Strange is the darkness in which i Hide!

Posted on Tue Mar 29th, 2022 @ 7:15pm by

Mission: Season 5: Interlude: Darkness Abounds
Location: moon VI orbiting Murzi, in the Caldrun system
Timeline: Mutiny minus Five hours
1444 words - 2.9 OF Standard Post Measure

Winston again shook his head. It was the Strangest set of orders he had received to date, but the why was even stranger. "You have no poker face, and were going to stage a mutiny, not a real one, but just the appearance of one. You need to be at these coordinates at this stardate, and detain the group of individuals that shows up. "He was even warned about the possibility of Starfleet officers showing up. The words were used many times. Detaining and try not to injure too badly, and for Pete's sake if an admiral shows up, don't kill him or her. He was fine up until the phrase Section 31 was casually dropped. At that point, he was sure his entire chain of command had gone off the deep end.

The Coordinates were a lagoon in the shadow of a Volcano, the water was nice, if not a bit too warm, he had planted a few sensors, due to his love of spelunking, and Geomangetics, his love of vulcanology made him sometimes wish he was smarter, the brainiac requirements for school was his downfall, he didn't have the brains to be one of the doctors that ran around predicting what would happen next, although they kept saying California would eventually fall in the sea. and they had been saying it for what 500 years? So he just played around when he could.

The sensors actually had three purposes, 1. collect data on the so-far unexplored (officially) area, 2. let him know when people were skulking about, and 3. if the mountain was going to spew forth firey ash and rain brimstone on him, he was to know about it before it happened, not afterward. So far the mountain was active but quiet, the large manga pocket was 15 kilometers below the surface but moving upwards at a 2 meters a day progression, and would erupt next year, hopefully, he would be long gone by then.

Why he was here 2.3 light-years away from a crew combat action, he still didn't quite understand, but he was not the pay grade that planned these things, he just went where he was told, got to play with explosives, and yaaaa I know, That age-old tale...See exotic places... Meet exotic people... and not kill them?

They had given him a slightly broken down and rusty looking fighter, where they got it, was beyond him, but it was surprisingly powerful, it appeared to be a 20-year-old decommissioned fighter, but it had more firepower than the current version, and actually has cargo space, they had even put a case of real brandy in his hold, warning him to drink it, because the doctor that was lending it to them, wanted it back in tact. The rest was old star fleet emergency rations.

he had told the doc, just use a old fassioned currling iron, the kind that women use on their hair, the burns from it, gives the illusion of electro-schock torture. But the doctor said he had much better tricks up his sleeve.

His sensors showed a remarkable lack of hostile bacteria or organisms in the water. It was hygienic enough to take a swim, but he was not sure he want to risk the local fauna, some of the water creatures looked big enough to take a large bite out of him. He did scuba diving and skin diving back at his homeworld, but there they did not have 25 meter long fish that had teel as long as his fingers.

He heard the whine of a high-power lift vehicle coming in and it sat down on the lake. He smiled, finally, maybe he could learn a bit about what was really going on, maybe it was one of those Halloween pranks that happened on the first of April. that was not the correct phrase, he would have to look it up when he got back to the ship.

He walked down to the beach, his hand casually closed to his old-fashioned sonic hand cannon. It was borrowed from his Sargent, it was a family heirloom.

Three figures wrapped in long flowing robes were visible when the hatch opened,
That they were female was not alarming, Females were always the more deadly members of any species. But that was not the part that bothered him, The amount of weaponry on their persons, and well placed and rather well-kept weapons harness that was obviously made to keep the weapons secure, out of the way, but ready for instant use. His vision was good enough that he could see that they were not Vulcan, maybe Romulan, or offshoot, but human they were not. They had a smooth cat-like grace like they were already stalking him, and he was the prey of interest. They casually dismissed him as if he was not a figure worthy of their attention. After quickly looking around, and one of the females using a non-federation tricorder to scan the location, They stepped out on the water.

Wait what, how were they walking on the water. Then he saw the last female was pointing a device at the water, they were freezing the water to walk on it, well it did beat swimming with that hungry fauna. he casually looked down at his wrist comp, it was a fancy watch-looking PDA that was synced up with all of his sensors. He noticed that some of the larger fish creatures were attracted to that device that was freezing the water. He did not want to speak in federation standard, as that mike make him seem like an agent of Starfleet, so he spoke in
Breen {Your device is attracting the large aquatic predators, you might want to speed things along} they did not seem to understand, but then again, it was a language that sounded like garbled guitar sound effects. His throat always hurt after trying to speak it but enabled the universal translator as spoke again. The Gadget did its job and translated [you, large man-eating fish attract, not use much more if want to live long or faster reach the destination!]

They paused, held a hushed conversation that he could not hear, they started leaping. It was like a ballet. he expected to hear music from the nutcracker erupt from hidden speakers in the forest any second. Their leaping was bringing them rapidly to the shore, but also a lot of those 25 meter long fish things too.

They reached the beach as the fish started attacking the small ice patches on the water where the females were previously had been. Those teeth looked even more impressive up close. He had positioned himself between the females and the edge of the water and had his hand on his sonic cannon, but the fist seemed only interested in the frozen snacks of ice cakes on the surface, he slowly backed away from the water, trying to forget the 3 armed to the teeth females behind him.

As he turned around the shortest female had a wicked-looking Klingon dagger half a meter from his face, looking like she was about to skin him. he said in Breen [Do you follow the Klingon poet path] the PDA on his wrist translated into Federation Standard {Do you subscribe to the path of the warrior-poet?} The lead female, the tall one with the most weapons, said in Klingon "choSaw/nayqang’a’" His PDA translated as {I think he wants to marry you. } He froze at that phraseology, then went into his unarmed combat stance. Maybe picking Breen was a bad idea, to much room for bad translation.

Maybe he should let her win, or was that agreeing to the marriage, but what if he needed to defeat her to not accept, or what if defeating her meant that he won her hand in marriage. "Aarggg" he voiced, his frustration now getting the best of his calm center. The two taller females backed away from the shorter now pissed-looking female, who turned her blade sidewise and started what looked to be knife forms, or at least she was waving her knife around in a complicated fashion. This was not working out as he had planned. He was trying to identify her fighting style, it did not look Klingon, nor did any of them. She was athletic, graceful, and he was startled to notice she was rather attractive. [oh crap] he said in Breen, fortunately, he tended to continue in whatever language he started in, it was a bad habit that just might save his skin. His PDA translated {Fertlization commenced } If he did not need that stupid PDA to translate, he would shoot the blasted thing.


to be continued