Chapter Twelve

Unsure what the condition that the ship was in, they chose one of the shuttle bays as their transport site. As the transporter effect faded they appeared in pitch blackness.

"Ugh… What is that smell?" Halee asked as she covered her mouth in a futile attempt to cover the smell.

"That's stale air. It's almost like this ship as been here for years." Amber explained as she turned on her flashlight, revealing her face, which had a look of disgust on it as well. She shined it on the three engineers who were already prying a bulkhead panel off. A few moments later, and the shuttle bay illuminated with emergency lighting.

"From the looks of it, this ship's in pretty bad shape due to neglect." Hatoko reported.

"That might explain the smell, and with all the things that are happening, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case." James added. "Go down to engineering and try and get the main computer core back online, we'll head to the bridge. Keep an open com-link at all times, and report anything you find."

"Aye, sir. Miller, Zadler, lets go." Hatoko ordered, and they both headed to the double doors of the shuttle bay and activated the emergency manual release, it opened reluctantly, and they headed to their destination.

"C'mon, let's get going." I said to the two women with me.

"We're on deck twenty-one. Looks like we got a long way to go." Amber said, studying her tri-corder. "Looks like the turbo lift systems are offline as well."

"The Jefferies-tubes would take too long; we can get there by climbing up the turbo lift shaft." Halee suggested.

"Twenty-one decks, Hope you're in shape, Lieutenant." I said making my way down the semi lit corridor and around the corner towards the turbo lift at the other end.

Hatoko kept her eye on the corridor ahead of her with her wrist mounted flashlight on one arm, and her phaser in her other hand when she heard one of the other engineers with her mutter something, she tossed a glance back over her shoulder.

"What is it?" she asked

"Nothing ma'am, it's just that this ship is really giving me the creeps." Lt. J/G Mike Zadler admitted.

"Alright, just try thinking about something else, remember, we're here to do a job. We have to find out what happed to the crew of the Antarctic, and if it's any consolation, I'm a little creeped out by this mess too."

"Ma'am, the upper level of main engineering is a deck below us; we can get there faster if we take that Jefferies-tube access hatch there." Ensign Raymond Miller said looking down at his tricorder and pointing to a hatch at about knee height a few feet away.

Hatoko opened the hatch and peered inside with her flash light and fell backwards with fear. Before her was a skeletal corpse with long hair, now in patches at the opening of the hatch, and on the door were scratch marks. Its mouth was wide open, as if the person was screaming. She tapped her comm-badge with a shaky hand.

"Commander?" she said with an equally shaky voice.

"What is it?" James replied, stopping his accent.

"We just found a body, and it looks like it's been here for decades. It looks like she was clawing at a tube hatch when she died." She reported grimly.

"Alright; we can deal with the remains of the crew when we find out more of what went on here. Continue on to main engineering." James responded.

"Aye, sir, Hatoko out." She said with an upset tone in her voice, knowing what she had to do. "Alright, you heard the commander. We have to move her, let's be careful."

They gently pull the body out of the tube and onto the floor of the corridor, where they found what she was trying to get away from. Grasping onto her left ankle was a severed arm, but the spot where it was severed was clean, almost surgical. Hatoko looked at the two other officers with her.

"Ok, now I'm starting to get creeped out." Miller said.

"What the hell happed on this ship?" Zadler asked.

"I don't know, but this woman was running away from something," She said looking at the arm, which resembled no species she'd ever seen before. "But I think we owe it to her to find out. Let's get going." Hatoko said as she crawled into the tube head first.

James wiped the sweat off his forehead and continued to climb up the latter towards the bridge. James looked at the deck marker as he passed it; it said 'Deck 4 – Crew Quarters'.

"I think we should stop here first." James suggested out of the blue.

"Any particular reason?" Amber inquired, looking exhausted.

"Deck four has the majority of the crew quarters, maybe we can find something, and I don't know about you, I'm beat." James said, as he started to pump the manual release on the turbo lift door to open it, and then climbed out on the deck and helped Amber and Halee. The three of them stopped to regain their strength. Halee cracked her neck rather loudly, which caused her to be stared at by her two companions.

"What?" She said defensively. Amber just laughed as she pulled out her tricorder and started taking readings.

"Whoa…" she exclaimed as she started to punch in commands furiously into her tricorder.

"What is it?" James asked quickly.

"Tachyon readings just jumped by a factor of ten."

"Is there any risk of radiation?" Halee asked.

"That's the puzzling thing, I'm not reading any radiation, but I'm still reading tachyons, and these readings aren't like the ones I was getting back on the Divination, these are stable."

"Stable? How can that be?" James asked equally puzzled.

"I don't know, but I think we should take a closer look. The readings are coming from the next section in a public lounge."

"Alright, let's go." James decided as he got up and started down the corridor. He pulled his phaser from its holster, not knowing what was going to be around the next bend.

"James, hold up, the readings just spiked again! James!" Amber looked up and he was gone.

James stood in an entirely different corridor, but oddly it seemed familiar to him, but all the feelings of familiarity came to a crashing halt as he looked at the person standing in front of him, his face turning ashen white.

"James! You startled me. What's wrong, you look like you've seen a ghost, and what are you doing in that uniform?" Amanda Harrison asked.