Roughing It

Posted on Fri Aug 16th, 2019 @ 9:05am by Petty Officer 2nd Class Ila Dedjoy & Death & Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Lieutenant Commander Sonak & Lieutenant Samuel Clemens XV & Petty Officer 3rd Class S'Rina Wil'I'Ams
Edited on on Sat Aug 17th, 2019 @ 4:33pm

Mission: Mudd on the Souls of Mankind
Location: An Unknown Planet
Timeline: 2396 - After the time traveling adventure

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the 15th, chewed on a ration bar, looking thoroughly deez-gusted.

Not with the bar- as rations went, Petty Officer DeLacroix had practically revolutionized the idea, by building a bar that not only would keep you alive, but actually was tasty. It was a miracle of modern science, it was. As impressive as his current repast was, he was distracted from it by one teeny, tiny, minuscule detail.

He had no idea where they all were.

"Damnitall, how could every-damned-thang in thuh whole core jus' smoke itself, lahk a cannibalistic doobie??" he groused, trying to coax the navcomputer from the shuttle into betraying its secrets.

Sitting in the corner with bandages across half of her face and upper shoulder nursing significant plasma burns, Lieutenant Mnhei’sahe Dox groaned slightly, understanding the Chief Intelligence Officer’s frustration all too well. “I wish I knew, Lieutenant.”

There was a bit more rasp in the usually raspy-voiced young Romulan pilots voice than usual. “It was a catastrophic, cascading system failure. Happened across the board in… in an instant. There wasn’t even a warning light before the console blew up in my damn face.”

The young pilot had never a ship go down while she was at the helm of before and was trying not to wallow in the moment, and so was trying to help Clemens troubleshoot the problem. It was something to do to figure out why their runabout malfunctioned so epically immediately upon returning to their own time. “How long did the shuttle remain at warp after I got knocked out?”

"Ah counted th'seconds b'fore ah heard th'subspace re-entry downshift. Was about twelve point fahve three. But ah dunno what our factuh or headin' was, an' if'n our vectuh changed aftuh. Th'dampenuhs lasted fuh 'bout thuhty seconds moah, an' then we wuz a'driftin'," Sam replied, having given up on the fused-solid core. Whatever had hit them lept from system to system, thermally-destroying things as it moved, like ball lightning on a summer day over the West Memphis sky.

Sam had only minutes before disconnected his charging systems from the tiny ship's IPS grid, having topped off his internal cells.

The young but seasoned pilot closed her exposed eye and started running math in her head, mumbling bits and pieces as she tried to think out loud. "Twelve point five three. We were cruising at warp six point two…"

Fingering In the air in front of her, Dox winced slightly from moving her burnt shoulder. "The last position I saw was seven seven four mark… assuming the warp fall off was minimal… Hnaev."

Cursing in Romulan as she muttered, Dox replied. "Yeah… once the helm was fried, we could have changed direction. But at that speed for that duration could make the search area… across three systems. We could be in the… Martell system, the Goraz system or even the D'Nazz cluster."

“I’m betting on the Martell system myself,” Rita Paris re-entered the shuttlecraft, dusting off her hands. “I’m not intimately familiar with the system, but judging from the visible constellations in the sky, it’s a high likelihood.“

Tapping the injured Romulan pilot on the arm, Paris grinned at her. She was sporting a black eye from trying to get out of the reclamator in a hurry when the surge had hit. “C’mon, I built a fire. Bring some of those aluminum foil blankets, let’s have a seat and warm ourselves by the fire. Like it or not, we’re on a camping trip, so we may as well make the most of it.”

That was when Dedjoy, the captain’s android yeoman, returned with good and bad news from her brief scouting trip. “I have found a clean source of fresh water nearby. There are also berry bushes and fruit-bearing trees, but I advise against eating them as they register as toxic to all but Lieutenant's Dox and Sonak's digestive tracts. I surmise that they would be a powerful hallucinogen for them both due to the bio-acrylates present.”

Stepping out of the shattered remains of the Runabout Danu, the infirmed pilots personal favorite Runabout, with a stack of silver thermal blankets crinkling under her arm, Dox groaned lightly. Moving exacerbated her pain, but it was more annoying than not at the moment. "Lovely. There's food, but only Sonak and I can eat it but if we do we'll start hallucinating. As if I needed more reasons to dislike camping."

As Clemens started unshipping and prying exterior panels off the broken frame of the poor craft that gave her life to save her charges, stacking them in neat piles by size, he mused out loud, "… mah granpap usetah talk 'bout how most plants had somethin' useful, even if'n the easy t'git stuff was no account. Like how 'mater plants'd iill ya if ya tried t'eat anythin' but th'fruit. Th'leaves're fulla digitalis, 'cause it's a relative of dead'leh nightshade." He finished stripping the plating off, and went to work on the interior trim, doing the same thing. His unspoken intent was to turn maybe-viable wreckage into definitely-useable shelter, maybe even with a bit of privacy. "Maybe th'roots or leaves or stems of that berry and fruit plants have somethin' we could make use of…"

"Well, there are rations for when we're hungry. We've still got medkits and survival gear, and the hull is still intact, so we have some shelter. We've got an emergency beacon, but we aren't sure how long that subspace signal might take to find someone who cares. In the meanwhile, we'll make do and take this night under these stars that are so far away from all of our homes. And we are going to tell stores, and share experiences, and keep our spirits up. Because we may be shipwrecked, but we're not alone. Starfleet is out there, and they'll find us."

"Assuming we're supposed to exist right now," Paris admitted aloud. "Mr. Sonak, how accurate was our chronal transit?"

The Vulcan was barely out of his healing trance. It had taken him a day to restore himself after being hit indirectly by an EPS conduit blow up under his station. Only this advanced healing self-healing technique and his Vulcan physiology, strengthened and toughened by evolution on a harsh, hot, desert planet, had saved him from fatal injury. As it were, such a short session had only restored his faculties and only his decades of mental discipline kept him in control, apparently only singed from the ordeal; an Andorian would have died on the spot and a Human would still be racked with atrocious, incapacitating pain. He carefully avoided close contact with his wife and everyone else, else his newly heightened telepathy would have them share his suffering. Only this obvious attitude and his slower speech betrayed all this to the others as he answered his wife and commanding officer.

''Spacetime is one and the same. Therefore, our temporal deviation is just as significant as our spatial displacement. Such would place us several centuries off our targeted time. However, our stellar cartography computer files and sensors were destroyed in the crash. It will take time from our current vantage point to determine it exactly... and if it is in the past... or in the future of our intended destination.''

Placing the stack of thermal blankets on a downed log near the fire, Dox grabbed one and wrapped it around her shoulders and slowly lowered herself to the ground near the fire with a pained groan. "I can't be certain as the memory is a little... jumbled... but I think we were out of the quantum displacement and back in normal space when the helm blew up. If so, we should be when we intended to arrive. Emphasis on 'I think'. It's still all a little... fuzzy."

''I was totally incapacitated when the actual reentry happened,'' Sonak said. ''If you are correct, then our displacement is only spatial due to navigational failure. But the time for Starfleet to pick up our signal depends on the closeness of any functional subspace relay. If not, then it will take eight point seventy-six hour for the signal to cross a light year.''

"Then if we are in the Martell system, then Starfleet should pick up our signal before too long. It's remote but not completely off the map." the injured pilot added, trying to keep her own spirits up as Rita had suggested, focusing on the positives.

Sitting down as well, Ila closed down her tricorder and closed her large eyes for a moment. It seemed she was the only one that had somehow escaped any semblance of injury in the incident along with the Klingon Security Officer, S'Rina, who was silently patrolling the perimeter. "The last thing I saw on the displacement drive interface was that we were exiting the quantum filament roughly a week after our initial departure and in the general vicinity of the systems you described earlier. A little off of the projected arrival, but still within the safety margins."

Listening, Dox couldn't help but smile a little. If they had returned a week or more past the point in which they left the timeline, it was possible that her Bond-Mate Mona back on the Hera would know if their attempts at conception were successful or not by then.

"Someone see if we can launch a probe to boost our signal and increase our odds of getting rescued sooner. And meanwhile... we're here. We could be industrious and build shelter, but for tonight we can sleep in the Unlucky Lady. I think tonight we sit around a campfire, keep the sensors on alert, hope that alien mosquito bites aren't deadly, and we'll tell stories."

"In fact, why not tell one of your own stories, so we can get to know one another a little better. because we're marooned on an alien planet we haven't identified yet, possibly lost in time as well as space although that is looking doubtful now, fortunately," Paris nodded to the able pilot who had crash-landed from orbit, with no casualties and only one serious injury due to an exploding panel. "I'll start, because mine is a sad story. It's one of my ghost stories."

Briefly, she considered sending Sonak to monitor the sensors so he could rest, but he knew himself and his limits, and she respected his choices. If he wanted rest he would take it, but here, by the primitive fire as the third moon rose, it might do some good to get all their minds of their shipwrecked state.

"It was sometime in my second year on the Constitution. I'd been a ghost when we shoved off, and I'd been a ghost ever since. I was still trying to find ways to communicate with people- I figured if I got close enough to the right field or energy wavelength or scanner someone would see me or figure out I was there. That's how I met Crewman Gary Barnhardt." Leaning back against the tree Rita had her back to, she eased into the story.

"Gary worked down in Science Lab 8, under Chief Carson and Doctor Zanque, a petty little ensign who was just a miserable excuse for an officer. I learned all of this because, y'know, for most of my day I didn't have anything to do. So I had taken to hanging around the science labs, and eight in particular because they did a lot of exotic scans. Which was kind of interesting to observe... again, boredom was my greatest enemy since I didn't sleep. Anyway. I started... following people around sometimes. I wanted to feel like I was with people. so I would attach myself to people sometime and just follow them around. It made it feel like I had a routine, somewhere to be, a purpose."

Rolling her neck a bit, Rita hissed at the stiffness. She was definitely going to need one hell of a chiropractic adjustment after this. "So I had taken to following Gary, and one day, as he gets back to his quarters, he turns and says, 'Hey, beautiful'. I stopped dead in my tracks- I was excited, elated- had something he had been exposed to enable him to perceive me? To see me? I rushed him, to wave in his face and call out to him."

"Then he walked through me, and went over to pick up the holo of his girl back home. Ramona."

"I followed Gary for a few weeks, I think. Ah, my time perception started slipping after a while, so it could have been months. But I actually started looking forward to him talking to his girlfriend, because... okay, try not to judge, please, remember the circumstances. I looked forward to him talking to his girlfriend, because I imagined that he was talking to me. And so I listened, and I pretended, and I worked on holding onto my sanity. which was going pretty well until the day a subspace datapacket was received. Mail from home, they used to call it. Datapackets from loved ones and family, favorite shows and new vids and movies from back home, and love letters from distant shores."

Sitting up, Rita looked at the fire, picking up a stick to tend to it with no small degree of skill. Clearly this wasn't her first campfire. "Ramona had made a video diary of herself, every day recording a one minute message to him for six months. Sweet, right? Thoughtful. All she ever did was talk about herself, and her friends and the tournament they were training for. Then came the day she sat in front of the camera, all prim and proper, and she dumped him."

"Now, Starfleeters have been dumped since before we sailed space. Mariners came home to find their wives in the arms of another, so the story goes, and poor Gary was no exception. He watched the rest of the one minute videos where she talked about what a good time she was having with her new boyfriend Konar, and how she felt good knowing that he was over it by now, and that she was glad they could still be friends. It was perhaps the most callous exercise in selfishness I have ever witnessed, before or since." Paris looked around at the tight-knit and heroic crew, and smiled, a somewhat grim smile.

"I'd listened to Crewman Barnhart go on and on to Ramona, extolling her virtues, and sharing his hopes and dreams to the image of the woman he thought was waiting for him back home, only to discover that even with a ring on it, she did not feel constrained to be faithful. Why he watched all of the vids, I will never know, but he did. And when he was done, he hung himself in the shower with his underpants." The ancient astronaut paused to look around. "I couldn't stop him. I cried for days, and all because I was so lonely that I had followed the man around and basically let him talking to the picture of his girlfriend substitute for human interaction for me."

"I identified with his idealized Ramona. She had been my stand-in, someone who still existed. So when he killed himself, I felt guilty, as if I had somehow contributed to it. I cried for days, and eventually... that was the first time I walked into the dilithium chamber. Because of the guilt I felt over Barnhardt's death, that I had nothing to do with, and could not have prevented."

"And yet."

There was a pregnant pause, whereupon Paris sat up, held her hands out to either side of her. "That's my story. Who's next?"

The assemblage of stranded Starfleet sojourners sat In shock for a few seconds. The impact of Rita's tragic tale, just one of so many collected through the different eras the time-tossed Commander had lived in, hit those listening flat in the chest.

The silence lingered for a moment as Dox shifted uncomfortably to a more upright position as she sniffled slightly. It was months ago that she had shared with Rita her own flirtations with suicide as a child and wanted to run up and hug her chosen bond-sister, but in the group it didn't seem appropriate and would only serve to bring the mood even lower. "It's not fair to make someone with an eye that's bandaged shut cry, Commander. Heh."

The somewhat awkward, forced joke cut the tension ever so slightly as the red-headed Romulan leaned a little closer to the fire as she cleared her throat. "I guess that means I volunteer to go next."

Arcing her head up, Dox looked up at the stars above them all and sighed slightly. "For the most part, when I was growing up on the Forager… my mother's smuggling ship… it was just the two of us. Declan was never my real father so he left early when the business no longer served his needs, Leaving it mostly just us. But we weren't always alone."

"I had an uncle growing my. My mother's brother. She… neither of us talks about him much. He was still loyal to the empire, at least on paper. His name was Va'Kone tr'Aan and he was a military engineer on Chetzia III before some kind of weaponized plant things wiped out the military installation there. He and his daughter evacuated, my cousin. Her name was Lhi. Lhi t'Aan. She was… well, when I was a little girl, she was my only friend."

"Her name In Rihan meant 'a game of wits and riddles' and she lived up to it. When I met her after they evacuated I was…" Dox paused for a slight moment to think, a melancholy expression, "I was seven and Lhi was nine. Maybe ten at the most."

Leaning back slightly with a wince, the heat of the flames quickly became too much for the sensitive, freshly burned skin of the injured pilot. But she shook the moment off an continued. "We intercepted their escape ship and brought them over. Va'Kone was… he didn't even know his sister was still alive so he was beyond happy and they stayed with us for a month and a half until my mother arranged to get him his own freighter to take Lhi to a reunification colony on the rim of the neutral zone."

"But that month and a half…" Dox smiled broadly and warmly as she remembered. "They were the best of my childhood. It was the only time growing up where my Mother let off the reins of trying to make me her perfect little soldier. She let me be a little girl when Lhi was there. So I did. We played and explored the ship and got in trouble. We… we were friends."

The injured Romulan pilot settled back slightly, trying to get comfortable as she talked, though the memory was clearly filled with mixed emotions. “After my Mother found them a ship… a little Romulan shuttle, really, not much bigger than a runabout, I stole two sub-space portable comm units from a cargo shipment we had in the hold. I hid one in my room and gave one to Lhi so we could still talk after she left. I knew a smugglers frequency that was near impossible to detect or track and we talked every night after lights out, sometimes for hours.”

“Their trip was only supposed to be about three weeks on low warp to the Romulan/Vulcan colony, but it felt like another eternity. I had my lessons all day with my Mother. Flight class. Combat training. Engine maintenance. Understanding how the cloak worked. Then in the afternoon, Language drills. Vulcan and Klingon and Federation standard. Then more flight training. Basic sciences. It was a repeating cycle most days for about 14 hours a day when we weren’t too busy with a job.”

Then a smile replaced the melancholia. “Then it was lights out and I’d pull out the comm unit I’d hid under the deck plates in my little room and Lhi and I would talk. We would play games and talk all night long. I would tell her how desperately I wanted to get away from being a smuggler. She would talk about wanting to learn logic from the Vulcans and learn how to fly a ship like I was being trained to. She wanted to learn everything. I think she would have enjoyed having my mom train her the way she trained me.”

“But she lived up to her name, and she loved puzzles. She would come up with logic puzzles and end each transmission every night for those weeks with a new one for me to think about during the day. I looked forward to that call all day long like, what’s the expression Commander? A kid on Christmas?”

"It's around our winter solstice, the shortest day of the year on the northern hemisphere, but it kind of caught on worldwide. We celebrate with gifts, which we wrap in colorful paper to disguise their true nature, and place them as temptations, not to be opened until Christmas. Although really, the joy is in seeing the gift opened by someone who then sees that you get them. Since most of the gift giving is particularly for children, they are usually very excited for Christmas morning, when they will be allowed by some societal pact that they can now open their presents."

"So yes, Miss Dox, that level of excitement." Married to a man of logic, and one of the few humans amongst the stars where she traveled, Rita Paris had striven to become adept at succinct, yet illustrative explanations of her culture to those who had no context. As an explorer amongst the stars, one had to be able to relate.

Continuing, Dox’s tone shifted dramatically as the joy that had been on her face vanished. “Then, one night while we were talking, Lhi was… different. Scared. She was telling me something about how their engine core was glitching. The ship kept changing speed without warning, leaping to higher speeds then should have been possible, then back down to a crawl. I told her to have her father to check the plasma injectors and the flow regulators but nothing worked.”

“The signal began to break up… interference from… whatever was happening.” Dox looked increasingly stressed as she recounted the tale. “Then, Lhi vanished for ten minutes. The longest ten minutes in my life up until that point. When she came back on, she was in a panic, all but screaming. She screamed for me to come help her. That her father went into the engine room and never came back out. That he was just… gone. I… I didn’t know what to do so I just kept talking. But she was so scared and I was trying to not sound scared for her. Then… the last thing I heard was... She just screamed at… something. She said… ‘No, leave me alone.’ and the line went dead. Nothing.”

Rubbing the back of her neck, Dox swallowed. “I… I just froze there listing to subspace static for… at least an hour before my Mother called me to the bridge. I hid the comm and went. She was in her robe at the comm station, crying. I’d… I’d never seen her cry before. She said that the Vulcans from the colony called her. Said that her brother’s ship sent out a distress signal and then… vanished. Vanished less than two million kilometers away. There was some debris, but Romulan ships use an artificial quantum singularity as their engine core and when those go… they don’t leave much debris.”

“I cried for… a good week. Every night. My mom’s solution was to increase our workload and make me train harder to exhaust me, but it didn’t help.” Dox continued, looking deep into the fire as she spoke. “Then, about two weeks later, I pulled the comm unit out from under the deck plates and… I turned it back on. I figured that they never found the ship, just some debris. In my depression, I clung to the idea that she had somehow survived. So I listened for nights. All night long, listing to subspace static, every few minutes asking if she could hear me until I’d passed out but there was, of course, nothing.”

“Nothing until the sixth night.” Dox said grimly. “I’d been nodding off, exhausted from a particularly long day of fight training and was nursing a broken arm courtesy of being taught how to get out of an armbar in the most painful way possible. And then I heard it.”

“The static cleared up and there was silence for a few seconds and I heard Lhi’s voice. It was weak and distant sounding, but I heard it as she said ‘Melanie?’”. Dox spoke, evoking the humanized name she had been given as a child to hide her Romulan heritage.

“I… I couldn’t believe it. I shot up in my bed and called back for her. I was practically screaming, but had to try and keep my mother from hearing me. But it came through again. I heard her voice, clear as a bell this time. She said, “Melanie? Where are you? I can’t see anything.”

“I… I actually wet the bed that night I was so terrified by the sound of her voice, it was so scared sounding.” Dox had a half-forced grin as she recounted the tale, trying to bolster herself. “Then she said, ‘Melanie, help me.’ and the line went dead again. Nothing but static. I ran across the ship like crazy and all but dragged my mother from the helm to come to hear.”

“She was… furious that I had been transmitting from the ship… but she listened too, but it was gone. No signal. No voice. Nothing.” Dox held her shoulders and shrunk slightly. “My mother was… she took the comm unit and… disciplined me for taking it and using it as it could have given away our position. But it didn’t stop me from trying again. I would sneak onto the bridge while she was busy and check the signal. Once I was actually flying the ship, I would leave the comm line on for hours sometimes. It was a secure frequency. But there was nothing ever again. Sometimes, I still will call it up and listen, but I’ve never heard anything again."

“My mother tried to convince me I had dreamt it or imagined it, but I know I was awake. I know what I heard.” Dox concluded, looking up sheepishly to her shipmates. “Uh… next, I guess.”

There was silence for a few long moments around the campfire as everyone considered the chilling tale.

The doll-faced android blinked a few times and finally broke the silence. "You all know I've died. It was an... Enlightening experience. I conversed with Gaia and Primordius, tracked through the quantum realm, guided the development of an entirely new system, saw the past and future as one and the same as the present..."

She paused to take a deep breath and let it out slowly, staring into the fire before continuing. "But one thing still haunts me to this day. When I was in the drive room... About to activate it... I felt my twin sister with me. She died on an away mission on the USS Katana years ago but I had the distinct feeling that she was there with me for some reason and that everything would be ok."

"Anyway, as soon as I activated the drive, the room was flooded and I was dumped into the quantum realm. I could see the ship fly away from me, spinning off on every axis towards its destination, but I was stuck in what was essentially limbo, waiting to die. I mean, it was beautiful... The trip through the wormhole doesn't even compare. It was..." Ila paused again, trying to find words for something that obviously had none.

"Anyway, after what seemed like an eternity, yet no time at all, a glowing form coalesced before me that looked like my twin sister. She showed me how to return to you and how to travel through the quantum realm. I don't know if it really was my sister, but... Thanks to her, I was able to find Commander Paris and figure out how to guide what path the genesis devices took from the other side."

That's when Ila looked up and fixed each one of them with her wide-eyed, unblinking gaze. "Now... Here's the ghost story... When I'm near the particles in the lab... And when I'm asleep, in my dreams... I can hear whispers... I don't know who or what they are but sometimes I can make them out. They talk about things I don't understand. I think they're supposed to be deep secrets of how the universe works or something about the aspects of reality. The last thing I understood was something about a white rabbit and the Captain. And the most disturbing thing? They're all in my sister's voice..."

Dedjoy then waved one hand, trying to dismiss it all. "I'm probably just going crazy and need a few diagnostics and counseling. I'll make a few appointments when we get back."

Listening, Dox nodded and smiled. "Considering everything we've all experienced on the Hera, that doesn't sound crazy at all. Asa's a tremendous counselor, however, and that's always a good idea."

"I've listened to the little voice in my head that's smarter than me for my entire life, Miss Dedjoy- and I'm not talking about Mr. Sonak," Paris paused for the chuckle that brought. "Inspiration comes in a great number of forms, Yeoman. Besides, for all we know, perhaps your sister is still beside you, advising you from another plane of existence. We've both been ghosts, after all. As the wise man says," Paris turned to let a concerned frown slip. "There are always... possibilities."

They were now all looking at Sonak with expectant eyes. There was no ignoring them or what they wanted. And he knew a dismissal would not be conducive to easing the conditions of their marooning for these emotional beings. Although he did not at all share their need, he was still a Starfleet officer; and it was his duty to see to the best survival of his crewmates. And thus he decided to humor them- it was the logical thing to do.

''Vulcans have no superstitions, nor fear of the unknown or belief in the supernatural. But this has not always been the case. Before the Time of Surak, emotions were as much part of our lives as it is for you; fear, of course, prominent among them. And in those days, stories were told that could have justified fear. It is a fact that there is much more to this universe than all the knowledge we have accumulated so far, beyond all the wisdom we have given ourselves. And without evidence, who can say any testimony of the unexplained is false? Witness this account...''

He paused before starting his tale, his gaze wandering far across the stars in the sky, as if he were looking back at primeval Vulcan itself, and seeing the events he was about to relate.

''Before the Time of Surak, in those bygone days of war and bloodshed, it was believed that hatred was a spirit possessing the mind, living eternally off the blood and suffering of the people. Today we do know such immaterial beings do exist; the Jack-The-Ripper entity encountered by Captain James Kirk's crew on Argelius IV, and later the hate-feeding one that pitted them against the crew of Klingon Commander Kang, reviving them over and over to renew their savage violence... And in the shrouded eons of Vulcan antiquity, so they were.''

His toneless voice became cold, distant.

''It so happened that a company of soldiers took refuge within the outpost of their enemy, an enemy they had just massacred. After weeks of tearing at each other's throats and minds, three men were all that was left of two armies. These were the three most vicious, most powerful, most ruthless warriors of them all. And now they reveled in the blood spilling of which they had been an active part, smashing the katra urns of former friends and foes alike in glee, relishing pocketing the riches, eating the food, drinking the wine and sleeping within the house of their fallen foes. And so they did, bathed in the red glow of T'Nukh, the giant sister world of Minshasa, as Vulcan was only called in those days. It was the first night of their victory; the last night of their mortal lives.''

His steely grey eyes looked past them; but the dancing glow of their campfire brought an eerie light to his gaze. His deep voice became even colder.

''Something they felt but could not name wakened them all at the same time. Not a noise, not a smell, something... fainter yet deeper; more than a feeling... yet nothing truly perceptible. The strongest among them rose, took his lirpa, tested the razor-sharpness of it's edge and went to investigate. Without knowing why, they all looked up at the ceiling, as if they could see the top of the ruined, blackened tower they were residing."

"They could see nothing, and only the vague cry of the wind could be heard. The strongest among them thus went to the spiraling stairs and ascended to the top of the tower. They followed the sound of his footsteps as he disappeared in the dark, beyond the rising elevation of the stairs. They followed the noise of his sandals over their heads as he walked... then stopped. Then, the heavy silence was rent asunder by a blood-curdling cry; it was the terror and agony- filled voice of their comrade... before they heard the distinct sound of a body falling.''

Now his eyes went to each one of his fellow castaways in turn.

''Then both of the men left inside heard a scraping noise... and their comrade's slow, heavy footsteps resumed. He was walking back down to rejoin with them. They saw first his sandals coming down the stairs; then his legs and the fresh, fine trickle of blood smearing them; and then he was walking back to them, his bloodied lirpa in his right hand... and in his left, his own severed head.''

All there yes were locked to his. His voice froze even the fire between them.

''The night resonated with the screams of the men; all three of them. But no one heard... except the dead. It was later told that the few who dared come to this ruined place to loot it or bury the dead never came back... or the rare few that did ran from it stark mad, blabbering about three headless corpses haunting the ruined fortress, killing every living being daring to violate the place, feeding on the terror and suffering... most of all between one another. To this day, it is believed that there is an antiquated ruin at the heart of the Vulcan desert called '’where three deaths forever live’. No one knows where it truly lies... or no one dares to tell.''

Sonak spoke no more, and for long moments, silence held sway over the campsite.

“Well, that was… impressive,” Paris said, finally breaking the silence. “Even Vulcans have ghost stories. Spooky ones, too,” Paris admitted, crossing her arms and rubbing her upper arms with her hands as if to warm them. “How about you, Sam? You come from a long line of tale-tellers. Got a story of a ghostly riverboat or a gambler whose luck ran out or a journey into darkness?”

Sam looked pensive, as though wondering whether or not to share this piece of his history. However, after a moment, he leaned back against the hull-frame of the shuttle, and spoke quietly.

"After I lost my parents, it occurred to me that galactic exploration might not be a bad way to improve my starfaring skills, especially since one of my ancestors decided that an inheritance of some mystery would ride upon some very specific criteria- one of which was my given name, and others to be found Out There- among the stars."

He settled down on a toolchest, and continued, the glow of the camplight unit making his blue eyes stand out under the mane of ginger hair above.

"I was barely seventeen when I showed up at the Merchants' Guild branch outside of Paris. I'd gotten business settled, and made sure I had no ties left on planet."

"I'd read up on the EmmGee, ever since I turned twelve, and knew the bylaws allowed for an emancipated minor to sign up, even without a sponsor, as long as there were no familial objections- and there really wasn't anythin' left on Earth for me, just then." He looked wistful, then shook it off, as he continued.

"I walked right in there, and signed up, pretty as you please, without a stitch of trouble. My school transcripts and aptitude test scores did the speakin' for me, and even then, I had a knack for engineerin', so they signed me up on a six-month tour on a freighter bound for deep space, on a trading expedition. We were bound for the Beta Quardant, out Ivor and Altair way, rolling past the Typhon Expanse, looking for new types of goods to trade for. It was a long haul, but the Expanse held some risk, and thus the pickings out there were richer than in the easy to get-to areas. We carried four of the five holds crammed full of useful doo-dads and supplies that wouldn't be easy to fabricate way out there, and quite a few things that were just culturally-distinct, which held value of their own due to uniqueness."

"We were in a sturdy ship, not meant for speed, but for reliable carrying of cargo, with several underslung scouting shuttles equipped with good comm systems and sensors, for contacting locals."

"I got to know the crew- several were Starfleet retirees, others were Merchant family members, and others were like me- exploring, learning, just experiencing. Marella was one of them. She was near my age, I think. Her culture didn't measure time as a day-to-day thing. They just flowed through it, in her words. She was what passed for a section chief in Engineering, and I was the newborn babe of the team. She took a shine to me, and I to her. We had interests in common. Several months passed, as we went our way toward the Beta Quadrant."

The spook took on a look not usual to his countenance, as he continued. "We'd just skimmed the riptide area on the upper side of the Expanse, when sensors reported a nebula that wasn't on the charts. Initial scans indicated it was a Class 3, with indications of multiple warp signatures inside, as well as profiles indicating at least three separate star systems. As we got closer, the systems showed multiple M-class signatures, and the subspace anchor for the nebula read as a multiphasic emitter, currently in-phase with the local quantum signature. It had probably been missed by surveys and other ships because it wasn't phase-matching at the time, and thus acted as a form of natural masking."

"The Cap'n figured a couple of things- one, it had warp-capable folks, so no Prime Directive messes, and two, it was remote, and not normally visible, which made it a primo trading area, and probably full of unique stuff." Clemens closed his eyes. "I wish we'd never seen it."

He took a deep breath, and went on, "We went in with what I'd learned was this company's usual contact system, involving sending in messenger probes with greetings and offers, and waiting for responses before sending actual ships into what might be a restricted area. Turns out, though, they were eager to see us, and responded with some excitement to our offers, inviting us to visit and show them our wares, as it were."

"This was an experienced company, so we went in with sensor sweeps and fingers on shield controls and weapons stations manned. NO one was gonna catch us off-guard, no-sirree. But we got nothing but friendship offered, and after a few successful meetings, the command crew decided we'd go ahead and work on trading off all our goods and load up on all the unique stuff this place had to offer, which was considerable. Tons of unheard-of art and music, foods with flavor profiles totally-different from anything on record- and a sublight drive system that bore no resemblance to anything I'd ever seen- from a totally-unique evolution path. Their physics was born of living in a naturally trans-phasic area, so they'd learned things no one else had. They'd skipped the chemical and ionic propulsion phase entirely- their early sailing ships were navigating gravitic waves by exploiting the naturally-evolved organic materials these planets had developed. Floating wood. Metals that could be forged into multiple shapes, then shifted from shape to shape with multi-tonal sounds. They sang to their creations, asking them to become what they dreamed of."

He had a smile on his face, and a faraway look, as though recalling a wonderful dream. But it didn't hold- he took up the tale again.

"We were near capacity on the holds, and I was workin' on adapting some of the structural techniques the locals used to make the hull plating lighter, when Marella came down to the workshop. She'd been off supervising the cargo teams, making sure they didn't load things together that wouldn't like each other."

"She had an odd look on her face, like she had indigestion. She came straight to me, and told me that we needed to look at one of the long-range shuttles, immediately. Something had gone wrong, and she needed my help."

"Her eyes, which usually were an aquamarine color in the outer irises, and a rusty color in the inner ones, didn't look right. I figured she'd gotten an allergy to the local flora, or something. I went with her down to the shuttle connector area, and we dropped through the hatch."

"As soon as the hatch closed, she hit a switch on the comms panel, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up. She had a look on her face that I never want to see again. Like terror mixed with contentment mixed with rage. She gestured me forward frantically. 'We've got to go, Sam. I don't know how long I can jam it...'"

"I sat down next to her, too scared to ask, but needing to, anyway. 'What are you jammin', Mar? ...look at me.' She was punching in the pre-flight routines without looking, either at the panel or at me."

"'Look at me- please.'" He paused, closing his eyes, then pushed through. "She looked at me, and her eyes kept changing. She wasn't human, and we'd not discussed her race, except in general ways- it just never was the right time. But I knew she was fighting...something. She reached back to the back of her neck, and cupped her hand there, like she wanted to grab something, but her arm swung back down to her side, stiffly, like she was doing isometrics with it. The look on her face was a plea. 'Please, Sam- launch us. Fast as you can, now. I don't have long.' The shock of her words made my hands move and I keyed it in. The shuttle launched, and we were away. The nav console had Earth as the destination, though it wouldn't be possible to get there without refueling a few times. 'What the hell, Mar?? We can't just leave...'"

Sam had a tear rolling out of one eye, as he continued. "She grabbed my hand, and said, with her teeth clenched, 'I'm sorry... don't look back. I'll try to stop them. But they can't get out. I can't let them.' She jumped up, then, and ran to the transport pad. 'Don't ever come back. Please.' She beamed out, and the pad threw sparks all over the aft. I guess she'd set it to overload so it couldn't be used to board. As soon as it did, I felt the ship kick into warp, until it got just below the redline, then hold it there. The system was set to drop out of warp at Archer IV."

Sam firmed up, and wiped his face with his sleeve. "I got back to Earth eventually. I went straight to the EmmGee station there, and they had another gig for me. No one would talk about what had happened. I looked for months, with what resources I had, as I bounced around the quadrant, doing work, but never could find hide nor hair of the ship- or her, or anyone else aboard. No charts ever showed anything in that area again."

He sighed. "Anyway- that's what sometimes bugs me late at night. Yer mileage may vary."

Listening to the tales, Dox couldn't tell if the chill she felt came from the stories being exchanged of the rapidly dropping temperature as she wrapped the crinkly, metallic thermal blanket a little tighter around her shoulders. Regardless, she was at least glad to find herself surrounded by friends in such a situation and smiled in spite of herself. Which, of course, hurt just a little bit.

As the night went on, the exhausted crew continued to talk. Rita shared stories of her and Sonak's early years in Starfleet from a century and a universe away. Dox shared stories of her years as a smuggler and the bizarre items she once carried on that ship. Ila spoke of some of the ideas for her more interesting inventions waiting in the wings and Sam told tall tales of riverboats and adventure.

The team's security escort, Petty Officer S'Rina, who had been quiet the entire time remained largely so as she held a professional vigil, walking the perimeter and ensuring the safety of her charges, though she scoffed a few times audibly at the stories being told.

And ultimately, as the fire began to die and the crew settled in to try and take shifts sleeping as the night stretched on, things were good. And as light of an alien world's dawn began to tint the horizon a greenish-gold, a signal came in. A Runabout for the U.S.S. Hera had triangulated their position and was on its way. In but a few hours after the dawn would break, they would be safely on their way home.

-------------

Meanwhile, just over a ridge a shadowy figure and her ghostly horse were keeping an eye on the group after having finished up with a plague on this very planet. She wasn't there to collect on any of them, but to make sure none of them came close and to make sure their friends made it in time. However, having heard their ghost stories, she just grinned and stroked the mane of her companion. "You and I could have scared them all literally to death with the stories we've got."