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

 

11.1
The Coming Darkness

 

“No! Rhonda! Stop!! Mev!!”

 

Only one voice had the power to stop Captain Rhonda Carter in her tracks, particularly when her blood was up. Until this moment, she had not realized anyone had such power over her. But over the past several months, her admiration for and friendship with the ancient klingon general had only grown. 

She turned on General Krank in a rage, his bat’leth, which she had swiped from the scabbard on his back, raised high above her head in preparation for attack. The weapon was almost as big as she was, but Krank had no doubt that it was more dangerous in her hands than in the hands of the mightiest of klingon warriors. The small, slight, blue-haired captain of the U.S.S. Escort emitted a roar of anger and frustration. Shaking the purloined klingon sword over her head in rage. She could not have been more klingon if her skull had ridges.

 

“No!” General Krank continued. “It would not be honorable! This is not your way!”

 

“These things controlled us! They used us! Used me!! I have had enough of weird, alien creatures taking control of my crew!” Rhonda Carter’s face was bright pink with rage. “Taking control of me!”

“You cannot exact your vengeance this way!” Krank continued. “A warrior does not attack from behind. Can’t you see that they are already engaged in combat with another enemy?”

 

General Krank, Captain Rhonda Carter and nine of the vaguely ant-like holy landers were standing on a cliff on an alien planet, looking out over a dark and violent sea. The sky was dark, but the top of the cliff and the cliff face were illuminated by a weird, ghostly light coming from what appeared to be gigantic, tree-sized, bioluminescent mushrooms. 

The nine holy warriors had formed a semi-circle, each standing with two of their arms and all four legs firmly planted on the ground. Their stingers, located at the back of their abdomens, were firmly planted in the ground. The ghostly light from the glowing mushrooms pulsed, cycling from white to amber to green and back.

The holy landers turned their faces to the sky, their eyes fixed, the third, compound eye in the middle of their foreheads reflecting the pulsing light so brightly that they seemed to glow from within. Their three antennae, two at the front of their heads and the third coming up from the back, erect, rigid, vibrating tightly.

 

“Engaged in combat with what? Engaged how?” Carter asked. 

In response, Krank turned and pointed to the darkened sky over the violent waves. 

A chill ran up Rhonda Carter’s spine as she realized that within the darkness was a form of impenetrable darkness. There was something primal about it. A fear that was written so deep into her DNA that she had no hope of defining it. It was the monster in the closet. It was the thing hiding under the bed. And it left those nascent horrors only barely awakened. Those things were its progeny. Its servants. Its food. 

 

And in some bizarre way, nine strange, vaguely ant-like aliens had engaged it in battle.

 

11.1