STAR TREK:
THE HEIRS OF PROTEUS
By Darrin Colbourne
For the rest of the day the shore party's main concerns were keeping Isabel Montoya and Sergeant Rice alive and packing for departure. Flores had decided to suspend all scheduled experiments and exploration in light of the crisis. As the scientists worked, the Landers not involved with medical duties set up a defensive perimeter around the camp and the transport landing zone. As the Landers worked, one of them spotted a brightly-colored bird gliding lazily in the air above them. They couldn't know that the bird was watching their every move, marking where they set up any traps or defensive weapons. When they were done and began regular patrolling, one of the Landers spotted what looked like a six-legged wolf on the crest of the nearby hill. The animal turned and ran away once it was spotted, but the Lander had to admit it had spooked him. Through all of this, no one noticed the camouflaged serpent that snuck onto the campground from the edge of a nearby stand of trees.
It was early evening before an exhausted Gwendolyn Flores was relieved in the transport by Connie Price. She gave Montoya a quick kiss goodbye, then made her way back to camp and trudged into her tent. She found Arabella Girardi sitting with her knees to her chest on Montoya's bunk. "How are you doing?" Flores asked as she sat on her own bunk.
"Better," Girardi said with a weak smile. "Thanks for letting me stay here."
Flores smiled and shrugged. "Right now it's the only spare bed in camp. It might as well be used, and I can't ask you to sleep in the ship again, under the circumstances."
Girardi nodded. "How are the Commander and the Sergeant doing?"
"They'll be fine," Flores said, a little too quickly. She knew that the supplies of plasma they'd brought with them in first aid kits were running out, so it might come down to transfusing blood from the available donors in the shore party, under conditions that were far from pristine, and that might invite infection from alien sources that they were ill-equipped to fight. She thought the situation couldn't get more dire, but there was no point in telling Girardi that. "At least they're not getting worse. They're both resting comfortably."
Girardi bowed her head. "I'm sorry for cracking up like that before." She looked up at Flores. "It's just…you don't know how close Mira and I are…were…"
"I think I can guess," Flores said. "You two were probably in the same class at the Academy, right?"
Girardi's eyebrow went up. "The Academy? Oh, no! You've gotta have a rich daddy or some other connections to get into Starfleet Academy. I wanted to go, but I could never get a legislative sponsor. No, Mira and I met when my family moved into her neighborhood in Warsaw. We went to high school together. She never wanted to go to the Academy. She thought it was too much crap to go through for what was essentially four years of college. So when we graduated we enlisted together, went through Basic, qualified for Officer Candidate School and got our commissions in eighteen months instead of four years. Then we both entered Space Warfare School…"
"…and here you are," Flores said, cutting the story short.
"Yeah," Girardi said with a nervous chuckle, "here we are."
"You must have considered it lucky to be assigned to the same flight crew as your friend."
Girardi shrugged. "I like to think it was luck, but sometimes I suspect it was Starfleet's way of keeping a couple of screw-ups from contaminating too much of the Fleet."
They chuckled at that, but just as Flores was about to say something else her field radio chirped. "Tupolev to Flores," a disembodied voice said.
Flores hunted through her pockets for the radio. Tupolev was one of the Landers currently on guard duty. "Flores here. Go ahead."
"Lieutenant, I've got someone approaching my position."
"Can you tell who it is?"
There was a pause. "That's the strange part…"
Minutes later, Flores and Girardi were waiting outside the tent for Tupolev to escort the visitor back to camp. As they got close to the tent, Flores could see that the burly soldier had given his Work Green shirt to the visitor to wear. The garment hung from her shoulders like a nightshirt, but even with that Flores could tell she was naked underneath. She certainly looked human, but neither Flores nor Girardi could believe who Tupolev had said she was until she got close enough for them to see her face.
After that, Girardi harbored no doubts. "Mira!" She screamed as she broke into a run. She intercepted the woman a few meters from the tent and caught her in a bear hug. "It's really you," Girardi sobbed in Mira's ear.
Flores approached as she watched Girardi make a scene. It seemed like Girardi's best friend was confused. She simply stood there for a few seconds without hugging Girardi back, then when she finally reciprocated the hug was tentative, experimental.
Girardi didn't care. "Don't you ever scare me like that again, you bitch!" She said when they pulled back to arms length. "I missed you so much!" Girardi tried to keep her face stern, but a second later she broke into a wide grin. "I can't stay mad at you! It's so good to see you safe and sound!"
Mira grinned back - or, at least, she tried to. It seemed as if she were unfamiliar with the action, or worried what might happen to her face if she tried it. Flores found it odd. Girardi simply pulled Mira back into the hug. "Hey, Girardi?" Flores said. "Why don't we take her inside and let her sit down?"
Girardi glanced at Flores, then turned her attention back to her friend. "Right. She's right. Let's go inside. You have to tell us how you escaped!" Girardi took Mira's hands and dragged her toward the tent. The other woman followed obediently, if somewhat reluctantly.
Flores looked on in mild confusion, Tupolev did so in total confusion. "You better return to your post," Flores said to him without turning. "Let me know if you see any other strange visitors."
"Yes, Sir," Tupolev muttered before turning heading back out.
Flores went back into the tent and found Girardi and Mira sitting together on Montoya's cot. In the light of the tent's camping lamp Flores examined Mira by eye. There didn't seem to be anything obviously wrong with the woman. She just seemed…detached. She was looking around the tent as if she'd never seen one before, and she seemed nervous with Girardi's hand holding hers in a gentle but unwavering grip. "…and I could swear I saw that thing go through your heart!" Girardi was saying to her. "You've got to tell me what happened, Mira! Where did that thing take you? How did you heal so quickly?" She paused with this question and frowned. "She's not talking," she said. She turned Flores. "Why won't she talk?"
Flores came closer. "She may be in shock. There may be some memory loss. Why don't you let me give her a quick examination, just to make sure she's okay?"
Girardi tightened her grip on Mira's hand. "You won't hurt her?"
"Of course not. I just want a quick look at her. She won't feel a thing."
Girardi hesitated before letting Mira go and sliding a few inches down the cot. Mira watched her go, but made no other move before Flores kneeled before her, then she turned to look Flores in the eye.
Flores put on her friendliest smile. "Hi," she said, "you remember me, right? Lieutenant Flores?"
Mira smiled back, more confidently this time, but it still looked as if she wasn't sure of the purpose of the action.
"Right," Flores said as her smile melted. She found a small flashlight and aimed it into Mira's eyes. What she found there made her raise an eyebrow. She lowered the flashlight and held a finger up to Mira's face. "Follow this with your eyes," she said, and moved the finger back and forth. Mira turned her head to follow it, but her eyes were aimed toward the finger.
Flores lowered her hand and got up. "Stay here," she said to Mira, then she hunted around until she found a stethoscope. She returned to Mira and put the lead to her chest, adjusting the audio pickup until she could hear Mira's heartbeat through the shirt. What she heard made her stare at Mira in shock.
Flores put the stethoscope down and grabbed her radio. "Flores to Price."
"Price here," Price's voice said.
"Connie, scavenge the med-kits and see if you can scrounge up a spare syringe and some vials. I need to take some blood samples."
"From whom?" Connie said. "I'm right here, so I can get the samples for you…"
"Not from them," Flores said, looking pointedly at Mira. "Just bring the syringe to me. Flores out."
Girardi raised her hand a little. "Um, just so you know, Mira doesn't like needles."
"I'm sure she doesn't," Flores said as she flashed Mira another grin, "and I'm pretty sure she has no idea what I'm planning to do."
Some time later, Ben Goren was awakened from a sound sleep by the sensation of someone shaking his shoulder. He rolled over and saw Flores standing over him. "What?" he said, exasperated.
"I need to talk, Belle isn't available, so you're elected!" Flores said.
Goren stared at her for a second, then did his best to sit up. He managed to prop himself up on one elbow. He used his free hand to rub his eyes. "Okay…so what are we talking about?"
"Guess who decided to rejoin the shore party about ten minutes ago?" Flores said.
Goren shook his head as he thought about it. "Well, you wouldn't be making me guess if it was somebody that made sense, so…I dunno, Ensign Kryczyk?"
Flores pointed at him. "Yes! And No!"
The response woke Goren up a little more. It also confused the hell out of him. "Wait…what?"
Flores composed herself a little, then said, "Ten minutes ago, someone or something that looks exactly like Ensign Mira Kryczyk walked into the camp perimeter, naked as a jaybird and without a mark on her! Did you hear me, Ben? Someone we were told was stabbed through the heart is now sitting on Belle's cot in my tent listening to Lt. Girardi talk her ears off!"
At this, Goren forced himself all the way up into a sitting position on the edge of the cot. "And we know Girardi wasn't simply mistaken because…?"
Flores sat on the cot next to him and took out her flashlight. "Because I shined this in her eyes and there was no reaction! None!"
"So?"
"So, that can't happen unless she can't see the light, but she's not blind! She could see well enough to walk, to follow my finger, to mimic my smile…"
"Okay, I got it! She can see but her eyes act like she can't. So you're saying there's no rational explanation for that?"
"I'm not done! There's also her heartbeat."
"What's wrong with her heartbeat?"
"It doesn't sound like a heartbeat!"
"You mean it doesn't sound like a human heartbeat?"
"No, I mean it sounds like what someone assumes a heartbeat sounds like, like someone beating a bass drum underwater!"
Goren thought about that for a second. "You can actually tell the difference between a heartbeat and the sound of someone banging a drum underwater?"
Exasperated, Flores pulled Goren's head close and screamed in his ear, "Wake UP, Ben!! I'm not here just to hear myself talk!"
"All right already!" Goren said. "I'm up! Okay…so what do the non-reactive eyes and the drumbeat heart tell us?"
"That whatever it is in my tent wants us to think it's Mira Kryczyk, so it made itself look enough like her that it would fool anyone who only gave it a passing glance. The eyes didn't react because they're just decorations. It has eyes because it knows she had eyes, but it doesn't need them to see! And the heartbeat is what it expects her heart to sound like if it were functioning! The whole thing is just one big disguise!"
"Okay, well, why stop at a disguise that would only fool a passing observer? Why not go for broke and make itself a perfect replica?"
"Because it couldn't if all it had for reference was Kryczyk's corpse! Don't you see? Girardi was right! Whatever was in the cave killed Kryczyk, then it took her body, examined it, and then made a replica based on what it found out about her, but the replica couldn't be perfect without a functioning body to observe! This is its best guess!"
Goren thought about that for a moment. "I don't suppose it occurred to you to just ask Kryczyk what happened?"
"I would, but it seems that she isn't speaking anymore. She's physically capable. I just don't think she knows how."
"What does Girardi think?"
"I haven't told her yet. It could be bad for her whether I'm right or wrong."
"Well, how about running a tri-corder over her and seeing what you can see?"
Flores got up and started to pace. "I thought of that, but thanks to my orders all our tri-corders are now safely packed away and ready for transit! I couldn't get to one in a hurry."
"Okay, so what do you want to do?"
"Fortunately, we had to leave some instruments out so we can monitor Belle and Sgt. Rice. I took some blood samples. Connie is testing them now."
"That should get you some answers soon."
"I don't know. It took me three tries to get the first sample. The first two times it was like the needle never touched her skin, but I know I inserted it deep enough…"
Just then her radio sounded. "Price to Flores."
"This is Flores. Go."
"You better get over here, Wendy."
"Why? Is something wrong?"
"It's those samples you took from Kryczyk."
"What about them?"
A pause. "They're not blood."
Connie Price was pacing back and forth by the instrument table when Flores and Goren arrived at the field lab tent half-a-minute later. When she saw them she went to the microscope on the table and beckoned them over. "Come take a look at this." She set up a slide and explained as Flores bent to look through the scope. "That's an untouched quantity of one of the samples."
Flores examined it quickly, but thoroughly. "It looks like blood," she said when she was done. She didn't sound convinced.
Price nodded and set up a new slide. "This is part of a sample that I put through the standard battery of tests."
Flores looked through the scope again. "Damn," she muttered.
"What's wrong?" Goren said.
"It looks exactly the same."
"Wait…so it looks like blood? I don't see…"
Flores stood and turned to him. "Y'know, I keep forgetting that if it wasn't built in a drydock you can't figure it out. It doesn't just 'look like blood.' This tested sample looks exactly like the untested sample, which should be impossible if the tests were done correctly."
"I triple-checked everything I did!" Price said defensively.
"I don't doubt you, Connie. I believe you did everything right."
"The blood just didn't react," Goren said.
"Any more than the eyes reacted," Flores said, "or maybe the reactions are too small for these instruments and our eyes to pick up, and whatever this stuff is simply resumes its disguise more rapidly than we can sense." Now she began to pace.
"Could somebody please tell me what's going on?" Price begged.
"Wendy thinks that Ensign Kryczyk is some kind of changeling," Goren said.
Flores wheeled on him. "Could we not start bringing fairy-tale terms into this?"
"Well, what terms would you prefer? Shape-shifter? Metamorph? Transformer? The point is it's a life-form that can change its appearance at will, apparently down to the cellular level, and it's in our camp!"
"L-let's try to stay calm," Price said. "Okay…we have an alien in the camp that can assume any shape. What do we do about it?"
"Whaddya mean, 'What do we do'?" Goren said. "Obviously, we find a way to contain or destroy it before it does any damage!"
"But isn't part of our mission out here to seek out new life?" She turned to Flores. "This life sought us out. Shouldn't we at least attempt to communicate with it?"
"Communicate, hell!" Goren turned to Flores. "Our primary mission is to seek out humanoid life and its origins! You said it yourself, Wendy. Whatever it is that's in your tent, it ain't humanoid!"
"Does that automatically mean we should destroy it?" Price asked him. "Attack it just because it isn't like us?"
"No, we attack it because it attacked Isabel, Rice and our only way off this rock!" Goren shot back.
"We don't know everything that went on in that cave." She turned back to Flores. "No matter what happened, Isabel would want to try and communicate with it."
Goren turned away in disgust, muttering, "Yeah, that would be brilliant, because we all know the Boss's track record when it comes to communicating with aliens…" He stared at the opening to the tent for a few seconds before he realized that neither of the women had a response. He turned back to find Flores looking at him as if he'd physically struck her, and Price eyeing Flores warily. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.
It took another moment for Flores to come to her senses. She went back to the microscope, deciding to ignore the comments for the moment. "I don't want to do anything until I'm sure of what we're dealing with," she said as she started adjusting the focus on the instrument. "No disguise is perfect. Even if that replica had come in walking and talking exactly like Kryczyk, with a physiognomy that reacted exactly the way hers would have, there would have to be a point where the illusion breaks down." She kept magnifying the image of the blood, from cellular to molecular to atomic and beyond. "That point is probably real small, probably where the whole universe starts to get grainy, but it's…" She was speechless for a moment as she stopped adjusting the focus. "There," she finished with a lopsided grin. "Found you…"
As she made her discovery, the being who'd taken Mira Kryczyk's form suddenly looked toward the entrance to the tent. Up to that point it had simply been watching the Invader sitting with it closely as it vibrated the air incessantly. The technique seemed to be an interesting yet highly inefficient method of communication the Invaders utilized. The being had been paying attention, watching closely to see how the Invader used its body to create the vibrations, as well as studying its other mannerisms and reflexes, with the intent of learning how to better infiltrate Invader settlements in future. It's observations were interrupted by a real communication that came over the link it shared with others of its kind. The pieces of itself that had been taken by the other Invader had been discovered in their true form.
The time for study was over. The message the being sent back over the link was succinct.
Flores was about to tell her colleagues what she had discovered when the sample on the slide changed into clear water and rushed onto the table. At that same moment the other samples exploded from their vials and rushed to the table as well. The streams merged into a thick bubble, which in turn changed shape and color until it resembled one of the large, stinging species of flying insect that the team had catalogued since coming to Ceres Two. It buzzed loudly as it hovered in the air, circling the table a few times before lunging right at Flores.
In Flores's tent, Lt. Girardi rose from the cot when she heard a scream from another part of the camp. She went over to the tent opening. "I wonder what's happening…" she said. Before she could find out, she felt Mira grab her wrist. Her friend had a grip of iron. "What are you doing?" Girardi asked.
The being just stared for a moment. It had come to a decision. It and its allies would kill all the Invaders except this one. For some reason, it had seemed willing to be kind. Its reward would be to be kept alive for further study.
Girardi watched as Mira worked her mouth and tongue, as if trying to figure out exactly how to make them do what she wanted. After a moment, she finally managed to say two words:
"Le-e-ett's…go-o-o…"
The voice didn't sound like Mira, didn't sound human…didn't sound alive.
Girardi's scream could be heard throughout the camp.