Chapter Text
The Star Beagle Adventures
Episode 12: Close to the Edge Part I - The Solid Time of Change
Scene 11: Something Wicked This Way Comes
Getting over all the time I had to worry
12.11
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Lt. Cmdr. Zizira Gross and General Krank were crowded uncomfortably into Captain Rhonda Carter’s quarters. Uncomfortably both because of the lack of seating and the need for the blue-haired captain to use the transparent screen in order to read transcriptions of everyone’s words as she could not hear them.
The elderly klingon general was seated next to Carter on her bed. The bolian first officer sat across from them in the room's only chair.
Captain Carter had cleaned all the bizarre markings off of her walls days ago, but one inscription had returned to her wall. Lt. Cmdr. Zizira Gross was stealing uncomfortable glances at it.
“Something’s coming,” Carter started. “I don’t know what and I don’t know how, but I reached out to something and it’s coming.”
“Is that why we’re headed in the wrong direction?” Zizira Gross ran a blue hand over her blue scalp, then squeezed the back of her neck, a sign of agitation among bolians.
General Krank grunted. “You are running. Are you running away from something or are you running toward something?”
“We’re following the holy landers,” Carter answered. “They know the way out.” She made an exasperated gesture with her left hand. “I need you to focus here..." Rhonda Carter looked down and sighed, gathering her thoughts, then: "You know that I went crazy trying to hear again…”
“We noticed,” Gross muttered.
“I used to practice witchcraft as a kid,” Carter continued. “Just for fun. Not something I believed in, but I would give my brothers the evil eye just to put them off their game. I was just playing, but I didn’t let them know that…”
“All older brothers,” Krank said. “Made you a fighter.”
“Yeah,” Carter replied. “Each one of them wanted to teach me how to fight. Surprised the hell out of them that I kind of knew already. I guess from watching them wrestle around. A bunch of big old farm boys and one little girl… But anyway, I went through a witchy phase when I was 10, 12 or so, and got fascinated with magic spells… Well, I was just using everything I could remember and everything I could find in the computer. I didn’t think for a second any of it would work in any mystical way. I guess I was kind of hoping that it would help me… You know… Part of healing is mental…”
“Like poetry,” Krank opined.
“I guess,” Carter responded. “Yeah, kind of the way klingons use poetry. Strengthen the mind…”
“And the mind strengthens the body,” said Krank.
“It was so loud,” Carter continued. “When you deafened me. It was just this endless howling roar. Not like surf. More like a wind storm. But kind of dead, a dead sound. I had to exhaust myself to get to sleep. I think I was trying to distract myself from all the noise…” The blue haired captain pointed at the one inscription she had scrawled back onto her wall after cleaning it. “That is a summoning spell. Something came to me in a dream and took away the noise… It’s been silent ever since. Occasionally, I think I hear myself when I’m talking, but for the most part, totally silent. Then it came to me again in another dream and showed me that…” Carter pointed again at the summoning spell scrawled on her wall.
“You can’t be serious,” said Zizira Gross. “You don’t really think you cast some sort of spell and summoned a demon of some sort…”
Rhonda Carter shrugged. “A year ago, some giant trans-dimensional mushroom eyeball rode a subspace carrier wave into this ship’s communication system, showed up on my bridge and got inside your predecessor’s head, leading to his death.”
Carter leaned forward and tapped her first officer’s knee. “That’s why you’re here." She leaned back. Gestured broadly to both Krank and Gross. "Not too long ago, all three of us were painting our nails black and our eyelids green thanks to creatures made of some sort of glass. This ship was taken over by giant, singing warrior ants to help them fight some horrifying, kite-shaped monster on a planet full of giant, glowing mushrooms. We just escaped from another variety of trans-dimensional mushrooms encased in thorns of rock. I wouldn’t get too arrogant about what is, and what is not possible.”
“So you think you summoned something?” asked Krank.
“I think I got something’s attention,” Carter opined. “With my luck, it’ll turn out to be some sort of trans-dimensional singing mushroom with a fetish for nail polish…”
“All right,” said Gross. “Let’s assume you’re right and some sort of psychic mushroom has tuned into your brain waves and is coming to meet us. What are we supposed to do about it?”
“Everything we know about this thing is on that wall or in your head,” said Krank. “So we need to get into your head.”
“We don’t have Dr. Uto, or any of the betazoids with us,” said Gross.
“Betazoids, no. But we do have vulcans,” Krank observed.
“Great,” muttered Carter. “Just what I need. More people in my head.”
“It will have to be Ensign Sevork,” said Gross. “They’re both part human. John’s more human than Seprek, but he has the ability and Seprek doesn’t. Shall I?”
Carter sighed, then nodded.
The bolian first officer touched her communicator badge. “Ensign Sevork, this is Gross,”
The young vulcan’s voice came through over the comm system: “This is Sevork, go ahead sir.”
“Please join me in the captain’s quarters.”
The U.S.S. Escort wasn’t a large ship and it was only a few moments before the senior officers were joined by Ensign John Sevork.
The young vulcan was sporting a purple mohawk and the beginnings of a purple goatee.
Rhonda Carter burst into laughter, only to find the three non-human officers looking at her with puzzled expressions. Carter couldn’t help herself - she laughed until her sides and her throat ached. She clutched at her throat, trying to breathe, her eyes tearing up.
Sevork waited until his captain had regained enough composure to look at him through her transparent screen. “You suggested that I update my hairstyle…”
“Oh my God, I love it! You bizarre, wonderful terrestrial vulcans...” Carter managed, before lapsing into more helpless laughter.
12.11