"Has anyone seen Commander Harrison?" Admiral Marcus marched through the lobby of the Data Archive. His tone loudly informing everyone in the vicinity there was a problem. Evelyn looked up from her desk at the name.
"C'mon people, someone must have seen him today, contacted him?"
He was met with silence and blank faces, so continued to make his way down to the basement levels. Rampaging into his office, he grabbed his communicator when a young officer entered the room.
"What? This better be important." He barked.
"Uh, Sir," The officer began, "We have an unregistered craft spotted leaving the system in the early hours of this morning."
Marcus put the communicator down.
"Old Starfleet class, barely standard warp capabilities. I'd be amazed if it got very far." He told him, "Want us to go after it?"
The Admiral was thinking. "He really believes there's someone still up there, doesn't he?"
"What if… What if he's right, Sir?"
"Of course he's not right!" Marcus shouted. "We will not play to this. He won't find a morsel alive up there, but if he's so desperate to try, he can perish in his unregistered craft for all I care."
"But, Admiral-"
"Enough! I've things to do, get back to your duties!"
The officer left him. Marcus slowly sat down in his chair, leaning back and turning to look out of the windows onto the view. He wouldn't find anything. The Enlightenment had been destroyed, as it was supposed to be. He was sure of it…
xxxx
"No don't you dare! No, no!"
Nyota scolded the forming parasitic blob as it made its way from one devoured corpse toward her Spock.
A high pitched string of clicks erupted from the thing, startled by her sudden movement and noise, it darted away and up the wall, squelching its way remarkably quickly to hide amongst the barricade of debris.
Nyota stood near Spock, phaser in hand, pointed in the direction of the thing.
"Show yourself, you little bastard!"
Her response was another string of clicks. She had decided, it was definitely big enough to kill. The phaser would be able to target living matter instead of just disrupting a large blob of cells. At this size, she had the advantage, because it seemed to be more afraid of her than she was of it.
"Nyota, are you there?"
Nyota edged her way back around to the communications desk, still poised to fire at the pile of debris should the parasite decide to emerge. She quickly hit the button to respond.
"Hey." She sidestepped back onto the bridge.
"I'm in space. I've acquired a craft. I need you to send me an update of your coordinates. You probably haven't drifted far, but the more precise we can be the quicker I'll be able to find you." Khan explained.
Noises were bubbling from the debris, Nyota's eyes scanning the pieces.
"Okay I'll-" An inquisitive noise came from the left, "I'm on it."
"You're distracted, how's your little friend?"
"Growing, and being a little shit." She told him. "It's hiding in the debris, I scared it." She edged back to the comm again. "Hang on I'll send it quickly."
Scanning the room thoroughly one last time, she stuffed her phaser into the belt of her space suit and turned to the computer, finding the coordination codes and sending them to Khan as quickly as she could, not wanting to have her back turned for long.
"Received. You've not drifted far, I'd estimate-"
Nyota shrieked to feel a weight suddenly land on her left leg.
"Nyota?!"
The parasite had taken advantage, and was now wrapping itself around her calf, trying to get through the material of her space suit to her flesh. Reacting, Nyota tried to shake it off, but it wasn't working. She tripped in her struggle, laying on the floor, using her other foot to try and scrape it off herself with her boot, yet it clung on, and she could feel the fabric of her suit getting thinner.
Grabbing her phaser, she shot at it with no hesitation. The parasite squealed, loosening its grip but it took several blows before it finally detached from her leg, plopping to the floor and beginning to shrivel lifelessly.
Nyota tried to catch her breath, heart racing at the ordeal, becoming aware of the pain now on her leg. Her suit was covered with parasite goop, the fabric of both the outer suit and her trouser leg was shredded as a combination of the creature and the phaser. Part of her leg was beginning to blister from the burns of the residue heat from the shots she fired. It hurt.
"Ah, shit!"
"Nyota, what happened?"
"It got me." She groaned, gently trying to move her leg and get up off the floor. She managed to make it into her chair. "It grabbed my leg and ate away the fabric of my clothes. I had to shoot it but now I've got phaser burn, and I'm covered in goop."
"Do you have first aid? Whatever you do, do not let any of the goo get into your damaged skin."
Nyota grimaced, analysing her flesh wound. Carefully she tore her suit and trouser leg to try and remove any goop from around the area.
"I don't have first aid, but I've ripped the covered fabric off to keep it out of the wound. I don't think I got any in there." She said. "What happens to me if I did?"
"I'm not sure exactly. No one has ever been just attacked by one - they are usually eaten whole with none of them left to experience any effects of the parasite. I cannot say what an infected person would experience."
"Great…" Nyota studied her leg.
"This ship does not have strong warp capabilities, but I will be with you as soon as I can."
"Well, I'll be here." Nyota decided sitting was painful, lowering herself off the chair and to the floor, she stretched her leg out to allow better blood circulation. "Big floating hunk of metal with the word 'Enlightenment' on the front. Can't miss it."
She heard Khan snuff a laugh.
"I'll do my best to keep an eye out for you."
xxxx
Opulence whirred away peacefully with the occasional cough. She reminded Khan somewhat of the old man he had bought her off of at the shipyard. Space drifted by him. He had missed it. The darkness, the cold, the unexplored and the awesomeness of it all. Larger than any man, than any being, it could chew you up and spit you out and there would be no way in which you could save yourself. Yet treat it with the respect it deserves and awe at the majesty of it all, and you'll never be so glad for feeling so small in all your life.
The coordinates display counted down with every star he passed. He had been travelling for nearly two hours now, and finally the screen showed less than sixty-seconds. He glanced at it, taking a firm grip of the pilots controls, unsure of how well the old girl would drop out of warp, he braced for a wobbly stop.
5… 4… 3… 2… 1…
The blackness fell into swimming focus around him. Opulence juddered, not so much a dead halt but more of a bunny hop to the finish line, either way, he had reached his destination in one piece. He stood up, getting a broader look out of the view screen and there she was.
Drifting, and looking more than sorry for herself, the Enlightenment hung there in space. It looked odd somehow, apart from being a little battered. Khan moved to get a better look, noticing some kind of extra craft attached to the underside of the ship.
"So that's how you got in." Khan observed. Now the question was, how was he going to get passed it?