EP 6 - ACT III
COMMAND YACHT, ENGINEERING AREA
Reb shook with trepidation, pressing his face against the
mesh at the end of the crawlway, trying to see through into the space
beyond. His hands, face and clothes
were all smudged with black soot from the charred insides of the narrow tube as
he'd inched his way toward the warp core anti-room.
He'd scraped his arms and legs while squeezing past the broken
shards of plastic and metal, and each scratch felt sore.
The half Ferengi sniffed at the air.
Laying in the crawlway, he could see from
the floor level position the wild lighting effect of the warp core bouncing
pink and purple colours off the deck and the surfaces of the surrounding
atrium. In fact, this engineering space
was a lot larger than its adjacent shiny black control room, and he wondered if
it had been designed that way so that only the sleek, ultra-modern room would
be on display to any fare-paying passengers who had taken a tour of the command
yacht.
The core was several metres away, pulsating in the centre of
the room. On the other side of the wide
vertical tube, he could make out what looked like the missing crew.
A naked, slightly wrinkled arm, human, lay
upturned to the left of the core, and sticking out from the right were the legs
of a Klingon, wearing the distinctive pointed iron boots - the rest of each
body and the third crewman were presumably obscured by the core itself.
Without warning, a face suddenly materialised in front of
the grille, only inches away from his own.
"Peekaboo!" it chirped.
"Yeaagh!!" Reb couldn't help but cry out with
surprise and fear and bumped his head hard on a crawlway support strut.
The face of the Bajoran girl on the other side of the mesh
merely smiled and giggled. "Have
you come looking for your friends?" she asked and gently released the
panel. Reb realised he was as good as
trapped, but still tried desperately to shuffle back away from her.
The girl was quicker and reached into the
crawlway, gripping his collar with alarming strength and hauling him out onto
the floor of the warp room. She stood
to her full metre and a bit height, slamming the grille closed with her foot.
"They didn't want to play with me," she snivelled,
looking over to her right. Reb propped
himself up on his elbows and followed her gaze.
Behind the core he now saw all three crewman, either unconscious
or dead - there was no blood or signs of obvious injury.
"Do you want to play with me?" She
smiled drawing closer to him.
Reb formed a fist and lashed out with all his might.
His hand smacked clean across her hard face,
bruising his knuckles. The girl only
slightly turned her head, a lock of hair falling over her eyes that were now
fixed upon him in a menacing stare, her perfect teeth slightly bared.
She was a freak, he decided, not at all like
a little girl. Her face in the light of
the warp core seemed false - gnarled at the edges.
Suddenly she whirled around, as if aware of something behind
her. A second later, the computer
chirped a warning. The little girl skipped
over to the console, with her back to Reb, completely unperturbed by his
attack.
The half-Ferengi desperately looked around for either a way
of escape or a weapon of some kind. He
noticed that the door leading to Karless and Murak was only a couple of metres
away. If he could just get there and
release the lock, the Klingon could enter and take care of the rest.
"They are trying to regain computer control," the
girl commented to no one in particular, then whipped her head around to face
Reb. "Computer!" she shouted,
staring right into his eyes as if reading his thoughts.
"Maximum impulse, go beyond all safety
limits," she smiled that sickly sweet smile of a dumb little girl again.
"Authowisation code Epsilon Five Nine
Eight Six." The computer trilled
and Reb felt a brief shudder through the deck as the engines complied.
* * *
COMMAND YACHT, UNKNOWN LOCATION
Christian felt the ship shake itself to a greater speed -
his instincts told him as much, but he couldn't figure out why that would be
the case. Perhaps they were being
pursued by K'Tani, he wondered. The
eyes staring at him hadn't moved for a while.
Christian toyed with the idea of making a break for it, but something
stopped him from moving, suspending the action until he felt ready.
* * *
COMMAND YACHT, BRIDGE
"What was that?" Jackson asked.
The ship was still vibrating slightly.
"The Command Yacht has increased speed," Ganhedra
called solemnly from the helm.
"According to the information displayed here, impulse engines have
gone beyond recommended safety parameters."
As if to signify this, a singular circuit blew high in the
ceiling of the bridge, sending a short shower of sparks to the deck.
* * *
COMMAND YACHT, WARP CORE, ENGINEERING
"Who are you?
Why are you doing this?" Reb asked pathetically.
It was the first thing he could think of,
desperate to divert her attention from beating him up.
Unfortunately, she leaped over to him in a single bound - an
impossible movement for any Bajoran, no matter how young and fit.
As she stared into his face with large,
perfect blue, round eyes, he knew then that she was far beyond anything
humanoid.
"It speeeaks!" she shrieked with delight and
squeezed his cheeks with both hands, pushing his lips together in a vertical
pout. Her hands felt cold and totally
hard, not like flesh and bone at all.
"Say something else!" she demanded.
"I shed, why are ooh doing dish?" he forced
out. She threw his head back, almost
breaking his jaw with the flick of her wrists.
"I didn't say repeat yourself!" she screamed, and
looked as if about to cry. Reb just
stared at her in terror and disbelief, and seeing this she managed to sniff
herself quickly into composure. She
half smiled at him - almost wanting him to not be afraid of her, Reb thought.
"What is your name?" Reb decided on a different
approach. The girl hesitated, flicking
her hair back.
"Pim," she replied efficiently.
"Pim…?" he pressed.
She shook her head, smoothing the material of her
tunic. "Just Pim, that's
all."
"Were is home, Pim?
Are you K'Tani?" Reb managed a few bum wriggles backwards in
order to get closer to the door while she stood and walked away from him,
preening herself. By her previous actions,
Reb realised that she was both fast and strong, and he was neither, but perhaps
by stealth he could let Karless in before she could stop him.
"No, no, no!" she giggled.
"I'm not anything like them, or you, or
anyone else on board. I am a… singular
sensation!" she giggled again.
"Are you a changeling?" Reb forced out.
She cast a sideways glare at him, frowning, then burst out
laughing. Reb used the opportunity to
sidle even further towards the door.
Eventually, she calmed down enough to speak.
"Nothing quite as fragile as that," she said
cryptically. The computer trilled again,
causing her to rush back over to the terminal.
"Those nasty little…," she said and promptly rippled away into
thin air.
Reb glanced from left to right - she had vanished.
He wasn't sure, but seeing it for a second
time, he thought it had looked like a cloaking effect.
Regardless, something illogical in his head
told him that if he couldn't see her, then she wasn't there.
He leapt to his feet and launched his hand
toward the release panel of the door.
Instead of connecting with the console, however, he
connected with a shield. The energy
setting was such that it gripped his entire body, launching him into the air
backwards, and crashing him violently into the deck unconscious.
* * *
COMMAND YACHT, BRIDGE
Hedrik laughed.
"I don't believe it," she said, cutting through the
atmosphere.
"What have you found?" Jackson walked over to the
bosomy Orion who was using the Operations console as an interface to the
computer.
"I was seeing if there might be a back door way of
shutting down power to the engines without causing any damage.
Look at these power distribution levels
along the secondary and tertiary plasma funnels," she pointed at the
gobbledegook that was the engineering read-out.
All Jackson could see was a streaming list of circuit
references and corresponding output levels.
The columns flashed ten sets of figures for each row, and each number
was rapidly fluctuating by the half-second, changing between mauve and orange
depending upon whether it was an increase or decrease.
Professor Karnak joined the Commodore.
"The output is unusually high for secondary and
tertiary level power supply," the Professor summised.
"What could be draining that much
power?"
Narli sat at the engineering console.
"The engineering diagnostics says that
all levels are functioning normally within those systems.
Engines and other main systems are
unaffected by the power drain, despite our increased speed."
"Where is all that energy being focussed, then?"
the Commodore asked. "And why does
the computer think it's normal?"
Narli shook his head.
"I can't access the mainframe.
My station is being locked out."
"It's happening to me too," Hedrik said.
Quickly, her delicate green hands flashed
over her console. She dumped the
current application and set up an isolated link to a random circuit
location. The readout flashed up for
several seconds before disappearing along with life from all other bridge
stations.
"Too late!" a little girl's voice rang out over
the ship-wide intercom.
"Did you see that?" Hedrik asked.
"Who is this?" Commodore Jackson demanded.
There was no reply.
"Computer, where did that last signal
originate?"
"Unable to comply, that function is restricted access
only," came the calm maternal voice.
"Computer, re-initialise bridge workstations,"
Narli requested.
"Unable to comply, that function is restricted access
only," the voice repeated.
"Commodore-" Hedrik began.
"Not now," Jackson turned toward the others.
"Time to alien ships?"
The Professor walked calmly back to her station.
"Seventeen minutes, fifteen
seconds," she stated.
"Bridge to Murak," Jackson shouted.
There was no reply.
"Hell!" she cried, and smacked the
tactical rail behind the command chairs.
She swallowed hard, deciding what to do next.
"Commodore, please," Hedrik pressed.
"What is it?" Jackson snapped, annoyed that her
train of thought was being interrupted.
"The circuit power outage readings, they looked the
same as holographic projection rates," the Orion woman said.
"What does that mean?" Jackson didn't quite
understand.
The Professor walked down to the engineering workstation,
leaning over Narli's shoulder. "I
have a theory. It may be that the
holographic systems are being used as a bridge to previously inoperative
machinery."
Suddenly, the bridge around them rippled, consoles dying
once more. In seconds, the bridge was
as it originally had been before departing the main section.
The Commodore couldn't be certain which was real - the
broken bridge or the fully powered one.
In her mind there was only one course of action.
"We're out of time," she turned to her two female
compatriots. "Miss Hedrik,
Professor: I want you to round up the survivors and make your way to escape
pods. Standby to eject, but not until
we bring her to a complete stop."
"Stop?" Narli quizzed her.
"You and me are going to help Murak to stop this ship
once and for all," she said, and boldly headed toward the Jeffreys tube -
secretly hoping that she wasn't making a big mistake at calling for such
drastic measures.
* * *
COMMAND SECTION, SEPARATION PASSAGE
"Now opening the bulkhead," Souveson's voice
rippled across the poorly lit deck and simultaneously into the helmet speakers
of the assembled, suited-up search parties.
As the bulkhead ahead of them opened a fraction, air hissed
into the dark space beyond. The girl
who had introduced herself as 'Penge the Philosophy Student' gasped, wondering
if there was vacuum beyond, but the more experienced space travellers knew that
the suction would have been more powerful if there was.
The rectangular bulkhead in front rumbled
upwards and the group of twelve suited volunteers stood their ground, ready for
anything.
As the dim light from their own section spilled into the
no-man's land space beyond, they saw a wide, high ceilinged transit corridor,
about four metres long on the other side of the doorway.
A second thick bulkhead door, narrower at
the top than at the bottom, lay across the end, a tiny red light winking on and
off beside it at hand height.
Lirik, standing apart from the rest of the group so as not
to allow his Medusan ambience to affect anyone instinctively took point,
stepping into the space and psychosomatically feeling slightly cooler as he
did.
"Remember, people," he advised them for a second
time, "treat this the same as a space walk - there may be no gravity, no
air, no heating or power of any kind in the passenger section.
You've all done walks before, that's why
you've been selected. God only knows
what we will find, but we're on a time limit here, so no hanging around.
Stick to the matter in hand.
No-one takes any unnecessary risks either,
and I want you all to keep together at all times."
The Yeoman reached the second door and pressed the red
flashing button. It turned green as his
finger pulled away and the bulkhead began its slow ascent.
Another puff of air was sucked into the
space beyond. This time, the group
could all see the two sets of thick double doors that represented the sheering
plane of separation between the Command and Passenger sections of the
ship. Lirik bravely stepped into the
second corridor, now almost 6 metres away from the group.
O'Hara noticed the distinct increase in Lirik's pulse and
respiration on her visor readout set to monitor group lifesigns.
"Everything okay?" she asked.
Lirik smiled at her concern, though no one saw.
He ignored the question and tapped his
wrist-mounted scanner. "I'm now
officially in the passenger section," he said.
"Automatic systems appear to have activated here.
I'm reading low-level life support in the
passenger section ahead - gravity too.
Let's hope the rest of the ship is as hospitable."
The final bulkhead leading into the passenger section had a
huge bird carved stylistically into relief on the surface.
Lirik activated the inner door control.
The bulkhead rose more quickly than the previous two and the
space beyond seemed pitch black. Lirik
glanced back to the group some ten metres behind him as, gradually, uplighters
grew in luminescence in the corridor ahead.
From O'Hara's distant viewpoint, the sight was more than a
little bizarre. In front of Lirik, the
corridor was slightly wider. Thick
carpet of a rich crimson, gold and black pattern lined the deck.
The walls were plain cream to hip height,
then flock wallpaper of similar colours to the carpet hung from the mid level
trim up to the cream coloured, softly moulded ceiling.
Brass and opalescent glass lamps hung at
intervals along the walls and glowed a warm light on the whole setting.
Another four metres or so ahead of Lirik, a
pair of opaque glass doors began to grow in luminescence from behind - the
space on the other side presumably coming gracefully to life.
"Wow," Lirik voiced their combined feelings and
thrust his sensor arm forward. He
stepped over the final bulkhead into the soft corridor and saw on the wall,
integrated into a large black splash of flock, a discrete, dark glass
panel. Touching it, a standard old
style Starfleet readout showed that emergency power was active.
Flashing below was the message 'Warning:
Battery Power Levels At Minimum. Life
Support Failure In 00:59:35:09' - the last two digits were whirling round,
indicating a countdown in progress.
Lirik took off his helmet and breathed the air.
Curiously, he could smell fresh paint.
In fact, with his unshielded eyes it looked
to him like the whole place had been recently decorated.
He ungloved his hands and retrieved a
thigh-mounted tricorder, sweeping it around.
Everything looked stable.
"Okay!" he called and waved everyone to proceed
into the passenger section.
"Emergency battery power has kicked in - we've got just under an
hour before it runs out. Keep your
suits on, just to be safe. You can
unhelmet or unglove to conserve your suit's energy, but keep them with you just
in case of a loss of atmospheric pressure."
The group caught up and together, they all began their walk
forward. Lirik, Leonard and O'Hara led
the way, side by side.
"Will you get a load of this place?" O'Hara
casually announced as they swung the doors aside and stepped into a wide,
square precinct. The carpet bled into a
border that surrounded an ornate marble floor, intricate in pattern and highly
polished. The ceiling was higher here,
slightly domed, and painted with heavenly scenes of a romantic style.
The group made their way into the wide area, spreading
out. On each side of the 'foyeur', were
four turbolifts, each entrance surrounded with gilded metal frames.
The doors to the turbolifts themselves were
constructed of milky glass held within a fretwork of shiny metal.
Four corridors twisted away from the 'foyeur' on the
opposite side of the square, two flanking each side of a massive staircase that
dominated their view, launching upward, then forking in two, disappearing to
the left and right. Each of the floor
level corridors were signposted with a simple, polished wooden plaque
indicating specific areas they would lead to.
"Waterpark?" Leonard mused to Lirik, standing at
the corridor immediately to the left of the stairs.
The corridor ramped down and then veered right, under the stairs.
"If you think that's strange," O'Hara said from
the corridor to his left, "this one says Holopark, Mall and
Arboretum." None of these were
visible either, as this corridor quickly snaked off to the left.
"Let's not get side-tracked," Lirik advised.
"Can anyone see signs for sick bay or
engineering?" The group all shook
their heads or muttered 'no' into their collar mikes.
A "ping" caused the group to turn toward
Vostaline, the Helan leader's daughter, standing in front of a turbolift.
The doors slid apart to reveal a luxuriously
padded car with a recessed seat for two.
"Wouldn't these be quicker?"
Lirik wasn’t sure, but time was ticking by.
"Very well, but each team is to split
into two groups, just in case there is a problem with the turbolift
system. If you become separated or
lost, head back to the Command Section."
He gripped O'Hara by the arm.
"Check in with me every five minutes.
Understood?"
She raised her eyebrow at his assumed superiority, but
seeing Leonard was not paying much attention, she nodded and made for a
turbolift.
* * *
COMMAND YACHT, ENGINEERING
Jackson and Narli entered engineering.
Lying on the floor just inside was the
unconscious form of Murak.
"He's alive," Jackson said, crouching to feel his
pulse.
Jackson was about to enter the room and investigate further,
but Narli gripped her wrist hard.
"We should get back to the bridge," he said.
"What?!" Jackson tried to protest, but already he
was guiding them out into the corridor and away.
The Commodore tried to struggle free, but his hold was too tight.
"Shh!" he instructed, almost in a whisper as he
frogmarched her round the corner. Upon
reaching the turbolift, Narli stopped and looked back down the corridor,
letting go.
"What the hell was all that about?" the Commodore
demanded in a hoarse whisper, following his line of sight.
"Someone was in there," the Ambassador informed
her, then pointed to his antennae.
"The image was very faint, but in such a confined, dark space it
was like a beacon."
"The agent?" Jackson was half excited, half scared
to death.
Narli nodded.
"She was using some kind of personal cloaking device, it looked a
lot like the ones the Jemm Hadar use."
Jackson was about to ask if he was sure, but decided not to
second guess him. "Do you think
she's a Changeling?"
"A Changeling wearing a cloak?
What would be the point?
Why not just become a console or blend into
the floor?" Narli couldn't deal with the thought of battling a Changeling,
they were too slippery. He pulled out a
phaser from under his robes.
"Cloak or no cloak, we're out of time," Jackson
snatched the phaser from him. She
proceeded back the way they came, closely followed by the Andorian.
The Commodore strode up to the small engineering room and
stopped over the threshold, bold as brass holding the weapon at the ready.
She pulled the Ambassador into the room with
her and closed the doors.
"Is she still here?" Jackson asked Narli, who
nervously stood behind her.
"Yes," he said, "in the far left
corner."
Jackson pointed and fired - knowing full well the girl would
probably get out the way. "Now
that I have your attention," the Commodore set the phaser to
overload. "Perhaps you want to
stop this ship now, before we all die?"
The girl materialised on the far side of the room, scowling
at the Commodore. "What?
Not having enough fun, yet?" Pim
shouted. "As if I'm bothered by
your little toy."
The phaser was emitting a low noise, slowly growing in
intensity. Jackson held the Andorian
device up, examining it. "This is
a Type…" she read the minute label with ease using her new spectacles,
"X9 personal phaser. Being
Andorian-made I imagine it is one of the most powerful known to the
Federation."
"And highly unstable," the Ambassador cautioned
her.
"No doubt," Jackson grinned wider - her game of
bluff needed to be convincing. "I
couldn't begin to tell you the blast radius…"
"Vapourisation effect to about eleven point five
metres," Narli prompted helpfully.
"Hm," Jackson regarded the device with renewed admiration.
"Enough to take out this room and a
good deal of the adjacent engine room as well.
Perhaps even the warp core itself?"
The girl threw her head back, flicking her hair violently
out of the way. "So you want to
kill yourselves, so what! Why should
that concern me? You're as good as dead
already."
The noise of the phaser was rising steadily.
The Ambassador assumed it was beginning to
get too hot to hold, but the Commodore was determined, it seemed.
"Disable the security lock-outs and I'll shut it
down," Jackson offered. Narli
thought the Commodore had played her ace too soon.
"Ha! In your
dreams," Pim grimaced as her left wrist shook uncontrollably.
She had to use her other hand to steady it.
"What's the matter, feeling a little nervous?" the
Commodore stepped forward.
The girl bit her lip, her right eye flicking open and closed
uncontrollably. "What do you hope
to achieve by this? Prove how
courageous you Starfleet types all are?" she walked back a pace.
Jackson took a couple more steps towards her.
"Why not?
You've been determined to show us how clever you are - and how
determined you are to get your K'Tani friends aboard."
The girl backed up against the doors to the warp room, her
whole body was visibly shaking.
"The K'Tani will prevail," she said as a statement of fact
rather than bravado.
"Isn't that funny," Jackson smiled - this almost
felt like reasoning with a real child.
"I was just thinking the complete opposite.
If I know my fellow Humans, they'll be
resisting the K'Tani up to their dying breath."
The phaser noise was quite loud by now.
The little girl turned and entered several
commands into the door panel - it wouldn't open.
She glanced back at the Commodore, this time with a little
fear.
"You are a lot like the K'Tani," was all she
shouted above the din before entering another command and the door finally
swished open.
As soon as the doors split apart, the Bat'Leth came crashing
down on the girl's skull without any announcement, embedding itself to about
three inches.
In the nano-seconds before contact, Jackson's expression had
dropped, her mouth open in horror at what she was about to witness.
She knew in that fragment of time that she
would not be able to give any warning - Karless brought the weapon down with
such force and accuracy.
Narli appeared more composed, matter-of-factly expecting to
see the Bajoran's head split in two, but instead the point sunk into the head
with a loud "chink". Blood
and a clear liquid bubbled and seeped out, but only slightly.
The girl's torso and limbs began to flail
wildly, like a rag doll being shaken violently.
Smoke and sparks flew out of the wound and Karless quickly
let go of his weapon, stepping away from her.
The weight and odd angle caused the girl's head to rock back slightly,
pulling her down backwards onto the deck - but the blade remained firmly in
place. Jackson could see through the
doorway that Reb was coming to in the room beyond and stared in a mixture of
horror/pleasure, flinging his hands against his ears from the deafening roar of
the phaser.
"An android?" Jackson was shocked, her words
unheard under the tremendous noise.
Narli grabbed the red hot phaser from Jackson and disarmed it, dropping
the hot, quietening object to the floor immediately after.
"No time to waste," Narli prompted and stepped up
to the main control. "What are we
going to do about these lock-outs?"
"Time to intercept?" Jackson urged, approaching
the calming girl, her chest rising and falling with machine-like rhythm, still
impaled under Karless' weapon.
"They'll be here in several minutes," he
announced. "Commodore, the
lock-outs?"
The Commodore crouched so she was at head-height with the
prone Pim. The girl's eyelids suddenly
flashed open. Rather than cute blue
irises, her cornea was awash with a grey-blue milky mass.
"You…think you have won…?"
"Let's make a deal," Jackson said.
"If you give us the security code I
promise we'll not destroy or dismantle you."
The girl tried to smile, her voice became tinny, echoing eerily around the chamber. Creamy
fluid trickled out of the sides of her mouth.
"I am not K'Tani," Pim stated, almost inferring that the
K'Tani would be persuaded in such a situation.
Or, the Commodore thought, she might be saying that the K'Tani were all
machines as well…? After a pause Pim
spoke: "I do not wish to cease functioning.
You… will…promise to let me go?"
"Of course," Jackson's heart was racing.
The girl swallowed.
"Five, five, five, five, five, Delta, Five…" her right eye
cleared and looked at Jackson. "It
was meant to be my age," she said.
"We're in!" Narli exclaimed from behind
Jackson. "Accessing navigation,
turning us about." They all felt
the slight wobble as he simultaneously slowed the ship and spun it on its
access, accelerating away in the
opposite direction. Seconds later, the ship rocked.
"We're being fired upon, some kind of long range
warp propelled missiles," the Ambassador was once an honoured pilot in one of the
Andorian Defence Squadrons, but his knowledge of this ship was limited.
He had only managed to use the helm controls
because Murak had left that function frozen on the screen, and the simple
navigation display showed the brief glow of the explosion behind the Command
Yacht.
"Do we have shields?" Jackson walked up to
him. Reb eased his way past the
android, resisting the urge to kick it.
Pim's eyes locked onto his as he passed by and he felt quite
queezy. He found a free workstation and
ran his fingers across it.
"Shields activated," Reb understood the basics of
Starfleet and most other Federation computer systems and easily replaced a
subsystems monitor to function as a standard emergency bridge console.
In its compact, intricate setting he could
access any of the major areas within two spans.
The ship rocked again.
The computer warbled a protest.
"Aft shields down to 45 per cent," Reb stated.
* * *
COMMAND YACHT, UNKNOWN LOCATION
Christian fell off his perch.
The ship had shaken for the second time and dislodged him.
At the same moment, he heard the heavy
thud-thud-thud footsteps coming nearer.
The eyes seemed to be only a few metres away now.
* * *
COMMAND YACHT, ENGINEERING
"Do we have any weapons?" Jackson asked.
The ship shuddered.
Reb looked lost.
* * *
UNKNOWN LOCATION
Christian felt like a long human hair had fallen on his
face. He brushed it aside, but felt
nothing there. The rest of his exposed
skin began to feel similar - it felt like being gently caressed by many strands
of delicate hair.
* * *
COMMAND YACHT, ENGINEERING
"Aft shields now at 30 per cent," Reb said,
calling up the tactical mainframe again.
He frowned. "Phaser access
is off-line. Reinitialising."
His hands danced over the controls - it
seemed there was a separate, crew-only system beneath the main systems.
None of it was active, so he had no idea why
the phasers were routed through it, or indeed what other functionality was
there. It was a weird set up, even by
his standards - nothing on the ship was straight-forward.
As he activated the sub-system a whole panel
came alive on the adjacent work station.
On the main diagnostic slaved to the small wall-mounted display behind
him, Narli watched the side elevation as decks drew apart, revealing other
'hidden' decks in between. The ship
rocked again.
* * *
UNKNOWN LOCATION
Christian saw a faint glow in the distance, it was framed by
the black outline of the door, but he still couldn't see anything immediately
around him. Without warning, the lights
in the room suddenly came on.
He froze for a second, his eyes tightly clamped shut by the
unexpected brightness, but he forced them open just a fraction to see where he
was. First he noticed the room was
whitish-grey and unfurnished. His eye
muscles resisted, and tears welled up in his pained lids, but there was no
mistaking - something black and shiny was on the floor a few feet in front of
him. He smeared the tears away and
found he could open his eyes more easily.
The sight was a shock and he sat bolt upright, though unable to cry out.
As he jolted up, the spider - about two metres from toe to
toe at its widest - shuffled back with its multiple thuds, turned and galloped
out of the room with tremendous speed.
Christian looked down and saw that he was covered in many tiny
threads. He brushed them away with
revulsion, thankful that the spider appeared even more scared of him.
* * *
ACT 4