Eat your pussy?" Illy asked innocently.

Hoshi laughed, feeling the blush taking over her face. She squeezed her eyes shut. "God, you really don't have any inhibitions, do you?"

"Not where they get in the way."

"You're officially, my hero," Hoshi giggled. "Just that you got me to…Look, you're not the first woman I've been attracted to. But you were the first one that made me admit it. And it feels so good! It's so nice not be ashamed and embarrassed and just, jeez, afraid of wanting it."

"Really?" Illy propped her head up on a folded arm. "I just figured you were really straight-laced, not really straight."

"That was a good one," Hoshi pantomimed chalking one up. "No, it's just the way I was raised."

"How so? You mean your family didn't approve of pansexuality?"

"Oh no," Hoshi shook her head vigorously. "No, no, no, baby, no."

"Huh. I didn't think Earth was still like that."

Hoshi took a breath and assembled her thoughts, sifting away the feelings from the facts. "Mostly, it's not. My family came from a Taylorist colony."

"What is that? I've never heard of that."

"There's probably no reason you would." Hoshi shifted and got comfortable. "Taylorist colonies were a series of survivor communities after World War Three. Taylor was this charismatic leader that built these communities dedicated to rebuilding the world in the aftermath of the post-atomic horror. He was, all things considered, pretty good at it. He emphasized communal living, tending to the needs of one another, the whole idea that the only way humanity could survive was together.

"Procreation was a big part of his ideology. Part of it was practical—we needed more people. But some of it was also to give people hope, because in the wreckage of the world despair and depression was epidemic. Having children gave people something to live for. So, having kids was a big part of being a Taylorist. As a kind of unintended side-effect, non-procreative forms of sexuality kind of became marginalized. Not necessarily vilified, just…considered unnecessary."

"But that was a hundred years ago," Illy said.

"Yeah, but people grow up with that sensibility…it's not like the homophobia of the nineteenth and twentieth century where homosexuality was considered evil. It's more like this sense of duty and responsibility that just sits below the surface of your conscientiousness. How to be a good daughter…someone my parents would approve of.

"So, meeting a woman I might be attracted to, this part of my brain would just…panic. Tell me to stay away from this thing I was feeling…" she shook her head.

"Overcoming your upbringing is hard," Illy said quietly and kissed Hoshi's cheek.

"Not as hard as oral sex, apparently," Hoshi scoffed. "At least for every guy I dated in my twenties."

Illy laughed so hard her head fell off her supporting arm, and she rolled to the side. "You just had a run of bad lovers, Starfleet."

"Yeah, well, it's my fault for keeping the sampling size small," Hoshi slid atop Illy. She felt light and insubstantial., "And homogenous." She kissed Illy, and her hand explored the flat plane of the woman's stomach.

"It's actually the easiest thing in the world," Illy whispered, her breath hitching slightly when Hoshi's fingers gently pet the stiff bristles between her legs.

"I don't know. What if I'm not an intuitive learner?" Hoshi said as she worked her fingers, feeling heat and wetness.

Illy closed her eyes and tilted her head back, her body arching like a bow. "I don't….oh…think that's the case."

Hoshi repositioned herself, straddled one strong leg, and kissed Illy's flat abdomen. "I couldn't even admit girls turned me on before today," she whispered. "This isn't intuitive for me."

"It's intuitive for all women," Illy drawled, running a hand along Hoshi's cheek. "Trust me. Every woman knows just what to do when they're down there." She slid her unencumbered leg apart, and Hoshi inhaled her heavy, musky scent. Excitement flashed through her again like a lightning storm.

"Really? That's always the case?" she asked as she lowered her face.

"Oh yes," Illy giggled, as her hand slid to the back of Hoshi's head and guided her in. "You'll see."

13

Reb Colton started a little as the music blared behind him. "Sorry!" A muffled voice called out as the music dropped to a more reasonable level. Shaking his head, Reb rounded the corner of the maze of booths to the medical tent. It was a small, open space designed mostly for the smattering of sprained ankles and food allergies that occurred every year. Every so often there was a serious injury—someone hurt on one of the rides, or a particularly nasty fall after an over-indulgence of pumpkin ale—but for the most part the medical tent only needed an open space and some folding chairs. A small table was set up on one end, and several med kits stood atop it. Reb noticed that one was ajar.

Examining the kit, Reb noted that it was missing a roll of unbreakable medical adhesive. He furrowed his brow. Reb hadn't heard of any cases come in. The carnival had barely begun. He rechecked the contents, but still came up short on the adhesive. A noise from behind the tent caught his attention, and Reb slid through the tent's rear flap in time to see a tall figure in a maintenance jumpsuit sidle between the tents and disappear around the corner.

"Hey!" Reb called out as he followed the person. "Were you just…" but the figure had vanished. Reb guessed he had squeezed between a couple tents to the main walkway and the throngs of carnival attendees.

Pushing back against an unexpected creeper of dread climbing his spine, Reb went back to the med tent.

14

"Wow! Such lovely cookies," Lindsey Keyes said, cocking her head to better appreciate the four pans overflowing with frosted pumpkins and ghosts and skeletons. She was a wiry, weather-beaten woman who, despite her crisp dress, looked to Hoshi as if she could wrestle a cow, if need be. She was, Hoshi thought, an iteration of future Illy.

"Glad you like them, Lynn," Illy said with easy familiarity. "We had a good time making them." She threw a pointed look at Hoshi.

"Really? I'm glad," Lindsey beamed.

"You're too kind," Hoshi said modestly. "I'm not a great baker."

"Well, they look just fine to me."

"I gave her a hand," Illy said. "Taught her a few things."

Oh Lord… Hoshi thought.

"Well, that's wonderful," Lindsey said.

"It was a lot of fun," Illy said.

"Well, that's the most important thing," Lindsey gave them a conspiratorial wink. "Well, that and getting to lick the icing spoon."

"The licking was definitely the best part," Illy nodded.

I want to die so badly… "So," Hoshi interrupted before Illy's double-entendres became single-entendres and she just flat out declared, we had sex all afternoon! "Have you seen any of the visiting students. I haven't checked in with them since this morning, and I should make sure they weren't eaten by a goat or something."

Lindsey laughed heartily. "Well, I don't think that will happen, but I believe I saw then over near the rides."

After a few more pleasantries, Hoshi and Illy moved off in that direction. Hoshi was acutely aware of the crunch of straw beneath her boots. After a moment, Illy slipped her arm through Hoshi's.

"I really hope Lindsey isn't putting two and two together about what you just said."

"Oh sweetie, Lindsey practically raised me. Believe me, she knows precisely what we got up to this afternoon."

"Oh super," Hoshi shook her head. "You're…oh, you're just you." She'd been floating in a love-drunk haze since they'd finished the cookies and left the habitat. Her thoughts were bubbling over with purely carnal, sexual memories and imaginings. Her mind unapologetically and unashamedly conjured up images of Illy's naked body and marinated in undisguised lust. It replayed the scents, smells, and textures she'd experienced when she'd immersed herself in the woman. The things they'd done—that Hoshi had begged for—would have struck her as depraved and filthy just a few days ago, but now the thought of them kindled a flame of pure lust in her stomach.

"You're a lot of fun to kill an afternoon with, too, Starfleet." She lean-bumped into Hoshi and whispered, "fast learner."

Hoshi grinned. "Good teacher."

"That's good, because we have a lot more subjects to cover…" Illy was interrupted by a small, contained burst of energy that was Danielle Spender.

"Ms Sato! Oh, did you hear?" she exclaimed breathlessly. Hohsi looked past her and saw Tom slouching by the railing of the Hammer Drop ride. Whatever set Danielle off, it wasn't another threat to his safety.

"Hear what, Danielle? Where is Marianne and Leo?" Hoshi noticed they weren't huddled with the rest of the students.

"That's just it, Ms. Sato! They're in the hospital. Something happened in the barn and they took them to the hospital."

"Wait, what happened? Did they get bit by a goat?"

"Goats don't really bite," Illy mentioned.

"I'm not sure. Groppler Crane was there, and some guy and they told us that Marianne and Leo needed to be sedated."

Hoshi and Illy exchanged puzzled looks. "That doesn't make sense," Illy mulled. "If it was a medical emergency, they would have called me. If just to let me know about the incident."

"We should probably go see if they're okay," Hoshi said.

"Do we need to come with you?" DeVonn asked sulkily.

"No, just have fun at the carnival. Doctor Adams and I will straighten it out."

All the students brightened noticeably. "Okay, give them out best. Thanks, Ms. Sato!" Danielle said, and the group melted into the rest of the carnival.

"Hearing you referred to as 'Ms. Sato' is kind of getting me hot," Illy murmured.

"Oh, stop," Hoshi said exasperatedly. "I mean, until after we check up on Marianne and Leo. After that I'll be Ms. Sato all you want."

15

The Haddonfield Municipal Hospital was a sprawling affair, surprisingly so to Hoshi, until Illy explained that it was the center of medical research for the colony. The actual patient wing was a relatively small appendage that jutted out from the main building. They found Marianne and Leo in a shared room, sleeping soundly beneath thrumming health monitors.

"They look fine," Illy mused as she reviewed their vital signs. "Sedated, but no signs of trauma or any catastrophic injury that would cause or entail a medically-induced coma."

"So, they weren't bitten by goats?" Hoshi asked, feeling a flush of relief.

"They weren't bitten by anything," Illy turned and waved at a passing nurse, who called out a friendly greeting and changed her course to join them in the room.

"Julianne, how were these two patients admitted," Illy asked her. Julianne was a compact woman with auburn hair and deep green eyes and a pretty, no-nonsense face. She appraised Hoshi like an interloper. "Sorry," Illy said. "Julianne Cooper is one of the senior nurses here. Julianne, Hoshi Sato from the Enterprise. She's in charge of the visiting students." Illy's voice and demeanor had become level and businesslike.

Julianne greeted Hoshi coolly, then checked her medical pad. "Oh, they came in not too long ago. Groppler Crane called for assistance at the carnival livestock barn and requested full sedation…" she frowned at the screen, then read verbatim, "'for the patients' own benefit.' What does that mean?" she wondered aloud.

"Doesn't make any sense to me," Illy said. "But their lifesigns are completely normal, so there's no need to keep them this way…" she punched a few controls on the console between their beds. "In a minute we can ask them ourselves."

It took more than a minute, but not much more. While they waited, the three made stilted conversation and Julianne periodically stared daggers at Hoshi. Finally, the two teenagers stirred. Marianne recovered first.

"What…where are we?" she mumbled.

"Mary," Illy said gently, leaning in. "You're in the hospital. Do you remember how you got here?"

Marianne blinked rapidly as her cognitive faculties locked back into place. "We…they took us here. Groppler Crane and some doctor and…" she shook her head, trying to clear it.

"What happened, Mary," Hoshi asked, trying for the same compassionate tone as Illy's and just barely missing it.

"We saw…" Marianne's eyes fixed at a point someplace other than where she was looking. It was someplace awful, Hoshi could tell. Marianne's face drained of all color and her eyes widened inhumanly large. She began to scream.

16

"This way," Danielle said in hushed voice as she charged through the narrow rows of corn, half-dragging Tom behind her, an orange chem-light stick held in front of her like an adventurer's torch.

"Do you actually know where you're going or are you just going blindly through the corn?" he asked. Sometimes keeping up with Danielle was like trying to ride a wave or steer a sailboat in a storm. Not that he really minded-Tom was acutely aware of lucky he was to have a girl interested in him. It just made life unpredictable.

"I just want to get fare enough away from the carnival," she said, excitedly.

"Get away for what?" he asked as they burst through a loose curtain of cornstalks into a decent-sized clearing. "Oh wow," Tom said, looking around. Someone had flattened the stalks so thoroughly that they felt like a solid surface beneath his feet.

"Right?" Danielle beamed, her normally-cherubic features taking on an uncharacteristically sinister cast in the orange glow. "It's perfect." She hung the chem-light on a cornstalk.

"For what?" Tom asked. He had a pretty good idea of what the spot was perfect for, but he couldn't just say that to a girl. You had to be smooth. You had be a cool guy like DeVonn and communicate it without saying it.

"It's good for this," Danielle crossed her arms around Tom's neck and kissed him.

This is the greatest moment of my life!

Tom felt his legs grow rubbery and he put his hands on Danielle's hips, then he closed them around her waist. She scooted her body up against his. "C'mon," she said when the kiss was done, and dropped to a sitting position atop the flattened stalks, which crackled and crunched beneath her weight.

"Um, okay," Tom said and plopped down next to her. The stalks crackled under him, too, and the whole clearing smelled sweetly of healthy vegetation.

"There," Danielle said and promptly launched herself at Tom like a striking tiger. Tom fell backward under an assault of kisses.

Seriously, the greatest night of my life!

He tried to return them as best he could—but still being cool about it, not too excited—when suddenly Danielle sat stock straight and whipped her head around.

"What was that?"

"What was what?" Tom's thoughts still hadn't completely coalesced back to handling anything other than the girl on top of him and how much more they might do beyond kissing.

"I heard a noise." Danielle's body was suddenly rigid as a carving, and Tom debated which was the more pressing matter to him: the prospect of someone walking in on them or the possibility of sex. He decided on the latter.

"It's probably just someone from the carnival running around."

"They might see us!"

"Um, well, we can turn off the light, I guess. Maybe they won't come this way?"

"I don't want DeVonn or Leigh walking in on us. They'll just be obnoxious about it," Danielle huffed. "They're so stupid."

"Yeah," Tom said, still thinking about Danielle's clothes and how hard it would be to get them off. "I mean, I guess I can take a look."

"No," Danielle said firmly, "I'll take a look." She hopped off him and walked to the edge of the cornstalks. Tom scrambled to his feet, trying to get his legs under himself.

"Wait! I should go with you!"

Suddenly the protective curtain of cornstalks parted and a tall, broad figure emerged from the darkness beyond them.

Tom and Danielle grabbed one another. Tom let out a frightened yelp.

"What are you kids doing here?" the man said, stepping into a warm, orange glow of the chem-light. Tom was simultaneously relived and anxious at the sight of the man's security uniform. A beam of white light suddenly bathed the two of them.

"I, um, we…" Tom stammered.

"We were at the carnival and decided to take a walk in the cornfield," Danielle said. "We thought it was part of the event. Get a taste of fall in the country and stuff."

It dawned on Tom that Danielle was a really good liar.

"Uh-huh," the security officer didn't look convinced. Tom tried to think of what punishments they might be facing. Could they get in trouble for making out? Maybe they'd get arrested for damaging the corn. Farmers took their crops seriously, Tom knew. Would they face prison time? His mind suddenly reeled at the possibility of a diplomatic incident. Danielle and he would be held in prison on the colony, and Ms. Sato's ship would have to come rescue them. Tom wondered if there would be a commando raid.

"It's true!" Tom exclaimed, hoping his testimony would bolster Danielle's case. He got another skeptical look from the security officer.

"Well, you shouldn't be back here," the officer said. "These fields belong to people. You can't just go tromping around them without permission. It's their property."

"We understand," Danielle said reasonably. "We didn't mean any harm."

"No harm!" Tom blurted.

"Well then, let's all just go back to the carnival," the officer said impatiently. Tom got the impression that he had better things to do.

"Right!" Tom gave him a thumbs up. "We understand."

"Okay," the officer sighed and gestured with his flashlight. "Let's just go."

"Sorry again," Danielle said brightly as she led the way out of the clearing. Tom followed, and the security officer brought up the rear. Probably so we went sneak back to the clearing, Tom thought. Security people, he saw, were pretty smart.

"Yeah, we didn't mean anything by it," Tom said, shedding some nervous energy.

"That's fine, let's just go back to the carnival."

They crouch-walked back through the narrow path, with Danielle again expertly ducking and dodging while Ted battled away the errant stalks. Based on the ruckus behind him, the security officer was even less delicate about it than he was.

"I mean, it really was a fun carnival…" Danielle chattered, but Tom noticed something wrong. The flashlight's gaze suddenly swung back and forth, and then there was a loud rustling/crunching noise behind him as if the whole field had come alive.

"Uh, sir…" Tom twisted around, but found himself looking at dimly-lit emptiness, a shadowy gnarl of stalks and wide leaves and harsh shadows. The security officer's flashlight lay on the ground, slightly upturned. "Sir?" Tom called again, fear crawling his spine.

"What is it, Tom?" Danielle had turned to him and held out the chem-light like a lantern.

"He's gone!"

"Gone? Like, just disappeared?"

Tom nodded. "One minute he was there and the next…" Tom scooped up the flashlight and aimed the beam at the route behind them, but its cold light only showed cornstalks in hyper-relief and beyond them a tangle of stalks and shadows. He swung it left and right but saw only the impenetrable wall of the cornfield.

"Tom, we should go," Danielle's voice was stripped of all the ease and assurance she'd deployed against the security officer just a few minutes earlier. Now it was hollow and tremulous.

"Maybe we should look for him?"

"No," Danielle sounded smaller still. "Let's go…Tom, let's go."

Tom nodded dumbly. Danielle stormed ahead, swatting and dodging the stalks, the chem-light creating an orange kaleidoscope around them, and Tom struggled to keep right behind her. His long legs caught on low-lying vegetation and sometimes his own feet, but even when he stumbled, he stayed at Danielle's shoulder.

"Something's really wrong here," Danielle huffed as she charged through the field. "Something's wrong—"

She lost her words as they stumbled into another circular clearing similar to the one they'd just left. Tom blinked, momentarily unable to understand what he was seeing. Beside him, Danielle's sharp intake of breath was a sound he'd never heard a human make.

The security officer sat on the far edge of the clearing, slumped like a rag doll, a long, scarlet stain cascading down the front of his uniform. It took Tom a moment to understand he was looking at a torrent of blood, and the way that the light played off it was because it was still flowing from the gaping found in his throat. His eyes were dull and dead, staring at some null space before him. His mouth hung slackly.

The figure standing above him looked over at them. It was humanoid, Tom could see, but its face was a blank parody of human features, a rough draft of a face, the eyeholes empty and black as if the artist intended to get to them later. The synthetic hair affixed to the top of the mask was a tangle.

It stared, and even with its blank eyes, Tom sensed it could see. In his scarred and calloused right hand was long, vicious-looking knife, the serrated blade still dripping with the security officer's blood.

Now Danielle managed a scream and Tom gave into the panic that was cresting within him. He did the first brave thing he'd ever done in his life: he grabbed Danielle and ran.

17

"Wait, what? Say again your last," Hoshi squinted at the communicator as if the garbled transmission was an alien text she could somehow decipher.

"Dani and Tom saw…murdered…guy with a knife!" Leigh Patel's voice, afflicted by some usual comms squelch, was unusually rushed and nearly incoherent.

"They saw…" Hoshi suddenly noticed Illy's expression. The blood had drained from her face and her features were a blank mask of fear.

"Get them out of there, Hoshi!" she hissed. "Get them somewhere safe!"

"What's going on?"

"Ms. Sato, what do we do?"

"Hoshi, you need to get them out!" Illy's gaze bored into Hoshi with an intensity she'd never imagined the woman capable of. Hoshi keyed the communicator.

"Leigh, round up everyone and get to the dorms. Go to the common area and wait for me."

"Um…okay, we will."

"Do it now, Leigh. Take a transport. Go fast."

"Yes, ma'am." Leigh sounded small on the communicator, like a little girl taking instruction form her mother. Hoshi closed the communicator and looked at Illy.

"What is it? What's happening?"

Illy swallowed and took a shuddering breath. "Evil," she said. "The evil has returned."

18

The dorm was humming with palpable nervous energy by the time Illy and Hoshi arrived, Illy racing ahead and storming into the common area like a Visigoth late for sacking Rome.

"Are you alright?" Illy demanded, directing her query indistinctly at Tom and Danielle who were huddled on the couch, arms around one another. They looked, to Hoshi, like two small birds hunched against a storm. Around them, the remainder of the students looked on with confused, solemn, reticence.

"We're okay," Tom said quietly.

"But that poor man!" Danielle managed, her eyes welling up.

"I don't get it," DeVonn said with a seriousness Hoshi didn't think he was capable of. "Some guy just goes and kills a security officer? Why?"

"Not just a security officer," Illy said grimly.

"It's true," Hoshi affirmed. "There are more. That's what Marianne and Leo's saw that got them sedated."

"They were sedated because someone got killed?" Leigh asked. "Why would they be sedated just because someone got killed?"

"Not really the point," Hoshi said. "But a good question, nonetheless. Look, did you report this to security? To anyone in charge?"

Danielle and Tom nodded vigorously. "We contacted Groppler Crane from the rover. He said to just hold tight and he'd take care of it."

"He doesn't know what he's dealing with," Illy said darky and checked her datapad. "The carnival is still going on."

"With a murderer out there?" Danielle exclaimed.

Look," Hoshi held up her hands placatingly. "I'm sure the colony security is handling things. Until then—"

"We lock ourselves in until morning," Illy said firmly. "Maybe it will be over by then." She threw a look at Hoshi. "In the meantime, let's contact Groppler Crane. Somehow, I suspect he'll need some motivation to actually act on this."

She grabbed Hoshi's hand and pulled her out of the common area and into the adjoining office.

Leigh Patel cocked her head at the closed and door and asked the group, "So, is Ms. Sato dating Doctor Adams now?"

19

"What is it, Illy? What's going on?" Hoshi was fast becoming exasperated. Random acts of violence seemed to be falling like snowflakes all around them. On top of that, the kids were being menaced by something, and she wasn't in a position to offer them much protection. She hadn't even brought a phase pistol with her. Why would she? Were the cows going to attack them?

Illy slammed her fist into a control console. "Crane's not answering."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know," Illy growled. "I don't know!"

"Illy, you have to explain what is happening." Hoshi took her face in her hands and looked into her beautiful, blue eyes, now as cold and burning as a dwarf star. "Illy, I am responsible for those kids. I AM RESPONSIBLE! Now, you need to talk to me!"

Illy blinked, a constellation of emotions playing over her features. Her hand squeezed Hoshi's wrist.

"Hoshi, you shouldn't be here," she whispered. "Not now. Not with him."

"Him who?" Hoshi demanded.

The other woman set her jaw as if facing a firing squad. "Michael Meyers."

"Who's that?"

"He's Haddonfield's nightmare. It's evil spirit. It's boogeyman."

"Wait…" Hoshi shook her head. "You're not talking about the kid who killed his sister. And some babysitters, are you?"

Illy nodded.

"But that was, like, two hundred years ago!"

"It doesn't matter," Illy said. "He's tied to this place. Connected. He always returns. Sometimes it's years between rampages. Sometimes decades. Now centuries. But he's a stain on the fabric of Haddonfield's soul. He's linked to it.

"My family knew this, Hoshi. We've waited. We're always waiting. Generation after generation. We've been waiting for the evil to return, because we're the only ones who can stand against it."

"So, you're like a…sentinel or something?" Hoshi began to seriously wonder if Illy was out of her mind and what that would mean for their relationship going forward. Probably nothing good.

Illy laughed, and her eyes crinkled at the corners. "No, you dope. I'm a doctor. But family has a connection to Michael Meyers, so we take him seriously.

"My mother's family name was Strode."

And then the heard the shriek.

20

"DeVonn, you should wait here," Leigh Patel said anxiously, but DeVonn waved her off and headed down the short hallway that connected to the kitchen and dining area.

"If I'm going to wait here doing nothing, I'm having a brewski," he groused.

"But Ms. Sato and Doctor Adams said we should stay here," she protested and put her hand on his arm, appreciating the toned bicep beneath his sleeve. But DeVonn threw her hand off with an aggressive pinwheel of his arm.

"Fuck them," he snorted. "Making us miss the carnival, which is the only thing worth doing at this lousy place. Just because Tom and Danielle got scared." He stepped into the semi-darkness of the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of bear from the food cooling unit.

"DeVonn, someone got killed!" Leigh said incredulously from the doorway.

"Yeah," he spun to face her, eyes blazing, "and if they had any guts they'd just let us go the carnival with everyone else and take care of the guy themselves. I'm not worried. That guy comes near me and I'll stomp some ass." He took a healthy swig of the beer.

Leigh Patel came to a sudden, sickening realization: DeVonn was jealous. She almost shook her head in incredulity—both at him and at herself for taking so long to see it. DeVonn was in love with Doctor Adams—of course he was—and he was upset that Doctor Adams with Ms. Sato. He was jealous and humiliated at being overlooked. It was so stupid that Leigh could barely wrap her brain around it. Did DeVonn really think a woman like her would be interested in a boy like him? She was blonde and beautiful and capable, it only made sense she'd fall for someone like Ms. Sato, who darted around the galaxy in a massive starship.

"Sure, you will," she said sarcastically.

"You don't know," he sneered. And that was when Leigh realized that the boy she'd been crushing on was so much smaller and less deserving of her attention than she'd ever realized. Her anger was even split between DeVonn for being a stupid boy and herself for ever liking him in the first place.

"You're an idiot," she replied, shaking her head and went back into the common area to look after Tom and Danielle.

DeVonn saw Leigh turn and leave and took another hit off the beer and managed not to wince at its bitterness. He didn't really like beer, but he wasn't going to let Leigh or Doctor Adams see that. They'd see he was a man. He didn't know how Doctor Adams could have missed that or why she'd be interested in a boring chick with a flat chest like Ms. Sato—hell, Leigh even had a bigger rack than her—but he'd be damned if he let the or anyone else see him as a teenager. He was a man.

He walked into the darkened dining area to look for cereal to eat with his beer. He rifled through the cabinets above the small resequencer, but came up empty. DeVonn started to get annoyed. Why the hell couldn't he find the goddamn cereal? He knew it was here? One of the stupid girls probably put it back in the wrong place. He moved over to the closet and threw open the doors.

In the dark, the chalk-white face was all he could see. DeVonn squealed a high, whining cry just before the blade came up and slid between his ribs.

21

"Was that DeVonn?" Leigh asked.

"I think it was a girl," Tom noted, still pale, but functional. "Maybe Marianne is back from the hospital?"

"Could be," Danielle agreed.

"Marianne!" Leigh called out. She stood and made for the kitchenette. "Marianne?" she called again.

A figure staggered forth out of the darkness. Leigh jumped back a bit before recognizing DeVonn. "Did you…?" she began, until she noticed the long bloodstain down the front of his shirt and his fear-etched face and fading eyes.

"DeVonn!" she screamed, dimly aware of Tom and Danielle recoiling in horror. She caught him as he pitched forward, his knees giving out. His hands were clutched over the wound as if they could contain the blood that was pouring out of him. Leigh eased him to the floor and onto his back. DeVonn looked at her with panic-widened eyes, while his mouth made only rasping, gulping noises.

Suddenly, Danielle screamed, and she heard Tom cry out, "It's him!" Leigh looked up to see a silhouette in the darkness of the kitchen. Someone massive, with a blank face and bottomless, black eyes. He held a knife in his right hand, and wordlessly walked toward them.

Leigh thought fast. "Computer!" she called out to the building's CPU, "Initiate fire-mitigation system. Location: kitchen." Immediately a curtain of transparent aluminum slid from the ceiling to the floor. The blank-faced figure tilted its head, as if transfixed by this new barrier, then touched it gingerly, then slammed its fist against it with a dull thump.

"What happening—" Illy Adams started to say as she and Hoshi Sato poured into the room, but she broke off when she caught sight of the intruder. Her face became ashen and pale. "Michael…" she whispered.

Hoshi stared at the figure. It almost seemed to simple to command so much fear and dread: just a humanoid in a mask. But as her gaze raked over the expressionless face, she felt an almost primordial dread grip her. The blankness of the face and empty black eyeholes were like some grotesque parody of humanity, a thing that existed without personality or interiority and only to kill and maim.

Illy stared at the shape, eyes burning, nostrils flaring like a horse, and the shape stared back at her. It cocked its head birdlike once again, and Hoshi had the mad thought of a child captivated by a particularly interesting zoo exhibit.

Then it slammed a hand into the barrier again.

"Fuck you," Illy hissed.

"Doctor Adams!" Leigh pleaded from the floor. "Doctor Adams, DeVonn's hurt real bad."

The plaintive cry penetrated whatever private space Illy was inhabiting and she snapped back to the present. "Grab the med kit," she snapped. "Second drawer next to the couch." She dropped to a knee beside DeVonn's shuddering body, throwing one last reluctant look at the figure behind the barrier.

"What about—" Hoshi started.

"He can't get past that," Illy said as she applied pressure to DeVonn's injury with an old sock scavenged from someplace. "Hoshi, I need your help."

Hoshi knelt on the other side of DeVonn. Illy took her hands and placed them on the saturated sock. "Hold the pressure while I get something else ready."

"All right," Hoshi said levelly. The blood which slid between her fingers was alarming warm, and the metaphor of blood as life seemed even more plain and obvious to her. Across the body from her, Leigh appeared with a plastic med kit.

"Here," she said breathlessly.

"Thanks," Illy took and began digging through it frantically before pulling out an orange vial and a hypospray. "Okay…" she said mostly to herself as she loaded up the hypo and pressed it to DeVonn's carotid artery.

"What is that?" Hoshi asked, but Illy was back to digging through the bag, more vigorously now.

"Come on, come on, where are...Aha!" Now she had a small spray canister. "Organi-seal," Illy explained, as if anyone knew what that was. "Okay, you can lift up the compress," she told Hoshi.

The blood began running again as if from a faucet once Hoshi lifted the saturated sock off DeVonn's chest, and Hoshi felt a rush of fear as she watched the boy die before her eyes.

"Okay, lift his shirt…good…" Illy sprayed a runny, black foam into the wound and over the injury. She tossed the canister aside and pressed two fingers to the side of DeVonn's neck. A look of relief rolled over her face.

"Is he—"

"He's stable for now," Illy explained hurriedly. "I injected him with reconstructive nannites, which should shore up the damage from the knife. That stuff—" she gestured to the black foam, which had hardened into a plastic-like consistency—"is an organic sealant to keep him bleeding out while the nannites do their job."

"So, he'll live?" Leigh asked tremulously with red-rimmed eyes.

"He needs emergency surgery," Illy said seriously. "We just slowed the decline. You need to call emergency services. Use the phone in the office."

Leigh nodded mutely and ran off.

"Doctor Adams, look!" Danielle exclaimed. Hoshi and Illy both looked up.

The figure behind the transparent barrier was gone.

22

It took emergency services about ten minutes to get an atmospheric hopper to the building and load up DeVonn for transport. "He's lucky you were there," the med-tech said over the hum of the antigravs. "There have been wild reports all night. Break-ins. Attacks. Security Services is completely tied up."

"Will he be okay?" Hoshi asked.

"Oh sure. We'll get him into surgery before his condition deteriorates. Patch-up jobs are easy." But Hoshi still felt the worry pulling at her as the hopper lit off into the night sky. She was, at least nominally, responsible for these kids, and now one was clinging to his life and the rest would be traumatized for a good long while.

"He'll be fine, Hoshi," Illy said, but there was grittiness in her voice that failed to put her at ease.

"Illy, what does he want? Michael Myers? Just to kill teenagers?"

"It's like I told you. He's a force of evil. If evil was a natural element, like fire or water. Michael Myers is that. He come in from the night, from the dark, and he destroys, and that's all he does. He doesn't want anything. He's not trying to accomplish anything. He has no motive, no agenda, no higher need than to destroy everything in his path. He's like a flood or a fire."

"But you—"

"My family has a history. He fixates on me." She looked at Hoshi with grim determination. "That's why I need to stop him."

"Let me help you," Hoshi said. "I have my tricorder It can access the colony's sensor net."

Illy looked torn, then nodded reluctantly. "All right. Just…just help me find him. I'll take care of the rest. Help me find him before he kills anyone else."

"We'll need the terminal down in the common area."

They clamored down the emergency stairs from the roof to the common area, where Leigh, Danielle, and Tom were still huddled on the couch. Hoshi gave them an assessment of DeVonn's condition, then told them to lock themselves in their rooms. The kids looked scared but resilient. Once they were safely secured in their rooms, she retrieved her tricorder from her quarters and met Illy in the common area.

"This should be relatively simple. Our engineer showed me how to synch a Starfleet tricorder with just about any Federation computer system."

"Any system?" Illy said skeptically. "He must be some engineer."

"He's the best," Hoshi mused as she worked. Then the display on the tricorder pulsed in unison with the main terminal. "Got it," she said. "All right, we can use the data from this."

"What data?" Illy asked, confused.

"When I scanned DeVonn," Hoshi explained. "The scan initialized and took readings of everything in the immediate vicinity before I focused it on DeVonn. Tricorders always do that. It's a huge amount of useless data, which is why the memory cores need to be dumped every so often. I can dump all lifesign data into the colony-wide net. The only two that won't show up in this room are DeVonn, and…"

"…Michael," Illy finished.

Hoshi nodded and brought up a schematic of the colony. A cluster of indicators pinged over the residence. "That's us…" she pointed at another indicator blinking amid the lines of an elaborate building. "I assume that's the hospital, so that must be DeVonn…"

"Yeah, that's the medical facility. Which leaves…"

One lone circle flashed on the edge of the map.

"What is that?" Hoshi asked.

"Nothing anymore," Illy said quietly. "It used to be…Hoshi, it used to be a cemetery."

23

Illy's land rover skimmed across the sown fields beneath a massive, orange hunter's moon, its headlights carving a cone of visibility out of the darkness and mist of the night.

"Illy…" Hoshi said tightly to break the silence.

"Don't try and talk me out of this, Hoshi," Illy said, not taking her eyes off the windscreen. "This goes back generations. Before The Wars, even."

"But," Hoshi sighed, exasperated. "This is insane…"

"Don't say that!" Illy retorted, then shook her head in frustration. "Or, okay, fine. It's insane. Of course, it's insane. The whole thing is insane. But it's real, and people get hurt, and people die, so what does it matter if it's insane? The point is, I have to contain the insanity. I have to confront it and keep it from harming anyone else. Like the women in my family have always done."

Hoshi had no good rejoinder to that. She watched the dimly-lit nightscape roll by. "What can I do?" she asked quietly.

Illy looked over at her, then back to her driving. "You didn't happen to bring a plasma pistol, did you?"

"I didn't think I'd need to shoot the cows."

Illy nodded. "Okay, go into the compartment between the seats."

Hoshi reached into the small hatch and felt the familiar plastic of a pistol grip. She withdrew a smaller version of the plasma pistols she'd been trained on before launching with Enterprise.

"Can you use that?" Illy asked.

"I know how to use it," Hoshi said. "Not well, but…"

"He'll be at close range anyway."

"What about you?" Hoshi asked, tucking the pistol in her jacket.

"There's something else in the compartment."

Hoshi reached in again and found the long buck knife.

A few moments later, they came to a halt so abrupt the dampeners could barely correct for it, and Hoshi was yanked forward in her seat. They were parked in front of a dilapidated wooden structure that Hoshi could barely believe was still standing. "What is that place?" Hoshi asked as they got out of the rover.

"I think it might have been a church at one point. I'm not sure. It was transplanted with the colony. There's an archeological dig beneath it." Illy answered as she wove her belt through the knife's scabbard before pulling it taut and giving it a pat.

"Does, uh, does Michael Myers like to hang out in, like catacombs and stuff?" Hoshi asked.

"Not as a rule."

They opened the structure's rickety front door in a squeal of rusted hinges and creaking wood. The interior of the church was long and empty and smelled of aged wood and dust overlaid with an incongruous chemical sterility. Hoshi saw that at the far side of the room was a brightly lit passageway.

"That's the dig," Illy said. They crossed over to it, their boots thumping on the wood beneath their feet. Something groaned above them, and Hoshi looked up to see a balcony jutting out above them like an overbite.

The brightly-lit passageway was a tunnel carved into the earth and winding downward. They followed it for several meters before arriving at an decontamination airlock. Hoshi fumbled with her tricorder.

"Relax," Illy told her. "That's a standard feature on these pre-fab archeological modules. There aren't any contaminants on this asteroid. Otherwise, we'd all have gotten sick years ago."

Hoshi still worked the tricorder.

"I'm telling you-" Illy said as they passed through the hissing double-doors of the airlock, then stopped.

They stood on a slight rise, looking out over a labyrinth of trenches cut into the ground, lit only by torches arranged in a pattern throughout the dig. The inconstant orange glow of the torches' flames played with the shadows of the deep gouges in the ground, any they looked in places like empty eye sockets and toothless gums.

In the center of a ring of torches stood Groppler Crane in a long, black robe, the hood pulled low over his face. Beneath his feet, the ground was marked with what looked to Hoshi from her imperfect vantage like a runic symbol.

Behind him, Michael Myers stood stock-still, shadows from the flickering torches swimming over his body and painting his mask a deep orange.

"Behind you!" Illy shouted and grabbed for her knife. Hoshi fumbled for the plasma pistol.

"It's quite all right," Groppler Crane said, voice booming as if he were addressing the colonial council. "He can't cross the runestones."

"The what?" Illy asked.

"Oh, surely you know the legends, Doctor Adams," Crane said playfully. "Michael isn't some random act of nature. Not at all. His…activities are tied to the stars and the elements. They are dictated by the precise alignment of the constellations, and the ancient movement of the heavens."

"Jesus…" Illy half-sighed, half-groused. "You're not telling me you buy all this Cult of Thorne crap, are you?"

"What's the Cult of Thorne?" Hoshi asked.

"It's some stupid bullshit…"

"You blaspheme!" Crane bellowed. "The Cult of Thorne is dedicated to harnessing an ancient and primal power. Something far beyond the understanding of man or his pitiful gods." He lowered his hood and glowered at Illy. "Mock at your own risk! You and your family have always interfered-meddled—in the way of things. And our avenger will make you pay. Just as he has always made the Strode women pay!"

"So, Michael is…the avenger?" Hoshi queried. "I'm kind of lost, here."

"Was it you?" Illy asked Crane, shifting her weight in an almost conversational manner. "Did you bring him back?"

"We summoned him," Crane nodded, satisfied. "We performed the ritual and displayed the sign. And he came."

"Actually," came another voice from someplace off to their left "we excavated him." From the inky shadows, Akkad walked into the light.

"Frank," Illy breathed. "Don't tell me you're part of this idiotic plan, too."

"The Cult of Thorne? Not a chance," Akkad scoffed. "But when Crane told me he wanted to resurrect Michael Myers…well, that did get my attention."

"Why? Frank, why would you—"

"Isn't it obvious?" Akkad ambled toward them, hands in his pockets. "Michael Myers is a biological mystery. A phenomenon. Shoot him, stab him, throw him out a window, and he always seems to come back. The secrets he could hold in his DNA could have an invaluable impact on our understanding of the longevity of living things.

"Crane knew the location, but he needed my help excavating Michael's remains. So, I let him dress up in his little costume and twirl around some—"

"BLASPHEMY!" Crane shouted, somewhat desperately.

"—While I used transporters to removed Michael from the ground and study his every molecule while his body reanimated itself and began to resemble something human."

"Oh, Frank," Illy shook her head. "I knew you were a self-obsessed scientific show-pony, but I never imagined you were this stupid."

Akkad cocked his head. "Illy, Illy Illy…you're really not so different than Crane, you know. Both of you are wedded to your superstitions and legends and all that nonsense that goes back to before The War. It's pathetic. At least Crane's brand of mania has a logic to it—I mean, tortured as it is. He thinks Michael Myers is some kind of divine messenger. You, though…" he threw up his hands. "You think he's the boogeyman? Children believe in that, Illy."

"He's much, much worse," Illy whispered through tight, white lips.

"Yeah," Akkad sniffed. "He's the embodiment of evil or whatever spooky stories your grandmother and great-grandmother told around the dinner table, generation after generation. It's just sad.

Akkad pointed at him. "He is a…miracle. He's an amazing specimen. He needs to be studied!"

"You're mad," Illy said. "You don't know what—"

"ENOUGH!" Crane shouted. "You weren't brought here to judge Michael Myers. You have no right to! You, Doctor Adams, are here as his prize!"

"Prize?" Hoshi asked. "What the hell is…"

"Crane," Akkad said irritably, "would you give it a rest for a minute, here? We're trying…"

Suddenly a flash blossomed from the folds of Crane's cloak, and while Hoshi's brain tried to process what she was seeing, she heard a harsh slap and, beside her, Illy fell. Hoshi let out a cry and fell to her knees beside her.

"Crane, what the hell are you doing?" Akkad demanded. Hoshi didn't even register Crane's high-minded answer. She was paying attention to the nasty burn on Illy's left thigh, where her work pants sported a ragged, burned hole and a rapidly-spreading bloodstain. Illy's face had gone pale, and Hoshi knew she was fighting back a wall of pain.

"Illy—"

"My jacket…" Illy said breathlessly. Hoshi put down the plasma pistol and dug through the pockets, and eventually found the small medkit. She wanted to scream in relief.

"What do I…"

"The green vial," Illy huffed. Perspiration had beaded on her forehead, and her eyes were beginning to lose focus. Hoshi sifted through until she found the stylus-sized hypospray with a green band. She pressed it to Illy's neck and was rewarded with a slight hiss. A moment later, Illy began blinking rapidly, and her breathing normalized.

"Good…good…now…"

"Red one?" Hoshi asked? "I remember from what you used on DeVonn." Illy smiled and pressed a cold palm to Hoshi's cheek as she injected the second one.

Above them, Akkad was still railing. "You didn't need to do this, Crane, goddamn it!"

"ENOUGH!" Crane's voice boomed. Hoshi gave him a murderous look, offended to her core that such a miserable excuse for a human had dared to hurt her woman. She scooped up the plasma pistol, but even as she did Crane kicked away the small runestones in front of the silent figure.

"Take her, Michael!" Cane implored gleefully. "You have crossed the stars and the centuries, and she is your reward for your journey."

"Fuck you, Crane!" Illy spat, but even from her position, even in the dim light, Hoshi could see Crane's eyes animated by a mania that was unreachable by conventional language. Hoshi knew crazy when she saw it, and she was looking at the face of it right now.

"Take her, Michael! Take her as your mate if you wish! Or let your blade feast upon her supple neck! Fulfill the quest you began so long ago and slay the children named Strode!"

"You have to get out of here!" Illy told Hoshi. "Get to the transport and get help."

"I won't leave you!"

"Hoshi, go!" Illy hissed. "He'll kill you, and I'll slow you down. Now go!"

"I won't," Hoshi retorted forcefully. "I'm not leaving you. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I left you behind."

"Damn it, Hoshi! This isn't a goddamn romance novel—"

"And I'm not a scantily-clad space maiden," Hoshi shot back. "I'm a Starfleet officer, and we do not just run away at the first sign of danger. The fact that we slept together doesn't make a difference. I'm not leaving you."

"For fuck's sake…" Illy griped, then grabbed Hoshi by the hair and kissed her hard. From behind them Crane's scream echoed in the chamber.

"GOOD GOD…" Akkad exclaimed. Hoshi looked over and saw a nightmare unfolding before her.

Michael had picked up Crane by the head in two enormous, scarred hands, and was working his thick, strong fingers into the man's eyes. Crane let out a whining, keening shriek as blood and viscous eye-fluid was squeezed out of his eye-sockets around Michael's fingers and drizzled down his face. Michael hooked his thumb inside Crane's mouth and Hoshi watched in horror as his powerful hand squeezed and filled the chamber with the dull, balsa-wood crack of Crane's soft palate giving way. A moment later the man's skull collapsed with a sound like a pumpkin being crushed as a slurry of blood and brain-matter fanned from the ruin of his temples.

Hoshi nearly threw up.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" Akkad screamed. Illy lifted her body up on her good leg, and Hoshi followed her up. A moment later she was knocked aside as Akkad lunged for the plasma pistol.

"Motherfu—" but Illy pulled Hoshi away toward the airlock. Akkad held the gun out in front of him like a Napoleonic sailor, giving Hoshi the distinct idea that he didn't really know how to use it.

"Come on!" Illy limp/staggered to the airlock, an arm around Hoshi's shoulders. The taller woman's weight bore down on her, but Hoshi willed herself to take the burden. She wouldn't let her down, she promised herself.

I just found you, I won't lose you now…

Akkad managed one wild shot that may or may not have hit Michael, but it didn't matter. The great knife sighed through the air and cleaved Akkad's hand cleanly from his wrist. The severed hand wobbled through the air and landed on the floor some distance away, nerves twitching, and causing the dead thing to fire one last plasma blast that arced into distance of the old church.

Akkad screamed at the sight of bloody stump at the end of his arm. Michael flicked the knife once more across the man's belly. Akkad turned, tried to run, but the motion caused his intestines to spill out of the gash that smiled across his midriff and tangle between his legs.

Whimpering, keening in fear, Akkad fell to his knees. He reached out in vain at Hoshi and Illy, as if to grasp them use them as an anchor to pull himself to safety. Instead, Michael grabbed him by the hair and rammed the knife through the back of Akkad's head, the blade sticking out of his mouth like an obscene tongue. The man's eyes went blank, and when Michael withdrew his blade from the skull, Akkad's body piled to the floor like a sack of laundry.

Then he set off after the two women.

24

Hoshi and Illy staggered through the airlock, and out the other side to the interior of the church. Hoshi felt her heart sink. Akkad's last shot had taken out the balcony's edge, sending the whole structure down in a haphazard pile of burning wood in front of the entrance. Thick smoke was beginning to roll and collect in the structure.

"Goddamn," Illy huffed. "Other side. We have to get to other side…" But Hoshi was already pulling that direction, and they hobbled between a set of decaying pews to the far side of the structure. Behind her, Hoshi could hear the crackle as the flames greedily consumed the frame of the church.

The smoke was building fast, and her eyes stung and burned. Blinking through tears, Hoshi felt a flare of hope as she recognized that the wall in front of her was not, in fact, a wall, but a series of boards slapped up over a window frame. She let out a loud grunt—mostly to put herself in the spirit—and hurled her shoulder against the closest board. To her vast relief, it gave way easily and she felt cool, night air enfold her perspiration-streaked face.

"Thank god," Illy managed, as Hoshi knocked out a few more boards, making a human-sized hole.

"Let's go, this place is going to…" she didn't bother finishing, as she dragged Illy through the hole and out of the rapidly-burning building. Outside, the night was preternaturally still and cool, as if deliberately oblivious to the terror unfolding within the old church. Hoshi and Illy lurched and hobbled a distance from the church, making a loose circle around it to get back to the transport. Illy felt her back and legs beginning to burn with the effort of supporting Illy, but she willed herself onward, pushing herself past the pain.

As they rounded the far side of the burning structure, a sound like a loud and sudden gasp accompanied a large blossom of flame from where the transport was parked.

"Shit!" Illy cried. "Stupid Model-twelves and their unstable power-cores…"

"Okay," said Hoshi, blinking through tears and willing herself to keep moving. "We just…we keep…"

"No," Illy sighed, deflated, and rolled her weight off Hoshi, landing on her back on the furrowed ground. Hoshi felt a shameful elation at the relief, and ignored it.

"What are you doing? We have to keep moving!" But Illy shook her head. Her face was streaked with sweat and soot, and her features were twisted.

"I can't…Hoshi, the anesthetic is wearing off. Too much exertion. I can barely think through the pain, let alone move. I can't make it."

"Illy, you need to," Hoshi said urgently. "You need to!"

"No, Starfleet," she said with a ghost of a smile. "You need to. Don't let's both die because I have a bum hoof."

Hoshi fumbled for her communicator. "At least let me call the security office first. I'm not going to just leave—" she broke off, noticing Illy's panic-widened eyes. Looking back toward the inferno she saw a humanoid silhouette striding impassively toward them.

"Go…Go!" Illy choked.

"Nope," Hoshi replied. "This conversation is over." She pulled out her tricorder and checked the program she'd started running in the transport.

"Hoshi, you have to!" Illy managed to drag herself into a fighting crouch, keeping most of her weight on her good leg. She drew her hunting knife. It's wide, flat blade caught the firelight and reflected a brilliant orange. "This is my fight."

The shape came closer, no longer silhouetted now. The fire behind it painted the blank, featureless mask the same orange as Illy's blade, but the eyes remained black and endless. It carried its own blade, this one dripping with Akkad's blood and bone matter.

"It's my fight, too," Hoshi said determinedly. "And I just called in reinforcements."

Illy took her eyes off the threat long enough to give Hoshi a puzzled look. "What are you…" but her attention was snagged a loud rustling in the dark, as if thousands of insects had suddenly emerged from the ground. A moment later, they both heard the smooth, human voice in the night.

"Moo," it said.

And another: "Moo."

"Moo."

"Moo."

"Moo."

One by one, the dozen or so synthbos sounded off as they emerged from the inky night and into the glow of the burning church, their white flanks colored orange by the flames, visual processors glowing intense blue. They advanced on Michael in a pincer movement, blocking him from Hoshi and Illy, crowding him, as he lashed out uselessly with his blade.

"Are you kidding me?" Illy said with an astonished laugh.

"I told you that Starfleet engineer taught me how to sync with native systems," Hoshi said, not even trying to keep the satisfaction out of her voice. "I accessed the cowdroids and brought them to us."

Michael had given up with the knife and was using his bare hands now, but the polymers and alloys that composed the synthbo's skeletons were impervious to even his inhuman brute strength. Slowly, inch by inch and foot by foot, the mass of amiably mooing machines drove him back until they reached the edge of the conflagration.

Fire sucked the artificial hide off the snythbo's endoskeletons and caused their systems to short out. A few of them stopped moving, but it was too late for Michael to press his advantage. The flames were already licking at his coveralls. The ground beneath his boots gave way, and, as Hoshi watched, his shape vanished into the roiling inferno.

Hoshi blinked, waiting for him to reemerge, to somehow, against all logic or nature, climb out of the fire and continue his implacable killing spree. She waiting for long moments, but he remained gone.

"Stay there," Illy growled from beside her. "Stay in hell, Michael. It's where you live, anyway."

They sat and watched the fire until the rescue teams arrived.

25

"Stop twitching," Julianne Cooper said testily as she tried to apply a derma-graft to the wrecked portion of Illy's thigh.

"It stings!"

"It does not," she sighed. "You don't have any functional nerve-endings left in that area. I swear, doctors really do make the worst patients."

"Come on, Haddonfield," Hoshi grinned and gave Illy's hand a squeeze. "Show how big and tough they grow them down on the farm."

Julianne arched an eyebrow at that but went back to working on Illy's leg. The woman was stretched out on a hospital bed, her pants cut away to expose her shorts, with one mile-long leg stretched out straight and the other folded beneath her. The woman's hair was a tangle, and her face was striped with dirt and soot and sweat. Hoshi thought she might be the sexiest creature she had ever seen.

"Shit, I knew you'd turn that around on me sooner or later."

"Yeah, well, you were lucky," Julianne said. "We had a lot of customers tonight."

"How bad was it?"

"Maybe a dozen injuries, all told. Final death count stands at five casualties, I think. Not including the two from the church."

"Three," Illy corrected her. "Three from the church. Akkad, Crane, and Michael Myers."

Julianne looked at them, puzzled. "They only recovered two bodies," she said. "Crane and Akkad. They're down in stasis right now."

"No one else?" Hoshi asked, but Julianne shook her head. She looked at Illy, who'd just gone a little paler.

"Maybe the body was incinerated. Just…ash…"

"Yeah," Illy said. "Could be."

Neither of them believed it.

Epilogue

Hoshi Sato flops on her bunk. Her shift his over, and she has just spent an hour in the gym. She's sweaty and her muscles are sore. Adrenaline and endorphins light up her system like neon, and the name in the subject line of the message waiting on her terminal sends a sharp pang of sexual desire through her body. She doesn't feel ashamed or frightened, just a longing for the woman—emotionally, sexually, conversationally… She accepts all the ways she desires Illy Adams as she reads through the message.

And on a darkened hillside on Haddonfield Colony, Doctor Illy Adams looks to the night sky, wondering if any of the faint points of light is the Starship Enterprise. She watches and she waits.

She waits for a monster. And she waits for a lover.