Part Three
When Mary Travis was summoned unexpectedly to Cargo Bay 1 at the request of Alexandra Styles, she confessed to finding the whole thing a little odd. After all, she was a protocol officer whose expertise lay in linguistics, xeno-anthropology, not to mention a healthy knowledge in Federation, Klingon and Romulan constitutional law. What contribution she could make to the study of the alien artifact that the Maverick had sighted floating in space would be minimal, but she had to admit that her curiosity was more than a little piqued by the possibility. Besides, she could not lie that she would not mind a look at the object beyond the view she had garnered through the view screen earlier.
Mary could not deny that despite all the dangers she had faced during her time on the Maverick, there was something inherently fulfilling about the exploration of uncharted space. They had encountered more alien species last month with the Maverick initiating first contract protocols to a small dozen, then Mary would ever had come across after a year at the Vulcan Embassy where she had been posted. With the Borg attacks and the recent Dominion War, Starfleet had been struggling to find experienced officers and she could now understand the reasoning that saw her posted here. An officer of her experience could not be left to languish on a diplomatic posting when a starship was in need.
Despite her initial apprehension at accepting the post, Mary knew that she could not imagine being anywhere else now. She knew much of this had to do with Chris and with their relationship slowly inching towards apogee, she had also come to understand that he was going to be in a permanent fixture in her life. Chris was already taking the space left void in her son's life at the death of her husband Syan and even Mary had started calling her child Billy instead of William. Syan's family would never approve of course and Mary had this terrible premonition that one day, she was going to be faced with a situation where she would have to fight for Billy's right to grow up, as he should.
Mary continued her ruminations inside the turbo lift that was taking her to the cargo hold decks when it came to a comfortable stop on the engineering deck. As the doors slid open, Julia Pemberton stepped inside.
"Hi Mary," Julia greeted as the doors closed behind her. "Computer, Cargo Bay 1."
Mary stared at her. "You too?"
"You're headed there as well?" Julia reacted with a hint of surprise.
"Yes," Mary nodded, "Alex asked me to meet her down there. I assume it has something to do with that crystal artifact that they beamed on board earlier today."
"I heard we picked something up." Julia remarked. "Do we have any idea what it is?"
"Not really," the protocol officer answered with a shrug of her shoulders. "Alex claimed before we brought it on board that it was almost half a million years old. It is beautiful though," she said with a hint of awe still left over from when they had seen it on the view screen in all its resplendent beauty.
"So why does she need us?" The engineer's brows knotted with confusion. "Lieutenant Potter is the archaeological expert on board."
"Who knows?" Mary responded. "Maybe it has nothing to do with the object at all. Perhaps she wanted to see us for something else. She and I are going to the Tethys Resort when we get to Pacifica but that still would not answer why she would ask for you too."
"Maybe she needs a neutral opinion on how to expend your time while you engage in your debauch down there." Julia teased.
"Very funny," Mary gave her a look. "I'll have you know that there will be no debauchery going on. I am there for the rest."
"Uh huh," the petite read head responded with a look of pure skepticism.
"I would not cast stones from my glass house," Mary replied with a glimmer of mischief in her own eyes as she regarded Julia in the narrow confines of the lift. "I mean you and Ezra in isolated resort away from the world and the ship. I seriously doubt you two would need any more than one room."
Julia blushed involuntarily and gave herself away completely. "Okay," she threw her hands up in a gesture of defeat. "I admit it, sex is on the agenda."
"Thank god," Mary let out a sigh of relief. "I think the man is about to snap."
"Well I wanted to take it slow!" Julia said exasperated. "He means a lot to me and I just don't want to go rushing into things. I mean Ezra is complex."
Mary gave her a sidelong glance. "That's one way to put it."
"You know what I mean." Julia retorted, finding nothing amusing about the situation.
"I know what you mean but you've been together for months now. I think it's obvious how he feels about you. He can't help it if he just so happens to be the most cynical human being to ever emerge from the primordial soup." Mary declared.
"I know," Julia sighed. "But a man who wears a poker face like his is hard to read and I didn't want to get hurt."
"Unfortunately," Mary sighed, offering the younger women the benefits of her experience. "That's the risk you take with relationships. There is no way to play it safe, believe me I know."
Julia glanced at Mary and nodded in understanding. For a few seconds, a deep silence lapsed over the conversation until the turbo lift doors slid open and they emerged into the corridor where the cargo hold was situated.
"Maybe Alex cracked the thing open and found the body of a 20th century movie star, alive and well but completely brain dead and starving for female company." Julia joked in an attempt to move away from the somber subject they had touched upon earlier.
"You know," Mary looked at Julia with a wry smile. "I always had a thing for Michael Biehn myself…."
She could sense the coming of the two.
She felt their life force, resonating down the hallway upon approach and was able to assess whether they were suitable to complete the triumvirate she would need to unseal the others. After so long, drifting in the nightmarish void of space, unable to do anything but watch helplessly as they were trapped in their prison, powerless to awake from the horror that they had been forced to endure, she was eager to begin. Every second of their long imprisonment was burned into their memory and held in abhorrence. She would never go back to it again and she would free the others so that they may know what it was to breathe air through lungs once again, to feel blood pumping through their hearts and souls and feel the passion of life surging through flesh and blood bodies. When she had first claimed this vassal as her own, her mind had swum with the sensations of touch, of sight and sound. After almost half a million years of existing as nothing but energy trapped in a glass coffin, the feelings were as close to ecstasy as one could imagine. She had to share it with the others.
She would share it with the others.
The doors to the cargo hold bay slid open and the two remaining for there to be three, entered the room. They saw the vassal and found nothing amiss as they advanced deeper into the room, making comments as to the beauty of the object that she could see as nothing but the coffin for innocents who had been buried alive. They called it beautiful; she would have snorted in derision if it did not mean shedding the façade she had to maintain until the joining was complete.
"So, what's up?" Julia asked as she approached Alex who was standing next to the artifact. As Julia approached it, she had to admit that Mary's description of it being beautiful did not do it justice. The engineering that had taken to shape this block of crystal did not exist even in this time and Julia wondered what race had inspired its creation. She was almost eager to take an engineering tricorder to it herself and make a study of the artifact. She could understand why Alex had insisted this be brought on board since it did certainly appear to be an astonishing find.
"I needed you both to see something." Alex said stiffly.
"It's even more beautiful up close," Mary exclaimed, already crossing the space between herself and the artifact. "It's amazing that it's remained intact as it had."
"Space is a big place," Julia remarked joining her advance. "It's not like it could not drift indefinitely. There are probably objects like this scattered throughout the quadrant, waiting for someone to pick them up as we did for this one."
"Yes," Alex said giving them an enigmatic smile. "It was fortunate."
"So, what is it?" Julia questioned again.
"There is something I require your opinion on," Alex answered stiffly, placing her hand on the smooth surface of the artifact, her palm resting flat against it. "I believe it is warm."
"Warm?" Julia looked at her incredulously as she regarded the artifact with astonishment. "How can it have a temperature? It's been out in a vacuum?"
"I do not know," the science officer replied. "It just does."
"And why am I here?" Mary inquired, starting to wonder if there was not something odd about Alex's behavior. The science officer could be detached at times. That was the nature of her personality that it had taken her crew mates time to accustom themselves to. It was an effort that was well worth the trouble for beneath her somewhat mercurial and dry nature was a woman who was softer in the center than she would have most believe.
"I thought you might like to see it close up." Alex replied. "Touch it," she urged keeping her hand against the crystal surface. "You'll see why."
Mary and Julia exchanged a curious glance and decided there had to be something extraordinary for Alex to make such an effort for them to experience it. Usually whenever the science officer stumbled onto such oddities, she could not break the interference of anyone in her investigation and was relentless in protecting what she called the scientific integrity of the study.
"This had better be good." Julia said with mock annoyance and put her hand against the artifact as the same time that Mary did.
The effect was almost instantaneous with tendrils of energy surging away from the crystal, enveloping all three in brilliant white globe. It did not affect Alex as much as it did Mary and Julia who jerked in uncontrollable spasms as their bodies were bombarded with alien power. Alex seemed more prepared for it since she had already undergone the process and she watched dispassionately as her friends went through the same trial although her mind was not present to be able to offer any feelings or sympathy or even prevent it for that matter. The dance of light and body took place for only a moment and the glow that had turned the artifact into a brilliant spectrum of color soon darkened, its energies now sapped out of the many facets in its crystalline form.
Mary and Julia tumbled to the ground soundlessly, boneless as they impacted on the cold floor of the deck. As Alex stood and continued to watch, she felt no fear about their well-being. The process was no good if the vassals that were required to carry the many were to die. There was so much to do and the patience, which had borne the many through the years in space, had dwindled to almost nothingness. For the first time in too long, they lived and breathed again. The chance for the accomplishment of what was left undone was too good to waste and they wanted to move quickly before the ones like those who had done this to them became aware of their presence and tried to interfere.
Mary stirred first; groaning first in pain as her body became accustomed to itself after what had transpired. She pushed her self onto her hands and knees and then stretched languidly, like a cat that had been curled into a ball of sleep for hours. Groans of aches quickly dissipating soon evaporated into the laughter of delight.
"Lords," Mary laughed out loud in a voice very much like the vassal's but full of playful mischief. " It has been too long!"
"We have been trapped in this prison," Alex glared viciously at the crystal artifact with obvious hatred. "For almost half a million of years!"
"Half a million!" The exultation of being alive drained from Mary's face. "I thought it might have been long but not for so long…."
"We must return home immediately," Alex declared firmly.
"Yes," Julia, who was the last to recover, spoke in a low voice, colder and far harsher than that of her normal self. "We must go home and find out what it is those animals that did this to us have done to the home world, if there is one even left for us to return to."
"We have no other choice but to try." Mary responded, agreeing completely with that statement. "We have nowhere else to go."
"We have more immediate problems to deal with." Alex replied, staring at both of them. "We must free the others. This knowledge of my vassal indicates that there are more than enough on board this ship to play host to the others."
"This ship is governed by the hated ones." Mary declared, her eyes narrowing into slits as if the words were so distasteful and the hatred she felt for them was something tangible they could see and touch as opposed to just a feeling inside her breast. "They will not take us home." She almost spat the words.
"The combined knowledge of the vassals we now inhabit and the ones that we will soon take will not make that a problem." Julia said coldly.
"We must keep them occupied." Mary added her voice to the discussion.
"With the hated ones, the usual way will suffice." The entity residing inside the Chief Engineer responded with clear of derision in her voice. The seemingly eternity of time had robbed her of whatever compassion that might have existed once. Years of praying and futility had driven everything that cared and felt into the oblivion of vengeance. It was that way for many of them and until they saw the familiar skies of home, there would be nothing that could assuage that terrible rage at the injustice that had been done to them.
"The knowledge of my vassal tells me much about these species," Julia continued to speak. "They are no different from the ones we knew from our time. They claim benevolence, these Federations, but their kind always dominates, always seeks to remain above those like us. They will underestimate us in the beginning but by the time their complacency is shed, it will be too late. We will have this ship."
They left the cargo bay hold at the same time, fanning out to different parts of the ship, like soldiers extending the battle lines as they moved off the cargo hold deck and entered the general population of the Maverick's complement. Once the triumvirate had been completed and the essence of self-had been sucked dry from its crystal confinement, the accumulation of new vassals would be nowhere as spectacular as it had been when the three had been taken. From this point on, it would be require nothing more than a touch and the vassal would be filled with the souls of the many.
Julia made her appearance in Engineering and acquired everyone there that was useful for the purpose. Upon passing the many to them, they were able to do the same as they expanded the scope of conquest beyond the walls of Maverick's heart and spread out even further like a cancer in its most virulent phase of devouring. The hated ones suspected nothing and went about their business as always, so confident that nothing was going on, unaware that the seeds for their surrender was being laid as they continued down the corridors of the ship, thinking that those in submission would always remain that way.
Mary Travis went to visit her son at school and in the process made everyone there, vassals for the many. The many did not wish to inhabit children but there were many of the kind that was acceptable to them and so their numbers grew yet again. A pat on the back, a brush of fingertips against skin, its passage through the ranks of the crew went completely unnoticed and there would be other forms of attack as well, not just the possession of bodies. The enemy was hated but he was not stupid and the oldest of the arts had to be employed most fully to give the conqueror the advantage. The many were not prepared to take any chances and as they continued their silent revolution, they gave no indication of their existence.
Alexandra Styles did not go to the bridge, for now the cause was still too vulnerable for her to attempt infiltrating that vital system of the ship. The battle there would be fought soon enough; instead she traveled through the ranks of the science department, acquiring new soldiers to the cause from the selection to be had in astrophysics, stellar cartography and astrometics. By the time she had set her sights for Four Corners, almost half the ship had fallen to the invasion without anyone being the least bit aware of it.
It was time to put their plan into motion for there was nothing on board that could stop them now.
There was something very strange going on.
Upon concluding her duty shift, Transporter Chief Rain had decided upon a very definitive course of action. She would go to her quarters and soak in her bath and should anyone choose to interfere with that plan, which she had decided most strongly was a good plan, she would simply have to beam them onto the bridge nude when they were not looking. She was not joking. She had done that before. Anyone who heard the threat and wanted to verify the truth had only need to read her service record to know that she had done it to an instructor at the Academy who would never sleep easily again. Rain suspected that she had gained the posting to the Maverick despite that official reprimand in her service record, was because Captain Larabee believed that anyone who could manage to beam someone out of their bed and plant them in the middle of the Academy mess hall could most likely beam his crew anywhere and back again.
Whatever the reason, Rain did not care, and she cared nothing about the blight on her service record either. There was something about being a Trill that was intensely liberating. Perhaps it was the fact that having a symbiote inside her body which allowed her to remember the past lives of everyone who had played host to it, always gave her a bright perspective on things. Not even death frightened her really because when she passed on, what she was would remain alive in the symbiote, alive in someone else and to whom she could transpose all her eccentricities. The other advantage of having the memories of all those people and their life experiences was being able to call on those images to shape her present life.
At the moment, the Trill named Rain was finding that experience did not quite cover this. She was not telepathic and other then the memories of those before her, Rain had nothing extraordinary to recommend herself, however, she could sense that something was wrong. People walked past her, looking no different than they did every day and yet, there was something about them that was not right. She could not place what it is, but it was there, lying in wait like the stink of dank water at the bottom of an old well.
She saw friends and colleagues walking past her in the corridors, as she made her way to the saucer section of the starship where the living quarters were situated, for that bath she was willing to go any lengths to enjoy. They looked at her but did not see her. If anything, they seemed somewhat glazed and detached. The same look was worn by those who wore Starfleet uniforms, by maintenance staff and even to the civilians who were family members of officers and crew. Rain wondered if it was just her as she approached the turbo lift that would take her to her quarters. Having so many experiences to draw upon could sometimes be confusing and mixed signals from too many voices was not uncommon.
However, Rain's gut instinct told her that it was not so.
She tried not to ignore the gut instinct especially when it was the one thing in her mind that was truly unique to she who was Rain not the symbiote or the lives it had shared but herself. She relied upon it like the Captain relied upon its ship and when it said something bad was going down, Rain believed wholeheartedly.
"Rain." A voice said behind her as the doors to the turbo lift slid open and Rain found herself jumping a little, startled easily because of the chill that ran down her spine from her observations and this creeping sensation that something sinister was a foot.
"Commander Styles," Rain turned to Alexandra Styles and was glad to see the science officer. "I'm glad to see you." She let out a sigh of relief. Alex Styles was the most formidable intellect on the ship as far as Rain was concerned.
Well, the Captain and Commander Wilmington didn't really count. They were men.
"Something wrong?" Alex asked somewhat icily, and Rain decided that the commander must not be having a good day. Considering that she herself was having an odd one, she supposed they could almost have something in common but chose not to mention that.
"Do you notice people behaving strangely?" Rain asked looking at some of the faces passing them by in the corridor.
"No," Alex shook her head, her expression looking stonier than ever. "Perhaps it is just you." With that, Alex placed her hand on Rain's shoulder just as the door to the turbo lift opened.
Rain felt the contact of skin and then felt something pass through the fabric of her clothes to strike at her with the sharpness of an icicle being driven straight into her mind. The young woman staggered forward, unaware that Alex did not follow her into the turbo lift and watched dispassionately as the doors closed behind her. The agony was so intense Rain could feel the others who shared her thoughts scream with the same excruciating pain and she fell to her knees, clutching her head and trying not to scream.
The tendrils of fire resonated through her mind, like someone had struck a tuning fork inside her head and the effects of it was vibrating itself into exhaustion. She did not know how long she remained on the floor of the turbo lift, gasping out in pain, trying not to let those strained groans become shrieks, until the torture had finally dissipated to tolerable levels. When she finally felt it ease and then recede all together, Rain was still breathing hard unable to understand what had happened to her.
"Oh girl," Rain swallowed as she struggled to her feet. "I think it's about time you made a trip to see a doctor."