"Nothing in the Dark"

[Atoz 77]

[This is a sort of "Halloween" story, a few months late. The idea was suggested to me by the VOY episode "Persistence of Vision". The planet is based on a real exo-planet that I saw depicted on "How the Universe Works" on the Science Channel.]

NOTHING IN THE DARK >>>

The young blonde woman felt her way cautiously down the staircase in the dark, her right hand brushing along the wood paneling of the wall while her other hand shakily tried to hold the candlestick steady. The flickering flame was a poor source of light, but it was all she had. The house felt so much bigger in the dark, filled with shadowy alien shapes. A cold draft blew along the corridor, making her shiver in the flimsy pink camisole and shorts she was wearing, and her bare legs and feet below that. Her mouth felt dry; her heart was thumping inside her chest.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, a flash of lightning abruptly lit up the oblong shapes of several windows, without actually alleviating the darkness. The accompanying crack of thunder startled her, making her catch her breath. "Iara?" she whispered, feeling goosebumps prickle her skin. "Are you there?"

"I'm right here, Aunt Amelia," came another hoarse whisper.

Amelia Penner let out a sigh as she felt the comforting presence of the younger girl, who was wearing baggy, blue checked pajamas. "Stay close," she said, passing the candlestick to her right hand and reaching back to clasp Iara's hand as she moved cautiously away from the wall.

The two of them keep together as they crossed the room. Penner felt her knees bump into chairs as she felt her way. Another flash of lightning tore the sky outside with a horrendous BOOM! -- but both girls were ready for it this time and it didn't frighten them as much.

What did frighten them was the stone dead corpse they saw hanging upside down from the rafters directly in front of them. It was the body of a girl, her long dark hair trailing downward like a veil, her pale white body dressed in a long white nightgown. And she had obviously been drained of blood!

Penner gasped, feeling the rush of adrenalin, her numb fingers clutched tightly to the candlestick. Beside her, she felt Iara's body tighten up with the unexpected fright. At that same instant, the French doors at the end of the room blew open, the freezing rush of wind blowing out their candle. Standing outlined in the doorway not four meters away stood a hulking, male shape. In the light of the next lightning flash, they could see his face, completely covered by a white oval mask with only slits for his eyes and a scattering of breathing holes. In his right hand, the man carried a gleaming stainless steel meat cleaver.

Penner let out a shrill scream. "Iara! Run!"

Instead, the younger girl darted forward, head-butting the man in his stomach. He staggered a little, but was much too big to be completely moved by a slender 14-year-old. He grabbed her by the arm and they both toppled forward as the man raised the cleaver...

"Computer! Freeze program!" Penner said quickly. Iara's attacker froze in mid-motion. "Increase light levels to normal." Instantly the lights in the house came on, illuminating the living room, hallway, and stairs. Their attacker didn't look nearly as frightening, standing there in the light like a waxwork statue while Iara pulled herself loose from his grasp.

"What did you do that for?" the young Cardassian girl said, breathing hard, her dove gray, semi-reptilian skin perhaps a shade paler than normal.

"You're not supposed to attack the monster," Penner said patiently. "You're supposed to be scared."

"I WAS scared," Iara said. "That's why I attacked him."

"Yeah, but..." Penner sighed. It wasn't Iara's fault that her culture didn't include horror movies. She had been doing pretty well for the first half of the story. "That's a good place to stop. We can finish it tomorrow."

"Oh yes, please!" Iara agreed. "I am beginning to see why you enjoy this kind of thing, Aunt Amelia."

Penner smiled, giving the younger girl a hug. "Computer, save program. End program." The stalker vanished, and with him the interior of the house, leaving only a perfectly square holodeck chamber with its plain matte black walls. Penner and Iara left the holodeck and stopped by the costuming annex to change from their pajamas back into their regular clothes. In Iara's case, a form-fitting purplish body suit. In Penner's case, her gold and black miniskirt Starfleet Ensign's uniform.

"Let's go get some dinner," Penner said, pinning her blonde hair up into a bun as they regained the corridor. "Then I've got to go on watch."

"Can I come with you to the Bridge?" Iara asked. "I'll be quiet. I won't bother anybody. I just want to ask if Diane's done."

"Well..." Penner said cautiously. "I guess that would be okay."

[Atoz 77]

Captain's Log, Stardate 53787.6: The Odysseus has come across an interesting situation. Rhomboid Euler 603 turned out to be a typical medium-sized red main sequence star, spectral class M1, with a family of thirteen planets of Classes B, C, D and E. Nothing unusual. However the innermost planet turns out to be class I, twice as large as Earth and nearly forty times as dense, locked in close orbit with one side eternally facing the star.

In his years as a Starfleet officer, beginning as an exobiologist and rising through the ranks as operations officer to command of his own ship, Captain Atoz had learned to see the beauty in almost every natural phenomenon he came across. But he was forced to admit, sitting in his command chair on the bridge and looking at the image on the main viewscreen, that this was the ugliest planet he had ever seen.

It was black -- a dismal, almost unrelieved black. Its crushing gravity combined with the heat of the star had long since smoothed out any surface feature. The atmosphere, if you could even call it that, was a churning miasma of liquified carbon, sulfur and heavy metals. It looked like a bowling ball whipping around its red hot parent star at fantastic speed, making a complete revolution in sixteen days. The only thing which relieved the monotony of its appearance was a bright orange spot roughly fifteen thousand kilometers across on its sun-ward side, caused by the constant, unrelenting heat of its sun on that spot.

Atoz watched that orange spot slide out of view as the starship passed into the shadow of the planet's night side, eclipsing the red star. The ship suddenly trembled for a moment as it was engulfed in darkness, but the moment passed.

"Stationary orbit, Captain," reported Ensign Joe Nickel, the helmsman. "Twenty-five thousand k.m. above the planet's surface."

Atoz got out of his seat, his eyes scanning the navigation board. "Will there be any problems maintaining?" he asked, worried about the excessive density of the planet, as well as the proximity of the red star. They were actually orbitting the star, but matching the velocity of the planet so that they could remain conveniently in its shadow.

"Insertion was a little tricky, sir," the ensign answered, "but no problems."

"Science Officer?" Atoz asked.

Lieutenant Commander Diane Weir was seated at her station to the right of the command chair. "I'm reading an unusually high magnetic field for a non-rotating body, cause unknown. Sensors are not penetrating the surface more than a few kilometers, but the crust appears to be a superdense conglomeration of various elements. The core could well be a form of degenerate matter. I suspect the planet may be the remnant of a black dwarf -- which is a pretty rare occurrence."

Unimpressed by its rarity, Atoz turned away from the oppressive blackness which filled the viewscreen. "Can you get all the data you need in one hour?" he asked.

Weir bit her lip briefly. "I suppose we could, sir. May I ask what the rush is?"

"I could say that I'm anxious to get on to the next survey on our schedule," the Captain said, turning back to the main viewscreen. "But honestly that thing just gives me the willies."

"That's not a very scientific attitude, sir," the Science Officer replied with a wry grin. And yet, didn't she feel the faintest rush of relief? Because strangely enough, she had been thinking the exact same thing.

"You did a scan for life forms, didn't you?" Atoz said, completely out of the blue.

"Prelim scans were negative," Weir said, caught by surprise by the question. They had found primitive living things in the atmospheres of the gas giants down system, but this planet, so close to the star? "I could do a Sagan-Epstein probe if you want me to, sir. Although I doubt that even fluorine-based life forms could survive these conditions."

Just then the turbolift doors opened with a hiss, and Ensign Penner and Iara stepped out. When she saw the Captain here, the Cardassian girl almost shrank back. But she caught sight of Weir and shyly followed Penner onto the bridge.

"Oh, I'm sorry, sweetheart," Weir said apologetically. "I'm going to be a little late tonight. Can you wait an hour?"

"As soon as the First Officer relieves me," Atoz said, "I was about to have dinner in The Leading Edge. Would you care to join me?"

Iara saw Weir's face, looking hopeful. The Cardassian girl knew that her foster mother wanted her to socialize more with the Captain, and she was about to say yes... when suddenly a crawling sensation rippled over her pale gray skin like an electric current. A feeling of nausea churned her stomach, making her feel sick. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Iara was confused. Where could these emotions be coming from?

"I... I already ate," she blurted. "Excuse me." She turned on her heel, lunging precipitously for the safety of the turbolift.

The door hissed open and she ran right into a big, dark-skinned Human -- Commander Charles Fawkes, the First Officer. He frowned down at her grimly, and once more Iara felt a shock of adrenalin race through her bloodstream. "Excuse me," she said again, darting around him and into the turbolift before she threw up.

"I'm sorry about that, sir," Weir said, puzzled, as the lift whisked her away. "I don't know what got into her."

"Nothing to apologize about, Diane," the Captain said easily. "She's always been skittish around Humans. Charles, I leave the bridge with you. I'm famished."

"Acknowledged, Captain," Fawkes said, settling his posterior into the command chair as Atoz stepped into the turbolift and disappeared.

Weir was concerned about Iara's behavior, but it was true that her reactions were sometimes still unpredictable. This was not the time to worry about it. "Bridge to Sciences," she said, briskly tapping her comm badge. "Lt. Rhyzkov, I'd like you to run an S and E. Stephens, work on the planetary dynamics model." She listened to the two officers' acknowledgements and tapped off her comm badge. "Arachne?"

In response to this last command, a holographic avatar of a beautiful woman wearing the gown of a Greek goddess appeared on the bridge. "Yes, Diane?" the computer interface said. "What can I do for you?"

"I want to temporarily enhance the short-range resolution of the primary sensor array," the Science Officer said. "I thought we could link elements five, seven, and nine together, and tune them to reach into the tertiary subspace band, sacrificing range for penetration power. Would that do it?"

"Working..." the holographic goddess said, looking into the middle distance for a second, just like a person trying to visualize something complex. "I'm afraid not, Diane. The A-1134 subprocessor would not be able to handle the extra bandwidth. However, if you added the element 11 processor unit, you could increase penetration power by 30%."

"Better than nothing. We're going to need warp power to the sensors, too. Conference me with Vespis in Engineering, please." Weir looked around the bridge. "Ensign Penner, are you busy just now?"

The ensign had just slipped into the chair at her communications station and was settling her earpod in place. "Well, sir, I was going to scan the radio and microwave emissions from the planet's core. I was noticing earlier that some of them cross into subspace bands."

"That can wait. Would you mind going down to the Emergency Manual Monitor, and re-configuring these processors for me?"

"I'd love to, commander," Penner said, tugging out her earpod and getting up from her chair.

"I appreciate this, Amelia," Weir said. "Call me when you get there. Vespis and I may have additional instructions by then."

***

Iara got off the turbolift on Deck 5, near the lounge. She ran past a pair of crewmen who shrank away from her, startled by her sudden appearance. She tried to close off her mind and not read their emotions as she bolted for the safest refuge she had aboard ship -- the cabin she shared with Diane Weir.

***

There were about sixty crewmen in The Leading Edge when Atoz arrived. It was a popular place to relax after watch. Most of them were speaking in hushed tones, staring out the wide glass steel windows which looked straight ahead through the prow of the Odysseus' saucer-like primary hull. The view was dominated by the inky blackness of the planet. A handful of stars cowered far off next to the starboard edge, but even they looked tiny and dispirited, crushed into submission by the baleful presence of the planet.

Atoz usually took his meals in the mess hall on Deck 5, since the food slots at the Leading Edge were only programmed for light dishes and snacks. Even as he picked up his tray with a tuna sandwich and potato salad, he wasn't sure why he had changed his habit. Surely he had seen more than enough of this planet on the bridge viewscreen.

For what reason was he drawn to the sight of it now? Because seeing it this way, without visual enhancement, with only the glass steel of the porthole between them, he had no doubt that he had come here on purpose just as the other crewmen had -- just as a person will purposely cruise slowly past a traffic accident, just to see the broken and mangled bodies -- just as a person will stop to stare at a deadly viper rather than prudently retreat. Just because it is there.

He shook his head and started to eat.

***

Deck 11 was so small, the turbolifts didn't go that far. Penner alighted on Deck 10, turned a corner, and took a narrow companionway down. As she arrived on Deck 11, the luminescent ceiling panels, normally off, sensed her presence and flicked on.

The access corridor was only about a meter wide, lined with exposed piping and wiring trunks. Penner briskly followed it past pocket doors to the Emergency Manual Monitor. Inside that tiny, cramped room, she located the correct access panel, squatted on one knee, and pushed it aside. Then she touched her comm badge. "Penner to Weir. I'm ready."

The Science Officer's voice responded immediately. Most of their reconfiguring could be done by the computer; only three small adjustments had to be made manually, which Penner accomplished in forty-five seconds. "That's good, Amelia," said Weir's voice. "You can return to the Bridge now. Thank you again."

"Always happy to help," Penner replied. She replaced the access panel and stood up. Just then the light panels suddenly went out, plunging the comm officer into complete darkness.

"Hey! Computer, lights on!" Nothing happened. "Computer, lights on!" she repeated, feeling a rising panic in her chest, making her heart pound. The only things she could see were the tiny pinprick lights from control panels, and they seemed to add to her disorientation rather than help. She floundered around until she managed to find her way out into the narrow access corridor. "Computer, stop kidding around! Lights on!"

The light panels did flick on then, but at maybe one tenth standard illumination, like a night-light in your bedroom. Catching her breath, Penner started toward the companionway, both hands keeping contact with the opposite walls of the access corridor like a blind person. It was so scary down here! She was going to have some choice complaints to make to the Chief Engineer...

Penner was halfway along the corridor when she heard it. A noise behind her. She could feel her skin pricking, feel the rasp of her breathing. Someone was down here with her! Someone who couldn't possibly be here!

The young blonde looked behind her, and there he was, plain as day -- the hulking male figure with the white oval hockey mask, in his right hand the gleaming meat cleaver!

"F-freeze program!" Penner said without thinking. Her brain felt numb with panic. She turned to run as the man rushed towards her. His outstretched hand somehow caught her left shoulder and spun her around. Penner tried to fight back, but he pushed her down or something. With a jarring impact, she landed on the deck in between two thick pipes. She could see the shining meat cleaver descending in an arc.

Somehow it missed, tearing her sleeve, and Penner rolled away from him. The next thing she knew, her hands were frantically clutching at the rungs of the companionway, and her feet were stumbling as she climbed upward, back into the brightly lit haven of Deck 10.

[Atoz 77]

After Captain Atoz had eaten, he quickly tired of the view from The Leading Edge. He still felt restless as he set off down the curved corridor around the rim of the primary hull. He really needed to work on some reports he had to submit to Starfleet, and yet he didn't want to go to the Bridge, even to cross it on the way to his ready room. He could do the work in his quarters -- blank the portholes as soon as entered the room so that he didn't have to see that monstrous planet. Or maybe...

CHIRP-CHIRP! went his comm badge. "Captain? Do you think you could come by Sickbay for a moment?"

Atoz smiled. Or that. Talking to Ben Pierce would cheer him up. "What is it, Hawkeye?"

"I'd rather not say on an open line."

Fortunately Sickbay was on the same deck. It only required Atoz taking a right turn, a left, and another right, and he found himself entering the complex of rooms that made up the starship's primary medical center. He found Dr. Pierce in the first examination room, with Ensign Penner perched rather sheepishly on the table while he tended to a bruise on her exposed leg.

"What's happened?" the Captain asked mildly.

"Just a couple of scratches and a bump," Pierce said easily as he worked on the comm officer's injury with a small protoplaser. "You won't even notice come swimsuit season. Amelia, why don't you tell the Captain what you told me?"

Penner actually blushed. "I just feel so stupid, Captain."

"You're not stupid, Amelia," Atoz corrected. His roaming eyes noticed a long rip on the short sleeve of her uniform. "Tell me what happened."

"Well... I was down on Deck 11, doing something for Commander Weir." She recounted everything about the holodeck character that had chased her. "It was dark, and I guess I let my imagination run away with me. I MUST have! I must have bumped my shoulder into a conduit or something. Then I guess I panicked and tripped over a piping trunk. I mean I couldn't have seen... A holodeck character CAN'T leave the holodeck!"

"Of course it can't," Atoz assured her.

"Her epinephrine levels and alpha rhythm are still slightly elevated," Pierce added, picking up his small mediscanner. "In fact, they should have returned to normal by now. I thought my feinberger was giving me a false reading, so I tried it on Dr. Yee, Nurse Zelinski, a couple of lab technicians, and a maintenance guy who had just come by to fix the head. Half of them show slightly elevated alpha levels. Seven, is there something going on with this mission that I don't know about? The ship's doctor is always the last to know."

Atoz shrugged. "It's just a planet survey, Hawkeye. Maybe people are a little edgy, but we'll be done with it and on our way in an hour."

"I hope so."

***

Commander Fawkes fidgetted in the command chair as he tried to read the engineering efficiency report on his data padd. He couldn't seem to get comfortable, no matter how he tried. These reports were tedious anyway, virtually the same for any given two-week period. He concentrated on the summary plot, tracking how this two-week period compared with the last, and the one before, and the one before, and he could make no sense of it.

Abruptly Fawkes got out of the chair and paced. That image of that totally dark planet on the main viewscreen was so gloomy and depressing... "Lieutenant Rosh," he snapped, turning toward the tactical station, "give us something else to look at. Show us the view from the ship's starboard quarter."

"Gladly, Commander," the Eminian replied, and the view changed with such alacrity, Fawkes was sure that the lieutenant had hated the sight of the planet as much as he had. The viewscreen now showed the view in the opposite direction -- an honest field of stars, white on velvet black, moving noticably from left to right as the Odysseus followed the planet in its swift orbit.

Fawkes soaked in the sight. That was better. Glancing around the Bridge, he saw how the other officers also seemed to feel relief. Only Lt. Cmdr. Weir at Sciences, with her back to the viewscreen, appeared so absorbed in her work that she didn't notice. Now maybe he could read the report in peace.

But what was that sound? Fawkes darted a suspicious look at the viewscreen, his blood suddenly cold, his heart pounding. For a moment, he thought he saw a tell-tale movement out there among the stars... something cube-shaped!

"Mr. Rosh, what's that?" he said, taking a step closer to the screen. It was gone now.

"Sir?" the tactical officer replied. "I don't understand."

Fawkes tried to get ahold of himself. He found himself sweating. His own eyes were telling him one thing, but the short hairs on the back of his neck were telling him another. "Mr. Rosh, give me a scan for hostile vessels along our aft starboard quadrant."

"Commander," the Eminian said apologetically, "Sciences are using both the primary and secondary sensor arrays. But I can assure you there were no signs of any subspace warp fields in operation the last time I looked. There are no other space vessels in this subsector."

Fawkes' eyes darted back and forth across the screen, searching. He tried to tell himself that what he was looking for was impossible. "That's what they want us to think," he muttered almost under his breath. "They want us to think they're all gone..."

***

In Engineering, Lt. Cmdr. Vho Vespis felt a certain amount of pride mixed with apprehension. The Andorian Chief Engineer had successfully funneled warp power into the primary sensors, pushing the sensitivity into the tertiary subspace wavelengths and increasing short-range penetration power by forty percent, all without blowing the entire sensor array. At least so far.

She stood over the main engineering console in the center of the room, with the holographic image of Arachne on one side and her new assistant engineer, Lt. Boylan Wilson, on the other -- monitoring the deep sensor scan that Weir was performing of the planet's crust, while keeping a watchful eye out for any fluctuation in power levels which might mean the sensor elements were about to overload. Vespis' blue skin was a slightly deeper hue than normal, her two antennae twitching nervously as they protruded from her silky white hair. Although she appeared outwardly calm, to anyone who knew her well she might have been biting her nails.

"Zarkhon," Vespis whispered in awe, as she watched the readings scroll across her screen. She wasn't an expert at interpreting sensor probes, but as they delved deep into the molecular structure of the planet's elements, the data feed showed numerous corruption errors. It seemed to her even the ship's computer was unable to make sense of them. The core of the planet might be made of dark matter, or perhaps even something completely unknown and exotic! The idea was exciting, even though it was also a bit frightening.

Abruptly the data feed stopped entirely as too many errors accumulated and the display screen went blank. "Data subprocessors SSAC-1021 and 22 have failed," Arachne said. "Parallel failure of the 1019 regulator is imminent."

"Zerk!" Vespis swore, her fingers rapidly dancing across the controls as she tried to minimize the damage. "Wilson, what did you--?" She was interrupted by the boatswain's whistle of the internal comm system.

"What's happened to the sensors?" Weir's voice scolded. "Everything just shut off!"

"I know, I know," replied the engineer feverishly. "I'm working on it. Keep your pants on."

"I told you that configuration wouldn't work, sir," gloated Lt. Wilson, also working on re-routing power. "The Deck 10 modulator assembly couldn't take the strain, I betcha."

Vespis didn't like Wilson. He was new. But her former assistant engineer, Anya Gorsky, had been promoted to chief engineer of the survey vessel Polaris, and Wilson had transfered in to replace her. Wilson almost seemed to harbor some kind of prejudice against Andorians, but he was what she had to work with. "That's why I told you to tie in the Y-2 regulator in series with the Y-1," she said, as patiently as she could, "to carry the excess."

"Oh. Did you?" the assistant said. "I thought you said to switch them over--"

"Do you even SPEAK Federation Standard?" Vespis fumed, as a series of red warning lights flickered on across the main engineering panel. "Great! We just lost primary power to half the ship!"

***

Atoz had left Sickbay and stepped into the turbolift, on his way back to the Bridge. The car moved sideways along its shaft, and had no sooner started upward when it gave a sudden lurch as primary power went off. Emergency systems activated, automatically halting the car on the next level.

"Captain to Engineering," Atoz said, tapping his comm badge. "Vespis? Is there something going on that I need to know about?"

"Just a little glitch, Captain," the Chief Engineer's voice replied. "I'll have it sorted out in a minute. Auxiliary power should be coming on immediately."

***

Vespis took a right turn and down the companionway to the lower engineering level. From there the Andorian took a Jeffries tube into one of the between-decks maintenance bays. The light panels were still off down here, and without them, the tunnels reminded her of the caves she had once visited back on her homeworld. She had been a little girl then, and the feeling of the dark, like a heavy weight bearing down on her, had been terrifying. And when she had unexpectedly seen the cave paintings of ruff-bears and pelelants, she had screamed because they had looked like real animals trapped down there in the dark in the process of coming to life. Her parents had explained that the paintings were made by their ancestors a hundred thousand years ago, taking shelter in the caves, but that first impression had come back to haunt her many times.

That emotion, that feeling of fear, came back full force now as she fumbled a flashlight out of her tool kit. The little circle of illumination played at random across the ceiling and wall of the tunnel, chasing shadows back into the corner, but still the tunnel looked dark and completely unfamiliar to her. The Andorian felt her heart hammering like a drum.

This was crazy! Vespis had grown up on spaceships -- she shouldn't be spooked by a little thing like this! She swung the flashlight across the maintenance tunnel, searching for the access point to the power junction she needed to find. It had to be right here somewhere...

The light flashed across something; Vespis brought it back quickly. A crude stick figure about a foot high was drawn on the wall panel with some kind of dark pigment. The Andorian played the light back in that direction. The stick figure was followed by another, and another. The engineer's antennae were twitching now with fright. Where had these figures come from? No member of the crew would have done something like this.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, as the dark seemed to crowd closely around her. Frantically she swung the flashlight around. The entire wall behind her, which she had just passed by, was now covered with a bewildering variety of images of primitive Andorian hunters and prey animals, footprints, ideographs of suns and moons and stars, arrows, bows, campfires, and finally... writing in an alphabet Vespis had never seen before!

A low growl rumbled down the passageway. The engineer turned back the way she had come, her breath rasping in her throat, and saw the red, burning eyes of a real, live cave bear! She dropped the flashlight in terror.

[Atoz 77]

In her cabin, Iara had sealed the door behind her. Their cabin was on the aft starboard side of the ship, so that at least she didn't have the view of that dark, dismal planet to look at. The light panels had come on automatically as she entered, their soft glow hardly muting the scattering of stars she could see through the portholes. But the sight of stars didn't comfort her tonight. She went straight to her bed, situated flush against the aft bulkhead, and snatched up her pillow, hugging it to her chest.

She could sense it coming. What she had felt on the Bridge was just the beginning. She could feel it like the growing darkness at twilight, like an incoming tide. Fear was moving through the ship, moving from person to person like a devouring cloud.

***

Auxiliary power came on, lighting every third light panel. Atoz' turbolift had ended up on Deck 4. Knowing the ship like the back of his hand, he had already found the nearest companionway upward to Deck 3. On the way, he tapped his badge again. "Atoz to Weir. Diane, whatever you're doing with the sensors is apparently giving Vespis problems. Just shut everything down for now. We've got plenty of time." There was no answer. "Diane?" Still no reply.

He tapped his badge again. "Captain to Sciences. What's going on there?"

"This is Lt. Rhyzkov, Captain," replied a female voice with a Russian accent. "Sensors went out at the same time primary power did. Commander Weir is not answering her comm badge."

"Computer, locate Diane Weir," Atoz said. There was a chirping sound as the computer responded.

"Diane Weir is on Deck 5," said Arachne's voice, "corridor B, heading aft."

She must have passed him in another turbolift just before power went out. But what could possibly make Diane leave the Bridge at a time like this? And why wouldn't she answer him? Atoz reversed his direction back down the companionway. Deck 5 was only two levels below him. Maybe he could catch up to her and find out what was going on.

The companionway between decks was dark. As Atoz passed the maintenance crawlway in between decks 3 and 4, something suddenly darted out at him. Startled, his foot missed the rung, but before he could fall, he found himself ensnared -- long, thin tentacles had lunged out from the dark and wrapped around his arms and chest, holding him tightly! Fear assaulted him. The memory came flooding back to him of the summer he turned 10, when his best friend Osman had been attacked by a giant medusa while swimming in the lagoon. Stung by numerous poisonous nematocysts, Osman had almost been killed, and Atoz himself had been terrified of the water for months afterward.

Atoz struggled desperatly against the monstrous tentacles which roped around his arms, even around his neck, choking him and drawing him back into the dark. Some part of mind knew that what he thought was happening was impossible, but his adrenal glands were overruling his brain now -- making his pulse race and his skin break out with a cold sweat. Glancing over his shoulder, he could see the thing's huge, staring eye, lurking back there in its den, waiting gleefully to feast on its prize.

In his panicked state, Atoz kicked and flailed, jogging his torso around so that his head struck against the rung of the companionway ladder. He saw stars -- darn that smarted! But at least the pain momentarily cleared his head. By desperate effort, he managed to slip his arm free from the groping tentacles -- that is, from the loose sheath of fiberoptic cables which someone had left unsecured and dangling. Bracing his feet on the ladder, he pulled the other arm free, and found himself staring at the medusa's eye -- or rather at the reflective hydro-vent screen.

Atoz gathered himself to finish his descent to Deck 5. Chirp-chirp! went his comm badge.

"Sickbay to Captain!" It was Pierce's voice again. "Something's going on, Seven. I've been getting calls from all over the ship -- people are having terrifying hallucinations, barricading themselves inside their duty stations, even starting fights."

"What kind of hallucinations?"

"Visual, auditory, in some cases even tactile."

"Tactile?" Atoz said, rubbing the welt on his throat. "I think I just had one of those myself. What could be causing it?"

"How should I know?" Pierce said. "I'm just at the stage of treating the symptoms. Whatever it is seems to hit people by bringing out their darkest fears. But I can tell you it's not anything in the ship's atmosphere. That leaves some kind of external influence. I'd talk to Sciences if I were you."

"Sciences? Oh crap. I think Diane's already a victim of this, whatever it is."

"What makes you say that?"

"She left the Bridge," Atoz said. "If Diane were terrified of something, her first instinct would to be make certain that Iara was safe. I bet you she's on her way to her cabin."

"You may be right," Pierce said. "Listen, I've got patients I have to attend to. But do you mind if I make a tiny suggestion? If this has anything to do with that planet survey you mentioned earlier, it might be prudent to postpone until we figure this out." He closed the channel.

The survey! Atoz tapped his badge. "Captain to Bridge! Commander Fawkes, take the ship out of orbit. Thirty degrees Galactic East, full impulse. Take up a position near the third planet until further orders."

"I'm sorry, Captain," Fawkes replied grimly. "I can't do that."

"What do you mean, you can't do that? That's an order."

"You don't know the situation, Captain," the First Officer explained in a shaky voice. "They're out there. They don't show up on sensors, but I know they're out there. Hiding. Waiting. I can smell them. We have to stay absolutely still. If we move, if we use sensors, if we arm weapons, if we do anything at all to give away our position, they'll pounce."

"Who will, Charles? Who's they?"

"The Borg." Atoz could almost visualize the sweat breaking out on the First Officer's forehead.

The word itself was chilling, but Atoz knew that Fawkes had his own personal reasons for fearing those half-machine marauders. Three years ago, the Borg had totally obliterated his first command, the system defense boat Ashanti. "Listen to me, Charles," he said. "The Borg are not there. Trust me on this. Take the ship out of orbit."

"I won't listen to you!" Fawkes replied thickly, his breath rasping. "I know they're out there. I can hear them! I can feel them!"

"It's an illusion! Listen to me, Charles. Trust me!"

"Why would you order me to give away our location?" Fawkes said suspiciously. "Unless you've already been assimilated! Mr. Rosh, the ship has been boarded! Seal off the Bridge! Activate security measures!" With a chirp, the comm channel closed off.

"Fawkes!" Atoz cried out in frustration. He tapped his badge again. "Captain to Bridge! Captain to Tactical! Lieutenant Rosh, answer me! Lieutenant Rosh!"

It was no use. Fawkes had closed the Bridge off to all communications, leaving Atoz struggling with the very worst fear a starship captain can have -- his inability to command his own ship!

***

Iara huddled in her bed, hugging the pillow to her. When the light panels flicked out, she gasped in fright. For a minute or more all she could see were the shadows cast by the starlight coming through the porthole. She felt her pulse racing, her heart fluttering like a bird's as the shadows began to move.

A tall figure clad in a shapeless gray smock seemed to step out of the wall, the lower half of his face covered by a mask. It was a male figure; the Cardassian girl could tell by the prominent serrated ridge between his eye sockets. In fact, there was a notch in the ridge as it came down around his left cheekbone which Iara knew well and recognized. It was Meerod, the sadistic doctor back at the laboratory where she had been born and spent her childhood.

Iara gulped with fear, unable to move. Titanium bars had appeared around the bed, shutting her in, trapping her. There was no place to run. The girl felt her body begin to tremble uncontrollably as Merrod came closer, holding a gleaming neural prod in his right hand...

A chirp came from the pocket door. Light came flooding in from the corridor outside as the door slid back into the wall with a subtle hiss and Diane Weir rushed into the cabin, leaving the door locked in the open position. "Iara? Sweetheart? Are you all right?"

Merrod shrank away from the light and dissolved into nothingness as Weir ran to the girl's side, hugging her. "Oh Diane!" Iara sobbed, overwhelmed with relief.

"Shh! It's all right, sweetheart. I won't let anything hurt you..."

But almost immediately a strange noise made the Science Officer jerk her head around. It sounded like a short, sharp tapping or clicking, repeated over and over. Her eyes searched the shadowy corners of the cabin, darting here and there to locate the sound, as she kept Iara's face cuddled protectively against the shoulder of her uniform.

Another gray humanoid figure had appeared, not as tall as Iara's Cardassian doctor, but in its own way just as menacing. It was dressed in a black, hooded robe, the hood not quite concealing its malformed face. Three bulbous eyes, all of different sizes, dotted its distorted skull, which tapered to a snout or beak in front, from which the clicking sound came. Diane herself shuddered in nameless fear as the gray figure was joined by a second, then a third, then a fourth, spacing themselves around the cabin to cut off her and Iara's escape.

Outside in the corridor, Atoz came running up to the open doorway. Just as he did, Ensign Penner arrived from the opposite direction. "Dr. Pierce sent me," Penner whispered, showing him the hypospray she was holding. "I've got a sedative. Is Commander Weir in there?"

Atoz motioned her to be cautious, and the two of them slowly sidled up to the doorway.

"Stay back, Captain!" Weir said suddenly, catching sight of them. Her main attention, however, was focused on the four aliens, who were still blocking her escape from the cabin. The aliens also seemed focused entirely on her and Iara, keeping up the nerve-wracking clicking of their atrophied mandibles.

"These are the culprits," the Science Officer explained, holding onto Iara. "There's a whole society of them down there, living in an underground chamber twenty kilometers below the surface. I detected it just before the sensors went out. They never see light, so they've developed their psionic abilities, and they use them to ensnare passing starships. They want to take over the Odysseus."

[Atoz 77]

Atoz motioned Penner to remain in her place as he stepped quietly into the cabin, sweeping his eyes across the scene. "I see," he said. "How can we stop them?"

"Stop them?" Weir echoed, her voice quavering. The hideous aliens seemed to take heart from her fear; the clicking grew louder, more confident. "I... I don't know that there's anything we CAN do, sir. Even our shields wouldn't stop telepathy." Her voice was rising in panic. "No, there's nothing. We're completely defenseless--"

"I don't want to hear that, Science Officer!" Atoz snapped, taking another step closer. "We have three hundred and sixty lives depending on us! Iara's depending on us! There has to be something we can do to fight them!"

"I don't know..."

"THINK! Look at ME, Diane! They're attacking us with pure fear! How do we combat that?"

For a moment, it didn't look as if Weir was going to answer. She stood there, holding the Cardassian girl tightly. Her eyes slowly moved to meet the Captain's.

"They're... they're distorting our alpha and beta waves," Weir said tentatively, "stimulating the production of adrenalin. That and the density of the crust... um... means that their psionic wavelengths must be in one of the ultra-short subspace bands, near the K level. Secondary or even tertiary stream..."

Penner's face lit up with sudden understanding, but again Atoz motioned her to remain quiet.

"We could..." Weir said hopefully, her eyes focusing on Atoz. "We could use the warp engines to generate a subspace baromorphic field, using our alpha waves as a baseline. If the phase was asynchronous, that would disrupt their psionic projections and protect us."

She looked around suddenly, astonished to find that the black-robed aliens had disappeared. "Where did they go?"

"'They' were never here, Diane," Atoz said. "Whatever you saw was a hallucination. You told me yourself. The environment of this planet is too extreme for any humanoid life."

"But..."

"Tertiary subspace distortion waves, sir," Penner said, "generated naturally by the extreme pressures in the planet's core. Remember how I told you I had detected them? There must be cavities of slightly less dense matter in the mantle which cause harmonics in tune with our brain rhythms."

"Of course," Weir said. "I must have been blind not to see this sooner..."

"I hate to interrupt," Atoz said, "but shouldn't we get to Engineering? Fast?"

All four of them quickly made their way to Main Engineering, which was almost deserted. Atoz went straight to the main engineering console in the center of the room. "Where is everybody?" he said.

"Hiding, most of them," said Vespis, emerging from the computer core annex. Her uniform was wrinkled and torn in a couple of places, and she was carrying a spear that she had fashioned from a strip of vironium. "Do you have any idea what kind of madhouse this ship has become in the last forty minutes? But thanks to Lt. Wilson, we have primary power back."

"'Tweren't nothing, sir," her assistant said, appearing in the gloom beside her. "An Irishman doesn't spook easy."

"I'll write commendations for both you, assuming we get out of this alive," Atoz said, trying to engage the impulse engines. "Let's see if we can at least get some distance from the planet..." His face fell. "It looks like Fawkes has the helm on manual override."

"Yep," Vespis confirmed, trying from the other side of the console. "Why can't you just call up the Bridge and tell him to break orbit?"

"Because he thinks I'm a Borg," Atoz said nonchalantly, ignoring the look on the Andorian's face as his fingers danced over the console. "Okay, we can fire the engines and thrusters from here, but our fine control will be questionable... not to mention that they'll be fighting us on the Bridge."

"Uh... that could be extraordinarily dangerous, sir," said Weir.

"Tell me about it," the Captain agreed. The ship was actually in orbit around the star, in a precisely calculated position 20,000 kilometers above the planet. There was a very small margin of error. The slightest mistake could send the Odysseus into the planet's gravity well, plunging out of orbit to their deaths. He didn't want to do it, but...

"Arachne?" he said.

Her holographic image appeared beside him. "Yes, Captain?"

"I want you to flood the Bridge with anestheon gas."

"Are you sure, sir?" the AI asked him.

"Yes, I'm sure." Piloting the ship would still be like trying to drive an automobile from the back seat using a mirror and steering with your foot, but at least he wouldn't be wrestling with the driver in the front seat.

Joining Vespis on the other side of the main console, Weir pulled up the subspace emission charts that Penner had recorded earlier and sketched out her idea to the chief engineer.

"Wilson, go babysit the converter assembly," Vespis said. "It's going to get a bit bumpy."

"Aye-aye, sir," the Irishman said, disappearing into the shadows again.

"We're going to need to watch the phase discrimination closely," Vespis added, "or we'll generate our own harmonics. Penner, can you handle that?"

"Sure thing, sir," the comm officer said, running to one of the subsidiary stations.

As the others worked, Iara crept close to Penner. "I think I like the holodeck better," she said shyly.

"Here we go," said Atoz, as he activated the thrusters. "Engaging impulse engines." He kept his eye on the inset screen on the console in front of him, displaying the view straight ahead of the Odysseus. Right now all he could see was the dark, eclipsed disc of that ugly planet, but it was slowly sliding past as he maneuvered the ship out of orbit.

Behind him, a dull throbbing was coming from the three-deck tall warp core as Vespis and Weir, working together, programmed the disruption field. "Intermix temperature is twenty two four," muttered the Science Officer, rapidly punching buttons. "The baromorophic field in fluctuating. I'm going to need more power."

"Zek, I'm losing it," replied Vespis. "I'm going to need to recalibrate on the fly. Hang on..."

Penner, keeping one eye on the phase variations, made the mistake of glancing across at the three officers clustered around the main console. A cold flush crept over her skin as she saw the horde of dead people, standing around the four entrances of the engineering compartment in tattered uniforms, as well as in the catwalks of the upper level overhead. Beside her, Iara let out a muffled shriek as the army of undead surged slowly forward.

"It's not real," Penner whispered, teeth chattering. "Close your eyes! Close your eyes!" The two of them clung to one another, shivering with dread as they heard the steady tread of shuffling feet.

"Twenty five nine," read Weir, her face beaded with perspiration as she kept her attention, her entire being focused on the instruments.

Atoz' nerves were so keyed up, he could have sworn the deck plates were trembling like an earthquake. The hum of the warp core dropped into an even lower register. His short hairs felt like they were standing on end, but he kept himself focused on his task. As the ship's heading finally cleared the black disc of the planet, a swarm of asteroids suddenly came out of nowhere, aimed straight for him! His fingers twitched as though they wanted to punch in a new heading, but he held them steady by sheer will. He was right; the jagged boulders dissolved into nothing as the ship flew straight through them -- they weren't really there.

"Thirty one one," said Weir. "We ought to be seeing some effect soon..."

Penner and Iara were face to face, arms wrapped around one another as the zombie horde slithered over them. They could feel the clammy hands grabbing at them, trying to pull them apart...

And then, nothing! The hallucinatory army was gone as if it had been nothing but a dream. The two girls looked around the brightly lit engineering compartment in disbelief. Already the undercurrent of fear that they had been feeling for the past hour was melting away. The girls were grinning out of sheer relief.

"It's over!" shouted Iara, dancing around in a circle and throwing her arms around Penner's shoulders.

"Oh thank Zarkhon!" Vespis gasped, leaning both arms on the main console as the reaction set in. Weir slumped against her, both of them giddy from the aftershock of adrenalin.

Atoz made certain the ship was well clear of the planet's gravity well and in open space. Then he tapped his comm badge. "Captain to Helm Operations Officer! Replacement crew report to the Bridge on the double!" He turned to Vespis and Weir. "Good work, both of you," he added, and then he hurried himself to the nearest turbolift.

Weir glanced at the engineering console. They were outside the range of the planet's subspace influence now, so she deactivated the baromorphic field so that it wouldn't interfere with the hyperspace slipstream when they went to warp. "Have you had dinner yet?" she said to Vespis.

"No, I haven't," the Andorian replied. "And I'm starving! Have you ever had gyershi? It's a kind of shellfish stew."

"Sounds delicious," Weir said. "Does it go with red wine or white?"

"Both," Vespis said.

>>THE END>>>>>>