Part Two
The six figures materialised inside a darkened corridor onboard the derelict vessel.
As soon as their patterns had finished reforming on the deck plates, Captain Grinya and his Flaxian lieutenants tapped the sides of their helmets to flick on the torchlights on top of the headgear and swung around to sweep down each direction of the corridor.
At the same time, Grinya flicked on the comms link back to the Ret Kol with a tap of his suit's wrist controls, while Deroya and Kataya tapped their own wrist controls to perform initial scans with the built-in tricorder. All of their actions were performed with the practised speed of a group of people who had done this sort of thing dozens of times before.
"Grinya to Ret Kol."
"Rondya here," the gruff voice of his second in command came back.
"We've completed beam-in. Main power is definitely offline, no sign of any crew. Or any bodies. For now. Keep the channel clear for updates. Grinya out."
While the Flaxians were following their usual procedures, the three Bounty crew members were working on keeping up, switching on their own helmet torchlights. Jirel found himself suppressing a shiver that ran down his spine as he peered down the shadowy and uninviting corridor ahead of him, bathed only in thin torch beams.
"Lifesign readings are still unclear. But no contaminants detected," Deroya reported over the separate suit-to-suit comms channel as she tapped her wrist controls.
"Well, that's something at least," Sunek grunted, reaching to undo his helmet.
"No!" Grinya snapped at the Vulcan.
"Wh-? What the hell were you transporting in this thing? The Tarellian plague?"
Grinya ignored the latest round of sarcasm from Sunek and checked his own readouts, explaining his reasoning as he did so.
"As the lieutenant said, scans are still muddled. It's possible they're missing something. Until we find the crew, or until we get main power back online and run a full internal sensor sweep, helmets stay on and suits stay sealed. This is not a debate."
With that matter settled, the lead Flaxian turned to the rest of the group and began to bark out orders.
"Ok, people, this is the part where I tell you what you're gonna do, and then you all go and do it, without screwing anything up. Everyone clear?"
Jirel braced himself for Sunek's inevitable contribution to that question, but to his surprise, the Vulcan remained silent. He couldn't help but absently wonder whether there was a fault with his comms unit.
"Myself and Lieutenant Deroya will head to main engineering, get main power back up," Grinya continued, "The Klingon and the Vulcan will head up to the bridge and set up the data link back to the Ret Kol, so they can start downloading data recorders and mission logs. And Lieutenant Kataya, you take newbie here and begin a deck by deck sweep for crew and cargo. Tag everything of value for us to retrieve with the Ret Kol's transporter, and get any survivors back to sickbay, stat."
"Great," Jirel muttered to himself, forgetting his own comms link for a second, "Splitting up. That always works."
Grinya took a slow and deliberate step towards him and fixed the Trill with a glare.
"You got a problem with my orders, feel free to sign up for the Flaxian Science Agency, work your way up the chain of command until you outrank me, and then tell me what to do. In the meantime, remember: I'm the leader of this operation. And you will do whatever the hell I tell you to do. I've not lost a member of a salvage team in fifteen years, and I'm not gonna start today."
His eyes narrowed slightly as he stared down at Jirel.
"Besides, you'd better do a good job, or that debt of yours with Commander Turanya'll grow a little bigger."
He didn't bother to wait for a response, and instead turned on his heels and led Deroya away down the corridor. Once he was a safe distance away, Sunek took a moment to snap a very sharp, and very sarcastic salute in his direction. Despite their situation, Jirel failed to hide the smirk.
Lieutenant Kataya, meanwhile, didn't seem to be in a smirking mood.
"Ok, you all heard the Captain," he barked over the short-range comms link in their helmets, jabbing a gloved finger in Jirel's direction, "You're with me. The two of you, get to the bridge and set up that transfer. And everyone keep an eye out for lifesigns."
Like Grinya, he didn't wait for any sort of affirmation either. He was used to people doing as they were told. Instead, he hoisted his phaser rifle, tapped a couple of commands into his wrist-mounted controls, and set off. Jirel offered the scowling Klath and the distinctly nervous Sunek a shrug, then took off after the Flaxian before he disappeared from sight.
With only Klath left for company, Sunek made for a set of turbolift doors that were recessed in a nearby alcove. He paused in momentary confusion when they failed to open.
"What the hell?"
"Perhaps you missed the fact that main power was offline," Klath grunted from behind him.
"Yeah, but then how are we supposed to-?"
Sunek paused mid-question as he turned to see Klath disappearing into an access conduit a little further down the corridor, to begin their slow and laborious journey up to the bridge.
The Vulcan sighed inside his helmet with enough intensity to temporarily fog the visor.
"I really hate salvage work…"
'*'*'
'*'*'
She watched them from a safe distance, keeping herself well concealed.
As soon as she had heard them arrive, she instinctively reacted and hid herself away. Just as she had learned to with the others. She knew now that it was important to remain out of sight. Until the time was right.
Fortunately, it was easy enough for her to remain concealed, especially when she was so small. So she had calmly watched on as they had debated and gesticulated at each other before they eventually split up.
She hadn't been able to hear what they were talking about, and struggled to discern much about the newcomers at all given how they were dressed in identical suits. She certainly couldn't make out any details of their features through their helmets.
She had also never seen a Flaxian phaser rifle before, but a distant memory somewhere inside her instinctively made her feel wary about them. Especially when she saw the way they were being held by the newcomers.
And although she had remained concealed and undetected, their presence worried her. She hadn't expected any more to show up. She thought that she had done everything that she needed to do. But it appeared that her task was still not at an end.
Once again, she found herself wishing that she could just go home. She ached to be back where she had been before all this had started. Before she had started to kill. But all of that seemed so far away, like a distant and faded memory.
And besides, she had no idea how she would even get there any more. Whatever she used to do, or used to be, this was what she was now.
So, instead of going home, she crept onwards after two of the newcomers. Keeping herself carefully hidden from view for the time being, and using her skills to ensure that they had no possible idea of what was silently stalking them.
She continued to observe them for now, but she knew that soon she would have to act.
Because she didn't think she was going to like these people either.
'*'*'
'*'*'
The bridge of the derelict had been peaceful and silent for some time.
Then, in an instant, the silence was shattered by the sound of an access hatch clattering to the ground, and two ungainly figures in spacesuits awkwardly clambering out onto the deck. All the while, Klath's own peaceful silence was being shattered by the sound of Sunek's long list of complaints over their short-range comms link.
"Five decks! Five decks, crawling on our hands and knees inside a bunch of musty old conduits, in a stupid heavy spacesuit which, frankly, I'm starting to think wasn't even freshly replicated! Does yours smell weird?"
Klath got back to his feet and retrieved the phaser rifle from where it was slung on his back, swinging the weapon around the darkened bridge and using the torch sight along with his own helmet lights to scan for any threats.
"No," he replied to the Vulcan as he did so, "My suit is fine."
Sunek clambered back up onto his own two feet, and caught the clear message in the Klingon's grunted comment.
"Yeah, ok, I know what you're implying, smart guy. But it's not me. Vulcans don't sweat. And besides, I have a very pleasant natural odour. Every single one of my exes have said that I'm-"
"Completely empty," Klath muttered.
It took Sunek's indignation a moment to realise that Klath's attention was still on the bridge of the derelict itself. The Vulcan swept his own spotlights around the room to confirm the Klingon's initial analysis of the situation.
The bridge was a fairly typical design for most species throughout the quadrant, with a forward helm position, a central command chair and several other consoles and interfaces dotted around the perimeter of the room. Sunek noted that, aside from the command chair, every other station was a standing position. On Flaxian ships, it seemed that only the captain got the comfortable option. At the front of the room stood a small but functional viewscreen. Albeit one that was currently offline, along with just about every other screen or readout on the bridge.
And, as Klath had correctly pointed out, the entire room was completely empty. Not that Sunek seemed overly worried by that at first.
"So?" he shrugged, "What were you expecting? A surprise party?"
Klath stepped cautiously and quietly around the expanse of the room, making sure to scan into every dark corner with his lights.
"No," he replied tersely, "I was expecting dead bodies."
"So, like, a Klingon surprise party?"
Klath suppressed a sigh, the tension inside him continuing to rise as he completed his sweep of the seemingly empty room.
"We have still detected no lifesigns, but this vessel apparently only suffered a power failure," he patiently explained to his companion, "Which means that some of the crew would have remained on the bridge while repairs were attempted."
Sunek considered this statement for a moment, cocking an eyebrow as he thought through the likeliest answer to Klath's concerns.
"Maybe they abandoned ship?"
"Perhaps they did," Klath replied, "Or at least attempted to. Which is a very…illogical response to a simple power failure, would you not agree?"
At this leading comment, Sunek suppressed a shudder that suddenly passed down the length of his spine. Without being entirely sure why he was doing it, he found himself unslinging his own rifle from his back and idly thumbing the power setting onto a medium stun.
"Alright, come on, stop messing around, buddy," he managed to stammer out, "What the hell are you getting at?"
The Klingon walked back over to the Vulcan, still darting glances around the dark recesses of the bridge as he did so. His battle senses were definitely hardening.
"Something I sensed as soon as we arrived here. Something is very wrong here."
"I-In what way?"
"It is as if everyone on this vessel decided to…run."
A second shudder followed the first down Sunek's spine. He quickly thumbed his rifle onto the heaviest stun setting available.
"Ok, look," he added, gesturing to the consoles, "Let's get this stupid data link sorted. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can get the hell off this crate and you can tell me your ghost stories somewhere a lot less creepy. Deal?"
Klath's senses still alerted him to the danger of their situation, and he felt his blood lust rising once again. But he controlled that for the time being, and nodded back at the Vulcan. The pair of them moved over to one of the side consoles of the bridge, and before Klath could start to work, Sunek took over the entire task.
"Right," he said as his gloved fingers danced across the dimmed controls, "There's enough juice in the reserve batteries to get this done without main power. I'm gonna patch out a link to the other ship, then they can take over and pull whatever they need from the database."
Despite the darker feelings inside him right now, Klath couldn't help but watch on in quiet satisfaction as the Vulcan actually put some effort in for once. Not only was it a rare enough event to be celebrated in its own right, but he had also stopped complaining.
The Klingon was almost allowing himself to relax a tad when the main comms units inside their helmets suddenly flared into life.
"Search team checking in," they heard Jirel's familiar voice say with a clear modicum of worry, "We've...found a body."
Klath tensed up all over again, even as Sunek patted him on his arm.
"See, buddy?" the Vulcan said over their shorter suit-to-suit link, "There's your bodies."
Klath ignored his comment, listening in to the main link as Captain Grinya's gruff voice responded to Jirel with clear irritation.
"It's a salvage mission, newbie. Should expect to find some bodies."
"Yeah," Jirel replied, "But not in the state this one's in."
The third shudder that jolted down his spine was sharp enough to cause Sunek's fingers to jump across the controls with even more haste.
To his side, Klath gripped his phaser rifle even more tightly. Whatever Jirel's comment meant, he was now certain that the crew had been running. The next question was: From what?
'*'*'
'*'*'
Like most 24th century spacefarers, Jirel tended to intensely dislike wearing spacesuits of any description.
Centuries ago, such heavy outfits had been a basic requirement of space travel, in order to keep their occupant alive and well in whatever harsh environment they found themselves in.
But since the advent of reliable artificial atmospheres and gravity, together with precise sensor readings and transporter biofilters to protect against most threats, they had been phased out for just about anything other than external spacewalks. All of which meant that it was now possible to spend your entire life travelling in space without ever having to wear a spacesuit, being able to walk around or beam in and out of any environment as you pleased, unencumbered by anything other than the clothes you had on at the time. And the rare occasion when you actually had to pull on a spacesuit tended to be seen as a universal chore.
Still, right now, Jirel was glad to be inside the bulky confines of his Flaxian spacesuit. Because at least the suit and his helmet were helping to block out a couple of his senses.
He stood alongside Kataya and surveyed the grisly scene they had stumbled into, and took a moment to control a fresh feeling of nausea.
There was very little left of whoever it had been. Little more than a ragged, shredded torso lying in a dried-up pool of crimson blood. After a brief supplementary search, Kataya had found a couple of limbs a short distance away.
They still hadn't found the head.
Jirel glanced over at his impassive Flaxian search partner, even as Captain Grinya's voice filled his helmet over the still-open comms link.
"Tag the remains and move on. We'll beam them to the Ret Kol when we're finished up over here. Meantime, there's a lot more searching to be done."
The Trill stifled a scoff at the dispassionate nature of his response. He was pretty sure he'd been detailed enough in his description of what they'd found.
"You heard what I said, right?" he replied with more than a trace of anger audible in his words, "This guy's been-"
"Understood, Captain," Kataya butted in over the open link, "Tagging and moving on. Search team out."
Before Jirel could act, Kataya had closed the link for him. The Flaxian then dutifully thumbed the controls of his rifle into tagging mode and shot a small isolinear tag into the bloodied torso. All the easier for the Ret Kol to identify it and beam it back. With that done, he stood back up straight, kept his weapon raised, and continued down the corridor in the direction they had been heading.
A shocked Jirel took one last look at the remains, suppressed another wave of nausea, and then took off after the slowly marching Flaxian.
"That's it?" he called out over their suit-to-suit link.
Kataya didn't look over at him, continuing to sweep his spotlights across the deck in front of them instead.
"That's it," he grunted in response.
"But," Jirel persisted, "Wh-I mean, what the hell did that? What the hell were they transporting on this ship, anyway? Whoever that poor guy was, it looked like he'd been…I dunno, mauled by something!"
Kataya's focus remained on the path ahead, but inside his helmet, his jaw clenched a fraction tighter before he responded.
"Unclear. Explosive decompression, engineering malfunction, some kind of previously undiscovered interstellar phenomenon-"
"Interstellar phenomenon?" Jirel scoffed, "Yeah, sure, maybe a type-4 meteor just swung by and ate the guy!"
Kataya stopped suddenly and swung back around to Jirel, fixing him with a stern glare.
"And what exactly is your theory? Hmm? Some big old space monster on a ship where we're still detecting no lifesigns? That seems more likely to you?"
Jirel felt the intensity of Kataya's glare even through the visor of his helmet, but he maintained his own stance without shrinking back.
"I thought those readings weren't reliable?" he offered back, "Otherwise, what exactly is Captain Grinya having us search for?"
Kataya went to retort, then paused. Clearly the Trill had caused him to run into a momentary logical dichotomy. But it didn't take long for his expression to harden again, back into work mode.
"Listen, newbie," he grunted, "I don't know how you normally do things wherever the hell you're from, but we've been given an order by Captain Grinya. And when he does that, we don't ask questions, we don't start playing make-believe, we follow his orders. Because when we stop doing that, that's when things go wrong."
Jirel couldn't help but fire off the response that jumped onto the tip of his tongue.
"That guy back there," he gestured back to the remains, "Think he followed orders?"
He regretted saying it as soon as it was done, even though he stood by it as a question, seeing Kataya's expression contort into an even deeper scowl. For a moment, he even wondered if Kataya was about to settle things as he and his crewmates had tried to settle things in the mess hall earlier. But instead, the Flaxian merely jabbed a gloved finger back down the corridor as he spat out his response.
"I have no idea what the hell happened back there, ok? But I do know that the best way to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to us is if we make sure not to jeopardise the entire salvage operation. Now, we've tagged it, and we're moving on. Clear?"
Jirel stared back at the Flaxian. Almost every fibre of his being was telling him to continue to argue his point further with the order-following lieutenant. Or even to entirely go rogue and signal back to the Ret Kol to beam them back.
But once again, he was also keenly aware of just how far away from home he was. He had lost the Bounty, he had left Natasha and Denella many light years away. And now he was even separated from Klath and Sunek. Every one of his friends and his comforts had been stripped away.
And he felt very alone indeed.
So, instead of arguing, he quickly walked off after Lieutenant Kataya, as he strode on deeper and deeper into the maze of corridors inside the derelict ship. Getting even further away from home with every footstep.
And as he walked down the darkened corridors, he couldn't shake a feeling that had been cultivating in the back of his mind since they had beamed in. A feeling that was unsettling enough to make his spots itch.
He felt like they were being watched.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Captain Grinya growled in renewed frustration as the console in front of him remained resolutely dark and powered down.
He had finished the laborious process of rewiring the main power grid of the derelict moments earlier, which should have been enough to get everything back up and running. But the ship was still refusing to cooperate with him.
His mood wasn't being helped by the message from Jirel. Not just the unhappy content, but the deeply unprofessional way it had been communicated. Not for the first time since he had accepted this salvage job, he was beginning to sense that Commander Turanya had cheaped out on him once again.
The slimy commander of the Reja Gar station had promised to make sure that the Ret Kol was back up to a full crew complement for their recovery mission. But he hadn't told Grinya that he'd be sending him a trio of untried and entirely untested newbies instead of genuine like-for-like replacements for the reassigned members of his team.
And ever since the three newcomers had arrived onboard the Ret Kol, Grinya had been feeling more and more irritations over what was supposed to be a simple salvage mission. Irritations that were now being added to by the entirely non-functional power grid.
"What the hell is wrong with this thing?" he muttered to himself after muting his suit-to-suit comms link with Lieutenant Deroya, leaving the angry words of frustration to echo emptily around inside his helmet.
He began to check over the connections with his wrist-mounted scanner once again, searching for a broken connection, or any sign of a fault he had missed.
Then, in the corner of his eye, he saw something move. A shadow flickered across the wall somewhere to his right.
He instinctively spun around and grabbed his phaser rifle where he had placed it next to the bulky console, bringing it to bear in the direction he had seen the shadow. But there was nothing there.
Still, he was sure he had seen something moving.
"Lieutenant Deroya?" he called out.
No answer.
He scanned around the dark recesses of the section of the engineering deck he was working in with furtive darting looks, feeling his breathing grow sharper and more tense as his torchlight illuminated jagged metal edges in amongst the shadows. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead, even inside the carefully temperature controlled confines of his spacesuit.
Then, as he swung around, he saw another movement. His instincts told him that this one was much closer.
Already fearing it was too late, the gruff Flaxian whirled around, bringing his phaser rifle to bear on whatever was approaching at the same time.
The torch beam of his weapon illuminated the face of Lieutenant Deroya. She stared at him in shock. Through the visor of her helmet, he could see her mouth moving, but he couldn't hear her.
His suit-to-suit comms link was still off.
He silently cursed himself for missing such a basic issue. He'd temporarily switched it off in order to be able to grumble to himself in private, but hadn't switched it back on after being distracted by chasing shadows. With a tap of his wrist controls, he reactivated the link in time to catch the end of Deroya's monologue.
"...checking the secondary systems. Are…you ok, sir?"
She maintained her formal tone as she delivered her report, while still warily eyeing up the rifle, which Grinya now lowered, slightly sheepishly.
"I'm fine, Lieutenant," he replied, a little more sharply than he'd intended, "Just losing my patience with this goddamn power supply, that's all."
He gestured back to the console he'd been working on, as Deroya considered the issue.
"There could be a fault in the plasma grid matrix?"
"Yeah," Grinya muttered back with a scoff, "Could be about two dozen other things as well. Bad enough that worm Turanya sent me those three newbies to do this with, now he's sent me to a derelict that doesn't want to cooperate either."
He forced himself to pause and stop chewing his loyal lieutenant's ear off, reminding himself that he needed to make sure he was following his own orders as much as his own team should be.
He needed to make sure that he wasn't allowing his own frustrations to affect their work. The only way that he had been pulling off these sorts of salvage missions without a serious hitch for the last fifteen years was by ensuring that everyone kept focus. So he reined in his growing list of irritations for the time being, and nodded at Deroya through his helmet.
"You're right," he grunted, "Could be the plasma grid matrix. Let's check it out."
She nodded back, betraying no sense that she had been thrown off by his sharp tone or his raised weapon.
The two Flaxians stepped away from the console and moved across the expanse of the engineering deck of the derelict. Both of them kept their rifles drawn, but kept them down at their sides for now, using the flashlights on their helmets to illuminate their path.
The engineering deck itself was a vast expanse of a room, dominated by the warp core arrangement on the far side. A vertical tube-like structure surrounded by scaffolding and platforms to allow for maintenance access.
Only the very top part of the core was visible at the level of the engineering deck itself. The rest of the huge cylinder disappeared down into the very lowest decks of the ship, into a cavernous hole that was only accessible via those same scaffold platforms, all the way down to the bottom of the vessel.
It was a somewhat antiquated design, even compared to older Flaxian cruisers like the Ret Kol. And Captain Grinya remembered stories he was told by his former chief engineer about the dangers of maintaining such an exposed core. But the design had persisted amongst some older Flaxian transports like this due to their cheapness and their reliability.
Although this particular example seemed somewhat lacking in the latter department.
As they passed by the core, heading for a specific access point on the far wall, the two long-serving salvage experts walked in lock step.
"Plasma controls are over here," Deroya noted with a nod.
She hadn't needed to say it out loud. Both she and Grinya knew enough about the layout of this ship to know that. But she had also wanted to break the tension in the air. And distract herself from the unsettling fact that, regardless of what her wrist-mounted scanner was telling her about the lack of local lifesigns, she was sure she kept seeing something moving in the shadows.
They got to the requisite panel, and Grinya crouched down to remove the dirty metal plate in order to get to the plasma controls. He paused.
"Look," he grunted, gesturing at the panel.
Deroya crouched down next to him. For the time being, both of them hunched over the panel, their backs to the rest of the engineering deck.
She saw what he was pointing to immediately. Several of the clips that held the panel in place had been snapped clean off, and the few that remained were only holding the panel flush to the wall very loosely indeed.
Lieutenant Deroya couldn't help but feel a chill pass down her spine.
"What are you thinking?" she muttered over the suit-to-suit line.
"I think," Grinya replied with a dark grimace, "That we're not the first people to have worked on the plasma grid just recently."
Deroya allowed the words to drift around in her helmet as she took in what he meant by that.
In truth, he could only have meant one of two things. Either the crew of the derelict had been working behind this panel recently, and done a very clumsy job of it.
Or something very strong had wrenched the panel off. To tamper with the ship's power supply.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"Jirel."
There was no response from the Flaxian next to him as they walked away from the latest pile of body parts that they had tagged.
So far, the search team had tagged around half a dozen sets of remains, roughly a quarter of the derelict's crew. Though with some of them having been discovered close together, it was sometimes hard to see when one Flaxian ended and another one started.
Each time they happened upon a set of remains, Jirel's stomach tightened a little more, and his grip on his phaser rifle got a little more strong. Whatever had happened, the increasingly pointless search for survivors was becoming as grim a job as he had ever been involved in out in space. The unsettling nature of their work was beginning to take its toll. And things weren't being helped by the ongoing silent treatment he was getting from his entirely formal and focused search partner.
So he tried again to break that particular strand of tension.
"My name's Jirel," he continued, "Just so you don't need to keep calling me 'newbie'."
Alongside him, Kataya didn't offer him as much as a glance, keeping his focus dead ahead as they paced on down the latest corridor. But he did eventually reply.
"I know what your name is. Newbie."
Jirel strained to detect a sliver of good humour in the Flaxian's voice when he delivered that comment over the suit-to-suit link. But he heard nothing.
"Right," Jirel sighed, "I get it, you're doing a thing. It's just…I'd kinda like to think we're at a stage where we can drop all that now?"
No response. They turned another corner to find a mercifully empty corridor greeting them.
"I mean," Jirel continued as winningly as he could manage under the circumstances, "I thought we'd got past this back in the mess hall…"
Kataya grunted with a trace of amusement at this, but any hopes Jirel had of making a breakthrough in his relationship with his search partner were dashed when the Flaxian looked over at him with a dismissive glare.
"That fight gave me respect for your Klingon friend. But not for the rest of you. And around here, on this crew, respect has to be earned."
Before Jirel could muster any sort of response to that, Kataya swiftly walked on and rounded another corner. Then, as the Trill followed him and looked down the next corridor, a response suddenly came to him.
"Holy crap."
There was no response from Kataya. But, truth be told, his thoughts were similar. They both stopped dead in their tracks and stared at the sight that their torches were illuminating ahead of them.
On the right side of the corridor, about halfway towards the next intersection, the lines of the dark and weathered walls were interrupted by a huge misshapen hole, torn through the metal itself as if a photon torpedo had slammed through it. Great ugly shards of grey metal stuck out from the rupture, glinting in their torchlight, unsettlingly twisted outwards into the corridor itself.
Kataya raised his phaser rifle without a sound, and slowly stepped towards the carnage. Bereft of an alternative plan, Jirel brought his own weapon to bear and cautiously followed.
As they approached the tear in the wall, his eyes widened at the evident ferocity of whatever had so completely wrenched a direct path through the solid wall.
"Holy crap," Jirel repeated in a whisper, struggling to think of anything else to say.
As he got to the twisted metal, Kataya was already tapping his wrist-mounted controls, scanning the area to try and ascertain their surroundings.
"These are the main laboratories," he muttered over the suit-to-suit link, gesturing with his other hand to the scene of carnage on the other side of the hole.
"So," Jirel offered in return, "You gonna tell me this was a meteor as well?"
The Flaxian didn't respond immediately, keeping his focus on his scans for some sort of clue as to what had happened here. But Jirel persisted.
"I'm serious. What the hell have we beamed into over here? What were they transporting on this crate, Kataya?"
Inside his helmet, the Flaxian shook his head. The words of his response rang hollow when they finally came. His previous assertiveness eroded slightly.
"I…have no idea," he admitted, "Captain Grinya might have seen a full manifest, but he didn't flag any issues to us. We were just ordered to salvage the ship. Tag and retrieve."
"Yeah, well, looks like you're gonna need some bigger tags."
Kataya ignored him, continuing to scan the remains of the wall. Jirel turned the torch beam on his rifle onto the widest available setting and cautiously peered into the room on the other side of the wall, trying to make out details in the darkness. The light illuminated the eerie scene of a trashed laboratory, bouncing off wrecked consoles and overturned tables and casting foreboding shadows onto the walls.
Just as he plucked up the courage to take a step through the gap and into the room, being careful not to nick the fabric of his suit on the jagged edge of the hole, a sudden noise caused him to literally jump back in fright.
It took him a moment to calm his heart rate as his helmet filled with a familiar gruff voice.
"Klath to Jirel, come in."
The unauthorised communication not only caused Jirel to jump, but caused him to follow up with a slight flinch. He felt Kataya's glare on his back without turning around, as his colleagues once again went against clearly established protocol during Flaxian salvage operations. Still, given the circumstances, he elected to answer the call.
"Hey, Klath," he managed to get out as he felt his spots start to itch all over again, "Remember those long, super interesting briefings back on the Ret Kol, right? All salvage team comms are addressed to the team leader?"
"Yes," Klath grunted back, "But that is proving difficult. I am unable to raise Captain Grinya."
Jirel stepped back out of the ruined laboratory and looked over at Lieutenant Kataya, whose gaze became slightly more steely as he opened a second channel.
"Search team to Captain Grinya. Please respond."
Jirel watched on as the Flaxian waited for a response, then shook his head and talked back to Klath via his own link.
"Nothing here either. Could be interference if they're still down in engineering?"
"Perhaps," the Klingon replied, in a tone of voice that suggested he didn't believe that particular explanation for a second.
Kataya cut into the main comms line and barked out a response before Jirel could muster anything further to his friend.
"We're closer to the engineering section. We'll go down and check it out."
"Oh," Jirel couldn't help but reply, "We will, will we?"
Kataya fixed him with a freshly determined glare.
"Until we've re-established contact with Captain Grinya, I'm in effective command of this operation. So yes, we will. Newbie."
Before the Trill could retort any further, the Flaxian turned and walked off. Jirel sighed inside his helmet and began to follow, keeping his eyes on the scene of destruction that still dominated this stretch of corridor.
"Hey, Klath, you still there?" he called out over the comms link, not caring what Kataya thought about another breach of procedure.
"Yes," the Klingon replied.
"Listen, buddy, you two keep an eye out up there, ok?"
"For what?"
"I…don't really know," Jirel admitted with a sigh, "But based on what we've seen down here, I'm pretty sure there's something else onboard this thing with us."
"What do you mean?"
"Looks like…something got out of the labs down here. You should see the damage. Whatever it was made mincemeat out of the place."
"I see," Klath's response came, "Something…big?"
Jirel cast a final look at the twisted wreckage that had once been a solid tritanium bulkhead and suppressed a fresh grimace.
"Yep," he replied, "Something big."
'*'*'
'*'*'
Lieutenant Rondya sat in the command chair on the Ret Kol's bridge and sighed.
As second in command of a Flaxian cruiser primarily tasked with salvage missions, he found that there was a lot of sitting and waiting involved.
Perhaps if his commanding officer was more of a delegator, he might have had the opportunity to actually lead more of the salvage teams, and get in on some of the action.
But Captain Grinya had never been a delegator. He was a leader. And so his second in command was usually left with little more to do than keep the centre chair on the bridge warm for hours on end, while the real work happened elsewhere under the eagle eye of Grinya himself.
On the main viewscreen, the derelict hung at a slightly awkward angle compared to the Ret Kol itself, a testament to the ship's lack of power.
It was a substantially larger vessel than the cruiser, featuring a large rectangular secondary hull which housed the sensor banks, storage areas and laboratories alongside the main engineering areas, and a smaller semi-circular forward hull housing the bridge and crew accommodation, connected to the larger section with a short neck. Two stubby nacelles branched out from either side.
It wasn't an ugly design by any means. But given that Rondya had been staring at it for the best part of four hours by now, he was definitely starting to dislike it.
The bridge was largely understaffed, as it often was during the meat of a salvage operation. Aside from Rondya himself, there was a junior officer keeping an eye on the helm and matching their course with their target, and a relief officer at the rear comms and engineering panel to keep an eye on the derelict itself.
There was some concern among the bridge crew at some of the reports from over on the derelict, not least the complete lack of survivors found so far. But equally, it wasn't the first time they had dealt with such an unhappy situation. It was part of the salvaging process, after all.
As time ticked on, Rondya found himself absently drumming his fingers on the armrest of the command chair, apparently to the irritation of the helmsman, whose shoulders flinched slightly as the noise persisted.
Then, out of nowhere, the comms panel behind him chirped, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Captain Grinya and the team were ready to return. Like clockwork.
Except, this time, that wasn't what the comms traffic was.
"Lieutenant," the comms officer reported, "You're being contacted. From below decks."
"What?" Rondya scoffed, as he swung around in his chair.
"It's Crewman Jadaya. From the port engineering section."
The Ret Kol's executive officer couldn't help but raise a curious eyebrow. Jadaya was one of the newest members of the crew, and pretty much the lowest-ranking. He was very much the subordinate's subordinate.
Having actually met the sickly young crewman when he first came aboard, Rondya had considered it very lucky of him to be joining the Ret Kol at the same time as the three newbies had joined up for salvage duty. If it hadn't been for the Trill, the Vulcan and the Klingon distracting the more rowdy members of the crew, he was pretty sure they'd have eaten Jadaya alive.
Still, contacting the bridge from his lowly position, especially in the middle of a salvage operation, suggested that someone had gotten to the crewman for a spot of old-fashioned hazing anyway.
"Crewman," Rondya responded, keeping his tone formal despite the amusement he was feeling inside, "How can we help you down there?"
"Um," the weak voice of Jadaya stammered, "I-I just thought I should report it in, sir."
Rondya couldn't help but shake his head as he heard the helmsman snort behind him. Everyone on the bridge was wondering exactly what fanciful message the bullied crewman was being asked to deliver to his senior officers.
"Report…what, Crewman? Out with it."
"R-Right, um, y-yes. It's just…Captain Grinya said I didn't need to report it, but I r-really thought I should-"
The amusement vanished from Rondya's face in an instant.
"What the hell are you talking about, Crewman? Captain Grinya is aboard the derelict."
"Yes, sir. B-But he beamed back. Just now."
Rondya rolled his eyes. Maybe the Ret Kol's crew were losing their touch if this was the best they could come up with as a plan to haze their newest arrival.
"Ok, Crewman, I don't care who put you up to this, but you need to clear the line. We're in the middle of-"
"Sir," Jadaya's voice came back, a little more certain, "I'm telling the truth."
Rondya glanced at the officer at the comms station, who seemed equally perplexed by the effort that the junior crewman's persistence. Still not entirely sure he wasn't being hazed as much as Jadaya was, he reluctantly stood up from the command chair and left it spinning behind him.
"I'm on my way."
The Ret Kol's exec strode off the bridge in a foul mood. He was already cooking up a suitable punishment for the young crewman for all of this. A couple of weeks spent cleaning the waste reclamation unit was the first thing that sprung to mind.
A few moments later, when he arrived in the Ret Kol's engineering section, he was as shocked as anyone to discover that Crewman Jadaya had been telling the truth.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"Something big?"
Klath ignored the question and busied himself with re-checking the power settings on his phaser rifle, even as Sunek nervously rambled on.
"That's what he said? Something big?"
Their work on the bridge was now complete. The data transfer back to the Ret Kol was underway, and controllable from their end. Sunek had even found time to use some of the remaining battery power in the data systems to get another few bits up and running. The main viewscreen was now active, bathing the still-darkened bridge with a static-covered view of the Ret Kol where it hung off the port bow of the derelict.
But with only battery power to work with, there had been no real chance to get anything more significant up and running. Certainly not anything as powerful as internal sensors. Which meant that they only had Jirel's unsettling and vague description to work with.
"I mean," Sunek continued as he paced nervously around the bridge, swinging his phaser rifle around as he went, "What does that even mean? Something big? Like, how big? Your shoes are big."
He gestured down dismissively at Klath's significantly outsized spacesuit boots, even as the Klingon grunted back his straightforward response.
"It means that we must be prepared to fight."
"Oh no," Sunek scoffed, wagging a gloved finger at the battle-ready Klingon, "Nuh-huh. It means that we need to entirely and immediately leave this stupid ship."
He pointed at the benign image of the Ret Kol where it hung on the viewscreen as their sanctuary, to further underline his point.
"We need to get them to beam us back, and then we need to get the hell out of here. That's what we need to do. So you can take that look off your face right now."
Klath stared back at the fretting Vulcan through the visor of his helmet, doing his best to feign a look of ignorance.
"What look?"
"You know exactly what look. The look you always get when crap like this happens. The one that says 'I'm a big dumb Klingon warrior, so even though the only sensible thing to do is run away, I'm gonna go charging right towards all the scary things'. Honestly, it's a miracle your people made it this far in life, it really is."
"My people," Klath retorted, a tad offended, "Have learned that there is little to be gained from running away from one's problems."
"Yeah, right. It's just like that old joke, isn't it? You hear the one about the Andorian diplomat who slayed an entire Klingon army? He advised them to make a tactical withdrawal."
Klath grunted without a trace of amusement. He didn't get it.
"And that's exactly the sort of dumb thing you're doing right now," the Vulcan concluded with a final accusatory jab of his finger, "And don't even think about pretending it isn't, cos I've seen it all before. Remember Starbase 216?"
Klath looked up from his weapons check at this unhappy reminder. Some months ago, Sunek had been an unwilling witness to another of his more foolhardy moments, when Klath had been hunted by a vengeful Klingon called Kolar on a planetary Federation starbase that the Bounty had visited for repairs.
After Sunek had been kidnapped by his enemy, instead of seeking help, Klath had taken off into the wilderness by himself to challenge his rival. And he had not only ended up having to reveal the details of his discommendation to the talkative Vulcan, but had nearly ended up being killed.
Still, whatever regrets those memories dredged up inside of him, Klath remained a Klingon warrior at heart. And Klingons didn't run. So, instead of wasting time responding to Sunek's comments, he merely shouldered his rifle and made for the access hatch that led back into the conduits of the derelict, his mind focused on the battle that was to come. A battle with something big.
"Ugh!" Sunek whined, "You're really gonna do it, aren't you. Well, that's great. Just great. Cos that means that I'm gonna have to come and do the really stupid thing with you, doesn't it?"
"I am more than happy to go alone."
Sunek watched the Klingon stooping down towards the hatch and suppressed a sigh. It was true that he could call the Ret Kol and try to ask to be beamed out. That was definitely still an option that was available to him.
But he also knew that he couldn't let his friend face danger alone. No matter how much a significant part of his less brave side wanted to.
"Yeah, well," he sighed again as he set off towards the hatch, "Tough."
Just as Klath's head entered the conduit, though, Sunek's more cowardly side was granted a last second reprieve. Because suddenly their helmets were filled with an incoming transmission.
"Guys," Jirel said, sounding more serious than either of his colleagues had ever heard him, "We're leaving. Now."
"Thank Surak for that!" Sunek sighed, throwing his hands up in satisfaction.
Klath, for his part, couldn't help but look a little upset that he wasn't going to get his fight. But he managed to keep that from his voice as he crawled back out of the conduit and responded.
"Why?"
"I'll tell you when we get back," the Trill simply responded, "Prepare for beam-out."
Sunek stood and waited for the transporter effect, and looked over at the Klingon.
"Look on the bright side," he offered with a shrug, "Maybe they'll let you keep the gun?"
'*'*'
'*'*'
She made her way through the ship, still keeping herself hidden.
In truth, she didn't need to be quite so cautious right now. She was all alone for the time being. Still, her instincts told her to remain secluded.
She didn't think to question those instincts. Most of the time, that was how she operated. Her body and her subconscious reacting in ways that her conscious mind didn't understand. She had never been told about the concept of a survival instinct. But regardless of that, it was a potent force inside her.
As she silently moved, she allowed herself a moment of satisfaction, even of pride, in what she had been able to do. She wondered if her parents would be as proud to see what she had become, how much she had learned to do. She liked to think that they would be. Wherever they were.
But part of her was also filled with self-doubt. Over whether she was really doing the right thing, and whether all of this was necessary.
And then she remembered the pain, and the torment that she had been put through. She recalled the way that she had been snatched away from her home. How scared she had been, and how disorientating it had all felt.
She thought about the tests they had run on her, the challenges they had forced her to complete, and the punishments that were handed out when she didn't do as she was told.
And that was more than enough to convince her that what she was doing was necessary.
So she stealthily walked on in the shadows, and waited for the next part of the plan she only tangentially understood to be completed.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Down in the engineering deck, Lieutenant Kataya stood back up and tapped the comms unit on his wrist controls to signal their ship.
As he did that, Jirel kept his phaser rifle raised, scanning the expanse of the darkened engineering deck with his wide-beam torch. Looking for something big.
"Kataya to Ret Kol, requesting emergency beam-out."
For a moment, there was no answer. Only an eerie silence. When the comms link did splutter into life, it did so with a burst of static which did little to ease either man's concerns.
"Rondya here. Say again, salvage team?"
Kataya displayed no outward sign of concern or irritation at this response, but raised his own weapon defensively as he repeated himself.
"I say again: This is Lieutenant Kataya, requesting emergency beam-out now."
Another burst of static. Jirel felt the knot in his stomach tighten further.
"Message received," Rondya eventually replied, "That won't be possible at the moment. We're having some power supply issues over here. Transporters are temporarily offline."
Jirel instinctively turned back to Kataya, forgetting about the need to scan the room for the moment, though the Flaxian remained calm.
"What sort of power supply issues?"
"Our engineers are still trying to figure that out. There's some sort of power drain affecting almost every system. Happened as soon as we beamed Captain Grinya back over to you."
Now it was Kataya's turn to offer a moment of silence as a response. The Flaxian's mouth gaped open, but he struggled to find any words.
"Sorry," Jirel offered instead, jumping in to fill the silence, "When you beamed who back over?"
"Captain Grinya. He beamed over here to check the data link, then returned to the derelict."
Jirel licked his lips, feeling a bead of sweat trickle down his neck. His spots itched like crazy.
"Wh-When was this?"
"A few minutes ago. Why?"
Jirel glanced at the gobsmacked Kataya, then looked down at the two mutilated corpses they had discovered as soon as they had got to the engineering deck. The reason they had called for the beam-out in the first place.
The two victims were more readily identifiable than the other victims they had found, despite the severity of their injuries. One was Lieutenant Deroya.
And the other was Captain Grinya.
"That's…not possible," Jirel managed eventually.
On the other end of the comms link, he was hit by a fresh burst of static.
"Ret Kol?" he urged, "Come in, Ret Kol?"
'*'*'
'*'*'
Up on the bridge, Sunek and Klath had been following the back-and-forth over the comms link with growing concern.
"What the hell's going on down there?" Sunek snapped, as he paced the room impatiently.
"I do not know," Klath admitted, "But-"
He was silenced as the entire bridge was suddenly bathed in a bright light. Both Sunek and Klath followed the source of the light, turning as one back to the viewscreen at the front of the room.
Just in time to see the Flaxian cruiser Ret Kol being devoured by a fiery, all-consuming explosion.