Uhm...What's With the Hellspawn?

Posted on Tue Jul 4th, 2017 @ 8:37pm by Captain Enalia Telvan & Commander Mal Xustos & Lieutenant Commander Eneas Clio

Mission: Death is in the Details
Location: Captain's Ready Room
Timeline: After "Savoring the Past"

Mal sat in a chair in front of Enalia's desk and tried to wait patiently for Clio to arrive. He knew she was upset and he knew why and even agreed with her. Enalia had not been forthcoming about what they had locked up in the brig. Daytona, who was used to things being kept from him, was less offended, but would still want answers. Enalia had decided to let him wait to get them secondhand from Clio.

Meanwhile, Enalia had busied herself with unlocking all the data she had access to on her demonic counterpart and Project Gemini, which had brought her into this universe. She had a fair bit to brief these two on, and though they only had Sigma Nine clearance and she wasn't supposed to reveal most of this to anyone with less than her Sigma Twelve... Well... Tough titties... Starfleet Command could go to wherever that hellspawn came from for all she cared.

Once she had disembarked from the Selune, Clio wasted absolutely no time in marching up to the bridge. She ignored the stares from crew members she passed, long used to such behavior from other officers. Reaching the bridge, she firmly pressed the door chime button next to the ready room door, though she fully intended to override the lock if an answer didn't come promptly.

"Come in," Enalia called, still unlocking files and seeing that it was Clio without having to look up. "Excellent. Now get your beverage of choice and sit the fuck down so you can spit it all over me while I brief you on just what the fuck you just fucking faced down there. Computer, seal the fucking room. Clearance Sigma Twelve. Enalia niner niner omega niner niner."

"I don't think you're going to tell me anything that's going to shock me any more than it already did." There was a growling note to Clio's words, one she didn't try to hide. She chose not to get a drink or sit down at the moment, knowing she wouldn't be able to sit still anyway. "What the fuck was that thing and why the hell didn't anyone on this ship know about it?"

"A few people did know about it, but I'm the only one that had any idea of her capabilities," Enalia replied. "The brig cell she was in even had a special sub-quantum phase shift to it that should have prevented her from even escaping, yet she did. One file left..."

"I wasn't aware of our...guest, either, Clio," Mal said. "I assume there was a good reason that you and I, the two most senior officers in the command chain other than the captain, weren't fully briefed on the subject of Enalia's doppelganger. But now that the demon is out of the bag, I am hoping I will be given the full picture."

"Abilities like draining someone's soul out through their neck? Are those the abilities we're referencing here? Or how about the fact that she looked exactly like you until she fucking ate somebody right in front of us? Or are we talking about her apparent regeneration ability because Daytona and I easily put a dozen or so bullets in her and she just kept walking." While Clio had heard what Mal said, she was still looking straight at Enalia.

"Yeah..." Enalia finished and popped her terminal into conference mode, the lights dimming automatically.

"Ok... To start with, there was a project called Gemini where Starfleet wanted to temporarily create sub-quantum clones of ships and their crews for a few minutes at a time." A video started playing of a space station firing a beam at the Hera and it being duplicated in a lightning effect.

"Tests went well the first few times. No residual energy patterns, no psychological issues, and no signs that anything had gone wrong. Everything went exactly as they had in the controlled lab experiments. Until test number nine." Another video started playing but this time, the beam was a little off and instead of the white lightning, a red lightning was created and rather than a perfect clone of the Hera, a twisted demonic version of the Hera sat a hundred meters from the original.

As the video continued to play, the escape pod hatches all popped, but rather than escape pods coming out, nothing but demonic twisted corpses floated out. The airlocks and windows also unsealed, venting the entire ship. "Within the three minutes that it was in our universe, the Captain of that ship spaced her entire crew, then beamed aboard my ship and tried to kill me."

As the demonic Hera dissolved from existence she brought up the next video. This time it was the original bridge of the Hera which was an actual nebula class bridge. "This is why I hate the Nebula class bridge..." she muttered as the scene played out with the demon literally eating the helmsman and spraying blood everywhere, the bridge phaser turrets firing uselessly into it, three other crewmembers wasting phaser energy on it, and a younger Enalia calling for backup.

Mal took in the sensor records silently, closing his eyes for a moment when they were done replaying the gruesome images.

"And is there a reason Starfleet didn't order her vaporized?" Mal asked. "Daytona told me that his disruptor pistol took off most of her head. A disruptor causes the matter it hits to explode on the molecular level, but its effects are more localized than, say, Starfleet issue phasers on full power, so a handheld disruptor can't disintegrate a person-sized target. But a Starfleet hand phaser on the highest setting can and will disintegrate a person-sized target, usually in one shot. Even if this demon could regenerate, presumably she'd need to have at least some living tissue left to regenerate from, wouldn't she? So why didn't you disintegrate her? You're not known for being squeamish."

While Mal spoke, Enalia paused the video. "Those phasers are set to kill."

She then resumed playback. As the demon was munching on what was left of the helmsman, what vaguely resembled a black dog with nine glowing red eyes took shape out of its back and leaped for one of the bridge phaser turrets, ripping it clean off of its mounting and crushing it with ease. it then dropped it onto the head of one of the other bridge crew as another of the demon beasts started forming.

Enalia and the other two crewmen retreated to the emergency hatch at that point. Enalia and One crewman made it, but the last one through was quickly turned into dog chow. A few seconds later there was a sudden jolt. The bridge lights dimmed, the remaining phaser turret stopped firing, and the gravity plating gave out. "That was when I hit the emergency bridge module ejection sequence."

The video feed continued for a bit longer with the demon floating around a bit with her two demon hounds. When she noticed the camera feed was still functioning, she grinned at it with black hollow pits for eyes and long pointed teeth as red glowing eyes started appearing all around her face, filling the camera's view.

Enalia then turned the video feed off. "That feed continued for three days. Eventually Command snapped and decided they'd had enough and started blasting her with as many quantum torpedoes as they could spare."

Mal frowned.

"Impossible," he said. "One quantum torpedo makes the nuclear weapons that nearly destroyed the planet Earth look like...sparklers. On a bridge module with no shields...the superstructure wouldn't have lasted long...if the impulse engines exploded, that would have added to the energy...are you saying she survived multiple barrages of quantum torpedoes, or are you saying she got spaced during a hull breach and avoided most of the effect of the torpedoes?"

Clio did not have a weak stomach. Rather, she'd often been accused of having too strong of one. But this particular video feed was more than she could handle, and she'd looked away after only a few minutes. When Enalia turned it off, she was grateful, though she certainly wasn't happy. "Why the hell did you have something like that in our brig?"

"I'll get to that in a moment..." Enalia pulled up another video feed of the quantum torpedo bombardment pounding on this seemingly delicate eggshell of a bridge module. "After three days, she had absorbed the entire bridge module and our quantum torpedoes weren't doing much to scratch it. It took almost a month of scans to come up with a way to strip her of her power, which left her in the state you fought her in."

Enalia then switched to another video of a double helix beam weapon being fired at the module, all but disintegrating it. "The remaining residue was collected and I thought that was the end of it and I went about my career until a few months prior when I started getting weird dreams. I took them as cries for help as it seems she had been partially regenerated from that residue. Rather than try to finish killing her and put her out of her misery, I took her into custody until I could come up with a plan to do so."

"...I'm getting a headache." Despite still feeling agitated, Clio sat down and put her head in her hands, gently rubbing her temples. "You'd better have a plan because I doubt she's dead."

"If she wasn't, she would have told me by now," Enalia replied sourly. "In fact the shadow I've felt in my mind since that day feels like it's actually been lifted, if that makes any sense."

"Hmm..." Mal said. "Let's hope so. She nearly destroy the ship and she killed three million people. Daytona said she kept referring to a 'him' and shouted something about 'his' access before tearing open a secret elevator that Daytona believes led to the Master's labs. He said it was as though she could sense whoever this 'him' was. This information would seem to indicate that she knew or knew of the Master. Even the possibility of such a connection is a frightening prospect."

"Which brings me to the next file..." Pulling up a personal record, Enalia started listing off a few facts about the man displayed. A man that Nexi would immediately recognize if she were in the room. "This is the man that sponsored and oversaw the project. His name was supposedly Maas Teranja, a Vulcanoid Rigelian businessman that normally specialized in pharmaceuticals. Can you guess what kind of pharmaceuticals? He owns the largest production plant in the Federation for biomimetic gel and is the biggest producer of genetic reconstruction products in the quadrant."

"Maas Teranja..." Mal said. "Maas Ter..Master? It can't be that simple, can it?"

"As conceited as we know he is? It's possible... But this man died in 2388." Enalia pulled up twelve more records with identical looking men. "Then again, these men all have similar names and all died almost 50 years after each other."

"This is sounding an awful lot like James Bond," Clio grumbled under her breath. "Or Engstrom the infinitely annoying."

"Not all of those people are Vulcanoid Rigelian," Mal said. "But you're right, they do appear to be similar in appearance and the names are very similar, and they've all been involved in similar business ventures or at least career fields. If these are all the same person, and he sticks to his pattern, then he likely has a appearance and a name that's similar to these records and a profession similar to the professions in these records. Clio, can you use this information to track down our elusive 'Master'? Maybe we can get the jump on him and, without a demon packing tri-cobalt devices to get in the way, perhaps we can maintain the initiative and actually capture or eliminate him."

"I can try, but no promises. If he's really been around that long without being found, he's good at hiding." Clio had found people before who were good at hiding, but mostly it had been luck and chance.

"Add to that whatever network he's built up, minus what we've been able to pull apart..." Enalia added as she pulled the images down and replaced them with an image of what appeared to be a cross between an antique Orion luxury ship and a Vulcan survey ship. "And we're pretty sure this is the ship that he escaped on. It's the only ship that left the Selen VI Orion Starport that wasn't normally scheduled."

Mal leaned forward and looked at the image of the Frankenship. Something occurred to him.

"Uhm..." he said. "Do we know who might have owned that vessel? I know it's a long shot, it's just that..."

Mal sat back in his chair.

"This was the only unscheduled ship that left around the time of the explosion?" he asked. "How sure are we about that?"

"Not very," Enalia replied. "For all we know this was some other lucky bastard and the Master got away on a cloaked ship. We'll have to leave the data analysis to Clio's team to determine that one."

"Hmm..." Mal said. "Might I suggest first asking Daytona what he knows about this ship?"

When the two women looked at him curiously he, he explained.

"Uhm..." he said. "Well, let me ask you this: How did Daytona 2160 get off the planet? It would have had to have been done quickly. Demon Enalia arrived on the planet not long after our Daytona went to kill his daughter's murderer. Our Daytona reported that Daytona 2160 found the knife and left the station immediately afterwards. Our Daytona hasn't ceased to exist, so clearly Daytona 2160 made it off the planet. He couldn't have planned his departure, not in the time he had. So I would assume that he managed to somehow secure passage off planet that wasn't scheduled. Why don't we just ask him if he left the planet in this ship? It's a long shot, but it would clear up whether or not this is the Master's ship or not."

Enalia scrunched her eyes shut and just let her head drop right into her desk with a thud and a groan. "GODDAMNITALL!!! Does anyone else have a bullshit time travel fucknado to add to our problems?"

"If we go through another time travel circle of clusterfuck, I'm going to throw up," Clio grumbled, having winced slightly at Enalia's very loud outburst. "I'll ask Daytona about the ship. And we'll get started on the analyzing of all our data. After he and I have had a few minutes to get our brains back in order."

"Time travel is incredibly annoying, I agree," Mal said. "But we should soon be able to effect repairs and return to our own time, where at least there will only one Daytona to worry about...I hope."

"When this is all over, we're taking shore leave at my orbital fortress." Enalia promised. "And Ensign Gonadie will be in charge of the ship while we're gone."

Mal looked surprised.

"Thank you, Captain," he said, honestly touched. "Uhm...you have an orbital fortress? Sorry. Took me by surprise. I'll ask you about that at a more appropriate time."

Enalia lifted her head off her desk and sat back in her chair before closing down the current files and bringing up a structural report on her orbital fortress. It was basically a glass domed starbase with a forest and a giant castle in the middle and support structures slung across the bottom. "This is my actual home. It's only one hundred twenty kilometers across but should have enough facilities to accommodate the entire crew with the finer things in high society. I just hope my mother isn't visiting at the same time."

"Very...impressive," Mal said. He still wasn't sure why his captain had an orbital fortress in her family, but he supposed that was a question for another time. "I look forward to seeing it in person."

"I like it already. But since we won't be going there for a while yet, I suppose I should get back to work. After I wash off this body makeup and find some warmer clothes." Despite the costume being made of furs, it was still an Orion costume. Which meant bare feet and a fair amount of bare skin. The longer she stayed in one place, the colder the room felt.

"Yeah..." Clicking her terminal off, Enalia restored the room's brightness and unsealed the room. "I don't suppose either of you have any questions."

"The only question I have is whether or not I have time to take a nap. I'm guessing the answer is no." Actually, Clio knew for a fact there wasn't time. She'd be lucky if she got to sleep before midnight with how this mission had gone.

"Will I be seeing you later Commander Enaes?" he asked, hoping she'd get his intention. He wasn't such a cad that he'd show up at her door to proposition her for sex after the day she'd had. If she was interested, he'd go along with her wishes wholeheartedly, but if she just wanted to sleep, then he wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her close while she did.

Enalia sighed and shook her head. "Yeah... If it's questions like that, you're both dismissed."