Splatterhouse

Posted on Jan 21, 2016 @ 4:21pm by Captain Michael Turlogh Kane

Mission: Promethean

"SPLATTERHOUSE"

(Continued from "Pack Instinct")
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Location: Lavenza II facility
Stardate: [2.16]0121.2020
Scene: Bottom of the shaft


Aerdan Jos gave a quick check over the status of his away team as he collected his thoughts. He and Russ BaShen, Sam Perry, Jake Crichton, and Eve Dalziel were on the level at the bottom of the shaft - it would be incorrect to call it an access tunnel - and were pondering their next move. Scant minutes ago, Kassandra Thytos and James Barton had come down this shaft, several levels below where they had entered, and disappeared. The rest of the away team had moved off to try to find them, but like Theseus in Minos' labyrinth had been leaving little markers on walls as they passed by, in an attempt to not get lost.

Four phasers, three tricorders. The temperature was doing him no favours, either. Sweat was pooling under his arms and between his legs, and it seemed that every minute that passed led to another upward slide on the scale. Eve Dalziel, with her Cardassian blood, would also be feeling warm, but Andorian blood ran 'true blue' and was adapted for the cold conditions of their homeworld. He made a mental note to be aware of any heat-related physiological changes in his body, and to monitor how fast he was losing fluids to sweat.

"Anything?" he asked. The others were all consulting their tricorders, trying to make sense of this place. They were standing in a small crossroads-room, no more than one hundred square feet in area, dimly lit by a neon-like orange light in the ceiling above them. The deck plating beneath their feet had not changed - it was still tritanium grille in the corridors, full plate in the rooms and over bulkheads.

"Nothing from me," said Russ.

Eve shook her head likewise. "Very limited range, Commander. No sign of any power sources. These four corridors extend outward for around one hundred metres each. Three of them join other corridors, but this one - " she pointed at the corridor directly in front of them - "leads into some kind of kind of vertical shaft. The temperature is quite here down there, over three hundred kelvins."

"What could it be?" asked Aerdan, looking down the dark corridor.

"Heat dissipation?" suggested Jake. "It could be another of those exhaust pipes that we entered this place through. Or, it could be a simple air-conditioning shaft. This complex must be getting its heat and power from somewhere, probably the core of the planet itself."

"How are you holding up, Commander?" asked Sam Perry. She was looking at Aerdan with some concern, casting glances down at her medical tricorder. "Your body temperature is quite high."

"Fine, for now." Aerdan shone his wrist-light down the dark corridor they had come from. For the life of him, he couldn't see any obvious differences between any of the corridors. Who would construct such a complex without deck markers, corridor numbers, or any visual clue as to where someone was standing?

"It might be worth checking out that heat shaft," Jake was saying.

Aerdan blinked through his sweat. Had he just seen something move? He adjusted his wrist-light's beam to full intensity, and for a split second thought he saw it again - a quick, jerky movement just beyond the range of his light. "Tricorder down here, quickly," he ordered, gesturing to Eve. He drew his phaser. "Stand to."

Eve moved to his side and Sam dropped to the rear of the group, as Jake and Russ levelled their phasers at the darkness.

"What did you see?" asked Russ.

"I'm not sure," said Aerdan, wiping his forehead with his phaser hand. He set his jaw in frustration at the urge to second-guess himself. He wasn't going mad, the heat wasn't affecting him in that way yet. You did see something, he told himself.

"There's nothing there, Commander," said Eve, looking up from her tricorder. "No lifesigns around here except us."

Scrape-click.

Scrape-click.

The noise was of claws on metal, and it was coming closer.

"Lieutenant..." hissed Aerdan.

"There's nothing there!" exclaimed Eve, looking at her tricorder in shock. "No lifesigns, no thermal signatures - "

"But we can hear it!" said Jake.

Scrap-click. Scrape-click. It was a horrible teasing thing, like a serial killer's smile.

"Prepare to open fire," ordered Aerdan.

Eve hastily reconfigured her tricorder. This time when she read the data stream, her face was grim. "The air is being displaced down the corridor. Coming this direction. Sixty metres. Mass approximately one hundred pounds."

From out of the black came a creature of nightmare. Short and humanoid, it moved with a sinuous, serpentine slink on a flexible pelvis that was titled forward, giving it a leaning gait. Its two arms and two legs were lithe and creased with muscle, tapering down to three-digit clawed hands and feet, both extremities seemingly equipped with opposable thumbs. A thin prehensile tail waved around behind it like a bullwhip waiting to crack the air. Its skin was corpse-white and grey like it had never seen sunlight, but it was the head and face that were the most shocking - the eyes were black-sheened and opaque, bugging out of the skull like tennis balls, and maw was a hanging hinge loaded with needle-sharp teeth. It was sliding forward like a reptile, with the upper part of its body moving first.

The away team looked on in horror as the thing slithered closer.

Eve was looking up and down from her tricorder even as she levelled her phaser. "Tricorder's not showing any life-signs!" she exclaimed.

For one brief moment, Aerdan considered attempting to make contact with it, but Eve's shocked words were enough to make up his mind. "Open fire!" he shouted, lighting up the corridor with a sizzling orange lance of energy. The shot caught the creature dead in its centre mass.

The effect was immediate. Not only did the creature not go down, it threw its head back and gave vent to a hideous shriek. It threw its weight forward and burst into a run, long loping strides that quickly ate up the distance to the away team. Its claws seemed to extend further, sliding out from muscular sheaths in its arms.

"Phasers to maximum!" yelled Aerdan, jabbing his thumb over his weapon's setting controls. He fired again, and this time the beam sheared off one of the creature's arms. Black ichor splattered the walls, but it kept coming as Eve, Jake and Russ fired. Three more orange beams split the tunnel's gloom and the creature was phasered to ash.

Aerdan's mind was whirling. The last time he had been in personal combat was during the Second Dominion War eight years ago aboard the Patriot. There had been an explosion, a concussive blast perhaps caused by a Jem' Hadar grenade, and he had been thrown bodily against a shattered, jagged wall, that had torn shrapnel through his shoulder and badly injured him. He had learned, through his own frost-blue blood and blinding white pain, of the importance of staying focused even as the shitstorm hurricaned around him.

His heart sank when answering shrieks sounded from the corridors to their left and right.

"Back to back!" he snapped, realising with worry that they had only three phasers between the five of them.

From out of the darkness of the corridor that led to the heat-shaft, another of the creatures lunged at the rear of the group. Jake Crichton yelled in fear at the sudden movement, instinctively throwing himself backward, knocking Russ BaShen off-balance even as Eve and Aerdan turned to meet the new threat.

"They're all around us!" yelled Russ in fear, but Aerdan wasn't looking at him.

It all happened in slow motion. The creature's long white arms snapped forward, closing around Sam Perry's body like a snake's coils. The head whipped forward, jaws unhinging like a door yawning open, and all those teeth clamped down on her left shoulder, shredding through her arctic overcoat to crunch into bone and taste her green flesh. Sam screamed out, swinging her medical kit up to slam it into the creature's face, but her blow was shrugged off.

Aerdan levelled his phaser and fired, but the monster pulled back into the darkness, dragging Sam with it, and his beam fried a section of wall.

"It's got me!" Sam was screaming from somewhere beyond their lights. "It's got me!" The sound of her voice was disappearing at a frightening rate.

"Ensign Perry!" yelled Aerdan. He started down the corridor in pursuit, but more menacing shrieks from the surrounding corridors forced him to freeze in place. In battlefield triage, a doctor's duty was to those he could help.

As Sam Perry's screams faded into the darkness as she was dragged off to an uncertain fate, Aerdan turned his attention to his remaining away team.

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Location: USS Phoenix, orbiting high above
Scene: Bridge science station


Michael Turlogh Kane was still waiting for answers, but the mood he was in was an indicator that whatever they were, they wouldn't please him. An away team cut off from communications in a base that nobody knew existed, and he could do nothing to help. Although orbiting geosynchronously above the complex, ostensibly to prevent the pirate ship from escaping, he still felt impotent and wanting to do something.

He folded his arms as Lieutenant Byte, Ensign Lahav and Stephanie Trimble worked the science station, trying to keep his frustrations under control. For the past half-hour the ship had been conducting numerous precision sensor sweeps, conducting detailed scans across every conceivable frequency. Now the computer was collating the data.

Lahav looked at Byte and gestured to something on the data stream. The android nodded and turned to Kane. {{It is as we feared, Captain. There is a dampening field in operation around the complex. The field is disrupting both communications and sensors.}}

Kane frowned. "Elaborate, Mister Byte."

Byte pointed to the relevant data on the science station's monitor. {{Once we realised that the dampening field was disrupting our sensors, we concentrated on analysing the field itself. It is an inverted particle scattering field, that modulates on rotating frequencies to break up our sensors. It also effectively disrupts communications by altering subspace waves within its area of effect.}} Byte turned back to Kane. {{This kind of field can only be generated by a generator of immense power. It is likely that the complex we detected is directly tapping into the molten core of the planet.}}

"Isn't that dangerous?" asked Kane.

{{Yes, Captain. Any geologically-active world with a pressurised molten core is in danger of volcanic eruption. An ice world like this balances that risk by having a heavy, thick crust. In Lavenza's case, that thick crust, coupled with its distance from its parent stars, led to the creation of a kilometre-thick layer of permafrost atop its rocky crust.}}

Kane nodded. "So if we can take out the generator, we'll knock out power to the entire complex?"

{{It may not be that simple, Captain. A generator that can power an inverted particle scattering field likely has integrated power networks, redundant systems, backups, and all manner of secondary fallback systems. The generator's core is likely to be buried deep within the complex, close to some sort of control centre.}}

"Alright," said Kane. "Let's turn to practicalities. How can we rescue the away team?"

Byte glanced at Lahav and Trimble. The two scientists looked away from Kane's gaze. {{We do not have good news from that standpoint, Captain.}}

"Give me something, Mister Byte."

Byte reached down and changed the view on the science station's monitor. The display now showed a god's-eye view of the Lena and the exhaust port the away team had disappeared down. As Byte manipulated the controls, a line appeared, running in a square around the proposed location of the underground complex.

{{Given what we are about to propose, we have had to be somewhat conservative with our estimates of the complex's dimensions,}} the android explained. It extended a finger and pointed at several areas around the edges of the base. {{When an archaeologist finds the outline of a building buried in the earth, she smooths the earth around it, seeking its edges, does she not?}}

Kane nodded slowly. "Yes."

Byte looked Kane dead in the eye. {{We use the ship's phasers to melt the permafrost around the complex, and so find its outline.}}

Kane was flabbergasted. He glanced back at Lahav and Trimble, but the two scientists met his look evenly this time. He could imagine what Byte was proposing - the Phoenix was capable of scouring a planet's surface with her shipboard phasers, so why should she not be able to carve through the frost of Lavenza II? The immediate problem was an obvious one, however. "I realise that our phasers could immolate the frost layer, but that would throw up gas clouds of whatever the frost is made up of."

{{Water, ammonia, and methane, Captain. They are not inherently dangerous, and should not pose a significant danger to any away team member who reaches the surface.}}

"What about the danger to the complex itself? The closer we get to locating the outline, the closer our phasers will get to the structure."

{{There is the potential for danger there also, Captain. Although we would use a narrow beam for cutting, and vary the depth of the beam's penetration, there may be localised shaking, which would be exacerbated if we accidentally hit the complex itself.}}

"Once we have the base's outline, could we use our phasers to penetrate the dampening field?"

Byte nodded once, like it had been waiting all this time for Kane to reach this conclusion. {{Yes, Captain.}}

Kane felt a surge of elation. The plan seemed workable. He looked at three of them. "How soon until we can begin burning off the permafrost?"

Stephanie Trimble piped up. "The math is not a problem. We'll need Operations to make some tweaks to the phaser arrays, but that shouldn't take more than an hour."

"Good work, everyone," said Kane. "Advise me when you're ready to fire." He left them to their work. Finally, they had something to go on.

But would the away team last that long? he wondered.

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Location: Lavenza II complex
Scene: Turbolift shaft


Jake Crichton rubbed his eyepatch in irritation as he made the final adjustment to the bypass on the door. After climbing down through several levels of the turbolift shaft, the remainder of the crew of the Annabelle's Lament had finally arrived at a promising bulkhead door.

"Hurry up," whispered Evaer from just above him. Above the Bolian, Brass and Trixie looked on. The climb down had been quiet, with Goldstadt's grisly fate still uppermost on everyone's minds.

Jake flipped the switch on the door control. With a shearing of metal, the override worked, bypassing the lockdown and activating the door's controls. relief flooding through him, he climbed into the adjacent corridor, quickly followed by his companions.

Once inside the corridor, they all sat down. The door remained open, and some sort of metallic smell wafted up from the depths of the turbolift shaft. Jake imagined that he could still hear Goldstadt screaming from somewhere above them.

Evaer got up and moved down the corridor a little ways. Jake saw him stop and look around. "There's a room of some sort down there," said the Bolian, looking to his right. "There may have been an explosion or something. Looks like there's glass all over the floor."

Jake and the others got up and went to Evaer's side. The Bolian was correct. To the left, the corridor continued on, but to the right, it looked like a large window had been shattered, leaving a transparent glasslike material all over the deck plating.

Evaer drew his blaster. "Follow me," he whispered.

Jake felt naked without a weapon. Of the five of them, only Goldstadt and Evaer had been armed. Now Goldstadt's knives were food for peptic slugs. Gingerly, the four of them approached the bay window, but all was silent. They looked into the room beyond.

"Some sort of medical bay," said Trixie. "Look at the biobed, all that IV tubing."

Brass gestured to the autodoc drone, now lying in standby mode on the floor. "If that's the doctor, where's the patient?"

Jake looked around at all the glass, then back to the window. "A breakout," he said. "Look at how this glass is all all the ground here, with none inside."

"So what?" said Brass, baring his bodkin teeth.

"So whatever was in that room smashed the glass in this direction," said Jake, talking to Brass like he was a child. The Ferengi sneered at him, but Jake continued. "Whoever was in there probably burst out through the glass too. I'm curious, though. Why no blood on the glass? No hair, no skin either."

From the darkness of the far tunnel a huge shadow moved, twice as tall as Jake, as broad as it was tall. As it came into the light, Jake could see that it had once been a man, but a terrible science had wrought horrific changes to the body. Aside from the size, and terrifying girth of its arms and legs, the monster was covered with gray scaled skin that loked gnarled and thick as tree bark. Four reeking tusks jutted from its mouth, and its eyes were wild and feral.

Jake backed away, as slowly and surreptitiously as he could. The monster saw them, took them all in with one look. It reached out a viciously-clawed hand to them, and made some sort of noise deep in its throat.

Evaer had readied his blaster, but Trixie put a hand on the Bolian's arm. "Is it trying to talk to us?" she whispered.

The monster closed its fingers into a fist, and opened them again. Its jaw moved up and down with the semblance of talking, but the sound that came out was a deep and guttural growl.

Trix stepped forward.

"Be careful!" hissed Evaer.

Why are you doing this? Jake wanted to scream. Let's just run! Or shoot! The darkness closed around him like a shroud as he continued to backstep slowly away.

Trixie held up her hand to mirror the grey-skinned monster. She made her eyes big, hunched her shoulders down submissively, and put on the same child's voice that had lured many an unsuspecting john into the range of a sharp razor. "You don't want to hurt me, do you?" she asked in a tiny timbre. "You're just scared and want to get out of here, right?"

The monster stared at her with all-too-Human eyes. It might have been Jake's imagination, but he thought he saw some sort of understanding in them.

"Do you know where your master is?" asked Trixie in her child's voice. "Doctor Conniston? Do you know where Doctor Conniston is?"

The monster growled a three-syllable noise. It could have been Conn-is-ton. Then it stepped forward and slashed across Trixie's midsection with one mighty claw.

"No!" screamed Evaer. He pulled the trigger on his blaster as Trixie stood there in shock, seeing her own intestines flop outside her body, and hearing the wet splat as they hit the floor. The blaster bolt hit the monster in its chest, but all it did was focus its attention on Evaer. Under its withering gaze, the Bolian ceased fire.

Brass turned and ran past Jake, screaming somewhere into the dark. Evaer, too, took to his heels and ran, their foosteps fading away as Jake remained frozen in place.

Trixie collapsed onto her knees, then rolled over onto her back while the monster looked down at her. Her mouth opened and closed like she was trying to say something.

Jake watched as the monster knelt down on one knee, looming over the dying Trixie like a monolith. It pursed its own lips and tried to imitate what she was doing.

Then, it casually reached into her ruined trunk and wrenched one of her kidneys out in a spray of gore. Trixie made a horrible choking sound and lay still.

When the monster put the cooling meat to its lips to feed, Jake turned and ran for his life.

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NRPG: Bloody disgusting. No call for that kind of thing. Outrageous pornographic violence. Awful stuff altogether. Down with this sort of thing. End this story quickly!

Sam Perry has been separated from the away team. Please don't use her in your posts. Generator? Also, the Phoenix will be using those phasers shortly. Annabelle's Lament crew down another one. Grimdark burp.


Jerome McKee
the Soul of Captain Michael Turlogh Kane
Commanding Officer
USS PHOENIX


"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
- Isaac Asimov

"Violence is a form of cinematic entertainment."
- Quentin Tarantino

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