[PLOT FINALE] Deus ex Machina, II of III
Posted on 26 Dec 2024 @ 8:14pm by The Narrator
1,076 words; about a 5 minute read
Mission: Miranda
“There is some kind of…energy field not only locking us in but dampening my telepathy,” Elleese said in the room where the three Starfleet officers had been unceremoniously trapped in. So far, nothing they’d tried had worked to escape. And the look on the tactical officer’s face suggested she had sensed the same thing about the field around them.
Ell pursed her lips slightly, looking around every wall and corner as she thought it through. She pressed outward with her thoughts, probing the totality of this field. It seemed odd that a group from whom she sensed no telepathic abilities would have a field that could dampen telepathic abilities. She wondered… Had she missed it in them?
No, it was more likely they weren’t the first people who’d been trapped here…perhaps?
It was all so perplexing. The oddity of the group living here was clearly made of more malevolent intention than they had been able to sense…and that was odd too. Could they themselves have some sort of mental shielding as well?
“Maybe…if we work together, we can at least push through and try to send a message,” she said with a thoughtful frown, glancing back at Commander Sha’mer. She knew the other woman to be a powerful telepath, like Elleese was. Maybe…
It was a longshot no matter how you looked at it, but they had to try something, right?
Ensign Eri Dohm was a Betazoid member of the Odin’s science department. She was analyzing a plant she’d found near their campsite, mainly as a way to pass the time until they could return to the ship. She was so focused on this task that she didn’t hear the whisper at first.
When she did hear it, she was startled and whipped her head around to find out who was talking to her…but she saw no one nearby and realized it had been a telepathic call. The voice sounded familiar at first, but she didn’t recognize it at first. After a moment, though, she did…and she understood the faint word…
Her black eyes widened and she jumped to her feet, racing into the camp. “Cap-captain!”
On the USS Montana, one of the suited men was having a problem. He had no idea what he’d done or how it happened, but he knew in an instant that it was bad.
Very, very bad.
“We have to—”
He didn’t get any further.
Shooting stars were streaking through the dusky sky.
Except…they weren’t stars.
The rough atmosphere of this unknown planet, with its odd and unexpected population, was devouring things as they passed through it, but there was enough left by the time it reached the visible layers of sky for Easton—standing to the very edge of the camp’s perimeter—to see what it was.
He had been this far out wondering about his officers out there. They hadn’t reported in yet when they were supposed to, although he knew they’d been going deeper into the cave systems. He didn’t want to panic and rampage into the cave for nothing, but he knew that something didn’t feel right.
And now…he was watching pieces of a starship…pieces…fall to the ground.
Odin had done the sort of things she normally promised never to do.
She had not only connected with the Odin’s sensors to look outside the ship, but she had connected herself to the other Federation vessels as well. That’s why she knew when something went terribly wrong on the Montana, but she couldn’t do anything about it before it was too late. The ship—otherwise, thankfully empty—blew up, about half of it propelled toward the planet and caught in the atmosphere.
All bets were off, as the humans said.
Odin left the small sensor suite she’d been sitting in, reappearing in sickbay where one of the men were. She didn’t know who these people were, but they were not supposed to be here, and they were about to leave…
She was going to make sure of it.
He screamed when her now-physical form wrapped her arm around his neck from behind, applying force to keep him quiet and in place while she tore his helmet off. She was then able to get to his neck until he was unconscious, and she let him drop. Once he was down, she rooted around in his helmet to find its communications device.
Holding it in her hand, the lines between a technological intelligence and a formerly omnipotent being blurred. She was able to see things about it, and use its line to the surface…
Suddenly, Odin felt like she was everywhere all at once. Pieces of her were controlling the Odin, while other pieces were on the other two ships. She was also down in the computers on the surface, although touching those was like looking through a haze at a language she’d never seen before.
She started a campaign of terror against the invaders on the ship…
“Captain!” Ensign Dohm shouted, racing for the man standing at the edge of the camp. She was about to continue but saw him staring at the sky. She stopped to look at it with him, and her eyes widened again. “What’s… What’s happening?”
“Nothing good,” Easton said in a low voice.
It took a moment for Dohm to recover herself and she looked at the captain, remembering what had brought her here. “Sir, I think the away team is in danger,” she got out, even as her eyes kept returning to the gleaming streaks in the sky.
“What makes—” he began, but then they both realized that those streaks were actually getting closer to them…
“Something is wrong!” Gadra shouted from her console. She was not a woman prone to bursts of emotion, but she also wasn’t used to things happening this far out of their control. “There… There is something in our computers. Changing it. The fields are failing all around the compound. I… I can’t stop it.”
“What?!” Talvi exclaimed, hurrying up behind her chief scientist to look at the screen over her shoulder. Some sort of language was scrolling across the screen. Were those…
Were those ancient Earth runes?
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