Chapter Text
The gravity didn’t exist here. There are no lights, no smell, no sound. Only some strange taste stuck in the mouth. The soundless wind was always changing directions, always changing its strength. The filling of weightlessness made M’Ress sick. Her brain lost any sense of direction or time. She was here, wherever here was, for some unknown amount of time. Darkness felt like liquid. And she lost the sense of her skin. She didn’t try to move, didn’t try to get out of here. She just gave up, just relaxed and replayed the last couple of hours that in her head.
“Get down there, see if there is anything strange, take the readings and come back.” Ensign Jonson said. “Sounds easy enough!”
M’Ress smiled once again, remembering this phrase. “Easy enough” miss on that one.
“Don’t ease off so early.” Responded lieutenant Vetrov. “We will still have to walk.” He said, knowing full well that Jonson hated long walks.
M’Ress only smiled at the small discussion. She was in a good mood, but sticking her head in to a dialog, was not something she liked. She has already changed her uniform dress to a more fitting jacket and jeans. Even though the jacket she took was light one, it still looked a little too big for her. Jonson and Vetrov were wearing much wormer clothes. The planet, on which they were beaming to, had a good air composition, but really bad conditions. temperature -38 C, strong winds, a lot of precipitation. But unlike humans Shiboline had her fur as a very good lair of protection, especially because it just shed old fur.
“You are a little too quiet today lieutenant.” Vetrov said to M’Ress. “What do you think?”
“Think about what?” M’Ress asked.
“About the expedition.”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it an expedition. It’s more like a little away mission. Nothing really important. Shouldn’t be so hard.”
“Yea, I think so too.” Jonson said. “If it was something important captain Kirk would lead the mission.”
The doors to transporter room slid open and the team of free entered the room. Ensign on the controls was already waiting for them. The group walked up on the transporter floor. lieutenant Vetrov as the leader of the landing party looked at his team.
“Hope you didn’t forget anything. Asking captain to transport something on the surface will be humiliating.” He said to us making Jonson check his equipment once again. After Jonson’s nod, Vetrov turned to face the ensign behind controls. “Beam us down ensign.”
“Humiliation is hundred times better than what’s happening now.” M’Ress whispered, but her whisper never left her own throat.
Immediately as he ordered, the landing party was captured in a beam of light, reduced molecules and send hundreds of kilometers down to the surface. Only to be rebuild from the ground up.
M’Ress opened her eyes. She never liked beaming with open eyes. It disorientated her. Harsh, cold wind hit her face with all its mite. Her fur took the blow, but she still felt the cold stings of the snow. Trying to protect her face with her hand, she looked around to find the crew mates.
“Is everyone here?” She heard Lieutenant Vetrov asking.
“Here!” Jonson responded.
“Here!” She said trying to get to both men, through the thick snow.
Soon two silhouettes appeared. They almost immodestly turned in to Vetrov and Jonson.
“Alright people, lets get to work!” Vetrov commanded.
M’Ress took her tricorder out, scanning the area for the same reading detected by the ship. Jonson meanwhile opened his beg and started collecting the samples of the snow. The tricorder tried its best to scream through the wind, but M’ress still couldn’t hear it. She only worked with the data it showed on the screen.
“Here, this way!” She said to the group leading the way.
Through meters of snow they forced their way to the source of strange readings. The wind hit them hard and the snow painfully stung the skin. the team has already gave up the hope that the source will be in some closed area with no wind or at list no snow, but the closer they were getting to the source the more obvious it became that before them was some sort of landscape of building.
“Is that… a building?” Asked Jonson.
“No. More looks like a rock formation. Too random angles.” Answered Vetrov.
M’ress kept quiet. She looked on the tricorder trying to understand what it said, but the reading were too random. Scans showed that the structure before them was made of metal, but in second the same scans said it was send. Whatever there was it was messing up with the tricorder.
“Of course it was! This peace of ****************” M’Ress screamed in to the void. Her voice wasn’t even formed.
The team finely got to the structure. It was still covered by the snow, but judging by the area they saw clear suggested it something like a mountain.
“Whatever it is, it’s inside the mountain.” M’ress said when three of them found a small deepening in the rock formation to hind from the wind.
“Is there a way inside? A cave maybe?” Asked lieutenant Vetrov.
“I have no idea. The tricorder is mostly useless now. That thing messes up with its sensors.” M’Ress said trying to make something out of the mess the tricorder gave her.
“Hay, I think I see something.” Said ensign looking somewhere along the rock. “It could be a cave.”
“You sure?” Asked Vetrov.
“Well, we can check it. I don’t see much more options here.” Answered Jonson.
“M’Ress?” Vetrov asked for opinion.
“Why not?” She said.
And the team got on the way to the presumable cave. Luckily for them it actually was a cave. The entrance was about ten meters in height and about 6 meters in width. It was fully covered in ice, with meter long icicle hang down from the entrance. In some way the cave more looked like a very big tunnel than a cave.
Hah! We didn’t know… How stupid. We didn’t know… M’ress thought. She didn’t notice how her sanity was slowly slipping away.
“Feu! At list there is no snow here.” Said Jonson as the team walked farther from the entrance and there was less and less snow scattered across the floor.
M’Ress didn’t respond. She lightened up the screen of the tricorder with a flashlight. She tried to make a map of the cave, which was surprisingly easy despite all the random data tricorder gave her.
“Well, M’Ress? Do you have a map?” Asked Vetrov.
“Give me a second…” M’Ress said. “Okey, I think I got it.” She said in a moment and started walking to the approximate location of the source of the strange readings.
The group walked through the cave, lighting its way with flashlights. The cave became smaller the further they went. It sometimes divided, and the group had to mark the way out with a phaser and go on further in to the darkness. They walked like this for several minutes, stopping sometimes to take samples of the cave. The team started noticing that the cave looked a little odd. It looked a little too rectangle like, as if someone made a rectangle corridor in the rock and then left it for couple thousand years. They couldn’t prove it or check it, though. So they concentrated on getting to their destination.
After some more time they got to the end of the tunnel. It collapsed a long time ago and now the only way further was to crawl through a very narrow path…
“Well… I suspect the source of the unusual reading is somewhere there.” Vetrov said pointing at the very small entrance.
“You’re right. It’s there.” Said M’Ress. “It’s actually should be very close. I would say a couple of meters.”
“Okey, um… I don’t think any of us can crawl through this.” Said ensign Jonson. “Except for you maybe.” He added pointing at M’Ress.
M’Ress said nothing. She looked at the hole near the ground asking herself if she really could crawl through it.
“Hm… I can try.” Shiboline said. “Doesn’t hurt to try.” She added taking off her jacket and giving it to Vetrov.
She smoothly laid on the ground and like any other feline started slowly crawling through the tiny tunnel. Like some liquid she moved on the rocks. there wasn’t a single moment when she was stuck or couldn’t move forward. The T-shirt she was wearing protected part of her fur from being covered in dust and dirt, but her hands had already in so much dirt that M’Ress asked herself how long she will find send in the fur. The tricorder followed her like a second tail hitting the rocks and making the plastic or metallic clacking sound. Finely her hands were able to grab the walls of the exit out of the narrow tunnel. Without much of a struggle she forced herself out of tunnel.
She stood up checking her uniform and trying to clean the dust and dirt.
“Did you get through?” She herd Vetrov asking.
“Yes, I’m here.” She turned to look around.
“What do you see?” Asked Jonson. “M’Ress?” He asked when didn’t get an answer.
M’Ress couldn’t say a thing. She looked around in shock. She wasn’t in a cave any more. She was now in a room, enormous round room. Its dome ceiling was at least 12 meters high. In the middle of the room were two big columns. They blended a the tip forming something similar to gates. If gates had no doors. Around these ‘gates’ were several things that looked like control stations. Everything in the room was made of the same material and had the same stile. This material had the color and shine of metal, but it formed a pattern that looked more like something biological. The light from flashlight made some lines in this pattern illuminate with a strange purple color. These lines were like veins that spread everywhere. And lighting only a small section of these system of veins would illuminate several meters of them.
“M’Ress? Are you okey there?” Vetrov asked again, clearly nervous of possible loss of the member of his team.
“I’m here! I’m alright. It’s just…” M’ress didn’t know how to start describing the place she found herself in. “I’m- I’m in a room. It is clearly artificially made and if I had to say it seems like whoever made it was about our level of technology, maybe a little lower.” She said starting to walk around the ‘gate’ and scanning the structure. “In the middle there is something like two obelisks or columns. they look like a gate without doors.” She now looked only on the tricorder. “It seems like this gate is- I don’t know… Ether it’s messing with my tricorder or it emits some strange- radiation? The readings are too random.”
Her voice echoed through the room. She circled around the ‘gate’ slowly getting closer and closer. Her eyes were catching more and more repetitive data in the tricorder. She was slowly finding peaces of the whole picture, slowly getting to the point of everything.
“No… No! I should have stopped! Why did I continue? The facts were all there! Why didn’t I see it?!” M’Ress asked herself just for the sake of asking, just to fill the void that was slowly getting in to her mind.
“Hey… I think I see the source of all this interference from.” M’Ress said looking at the possible source.
On the other side of the control station, the side that is closer to the ‘gate’, there was a small bulge. The tricorder went mad when Shiboline brought it closer to the bulge. Trying to learn more about the thing, M’Ress touched the bulge. In an instance a cylinder slid out almost hitting feline’s head. She jumped up, away from the cylinder, but the machine hands already came to motion. The control station started changing its form. The metal it was made of melted and like water started moving around. The ‘veins’ on the station lit up with a purple light. Like some disease this light infected the floor, than the ‘gates’, the walls, and finely the ceiling. Suddenly the room was illuminated by tens of bulges in walls and ceiling.
“M’Ress? What happened?” Vetrov shouted from the other side of the tunnel. “The cave lit up just now!”
“I- I don’t know. It seems the system activated from my touch, I’m not sure why and how!” M’Ress shouted back. “The two columns are moving closer to each other. they are literally forming the-”
M’Ress didn’t finish the sentence. The room shook and her tricorder started screaming with beeps. The seismic activity just fired through the top. SD radar showed that there was something massive happening under the room.
“M’Ress get of there!” Shouted Vetrov. “Jonson contact the Enterprise! We need to beam out.”
“The rocks are blocking the signal!” Responded Jonson.
“Than run to the exit! Come on, run!”
“But sir… you-”
“That’s an order!” lieutenant cited him off. “Come on M’Ress get out of there! I’m not leaving you here!” He shouted in to the tunnel.
He didn’t know M’Ress tried, but the tunnel was blocked by some rocks. She already tried to find another way out, and the options she had were one worse than another.
“I can’t! The tunnel is blocked. You run I’m gonna find my way out!” She almost ordered to the Vetrov.
“I already said it. I’m not leaving you here!”
“There is no other way! Come on, get the hell out.” M’Ress shouted looking around, trying to find another tunnel, or a button or something.
Vetrov cursed to himself and ran back to the entrance. Meanwhile M’Ress has already gave up on finding a tunnel. She thought now on how to contact the Enterprise and somehow get transported from the room, but soon she realized that to do so she needed years and unlimited resources, which she didn’t have. So the only thing left to do is to stop whatever the mechanism she started. That was nearly impossible, but at least it was ‘nearly’.
M’Ress ran to the station and took out her tricorder. It finely stopped showing the random results and it became much easier to see the correlations and resolutes, but it was all useless. M’Ress couldn’t do anything with it. She didn’t eve know who created this thing, not to say about their language or controls. She saw the buttons, saw some little dents, but she could nothing about it.
In panic she tried to push them, to activate something, to make the machine do something. But machine did nothing. The shakes continued kinking M’Ress down. In frustration she tried to smash the control panel with her hand, but instead of hitting the metal and making a loud bang sound, her hand sank in it. The ‘metal’ like water wrapped her hand, getting between the hair and touching her skin. M’Ress could say anything. Fear took over now and she tried to free her hand, but the liquid meta caught her. She used all the strength she had, despite the pain of her hair being pulled the opposite way. She tried to twist her hand out but the metal stuck to her. M’Ress was able to get her hand out of the station, but the metal was still stuck to her hand. It stretched to the station. M’Ress tried to to twist her hand again, almost turning it 180 degrees.
The metal suddenly freed her, making M’Ress fell on the floor. The ‘gates’ moved forming a bridge between the two columns. The veins in the columns started shining even brighter and changing colors. From dark purple it changed to pink, than red, than suddenly dark blue and finely stopped at light blue, almost wight, color. It shined like a lamp now. Suddenly the light disappeared and the space between the two columns was filled with light blue and wight strings. they appeared one after another, and in a moment filled the space to the point when M’ress couldn’t see the other side.
M’Ress laid on the floor in disbelieve that her absolutely emotional and random actions led to such effect. The lines between the columns started to mingle and morph in to each other. Soon from those lines and image formed. A shore of some sort. Green waters were coming on the blue sand, washed it over, and then came back. From the sides of the picture Shiboline could see some mountains. Slightly above horizon there were two moons. This picture was clearly from some other planet, as the planet she was on never had any moons.
The picture changed. Now it showed some city between some low mountains. Somehow the strings were able to show the hundreds of people that walked on the streets. M’Ress couldn’t see what spices they were as the picture was taken from some hill a kilometer or two away, but she was sure she have never seen any structures like the buildings shown. Than the picture changed again showing some mountain terrain, and than again showing space, and again showing some insides of a ship. For a moment M’Ress saw someone familiar to a human that walked through the tunnel shown, and M’Ress could swear that person saw her through the gate. Their eyes locked on to each other for a moment before the picture changed again. M’Ress walked backwards a couple steps, but fell on the floor again because of another earth shake.
She looked at the ‘gate’. A thought came in her mind, a stupid thought, but a possible one. What if the ‘gate’ was some sort of a transporter system? It would be shameful if she went right through it and it would turn out to be hologram, but if it was a transporter… It could save her life.
Or ruin it! Break in to nothing! Destroy it! I should have died there instead of doing it!
M’Ress looked at the ‘gate’ the views have changed for several times now, but there was nothing even remotely familiar. If it really was a transporter she would like to get somewhere more familiar than a civilization that leaves in a Middle Ages. The views changed one after another. A river swapped with mountains, skyscrapers changed with tents, but one moment a very familiar figure changed the view. It was hidden in a shadow, but the figure of captain Kirk was still recognizable.
M’Ress couldn’t wait for her mind to recognize the surrounding of the captain. The cave, the room was getting less and less stable. It could collapse at any second, so a place with captain Kirk which surely on the bridge, was an ideal place. She ran to inside the picture and suddenly the world around her twisted and melted. Colors became intense, started burning her eyes. The coolness of the cave changed with a burning feeling. And then… everything went black.
So she got here, in this place, in the darkness, in nothingness. She lost her feeling of time, lost her feeling of place. It was nothingness. Tears had formed on her eyes as her she reminded herself this story of hers once again. The ending was the same, no meter how hard she screamed or how deeply regretted her decisions. She was here once and for—
SHVO-OH-H
A sudden noise almost made Shiboline deaf and the bright wight light almost made her blind. The gravity suddenly appeared above her head and the she fell on something metal making a loud BANG. Pain has fired through her head and darkness returned in to her eyes for a moment, but this time only for a moment.