Star Trek: Starbase 777

Membrane stretched thin over the room, choking out whatever starlight attempted to filter through the glass ceiling. Everything here sat in a quiet sort of stillness. Like a dollhouse, or a moment frozen in time in a museum. Silence hung heavy in the air, any echo of footsteps muted by the squish of the tissue beneath their boots.

Hal Gertie eased into the room with the others. Seeing nothing move, he glanced down at the floor to make sure it was just the 'normal' amount of flesh. The room was too quiet, too uneasy. It made him uncomfortable. His gaze flicked up to the viscera-coated ceiling, and he hesitated for a moment before gesturing for non-security or tactical personnel to follow him.

3

The android followed suite, eyes just mere twin dots in the darkness. (edited)

.. Not normal. Everything was thicker here...

He kept close to the others, following as they went through the observatory. “The growth of the viscera appears to be quite heavy, and therefore our theory about the traps may be more pertinent. Be careful as to where you are stepping.”

"S' beautiful here, in a way," he muttered, taking a chance to look around. The sight above was probably amazing, but, well... it was currently obscured. Kairos wondered what sorts of things and objects the scientists had recorded here, before everything.

"I highly disagree." Shears replied to Kairos. Lack of activity made them lower their rifle, still looking about.

The new room only added to her previous mental image. It was quite a claustrophobic one and after she eyed the glass ceiling, completely covered by thick Viscera, she looked over at Kairos. “Not my taste… You think this is what babies see?” At least on the species that were born with open eyes.

"I think this is what life is," he replied without missing a beat, paying Shears' words no mind. "Flesh and the carcass it inhabits. Cells breeding, moving, dying. Overcome, adapt, subdue, thrive. Whatever it takes to come out on top." His head then turned towards Marze, face pale, eyes bright. "It's what a successful species does."

“That is an interesting take on the current situation.” Sterling remarked, while scanning around once again, in hopes of finding some sense of what the viscera had consumed recently.

“It’d be prettier without the threat to our lives,” he didn’t say. Breaking the silence felt… wrong. They were too exposed. His grip tightened on his phaser, not that it would do anything in an emergency. He stopped next to Sterling, eyes still flitting around.

Metals, mostly. Slowly, slowly chipping away at what remained of the structure here... and something moving through the black, just out of sight.

4

Bringing up the very rear, making sure that everyone had entered this new room before finally stepping in himself, Timi hovered in the doorway to continue playing sentry, not needing to see people to know where they were, and not needing to look at them to see what they're saying. The conversation about flesh and species was... interesting, if a little out of place. He rolled his eyes a little fondly at Kairos' fascination with it. The androids were simultaneously dangerous blind spots and the least of his worries, so he resolved to simply keep an eye out while he used his telepathy to keep track of the organics and his eyes to keep track of the flesh zombies that had been mentioned before. He was immune to the silence, and the need to fill it, so he simply stayed back and kept watch.

“Step back.” Sterling’s voice sounded, suddenly completely different in tone. His voice programming had been relatively dysfunctional recently, perhaps it was that. “There is something else here.”

Almost imperceptibly slowly, Hal Gertie leaned over just enough to be able to read Sterling’s tricorder. With the tricorder as a reference, he turned slowly to orient himself towards the movement, raising his phaser rifle to point in its general direction. He wouldn’t shoot without clear sight, but it would allow the others to know where it was without too much noise or movement.

Having followed the group through, Vara'l moved to support Commander Hal Vallace without speaking as he reacted to the Android science lieutenants words and Commander Hal Valances response. After a moment he softly asked. "Anything on tricorders?"

Sinau had taken the PADD from earlier, despite feeling like she was holding a murder weapon. She was considering having keeping it as a cool little trinket, but she couldn't bear to keep it for long, after all of this, she'd give it to intelligence and forget about it. That's what she was good at, right? Blocking out the trauma. Running way from it. "I... haven't gotten anything on mine, anybody else?" Sinau said, pulling it out her tricorder. Which had been collecting dust on her belt up until now. "We sent out something to them... right?"

Did it matter? There was nothing left. Only a rotting body and a hungry virus. From the darkness came the sticky, squelching sound of stuttering footsteps, the figure half- bent over and yet their head— could it be counted as a face, with how overgrown it was?— fixed on the group. "Khhh.." it inhaled in a shuddering, gasping fashion, unable to finish its sentence. What was left of its uniform nearly blended into the blood and flesh around it.

4

“…Fascinating.” The readings coming from the long-since-engineering officer caught his eye, despite his internal instincts screaming at him to back as far away as he could.

”That’s what the other group talked about I presume!” Her riffle was ready, the head was aimed on, still… “Do we shoot?” Had it been for her, she would have as soon as the thing was in sight, but she had to remind herself there were others calling the shots in this mission. “Please say yes…” She muttered only to herself.

The being became his sole purpose as soon as it stepped out to them. Kairos watched it, equally alert and curious. "We can take it's attention for a while, given how many of us are here. In the meantime, someone can ask the other team again. They had the most info on these guys, correct?" he half-offered, half-inquired.

Shears' eyes just about widened. They instantly lifted their rifle. They pointed it straight at the monster's head. Their hands shook with fear, but they gripped it harder, trying to keep the barrel pointed dead on. They silently told them that if nobody acted soon, they would go ahead with what they were already thinking.

Rifle at the ready, aimed at the dark at Sterling's callout, Timi tried to... feel. If the zombies were the remains of the people who had been here before, perhaps there was still something resembling a mind for him to read. There- a presence he could hone in on. He tried to read its mind, or whatever was left of it, as he charged forward, along the wall, rifle set to its highest setting (a deadly beam on the best of days) and shot straight for its head. Whatever weapons they had 150 years ago, theirs were bound to be better, and shooting it was worth a try at least.

4

Pain split open the creature's mind like an axe cleaving it cleanly in two. Not physical — mental anguish, a plead for all of this to just end. There was a person there, once; someone with thoughts, with dreams and desires, but they had been reduced to nothing more than an apologetic mass of tumor-like flesh. The shot burned into the pulsing mass surrounding its head, and it reared back like a puppet with severed strings before buckling back over. It was trying to speak, but the words were muffled, its mouth covered. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please, on its mind like a broken record.

6

With a sickening suction noise, another creature emerged from the mass of flesh, an empty eye socket and a few patches of flesh the only visible thing left of the human within. "Hmmpp," it groaned out, even as its body carried it step by miserable step towards the others. "Saa.. sav..." came Ellie's voice from within.

6

Fascinating. So utterly fascinating, but terrifying, however it registered in his circuitry. He backed away, keeping an eye on the other members of the group as he heard the second corpse croak something out.

There was nothing there, no words of comfort that Timi could offer something that wasn't actually a person, something twisted beyond recognition by this mass that came for all of them. "Phaser fire ineffective," he beamed into everyone's heads telepathically, save for the two androids, without permission but needing to communicate this without loosening his grip on his rifle. It was mostly like talking, anyway, he reasoned; he wasn't reading anyone's minds, didn't even feel the urge to when he could feel their fear and disgust and morbid fascination pressing on him already with no input from him. Instead, he raised his rifle. If perhaps the fire wouldn't work, manual disabling of the bodies would. He swung down as he got closer, hoping to take out a leg with his swing so that he might prevent it from moving from its place, buying everyone more time as they figured out what the easiest way to stop them would be.

Shears chose to continually press fire into the SO's head. He held down the ray, hoping to eat away at the beast.

”Fucking hell… this is why we need blades people!” Her frustration was more than evident. Fucking Starfleet regulations! Shooting wouldn’t have any effects, the ceiling was glass – no way for a team A strategy – best option so far would be to hit them hard. And even that was a stupid idea. Marze started to look around. Heavy things, she needed heavy things, or even better: sharp things!

With annoyance at the opportunity to have potentially scanned them further and gathered information suppressed, Vara'l stated. "Fire and withdraw." Before he then requested. "Someone get tricorder scans of them." He then visibly twitched at the sudden intrusion then. "Indeed, someone get tricorder scans of them." He'd added though he hoped someone already had. "Given the effect of weapons fire, we need to know what it did if anything, it is intel." He fired on the one Timi had targeted as he pulled back to maintain distance between himself and the zombies. As he did, he proceeded to cast his gaze around in snatched moments, looked for options, for ways out for the team. (edited)

His tricorder already being out, Sterling took as quick of a scan as he could, getting the bare minimum before falling back. He stepped closer to the lieutenant commander, showing the results.

Shears held their gaze on the fleshy bodies. They winced, but held their fire. They spotted Sterling approaching and quickly receded, to allow him to scan, after a moment's hesitation.

Something restless squirmed inside of him at the sight of two bodies, as well as Timi's actions. The android crept closer, phaser belted, fingers twitching...

The thickness of the vicera did not go unnoticed by the resident Trill-Romulan surgeon. They were standing not too far from the rest of the group. They were trying not to get too close to the fleshy bodies. "Blades... I remember seeing a video saying a lightsaber is actually the optimal weapon in such a situation as it cauterises the flesh." Again not something Xuan thought they would ever utter in their medical career! It was just a silly spacetok video they saw too that gave such a tip.

The results showed was still a person inside there, somewhere. A mostly devoured person, puppeted by the flesh, but there was, scientifically, still some human flesh left. A tricorder wasn't magic, though. It wouldn't show any weaknesses, and it certainly didn't now, making its way towards the front of group— lunging towards Hal.

The creature staggered before pouncing— with an almost inhuman strength, it seized Timi, sending him flying towards a viscera-covered console and damaging his suit in the process. The rifle clattered forgotten to the ground, as the viscera began to cling to him, to try to wiggle in through the cracks..

4

At the senior’s order, Marze finally decides to act against the – mombies? Meaties? Zeats? Fleashies? – Noticing now they were two. She had seen one take a shot straight to the head and keep moving, so maybe the answer would be to make movement more difficult. For that she needed a blade. She looked at the window and didn’t think twice. Using the back of the riffle, she hit it as hard as she could. (edited)

There was no time to think! Hal Gertie moved to be completely shielding Sterling from the meat creature, giving the lieutenant a shove back as he did. With his other hand, he took his phaser rifle and shoved it as deep as possible in the science officer's eye socket, turning it all the way up before pulling the trigger.

3

2

Timi's head made contact with a console behind him as he was thrown, a thorough miscalculation on his part where he did not expect the shambling things to have the strength they apparently did. He felt metal bend at the joints in his neck, a heat starting to permeate where previously it hadn't. And then the pain set in, searing and raw and unexpected, and the hit his head took left him too dazed to control his reactions the way it had been trained into him so thoroughly. And so, uncharacteristically, he let out an instinctive pained groan unlike any noise he would ever have made with his wits about him, the loud sound eventually breaking and cracking as his vocal chords had become brittle and dusty with thirty-eight years of disuse, tapering off into a wheeze.

6

The blue-black eyes widened as he saw his colleague - his first contact on the station, his first friend here, really - go down, flesh-bone body (soft, fragile) landing onto the console with a painful-sounding, ugly noise. What followed was worse, though. Because what followed was a long, loud, broken keen, coming out of the usually so composed man - and Kairos felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. "Commander!" his voicebox stuttered out, spitting out something more akin to a shrill growl than sapient words, and the android took his trembling limbs - fury, fury, fury - forward, his body dipping downwards and then lunging at the aggressor like a sleek bolt, pinning what was once human down. He ached. The dumb fucking helmet was in the way, so instead his palm gripped around what was once the facial area... and Kairos pummeled the head up and down against the ground, once, twice, thrice - vengeful, vengeful, vengeful - stopping mid-air of what was almost the fourth hit, helmeted head snaking up close to check if the flesh so much as twitched. Or perhaps it was Rex who urged him to stop.

The rifle tore through the viscera with ease, sending shattered glass scattering to the ground. Perfectly sized pieces to do some damage, but one would have to be careful not to cut the gloves of their suit!

The thing— the husk dug desperately at Hal's suit, trying its best to pry something free, to squeeze its way inside — only to freeze at the rifle, blood and viscera exploding out from the back of its head as he shoved it through. It staggered, dazed, crumpling to the ground.. (edited)

The creature had no eyes visible to speak of, and yet it would seem they were entirely fixed on Kairos as it squirmed under him, clinging to the outside of his suit and trying to wedge itself through whatever cracks it would find. Here; lingering in the air between them as the android hesitated, Kairos would hear what they'd been trying to choke out the whole time, "Kkh.. Ki..ll... m..e...."

2

There he was, hunched over them with his tail swishing left and right - like some grotesque gargoyle, frozen over it's prey. Kairos watched the parasite cling to his armored limbs, searching, prodding for weakness in the suit, and listened to the plead of an officer long gone. Overcome, adapt, subdue, thrive. The form was still humanoid, in a way the crude clay figurines sometimes were. One species overcoming another, the loser turned into a husk. That voice did not belong to any of his teammates, though. It was, quite literally, decades old. Stuck repeating one final message from the person that this once was... Without a single word, Kairos released the head, letting it fall back and rest on the floor. His hand went for their neck instead, to hold them down, before delivering mercy. After the immediate danger was dealt with, the android pulled himself up and rushed to the downed teammate's side, a worried warble involuntarily rumbling through his chest, "Timi?.."

Shears stepped back, disturbed. She lowered her weapon. She tried to approach Kairos, but he seemed preoccupied with the health of his teammate. The Insectoid's gaze lingered on the puddles of flesh beneath the officer. The creatures she'd failed to stop.

Hal Gertie stumbled back, putting some space between him and the creature. Even through the EV suit it was clear he was breathing hard. He reached to feel some of the seams of his suit to reassure himself it wasn't compromised, that he wouldn't be the next husk crumpled on the floor. Of course he would know immediately if it had been breached, he told himself. But the nagging feeling remained. He forced himself to take another step back and breathe. He turned to face his team. He felt a pang of guilt; he hadn't even heard Timi get hurt in the commotion. He watched Kairos rush over. There wasn't much he could do for him at that point. He didn't know him personally, and he was certainly no doctor. So he turned to the lieutenant he had shoved. "Are you alright?"

Timi was still breathing, still conscious, having taken a few seconds to compose himself and sit up a little straighter. "Bad news," he signed slowly to Kairos, still dazed, "that shit is definitely in my suit." He tried to get his legs under himself in a way that would let him stand up, spotting his rifle. The movement dizzied him, and now he had to concede he was pretty sure he had a concussion. "Fuck me," he signed, needing to externalise his frustration at getting caught so unawares. Rookie fucking mistake, Kestrel. "If I turn into a zombie you'd better blow my head off immediately."

5

“I am unharmed.” Sterling replied, fully regaining his bearings as he brushed himself off, despite the EV suit. “Are you alright, Lieutenant Commander?” His head tilted as he spoke, “I hope you are not harmed.”

“That’s good to hear. I’m… fine. Unharmed, like you said.” He hated to have to move people like that, but it seemed like a better alternative to getting meat monstered at least. He glanced at the creature once more and tried not to think about what the burning, rotting flesh smelled like outside of the EV suit.

“That is optimal.” He dipped his head in a nod, “Although the damage to our crew is less than so, it is less than what I had calculated to be likely to happen.”

“We could be in worse shape, that’s for sure.” He crossed his arms, still watching Timi as he got to his feet. He’d be glad to get moving again, and put this room behind them.

The bodies had begun to stir once more. They'd gotten close enough and had been staggered long enough that they'd left an opening deeper into the outpost...

Maggie shuddered. “Ew, don’t like that.” She said, looking at the bodies.

Shears sprung up as she saw the bodies twitching. She snapped out of her self-pitying stupor. She quickly readied her weapon, even if it realistically was a futile effort. She turned to the commissioned officers. "Sir," she called, not even really to one officer in particular. "should we deal with the bodies?"

He sneered, sharp teeth glistening in low light, and shifted to look at the damage done to Timi's suit. Shit... "Understood," he signed to him with steady hands. "Don't take this as an excuse to give up, though. Miss Rei'nak will personally sign me up to get turned into tin cans if I let you perish here, and I'm too sophisticated for that." The movement of the bodies erased the slight smirk on the android's face. His next signs were followed by speech, loud enough for others to hear: "We should be moving while we still have a chance, not waste our time on pleasantries. Commander Kestrel, I offer to cover you and also attempt to mend your EV suit when we get to safety. Maybe we can use the heat of a phaser to weld it..."

2

Marze wasted no time in getting some of the glass, careful enough not to damage her suit. As many as possible considering she would have to retreat fast with the others. She had not missed her Lt. Cdr. and the intelligence officer voraciously attacking the bodies. She could not help but let out a victorious roar-like scream when Hal buried his riffle on the enemy, the shot sending the blue dressed creature back. “Let’s move before they recover!”

He turned at Shears’ question, and was pulled back to the moment. If a phaser rifle at its highest couldn’t kill one… he wasn’t really sure what would. The other two were right, they should get moving while they could. “We should keep going, yeah.” But instead of taking his place at the front of the party as he had before, he stayed near the rear to keep an eye (and his phaser) focused on the creatures as they left.

Timi nodded with a twisted grin at Kairos' words as he motioned for his rifle while he stood up, needing at least something in his hands to whack anything that came close with, but not trusting himself to pick anything off from the ground. "Ask them why they continued shooting even though I told them it was ineffective," he signed to Kairos with a frown on his face, signing "told" way up near his forehead to make it clear he meant he did it telepathically, and that's why Kairos wouldn't have received it. "And tell me who all did it. I'll send a report asking for additional training in high-risk confrontations." It wasn't entirely clear whether he was serious or not. At least he was standing, and as soon as he had his rifle back he'd be ready to move on. (edited)

5

4

He spotted the rifle when Timi gestured to it. After offering it back to the man and reading the signs, the android let out a slightly disbelieving huff. Oh, man... "Lieutenant Commander Kestrel is asking why there was continued shooting after he relied the information about this measure being ineffective," he asked out loud, voice gliding easily through the air as the group would begin it's movement. They can walk and talk at the same time, after all. "As far as I'm aware, only me and Lieutenant Sterling can't hear someone else's thoughts being literally beamed into our heads?"

”The commander seriously want to deal with this now?” Marze was, honestly, baffled. Even if she was one of the ones who didn’t shoot. “Also, ineffective to kill doesn’t mean ineffective to other things such as keeping them at bay while we get the hell out!” (edited)

Xuan observed like person standing emoji, but they were moving slowly forward, wanting to get far away from the weird flesh bodies.

1

"And as soon as it was shot, it lunged for said Commander, so yes, actually, I imagine it is an important thing to discuss, given that there is a very real possibility from what we've just witnessed in that phaser fire pisses these things off!" the smile on Kairos' face was... too toothy, too... unkind. "We are very lucky the only thing currently broken is his suit, not his neck."

Timi patted Kairos on the arm before walking ahead, out of the room. He fastened a firm hand around Marze's upper arm as he went, pulling her to walk alongside him. "You understand sign language?" he asked her as he pulled her into the next room, before pointing at her and mimicking a talking hand at her, making it clear that she could speak and he would understand her.

Shears averted their gaze sheepishly. They wanted to spare themselves some guilt from their weak attempts to fend off the zombie.

Xuan looked at Shears and then at Timi. They were trying not to think of the weird flesh monster. They knew random SpaceTok 'zombie apocalypse' videos would come in handy, phasers and guns did not work against the fleshy creatures for sure.

Vara'l focused on departing the room while he kept the zombies covered. While the phaser rifle was ineffective granted, if something being staggered back or forced to take a moment longer to get back up was something that'd have helped it paid to have the option. Well, what of a option it happened to be. Staggering it or not, the fact remained, Timi was right. Phaser fire had happened to be quite ineffective, even with what Lieutenant Commander Hal Vallance had done as well. If it happened that you had to get right up close to something for your weapon to do anything significant and that thing happened to be able to fling a officer in a EV suit across a room well. He reckoned that was the definition of a ineffective weapon. So his mind turned as he headed toward the lab entrance to something else even as he'd moved along. Options. How could these things be addressed if they attacked again? What could be done? It wasn't like they happened to have many other options. He looked around for well, more weapons related options, as he walked.