Ad Astra :: Star Trek Fanfiction Archive ^{Beam me up, Scotty.}

Chapter Text

The Star Beagle Adventures                                                
Episode 13: Close to the Edge Part II - Total Mass Retain
Scene 9: The Startled Memory

Sudden call shouldn’t take away the startled memory…

13.9
The Startled Memory

Lieutenant Commander Zizira Gross was horrified. She had always been somewhat afraid of Captain Rhonda Carter, but now the witch had finally come into her own. Bolians were a practical people. Not believers in magic or spells or witchcraft. Those were just stories to excite young children.

And stories children told younger children to frighten them. 

After contact with the humans, and their scary campfire stories, the stories of witches in particular had really spiced up bolian storytelling. But the stories didn’t hold a candle to the living reality. 

Gross wasn’t certain why there was now a bubbling cauldron where the command chair should be, or how all the bridge monitors had been altered to display spells and various arcane symbols. All glowing and none of them actually on the screens, but hovering, like holograms, just in front of the screens. Except there were no holographic projectors on the bridge of the U.S.S. Escort.

Carter’s back was to Gross, which she considered very satisfactory. Well, it would have been far more satisfactory if Carter had simply not been here on the bridge.

Scratch that, Gross thought. It would be much more satisfactory if she was, herself, pretty much anywhere else.

Carter’s electric blue hair was floating about as if she were in zero G. No - there was more of a pattern to the movement of her hair. As if her hair was somehow prehensile and was making arcane signals of its own.

Gross wanted to flee, but Carter was chanting. It sounded like the chanting of the Holy Warrior who had held everyone on Escort in thrall, particularly Gross. But unlike the Warrior’s song, the lyrics to this song were in some ancient, arcane, unholy Earth language that the universal translator was unable or unwilling to provide translation for. 

The song kept Gross rooted where she stood, terrified. A bolian, Gross had always wondered about the human aphorism, “My hair was standing on end…” Gross didn’t have any hair. But she suddenly understood the idiom. If she had any hair, it would have been standing on end. Her skin prickled, as if she were electrified. She was wrenching about, trying to fight against her frozen muscles. 

Gross was hoping that she had not actually been noticed. Hoping against hope that Carter would not turn around. Particularly since, in addition to stirring whatever unholy potion was bubbling in the gigantic black cauldron in the middle of the bridge and occasionally tending the roaring fire underneath it, the wild, blue-haired witch had taken to levitating just a few inches above the deck plates on the bridge.

Of course, simply thinking about how terrifying it would be if Rhonda Carter were to turn around, how much she really did not want to be seen by her, nothing was more likely to make the witch turn. Like a freezer door opening. Causing a deep chill to run up Gross’s spine.

Of course the arcane symbols on her face were now glowing. Far worse were the eyes - brightly glowing orbs of solid, bright blue… And she was still singing, the song holding Zizira Gross frozen in place…

Gross struggled against the spell. She still couldn’t move, but she finally found her voice. “Wh… Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this to me?”

“To stop you,” Carter said, simply. 

That was the creepiest of all. Carter didn’t stop singing, nor did she work the spoken words into her song. There weren’t two of her and she didn’t have two mouths. Zizira Gross could simply see her captan speaking and singing at the same time. Not two images superimposed over each other. Just one unified impossibility.

 Gross swallowed. Hard. Then: curious… “Stop me from what?”

“From stopping me,” said the singing shrimp-witch.

The Escort’s first officer took a sudden breath, looking into the glowing eyes of a giant shrimp that could not have possibly fit on the bridge, but, somehow, did.

Gross managed to raise her hand. Pointed a trembling finger at the sorcerous crustacean:

“…It’s YOU!! I KNOW you!!…”

13.9