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“Where?” McDougal asked T’Sala.
“Coming from starboard, range and speed… sir, they will arrive at the same time as whatever is in the forest will be here.”
“Options?” McDougal didn’t like the thought of the ‘villagers’ coming to fight the still unknown army right in front of the ship. He also didn’t like how the Prime Directive bound his hands in this situation. He could completely annihilate both ‘armies’ with the push of a button; but how would that affect the future development of this society? No, he would have to play the self defense card. He imagined himself at tactical, both armies still a kilometer away, shouting “They’re coming right for us!” and pressing the fire key. Sensors still didn’t have a clue what, or who, was making up the army in the forest. But they were clear that, in a matter of an hour, two armies would clash in the vicinity of the ship. He would do what he could to keep the ship safe, and get out as quickly as possible.
“Level of technology is similar to medieval earth,” T’Sala replied. “Reading axes, flails, hand shields, metal armor, swords… As long as we can keep them at a distance, we should be able to hold off any attack on the ship.” She added, “I can modify ship’s phasers to a stun setting.”
“I don’t want this to get too violent. Have all available security personnel establish a perimeter port and starboard of the ship, and get some people not doing much to issue phasers to all personnel on board, including the survivors.”
“Aye sir,” T’Sala replied. She quickly set to work on her assigned tasks.
McDougal sighed softly and eyed his cigar of victory. It was almost twenty four hours old. He pondered to himself, far away from the concerns of the moment, he wondered if, in the future, other captains would smoke on their bridges; would the replicator’s program for a fine cigar still even be there? Probably not. They’ll most likely purge ‘VICTORY’ but keep the big nasty as an example of what not to do with a replicator.
“T’Sala, order a scouting party into the woods, let’s see what we’re up against.”
“I was hoping he wouldn’t order that,” Jones said, closing down her communicator. “It is now time for us to go into the forest.” She pointed into the woods, and feigned a smile; the constant clack, clack, scream sent another shiver down her spine.
“I’d guess this is one of those times when he’s glad for that ‘XO leads away team’ regulation,” O’Kelly observed. They all drew their phasers as they drew closer to the boundary between grassy knoll and dense forest. With one final look back to the ship, the three of them plunged into the forest, followed by one of O’Kelly’s security guards.
They didn’t have to travel far before they could see a small scout patrol from the army of the woods. The three person patrol was clad in rusted chain armor, from coif to boots; and wielded each a sheathed short sword and crossbow. Rusty chain and dangling, rotted flesh bounced against dark, decayed bone as the undead scouts traveled onward, unaware that they, too, were being scouted. The quartet watched them go, in silence they sat, waiting for the patrol to leave earshot. After a while, the steady crunch of chained boots was far enough gone to be enveloped in the war cadence of the encroaching army.
“If that entire army is like those three,” Jones whispered as they all huddled in closer, facing each other. “We might be in some serious trouble.” Utter silence followed her words. No more chanting from the army, no more rustling of leaves on the wind, nothing. Pure, uninterrupted, and very loud silence. Renewed darkness fell unto the forest, seeping through everything, despite the radiant light of the nebular cloud high overhead. Eight eyes strained into the darkness, seeking, looking. Perkins opened his tricorder. McCloud produced a flashlight. Neither device worked, being jammed by some mystical force. Terror gripped them. A brilliant flash of lightning illuminated the forest, followed by the trumpeting bellow of tremendous thunder. No clouds had entered the sky, nor did any rain fall.
“I’ve just soiled myself,” the young security petty officer said, voice rattled in terror. “I… I… We need to go…”
“Its just thunder,” Jones tried to reassure him in her own, shaky voice. The young man pointed behind her; the other three turned and followed his pointing. Lightning came once again, and illuminated the forest. This time, they all saw what had scared the young petty officer. Thunder masked their screams.
Skeletons walked towards them, spears and swords drawn, rust and dust flaking and falling from ancient armor. Fear turned to anger inside Cerberus’s XO. She used the new emotion as a focal point, forcing words to form on a now solid voice, “I am Lieutenant Commander Selma Jean Jones of the Federation…”
“You lead them?” a stern male voice called to her in the darkness. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she could hear hoof steps.
“I lead these three,” she replied. It wasn’t what she had planned, but at least she’d made contact. “And to whom am I speaking?” Silently, she blessed the universal translator imbedded in her uniform. She’d heard that the next step was to fully integrate a communicator into the Starfleet insignia that housed the device; right now she hoped to live long enough to use one.
“I am General Par Tused,” the man said. She heard a soft thud, then foot falls and rustling. Seconds passed like hours before he finally appeared out of the shadows and into the torchlight. “I am the current leader of this army.” The skeletal warriors parted and allowed the man to pass closer to his captured quarry. She got a good look at him in the dim firelight. He was humanoid, and despite the not-so-rusty armor, he looked surprisingly like the old man they’d recently encountered. Until he turned his face slightly, exposing the hole in his flesh. He, too, it seemed, was as dead as the others.
“Rigor mortis,” he started, “kept me on the ground. Maggots ate this side of my face.” One of the skeletons, one with almost no flesh left to hang from his bones laughed in a deep wheezing-gasping laugh. Jones shuddered. Par Tused silenced him with a stern glance. “You are probably wondering why we are here.”
“It crossed my mind,” Jones replied.
“Long story short?” he asked. “Or do you have time for the long version?”
“Short,” O’Kelly interrupted. “Our time here is limited.”
“Very well then,” Par Tused continued. “My people were beginning transcendence. Star began to expand in death. The transcendees saw fit to transport us to this new planet to finish transcending. We stopped, started to die, become these,” he gestured to the army around him. “Only a small handful has actually transcended since our arrival here, and that was only in the beginning. Believe me, we tried everything.
“This army started as a few, deeply compelled to walk the forest at night, preying on the innocent. Those that died joined. The transcendees… they can’t stop us, or harm us, only those that are yet to transcend can. Now that there is eternal night, we will walk, and kill all those left living on the planet. We are forced to do this; but we can be stopped. We need your help.”
“So, you’re telling us that you want to kill every living being on this planet, yet you want us to kill you?” Jones stared at him, puzzled. “We can’t do that. We are bound by our ‘prime directive’, not to interfere in the natural development of a society, race, culture or anything else.”
“We were the ones who bombed your ship,” Tused added. “We hoped that would bring you down with revenge on your minds, killing us.” He sighed heavily. “You will not help, even to exact revenge for what we have done?”
Jones tensed, she knew what was coming. She hated the thought, but she knew she would have to fight her way back to the safety of the ship. “No,” she said softly. “We can not help you.”
Tused smiled with the half of his face that still worked. The hole revealed teeth and bone in a partially rotted mouth. “Then you will have to die!” In a flash, he drew his sword, and swung wide. Jones easily dodged the slash, and the four humans turned tail and fled the way that they had come. “Follow them, kill them, and make them our own!”
“Any word yet from our scouts?” McDougal asked impatiently. He’d been pacing the bridge ever since the thunderstorm outside had started. T’Sala surmised that it wasn’t a natural phenomenon, but rather a possible attempt at intimidation, motivation for them to leave the planet. Right now, that was all he wanted to do, get off the rock.
“Negative, sir,” she replied in her cold, emotionless voice. “Sensors still unable to pinpoint their location; and there still remains the unexplained gap in the forest, I have tried recalibrating several times to no avail.”
“Keep trying.” It was all he could say, all that there was to say. He would wait as long as possible. Both sides were closing on the crash site; they assumed that the gap in the sensors was being generated by the yet to be determined army of the woods. He kept pacing, feeling as if his course around the bridge would eventually wear an oval into the carpeting around the bridge. Lightning flashed and thunder clapped, he could feel it in the deck plates. He paused behind the center seat, watching the view screen as it peered into the forest. Something flashed, deep red, again and again. It had to be them… had to be…
“Signal all security personnel outside the ship to head into the forest, have them head for those phaser blasts!”
“We still have no sensors in that area,” T’Sala reminded him. “We may not be able to find them if they get lost.”
“Relay the order!” he growled, sneering madly at T’Sala. Silently, she obeyed. “I’m sorry,” he said, more calmly. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“Fear,” she replied. “It is a formidable opponent. No apology necessary.”
Stun blasts fired wildly into the forest, forcing the undead warriors to scatter and spread out widely. They did, however, maintain their pursuit of the four Starfleet personnel that were attempting to escape. General Par Tused was having difficulty controlling his undead stead as the red hot energy flashed by, but kept her under control none the less. He’d only wanted to talk, for these foreigners to listen, and for his army to be defeated. These ‘humans’ as they called themselves, would have been useful. He lost three good men to bring down their first ship; they were foolish and set the explosives wrong, destroying themselves while taking the ship from the sky.
Tused dug his heels into the rotted flanks of his war horse, urging her to go faster in the darkened woods. His choice of direction lead him closer to the four ‘humans’; he was attempting to outflank them. He stole a look down at his own flesh, it had just started to turn, to rot and fall from his bones. He was still in control of himself, his own wishes and demands. Unlike those who had long since fallen to whatever the force was that created them. He could still remember the stories of how his people arrived on this planet; how the first ones to die had become these foul creatures… he hated what he had become when his time came. He needed these humans, needed them to kill him and his army, before others would be forced to join his ranks.
He forced his mind to open, to try to call to the others, those that had gone on properly. If he could tell them what he knew… A red beam of phased energy stuck out in the night and hit his stead, sending him flying forward into the dirt. What remained of the war horse was nothing more than a pile of bone dust and deflated armor. He smiled. One less to worry about. The humans had reinforcements. He watched in horror as his army stopped pursuit and the humans fled out of the forest.
“All on board?” McDougal asked as he watched his executive officer walk from the turbo car. Perkins and McCloud followed her out, hot on her heels.
“Yes,” she said with a slight quiver in her voice. “And not a moment too soon, we barely escaped with our lives.”
“I agree,” Perkins interjected. “We met with their General, Par Tused he called himself.”
McDougal sat in his chair and turned about to face the screen as the trio took to their familiar locations. “We’ll only have warp six after we leave this planet,” McCloud said from her engineering console. “Life support is running over maximum design specs as it is.”
“Acknowledged engineer,” McDougal replied. “All stations, prepare for lift off!” A series of acknowledgements echoed through the bridge, followed shortly after by various control stations about the ship.
“All stations report ready,” T’Sala reported from tactical.
“Excellent, then let’s get the hell out of here; helm, take us off the planet.”
“They were undead, sir,” Jones said. “He wanted us to kill them all, our phasers have the capacity. This species, they were on the threshold of transcendence when the star started to expand, those that had gone already to transcend moved them from their planet to here as it began to warm up and support life. Everything that they had was transferred here.”
“Can this wait?” McDougal asked. “We really need to go.” Jones nodded in consent.
Michaels’ report was cut short by the intruder alert klaxon’s wail. It was a shrill warble, one that was joined by the louder and harsher tone of the red alert klaxon. In a flash, two humanoid skeletal forms materialized on the bridge. They dressed like warriors from a long forgotten time, dressed in rusted plate armor and wielding dried-blood stained and vicious looking scimitars. They both screamed, the same eerie scream that could be heard growing outside the ship, and charged McDougal. Using his chair for support, he leaned back, tucked knees to chest, and let loose with all he had. Two Starfleet issue boots found their marks in the chests of the two warriors, the momentum of the act forcing them both to fall to the deck in shock, their target standing firmly atop. Dust from long since rotted organs fell to the ground around the pair.
Jones was quick to act, drawing her type two and firing on the closer of the two forms. McDougal jumped away as the rusted chest piece fell to the ground atop a pile of pulverized bone. The second warrior began to get up, swinging his sword wildly at McDougal. Jones’ phaser struck the monstrosity in an unarmored area, powderizing the creature. Rusty armor fell to the deck with a clang.
“I’ve raised shields,” T’Sala reported.
“Sorry about all that,” a voice called from the aft of the bridge. Jones quickly trained her phaser on the glowing biped that had taken shape just outside the lift door. “There are no more of them on your ship,” it said.
“Who are you and what are you doing on my ship?” McDougal demanded.
“My name is unpronounceable by your tongue, but I can tell you I am the transcended form of one of the beings that inhabit this planet. And so were those that you killed.”
Jones smiled at him. “Par Tused wanted us to kill his army. And you say that they are no different from you?”
“Our planet was the second closest to the star before it began to expand outward in its death.” The being paused, lost in deep contemplation of what next to say to them. On the view screen, the skeletal army could be seen approaching the edge of the forest. Night had grown even darker, and their numbers swelled. “We were on the eve of our own transcendence! How wondrous a thing! Only to be cut short by our own star’s demise. Those that had gone before us found that they had almost limitless powers; we had only just discovered that this planet would sustain us once the star’s warmth touched it.
“Those who had gone before us transported us here, made the planet habitable for us while the star’s warmth was still too far to reach us. They protected us while we transcended.
“As the sun grew, our transcendence rate slowed. We discovered too late that our own star had betrayed us again, its radiation, while ultimately harmless, nearly nullified the process. But there was to be more. The same that slowed us, created them, out there. We discovered that those who went beyond unto death would live again, an army of undead monsters. They’d come out at night in small numbers, and return to wherever they hid before the sun’s rays shone in the early morning.”
“Fascinating,” McDougal interrupted sarcastically. “Kind of convenient that they should only come out at night, right? Praying on those who ‘have yet to go on’, and let me guess, those ‘who have gone before’ protected them from the evil, right?” His crew looked at him, puzzled. Jones scoffed silently. She’d heard this all before.
The being paused, its featureless face most undoubtedly bore a dumbfounded look. Anger seeped into his voice. “With our star gone, my people can now finish what they have been waiting on for ages. But not until after this army is put to rest. They have never been seen in such numbers!”
“Let me guess, you need our help…” Apparently, he did not know fully of Par Tused’s discussion with Miss Jones.
“Exactly. We had to disable your other craft, we had to study you. Some of us told you to leave, but we silenced them. Please, save us from…”
“No way,” Jones interrupted. “Par Tused told us that he had that ship brought down for the sole purpose of exterminating his own army. He knows what is at stake; he knows that his former people were never meant to be like they are now, but to be like you!”
“Listen, really, I’d like to help you out,” McDougal smiled in disbelief at what he was hearing. “But we have this little thing called the Prime Directive. I can’t interfere with the normal development of any race, species or culture. Me helping you would be akin to you helping us to transcend. Can’t do it. Mister Michaels, get us off this rock. And you,” he pointed at the glowing one, “get off my ship. We’ll be getting that hulk off the planet, in the mean time, I suggest you use your ‘all mighty powers’ to save your non-transcended partners until they finally join you. And take those,” he pointed to the skeletal remains on the deck, “with you when you leave.”
Cerberus shuddered as she left the planet’s surface. Below, the army finally emerged from the forest and began its long trek towards civilization. Not far from them, a yellow flash appeared over the living army, a protective shield. “You are a coward! Should we ever meet again, I’ll not be so kind!” In a flash, it exited the ship.
No one questioned McDougal’s actions; he was well within his rights to deny these people what they sought. “Tractor the Delaware,” he ordered.
Topic: Second Chances II: The Long, Dusty Trail. (Read 17886 times)