Chapter Text
Part Three (Cont’d)
The Flaxian cruiser Sud Yot effortlessly cut through the vacuum of space at high warp.
It wasn’t a brand new ship, but it was significantly less weathered than the Ret Kol, with a smoother and more curved raptor-like design. It was also substantially faster, with this particular class of cruiser having been handed a major warp core upgrade over all of their predecessors by the Flaxian Science Agency after having been commissioned.
As a result, it was set to make the long journey out to the derelict in a much faster time than the Ret Kol had managed. Although, as far as anyone onboard was concerned, it still wasn't making it fast enough. Even at their maximum cruising speed, they were still over 30 hours away.
Inside the habitation levels of the ship, Natasha tried to put her worries about the duration of their journey to the back of her mind and instead focus on the task in hand.
Alongside her, Denella was wrestling with similar feelings of concern. The feeling of being separated from so many people that she cared about wasn’t new to her. She had experienced that feeling before when she had been taken from her home on Orpheus IV by the Syndicate. And now she was feeling it again, separated from Klath, Jirel and Sunek. Not to mention the Bounty, her home. Her ship.
But, like Natasha, the Orion engineer was similarly trying to keep those feelings submerged for now, and kept equal focus on their task.
In their shared cabin, in the interior of the Sud Yot, Natasha watched on as Denella worked on the small padd device. The one that now contained the set of data she had been able to copy from Commander Turanya’s own device. Except, even the copied data was still locked down.
“Got something?” Natasha muttered at her colleague, eliciting a slightly irritated glance in return.
“For the tenth time: No.”
Natasha mustered an apologetic smile and stepped away from the single table of the cabin they’d been assigned, where Denella was working. There was little else in the room aside from the uncomfortable bunk beds where they were to sleep, which at least meant that, despite the relatively small size of the cabin, there was plenty of room for a spot of worried pacing.
“I’m sorry,” she managed as she walked, “It’s just…I sacrificed a lot of dignity for that. And I really want us to get something from it in return.”
Denella nodded in understanding and returned to her work. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, all your work made it a lot easier to get past the encryption.”
“So you’ve got something?”
“For the eleventh time: No,” she smiled patiently, “But this snapshot of the data is no longer tethered to the live encryption cycle of the main Science Agency network. It’s still switching between different encryptions, but only a local repeating sequence, which I can definitely work with.”
Natasha nodded in satisfaction.
She had already had a chance to browse through the smattering of unencrypted data that Turanya’s padd had contained on it. But that was little more than a dry list of ongoing research that he had been using to impress her over dinner.
And there was nothing in the projects, with titles such as ‘An investigation into the efficiency of hypospray delivery systems in zero gravity’, or ‘Assessing the impact of warp speed deceleration on the gut microbiome of a Horta’, or ‘Chaotic space: A topological study of trimetric fractures in the eighteenth dimensional gradient’, that had really helped shed any light on anything.
But she was sure that there would be more information than was being shown to her, and so Denella was now trying to break through to the full database. To try and give them a better idea of what might be going on as they raced on to find out what had become of their colleagues.
Neither woman was certain that there would be anything helpful on there, but even if there wasn’t, it was at least proving to be something of a distraction from their deeper worries on their long journey out to the derelict.
Natasha lost count of how many laps of worried pacing she had completed when Denella finally called out from the table.
“Ah-hah!”
“You did it?” Natasha called out, as she rushed over to the table and accepted the padd back from the satisfied Orion.
“The tougher they make ‘em, the easier it is to break ‘em.”
Natasha tapped away at the device in satisfaction for a moment, but it didn’t take long for that expression to turn into a frown.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she sighed, “There’s…nothing here. Just a bunch more lists of research projects, crew rotations, requisition forms, station admin.”
“What were you expecting? A big folder marked ‘secrets’? There’s gotta be something that’ll tell us more about what the hell’s going on here.”
“Like what?”
Denella paused and considered that question for a moment. Then, inspiration hit her. “What about the transit logs for the transport ship the others went off to salvage? Where had it been? What was it carrying?”
Natasha nodded and went to work, quickly tapping away at the device to find the relevant information. “Got it. Seems like it was dispatched to a trading outpost in the Drura sector.”
“Hrm,” Denella mused, recognising the name, “Pretty lawless part of the galaxy for a Flaxian transport to be waltzing by.”
“All the transit log says is that they were sent to pick up a ‘package’ for Commander Turanya and the Reja Gar station. Let me see if there’s anything else here…”
She worked on, checking through the padd’s files for the right information. And then she gasped.
“Oh my god.”
Denella glanced over at the screen, and her eyes widened in shock.
“Well,” she managed eventually, “That’s not something you read every day.”
* * * * *
Jirel stared down at the complex of platforms and scaffolding as they stretched out below them, the fragile structure only partially illuminated by his torchlight.
With a grim sense of foreboding, he looked back up at Lieutenant Kataya, who stood next to him overlooking the railings that fenced off the derelict’s warp core, and associated long drop down into the depths of the engine decks.
“And you’re sure this is the only access to the secondary power matrix?”
“Yes,” Kataya nodded inside his helmet, “It’s an old design. Not built for convenience. Usually this sort of repair would be carried out at a maintenance facility. Not in deep space.”
“Yeah, well, packed my spare maintenance facility in my other spacesuit, didn’t I?”
The Trill clocked a flicker of something on Kataya’s face in response to that. A slight softening of the Flaxian lieutenant’s icy complexion which made him wonder whether he was finally making progress on a rudimentary friendship. Although, he quickly conceded to himself that this wasn’t exactly the most pressing issue.
“Klath?” he called out over the comms link, “How are things looking?”
“Still clear,” the Klingon reported back, “For now.”
After they had ascertained that the deck was clear, Lieutenant Kataya had posted Klath and Sunek next to the entrance to the engineering deck to keep watch, as he and Jirel had got on with fixing the power issues.
The repairs had proven to be more complicated than either man had hoped, with the main power relays all out of action. Which is what had ultimately brought them over to the silent warp core, and the very long drop next to them.
“Ok,” Jirel managed, as confidently as he could, “Guess we should get on with this.”
With that, he took a deep breath, and went to clamber over the guardrail around the core, to begin his journey down into the pit. Just as he swung his leg over, his heart skipped a beat in shock as he felt something grab his arm.
He tried to hide his embarrassment as he realised it was Lieutenant Kataya.
“I should be the one to go,” he muttered over their short-range comms link.
Jirel channelled all his own power reserves into maintaining a brave face, and into keeping thoughts of the mauled Flaxians they had passed on the way here from the forefront of his mind. On both aspects, he was only partly successful. “You’re the expert on Flaxian engineering,” he pointed out, gesturing to the array of controls and consoles around them, “I’m the doofus who can just about clamber down there and flick on the secondary connections. Plus, you’re in charge.”
Kataya considered the logic of this statement for a moment, then reluctantly nodded. “Well,” he offered, “Good luck, Jirel.”
“What, no ‘newbie’?”
The Flaxian regarded the Trill and shook his head.
“Not any more.”
Jirel mustered a friendly nod and allowed that breakthrough to feed his wavering sense of confidence in himself. Then, he fully swung himself over the guardrail and set the heavy boots on his feet down on the first level of the elaborate scaffolding platforms that dropped down into the depths of the ship below him.
“Jirel,” he heard Klath grunt over the comms link from the other side of the engineering bay, “Make sure you stay alert.”
It was as close as the Klingon got to a heartfelt expression of concern.
“Yeah,” Sunek chimed in, “If you die, I’m gonna be really annoyed.”
And that was as close as the Vulcan got.
Stifling a smile despite himself, Jirel shone the torch beams from his helmet down below him, keeping a lid on the rush of vertigo he felt from the sight of the drop.
There were several further open mesh platforms to the labyrinth below him, each connected by narrow ladders and secured to the walls of the cylindrical expanse and to each other with stout metal poles. He still couldn’t get an accurate picture on how far down it dropped. But it seemed to be several decks-worth of distance down to the bottom.
He forced himself to look back up and tentatively stepped over to the ladder down to the next platform.
“Secondary connections’ll be two levels down,” Kataya reported as he watched on.
“Got it,” Jirel muttered back, as he began to descend.
There was barely enough room on each rung for one of his bulky boots at a time, forcing him to awkwardly swing each leg past the other with each step down he took. His phaser rifle rocked back and forth where it was slung over his back. After a moment, he breathed a sigh of relief as he touched down on the next platform, and quickly swung his head torches around to check his next move.
And then he saw her.
She was crouched on the opposite side of the platform he had just set down on, staring at him with a curious expression.
She couldn’t have been more than eight years old, and looked for all the world like a human child, with dusky brown skin and piercingly bright yellow eyes. She wore a simple green dress and flat shoes. Given the context of where they were and what was happening, she couldn’t have looked more out of place.
“Hello,” she said.
Jirel just stared back, frozen to the spot in shock. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t find anything to say through the speaker on his suit.
Above him, he heard Kataya call out over the comms link. “What are you doing? You need to go down another level.”
“Um,” Jirel finally managed, keeping his focus on the mysterious girl that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, “I think I’ve…found a survivor.”
“What?” Kataya snapped back in disbelief.
Up above, the Flaxian craned his neck over the guard rail. On the other side of the bay, Klath and Sunek immediately exchanged a look of concern.
Down on the platform, the little girl jerked her head up and spotted Kataya above them, peering down at them. Though he could seem to see her in the gloom. She cocked her head to one side as she studied the Flaxian in the spacesuit, before looking back at Jirel.
Despite the shock of seeing her, something inside Jirel instinctively made him want to help this lost child. Keeping his rifle slung behind him, he took a slow step forwards and crouched down towards her eye line. “Hey,” he managed, hoping his voice sounded as calm as he was intending through the tinny speaker on his helmet, “It’s alright. We’re here to help you. Ok?”
She seemed to consider his words, but was still primarily focused on his face through the helmet visor, peering at the two rows of spots down either side of his head.
“You’re not like the others,” she said eventually.
Jirel wasn’t quite sure what that was supposed to mean. But before he could ask any follow-up questions, the girl took a half-step back and scrunched her nose up.
“But I still don’t like you.”
In an instant, her expression hardened.
The girl’s face began to fold in on itself. Her entire body seemed to contort and deform as she transformed into something else entirely.
And Jirel, helplessly suspended on a platform above a long drop into the depths of the derelict, found himself clinging to one of the scaffolding poles for dear life, as the whole structure started to vibrate and groan.
And his eyes widened in horror.
End of Part Three