The Entity

Dr. David 'Darwin' Jones stands at the viewport in his consultation room, just off the general medi-care suite in the hospital hub. He had dispensed with his Star Fleet duties for the day and is taking a few minutes of quiet before starting his evening rounds of the civilian wards in the hospital. The Squadron flypast is quite a show-piece for the space station, although Jones could feel a small knot of trepidation tighten in his throat as the craft speed perilously close to the now spherical walls of Sentinel. The last thing he needed is to be dealing with is a spacecraft collision at close range of the station. He is about to turn back to his work when, without warning, the wormhole starts to open.

'What the!...' The exclamation of surprise dies on his lips as the wormhole opens and expands directly into the path of the Squadron and Jones can only look in horror as the space around them is instantly filled with an ever-growing cloud of... stuff. Jones cannot even begin to imagine what it is, as some enormous, amorphous, shifting mass of material engulfs the Squadron, seeming to ensnare and slow and then stop them mid-flight, before they disappear from view in its depths.

For a moment Jones is too surprised by what he has just witnessed to move and then, across Sentinel alarms start ringing. The cloud, or mass, or whatever the hell it is, is moving towards Sentinel and, without the Squadron, the space station is a sitting duck. The thought spurs him to action and he races from the window through to the nearest interlift and presses the button for the Bridge.

By the time he reaches the bridge the whole station is on full alert and he finds the Commander, Swayla T'Vayne and the bridge crew beginning to ready weapons and preparing the station for a full scale attack.

'Wait!' Jones shouts out the word over the sirens, without regard for the command chain or the film crew, who swivel in his direction without a pause in their filming as he rushes in. 'You can't fire on it! Whatever it is... those are our people in there! At least give them a chance to try and escape, Commander.'

Pierce shakes his head and sighs, Jones is right, he raises a hand and shouts above the alarms, 'Belay that order. We will wait for the... this thing to attack first and someone, please, turn off those alarms!'

'But Commander, it will be upon us in a matter of minutes! We must fire first, we have the advantage!' Swayla brings a clenched fist down on the handrail, making the crewman in front of her jump.

'No, Swayla, Jones is right, they have our Squadron, it is they who have the advantage. We are will wait, weapons ready, for now.' The alarms cease and the whole of Sentinel seems to fall silent as the huge cloud moves inexorably towards them.

Worwynd tries as best she can to break free of the cloud engulfing finDuj but it is no good, no matter how she manoeuvres, the stuff keeps pulling her back into it. She can feel anger and frustration rising up as she fights to get her ship free, firing a volley of energy bursts into the cloud but they seem to have no effect except make the cloud thicker.

'Stop firing!' It is Peator's voice, presumably across the communications link. 'You are only making it worse and likely to hit one of us. I am trying to bring ZeaDar closer to you. This cloud seems to use energy to make itself bigger. Can you get through to the Bridge on Sentinel?'

Worwynd grinds her teeth and tries to get control of her anger. 'I am not getting any response from them! It is as though the signal is bouncing back off... whatever this is! Can ZeaDar break free?' Worwynd wonders if the Quill can break through the cloud.

'No, but slow manoeuvring seems to be possible, can you see us yet?'

Worwynd peers through her viewfinder but nothing is visible through the entity, nothing is registering on any of her scanners. 'Nothing! I can't seem to contact the rest of the Squadron either, only our communicators seem to be working.'

'Don't worry, I'm in contact with them, I am slowly triangulating our positions and ZeaDar and I will shepherd us together. Perhaps as a group we can coordinate a way to get free.'

Numbers stares at the view screen, watching the cloud emerge through the wormhole. Beside him Elenah Mapletree whistles softly. 'What in this universe is it? A nebula of some kind?'

'No, no, not a nebula. An entity of some sort and it is growing. I am scanning the Borg data banks I have retained in my memory core to see if I can find a match. We should get to the Bridge. They will need my help if it attacks the station.'

Elenah is about to say how presumptuous to assume he would be needed on the Bridge but she catches herself in time. This young man in front of her designed the Sentinel. If anybody could help the Commander with defence strategy, it would be him. By the time they reach the Bridge, the alarms have been turned off and Sentinel slowly spins on its axis as the entity creeps closer, giving no sign of the Squadron within its mass.

Commander looks up as Numbers and Elenah join them on the Bridge. 'Good! Just the person I wanted to see, any ideas on what it is, Numbers?'

'I have found no match from my data banks but I have an idea about how the entity is growing.'

'Let's hear it then.' Pierce smiles encouragingly at the Borg as Numbers glances nervously at the film crew. 'There's no time to worry about them. We have... how long before this entity reaches us?'

'Three minutes and counting, if it keeps its present speed. Commander, we must fire while we still can!' Swayla tries her best to contain her annoyance at the Commander's refusal to fire first.

But Numbers interrupts her, 'No, it would only be to the entity's advantage. It is feeding on energy, I was able to map its size as it emerged from the wormhole and again once it had engulfed the Squadron. I compared the amount of kinetic energy the Squadron was producing to the expansion rate of the entity and, given they might well be firing energy bursts as well, it is growing and becoming more dense in exact correlation to the amount of energy it is absorbing. A bit like a protoplasm, it is changing from a liquid state to a solid. In fact, my initial computation is this entity is a single cell, somehow transformed by passage through the wormhole into this entity.

'A single living cell? From what kind if creature and how could it possibly survive through the wormhole?' Jones asks incredulously. 'If a protoplasm, without its cell wall, it is incredibly vulnerable, how is it holding together?' The doctor continues, almost to himself, his brain racing to keep up with Number's hypothesis.

'Like phosphorescence on a night sea.' Elenah announces, giving a description to the entity on the screen in front of her.

'Very poetic,' Swayla comments, ' But perhaps not helpful. How much kinetic energy is the station producing Commander? If, as Numbers has postulated, this protoplasm is devouring energy to grow we are surely about to be engulfed by it, like the Squadron.'

Commander Pierce wastes no time, and calls through to Engineering.

'Chief? We need to stop rotating!'

'Stop rotating? You'll lose all gravity, Commander!'

'But can you do it? Can you stop Sentinel before the entity reaches us?'

Mixie can hear the urgency in the Commander's voice and replies. 'It can be done but, well, no gravity on a station this size, with no warning...'

'Then warn everyone and stop this station now! That's an order!' The Commander grips the side of his chair as the low gravity warnings start and he addresses the crew on deck. 'Prepare for no gravity, hold on to whatever you can and brace yourselves, time left till it reaches us?'

Swayla calls up the countdown onto the main screen and they all watch, as the seconds tick away. 'One minute, twenty eight seconds and counting.'

'Wait! That's it. Not a protoplasm, I think you have it, more a type of phosphorescence!' Jonesalmost lets go of the seat he is clinging to. 'What if it is similar to plant chlorophyll, you mentioned phosphorescence, Elenah, which is able to absorb light energy and then release it over time. If this entity is absorbing kinetic energy, transforming it into potential energy for use as a fuel for the missing structures of the cell, without that mechanism, it is simply storing the energy, unable to release it. You said something about it turning to a solid? It has to be the effect of all the potential energy it is storing.'

'Rather than turning it into a fuel, say, heat or in the case of phosphorescence, light, or releasing it as sugars in a plant. Your computation does fit the model we are presented with.' Numbers nods in agreement with Jones.

'And this helps because?'

'We need to find a way for the entity to dispel it's stored energy.' Swayla answers the Commander. 'Without using anything with energy, so we can't fire our weapons at it!' She shakes in disappointment. They all watch and wait as the countdown nears ten seconds and the station slowly stops spinning. As they wait, objects start to float in the low gravity, each of them feeling the weightlessness in their limbs as the station slows and slows and then draws to a full stop just as the countdown reaches one.

Outside the entity stops, gently resting against the hull of the Bridge hub, as the strong pull of the station momentum dissipates into the vast stillness of space.