Hello lovelies. Sorry for the late upload, been a little pre-occupied the past week, but business should resume as normal now and I will try and upload every day or so. Thank you for all the kind words and support, I hope you're enjoying the story, your comments honestly mean the world to me. :) Take care of yourselves, and happy reading. :)
An image displayed on Khan's computer of a dark green scaled, amphibious looking creature. About the side of a labrador, it had tentacles emerging from its shoulders, three blob-like feet on each side of its body with suckers on and a bulbous head, lacking in eyes but making up for it in mouth and strange markings that provided it with sensory feedback from its surroundings. A carnivorous creature, it was non-specific about its dietary requirements, so long as its food was squishy with plenty of flesh and blood, it would suffice, be that dead or still alive. It was a grotesque being, in more ways than one.
Khan feared that this was the creature aboard the Enlightenment with Nyota.
It had no scientific name as its existence had been refused acknowledgement by the world when the first whispers of it emerged as rumour. This was a dangerous beast. It could survive with or without oxygen, seemed to be able to adapt itself to any environment, making its way onto ships and devouring crew in order to inhabit and transport themselves from place to place. A spawned parasite, once it had eaten enough, was able to duplicate itself without the need for reproduction. The more food there was available, the more they would be able to duplicate, sucking the life out of their current environment before finding a way to move onto the next.
Khan's attention flicked between the image of the parasite and the encoded data he was working on. It was now two-thirty in the morning, he had been working non stop since he returned home.
"Y'know…" Nyota's sleep deprived voice fell softly through the comm. "I think maybe I belong among the stars."
Khan could hear her take a deep breath. He checked the ships computer data readout: temperature, minus-three degrees celsius and falling.
"I never felt like I fit anywhere on Earth, not properly." Nyota continued, "I found out about Starfleet when I was seven, learning about it in school. I knew I wanted to join."
"I never imagined a life for myself in Starfleet." Khan thoughtfully replied. "In fact, I was only enlisted to your Starfleet a few years ago."
"What do you mean, 'my Starfleet'?" She questioned. Khan smiled slightly, this woman may be tired, but she didn't miss anything.
"You have an ear for details." He commented.
"Well I am a communications officer." She replied, he could hear a smile of pride in her tone. "So what did you mean?"
"I wasn't always in Starfleet." He paused. He didn't know whether it was the hour, or the fact he was getting tired himself, but he felt comfortable in this moment, talking to Uhura. He decided to continue. "I used to be in the military, the Royal Air Force… but that was another lifetime."
"The Royal Air Force…" She thought. "I recognise the name, but from history, there hasn't been a military air force since the first real stages of Starfleet…"
"Yes…"
A silence hung between them for a moment.
"Were you some sort of re-enactor? Someone who gets out all the vintage crafts and to fly them for historical display ceremonies?" She asked.
Khan pressed his lips together, eyes falling to gaze at the desk a moment. Her brain gave her the most logical explanation it could come up with. Was there really any chance she would believe his story if he told her the truth? This woman who he'd only ever heard the voice of, who was stranded lightyears away from him…?
"Something like that…" He replied after a pause. He sighed, he couldn't bring himself to delve into it.
"Wow! That must have been-"
The communication line crackled, static blocking her words. The line cut dead.
"Uhura? Can you hear me?" Khan tapped at the comm, re-entering sequences to try and restore the line. A sudden scream made him jump as the line fizzed back into existence.
"Shit shit shit!"
"Lieutenant what's going on?" He was literally on the edge of his seat, as if being physically closer to the computer would in some way help her.
xxxx
The lights had gone, power was randomly surging through the bridge, and Nyota could hear something outside the barricaded door.
Regretting her startled outburst, she clasped her hand over her mouth to quieten any sound, yet Khan's voice urgently blared over the comm.
"Uhura?"
"Sshh, I think it's here." She hushed him. "There's something outside the doors."
"It's okay, stay calm. If it's what I think it is, it won't be able to just break in to get inside."
The noise outside persisted, sounding more curious by the second.
"'Stay calm' it's okay for you!"
"Panicking will not help you."
Nyota sighed, clasping her hand over her mouth again. She knew he was right. A minute or so passed and the ships power had stopped surging, the noise outside also losing interest.
"Is it still there?" Khan checked.
"Yes. What do you think it is?"
"I cannot be one-hundred percent sure, but it may be a parasite."
Nyota's heart fell into her shoes. She glanced at Spock's corpse on the floor, remembering the conversation they had before the mission began.
"The unacknowledged one?" She asked in whispered tones, "The one Starfleet refuse to recognise because of what it did to the people on the base on Karora?"
"That would be the one." Khan confirmed.
"Shit."
xxxx
Khan was multi-tasking; busily tapping away at the ships auxiliary power system to sustain Uhura's life support.
"How do you know about the parasite?" He asked her.
"Just through rumours and theories." She replied "I was researching Karora before the mission, as I would before any mission, and this planet had so many conspiracies tied to it, it was hard to ignore. I guess there was something about the theory of these parasites that got under my skin."
"That could be quite literally if you are not careful…"
"Khan!"
"Sorry," He smirked, "I shouldn't be joking."
"British humour…" Nyota tutted along with some mumbled curses.
"I think I have managed to seal of the flow of auxiliary power to most of the lower levels now, all remaining power should sustain your life support and your energy."
"Thank you, will it get any warmer?"
"Unfortunately, no." He said, looking at the readout that now said minus-seven degrees celsius. "But it will take longer for it to get colder. If you can put up with minus-seven for a while."
"Do I have a choice?"
"Not really."
"Then-… Oh God, what is that?"
"What? What's happening?"
"There is this black goop seeping in through the small crack in the top of the door. What is it?"
"Duplication spawns." Khan said, pushing the mild panic creeping up his stomach back down. "I'm getting you out as soon as I can."
"What does that mean? What does duplication spawn mean?" Nyota pressured.
"It means you're going to have unsavoury company in a short time. Brace yourself."
Khan got to work on transporter functions. He drew up every method he knew of to try and find the quickest way of getting her off that ship.
"Oh God no, it's moved onto a corpse, I think it's eating it."
"It will be acquiring sustenance in order to grow and develop, like any living thing." Khan told her. "You need to be ready to kill it when it's developed enough."
"How will I know when it's developed enough?"
"Trust me, it'll be obvious. Just stay out of it's way for now, and have your phaser set to kill."
"How do you know so much about these things?" She asked.
"I studied them." Khan told her, "I had heard the rumour too, a long time ago, and when researching I came across a group of people, non-Starfleet explorers, who had managed to capture and study one of these parasites in secret. They showed me a lot of their findings."
"Starfleet better start believing these things are real if I get out of this alive…"
"Yes, I hope so…"
Khan heard the charge up of a phaser as Nyota prepared herself. He grit his teeth, staring at his comm and entering every alter and multi-code he knew of to try and set a transporter system to respond, but nothing would talk to him. The Enlightenment just did not have enough power to sustain a transporter, not even if the majority of the energy was external.
"Uhura, I cannot transport you off of the ship." He told her.
"What?!"
"The Enlightenment does not have enough power to sustain that kind of energy. I'm going to have to come to you."
"How long will that take?" She tried to hide the quiver in her voice.
"I cannot say. Once I'm in space, I know your coordinates so as long as you do not drift to far, it should be easy to get to you." Khan explained. "Acquiring the space craft will be the hard part."