It Was Not Spontaneous Combustion

Posted on Thu Oct 10th, 2024 @ 9:28pm by Lieutenant Commander Gulati & Captain Tyler Driskill
Edited on on Thu Oct 10th, 2024 @ 10:03pm

2,539 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Mission 2 - Death is Only the Beginning
Location: Lieutenant Kaelyn Carter's Quarters

CAUTION: Graphic Death Scence

Midnight had long since come and gone, time becoming meaningless as Lieutenant Carter enjoyed the solitude to work while most of the crew slept. The quiet was interspersed with the sounds of the equipment within her favoured lab - every noise as familiar as the sound of her own heartbeat.

It was moments like this, when you could be on any Starfleet ship anywhere, that it was almost possible to imagine they were not currently so far from home. Almost.

Stretching to placate some aching muscles, she yawned and with a glance at the display panel, realised how late it was. Definitely time to call it a day, given the next round of diagnostics wouldn’t be finished for a few hours. Plenty of time to sleep, grab a shower and fresh uniform.

Pausing to pick up some reports from her desk, she made her way through the ship to her quarters, sharing a friendly hello with the few souls she passed en route. Entering her quarters the lights rose to just above the minimum setting as she slipped off her boots and set the reports down on the edge of the table as she checked the computer for any messages. Just one, which was enough to distract her for a few seconds as she sent a quick response to confirm dinner plans. Was it a mistake to have dinner with someone you used to date?

"Probably," she whispered as she deactivated the screen and headed towards the bedroom. Almost inside she paused, hesitating for a second on the threshold. Had she heard something? She frowned, studying her surroundings but nothing seemed out of place and whatever she thought she had heard, it wasn't there now. Still, it didn't stop her from ordering the computer to turn up the lights a little more.

Swapping out her uniform for one of the oversized replica football shirts brought from home, she began discarding most of the pillows from the bed before she sat down on the edge of the bed and began to unbraid her hair. Her eyes as ever fell on the picture of her family which was perched on the bedside table and she wondered what they were doing now. Did they even know or suspect the mission hadn’t gone according to plan?

Her grandfather probably would, but only because he had been against her stepping foot on this ship to begin with. A man who when asked his age usually replied with ‘older than time’ and had a story for every occasion, having spent much of his life wandering the galaxy. Some of the stories he would tell on camping trips were too incredible to believe - from the fantastical and bizarre to downright terrifying.

“The universe is a wonderful place full of beauty and wonder,” he would often say, “but full of dangerous at every turn.”

He had even given her a copy of his journals, recounting his time travelling in this very quadrant. Unfortunately it was in his native tongue and at times something else entirely. She had spoken to a few of the linguists on board but had in the end opted to let the computer decipher what it could, which was now a work in progress. Maybe when done, she could find something that would help them reach Voyager. Or knowing him it was possibly just filled with really bad jokes and anecdotes.

She could understand some of the El-Aurian symbols but not all. Hardly surprising since, when raising her, her father had not exactly been concerned with teaching her much about their people. Maybe he planned to one day but things had not exactly gone to plan. Few people had mourned his passing but she was one of the few.

Turning off the main lights she lay down, pulling the bedsheet around her and closing her eyes, waiting for sleep that would never actually come.


It came from the ventilation system, the intricate ducts, chutes, and hatchways that ran the ship port to starboard and bow to stern. Oozing through the tiniest of spaces and slipping through the cracks. It knew it was being hunted by the solids but they were a pitiful bunch, always several steps behind.

One by one, one by one. That was all it had to do was take out pivotal members of the crew. The Chief Operations Officer had been an easy target, forcing itself down the Bolian's throat and suffocating the blue skinned solid.

It's next target, the Chief Science Officer. A peculiar solid. Access the the Federation database had taught it that she was an El-Aurian, a species amid the solids that had an almost godlike immortality compared to other solids like Humans. A pale imitation of godliness it was. Perverted even.

As she had turned off the lights, it came out from stalking and began to take form at her bedside, imitation was the sincerest form of flattery...that mediocrity can pay to greatness, and it was not imitating. The solid was the imitation, an abomination of the galaxy.

Looming over her as she lay there on her side, it blocked and all light as it took on a new nightmarish shape. This El-Aurian was nothing but a child among her own kind, and the shape shifting creature took on a dark grimly figure from El-Aurian lore, one that children were taught to fear.

In the moment between sleep and consciousness came an awareness... a certainty in her bones that while it should not be possible, she was not alone. As the form took shape behind her she could not see what lurked in the shadows, yet it seemed to steal the oxygen from the room as she heard a series of clicking noises and a hot breath against the bare skin of her shoulder. Adrenaline was coursing through her veins and rationale thought was somewhere back in Alpha Quadrant when something razor sharp trailed along her back.

Fight or flight... she quickly chose flight. Launching herself off the bed opposite to whatever was behind her. Which she realised was a mistake when it gave her literally nowhere to go. Maybe the bathroom if she was fast en -

The air felt like it had been ripped from her lungs as in her peripheral vision she saw the thing move. As it moved, that tiny sliver of strip lighting revealed small glimpses of features amid the shadows, the obsidian eyes, beastly hands which ended in razor sharp claws, the movements deliberate, as if a hunter stalking a pray. Shrouded in a darkness which seemed to consume all in it's path.

Eji Vu Lythani.

"You can't be real," she whispered, her voice far from confident. For she could feel that trickle of blood from where those razor sharp fingers hand merely brushed against her flesh.

Eji Vu Lythani. Consumer of souls. Servant of the underworld.

It was a story. A myth. Folklore. Something to scare. Only this was feeling insanely real. And she suspected if she were close enough she would smell the blood of victims, see how their souls allegedly sustained his decaying physical form, each one a dimming light in an amulet which was drapped around it's gruesome neck ...

Her leg bumped the other table and she grabbed for anything that might be on it. Which unfortunately for her, was just a hairbrush. With a defiant scream she launched it with all her worth before vaulting over the bed to try and make it past this ... this thing and out of her quarters. Security! Why hadn't she -

The shape it had taken had been effective, damn near causing paralysis as the Chief Science Officer struggled to let out even an utterance of a scream. "Your existence is obsolete" croaked the shape as it's form shifted and shot towards the woman's face.

It entered her body through her mouth, through her nose, and her ears as nearly liquid state. There was nowhere to run nor hide. The Chief's Science Officer's body was about to undergo a painful and suffer change as the entity that had entered her body began to solidify within her becoming expanding foam until her body could no longer endure the stress, integrity compromised.

Her scream of horror as the demonic figure seemed to lose cohesion, becoming fluid like and hurting at her at warp speed. The scream died and in the few agonising milliseconds which had followed was excruciating. Pain beyond anything she had imagined possible, making her very mortal body convulse before she collapsed onto her hands and knees as blood poured from from her mouth, nose eyes and mouth. Drowning in agony until there was nothing, death a welcome escape as the foam continued to expand, filling veins, arteries and organs until they ruptured but still the pressure continued to build and build until a critical pressure was achieved…

Lieutenant Gulati was hot on the trail of the hitchhiking life form, saboteur, and murderous shape shifting scumbag that she strongly believed was aboard. All evidence that she and Rehman had come across, collected, and analyzed had certainly pointed in the director of the Gamma Quadrant menace. They unfortunately knew very little about the species.

Having refined her tricorder to look specifically for anything she could think of that would detect even the faintest of a changeling's signature, Gulati had found herself crawling through the Jeffries tube network of channels and cross channels, up and down the starship until she popped out of a hatch at a junction.

The door ahead of were private quarters. Examining the number of the unit she recalled them belongings to the Chief Science Officer. Had it been Kaelyn all along? Was the changeling posing as the Concord's Chief Science Officer?

No, that can't be Gulati thought. She had consulted her tricorder and there was El-Aurian bio signatures inside. At least there was before the blood curdling scream that caused Lieutenant Gulati to gasp and nearly jump out of her Starfleet issued heavy soled boots, throwing her tricorder across the corridor. It has collided with the doorway and the screen shattered, parts ans pieces rained down. The tricorder was beyond busted.

She had heard the Chief Science Officer scream once before albeit not in the same register. The octave was higher, and that had been several days ago in the mess hall when she was on Gulati's list of suspects...and Kaelyn had not taken to kindly of Gulati 'missing her plate' with her fork which she plunged right into the Chief Science Officer's hand.

The blood that adorned the table was enough to take her off the determined Benzite's list of suspects. She had taken the fork back to Tyler Rehman for testing later that evening much to his chagrin of being an accomplice to Kaelyn's assault.

Lieutenant Gulati quickly retrieved the phasers that she had holstered on her waist, something she had 'burrowed' from a weapons locker, and would undoubtedly be on the Security Chief's shit list for. She was also about to add to her offenses because cling out to the Chief Science Officer and pressing the chime repeatedly was getting no response.

Gulati may not have designed or built the Concord, but she did work on Peoject Concord. She knew the starship and where it was vulnerable. 'Picking' the lock at it were was not something she advertised as knowing how to do. The Benzite removed the metallic plate to get into the circuitry of the door and started carefully yanking some wires.

She jumped back when a few sparks hit her skin. A few burns were worth it. She went back to work pushing two frayed wires together and causing the door to open, circumventing the lock. Breaking and entering she thought adding the charges to her tally.

When she entered the quarters with a phaser drawn she found nothing until she made her way to the bedroom and something went squish and crunch under the footfall of her boot. She called for lights and looked down to see a piece of skull, hair attached, and blood a lot of blood everywhere floor to ceiling, wall to wall. Bone fragments were like a debris field scattered crossed the room. Ripped fabric was everywhere.

Gulati immediately ran to the toilet and lost the contents of her stomach. She slumped down and immediately tapped her communications badge. "Gulati to Wild. Oh god. I need you in Lieutenant Carter's quarters now!"

She did not wait. "Captain," she shrieked having opened a channel to the man. "Lieutenant Carter...she's everywhere. She's dead."

It only took a matter of minutes for Tyler and T’Lar to arrive and override the Lieutenant’s quarters security lock outs. “What the hell” the Captain asked seeing the grotesque scene left in Lieutenant Carter’s quarters.

The Benzite ran her sleeve across her mouth. "That's Carter, Sir. At least what is left of her" explained Gulati. "It was the changeling, Captain. I was tracking it and it lead me here. I heard Carter scream and I broke in...but I was too late."

“I want that monster found” Tyler said turning to Gulati and his Assistant Chief Security Officer. “Two horrible murders and we are not any closer.”

Gulati nodded and examined the small burns she had. "We're going to find it, Captain. It's only a matter of time. If we have to tear this ship apart piece by piece. Lieutenant Rehman and I have been hot on its trail."

“No one goes anywhere alone” Captain Driskill ordered “we’ve already increased security and have the matter of dealing with our new alien friends.”

Gulati looked at Captain Driskill and placed the phasers in his hand. "Same goes for you, Captain. Don't think about going anywhere alone. Security should be posted outside of your quarters, and I'd strongly encourage keeping a phaser on you at all times."

Captain Driskill gave a nod “I’ll be on the bridge.”

"And I'll be in Sickbay getting these burns taken care of. Once they release me, Rehman and I will get back on the hunt."

“Very well, Lieutenant” the Captain started down the corridor. He was upset with the fact this was the second murder in his ship on the last week. They would get to the bottom of this even if he had to confine people to their quarters and start blood testing.

If I have to start stabbing everyone with a fork to find this thing I will thought Gulati as she watched as more security personnel and others arrived in the quarters. This was more than a crime scene. It was an unsettling reminder that none of them were safe, all of them were vulnerable, and something incredibly heinous was picking them off one by one.

The small but determined Benzite had barely said more than a few words to the Chief Science Officer. She did not know the woman. Though she had some final words that she kept inside. I will hunt this thing down and show it no mercy.

 

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