Chapter Two
"Starfleet Intelligence has baptized the interphasic
creatures: shadow entities. From now on that's their official name. At least
until they are revealed to the general population…Which should be soon…"
Captain Kline said, holding a padd in front of him.
"Shadow entities…" Stevenson sighed. "Original."
"How can this be?" Reeves asked from her seat
at the end of the table opposite to Kline. "I thought we sealed them up
back on Gyltian."
"I don't know…" Kline said. "Maybe another
interphasic rift formed somewhere in this area of space…Maybe one of their
ships simply escaped from the Gyltian invasion."
"There are many possibilities…" Sutter said,
nodding. "But one thing is for certain…They're back…"
"And they're killing..." Eskina added slowly.
There was a brief moment of silence that was interrupted
by doctor Tarses: "So what do we do?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.
"We have to follow them…" Kline said.
"Destroy them and, if we find out where they came from, destroy their
means of transport between our space-time continuum and theirs."
"Sounds pretty simple…" Stevenson folded his
arms across his chest and frowned.
"Indeed," Kline nodded. "But we won't be
getting any support from other ships unfortunately, we're too far out."
"Somehow…" Burnel sighed. "I'm not
surprised."
Suddenly, the comm. system beeped:
"Captain Kline? This is Lieutenant Johnson, sir.
We've just picked up a vessel in orbit of the planet. It's a Federation
shuttle, captain."
Confused glanced were exchanged throughout the conference
lounge as Kline tapped his commbadge and said: "On my way."
* * *
The shuttle tumbled slowly towards the Valiant,
drifting.
Suddenly, a blue tractor beam lashed out from the
starship's emitters and placed a firm grasp on the smaller craft that instantly
stopped tumbling on itself.
"Bring her in," Kline ordered.
"I'm reading one life-sign on board, captain.
Human." Eskina reported.
"Beam it directly to sickbay. Commander," Kline
glanced at Sutter, signaling her to follow him and they left the bridge.
In the lift, Kline's commbadge chirped: "Stevenson
here, Captain…Slight interphasic interference is making transport
difficult…I'll have to retune the H-compensators or else or our visitor might
end up in a million pieces."
"Understood, lieutenant. Proceed."
"Aye,"
* * *
Stevenson shut the panel with a punch and nodded to Chief
Robinson who had been waiting expectantly for him to finish his work:
"Ready." He said.
She nodded back at him and engaged the transporter cycle
just as Kline and Sutter were entering the room.
A glowing column of energy swirled to life on the
transporter pad; slowly, the wild particles came together and formed the
sizzling outline of a humanoid.
She was unconscious, her hair covering her face. She was
dressed in beige civilian clothes and there was a stain of blood on her left
thigh.
Sutter tapped her commbadge: "Medical team to the
transporter room on the double."
"Aye," Tarses replied.
Stevenson ran onto the padd and checked for a pulse,
there was one, but weak. She was breathing shallowly and she definitely wasn't
going to wake up anytime soon. He brushed the hair away from her face and Kline
seemed to recognize her:
"That's Amanda Parker," the captain said.
"She's the Federation science representative on Amad."
"You mean: she was …" Stevenson said
slowly.
The doors swished open and a three-person medical team
entered, pushing an anti-gravity stretcher. While two assistants lay Parker on
the stretcher, the doctor took some readings with his medical tricorder.
"She seems to have passed out due to blood
loss…" Tarses said. "The wound on her thigh is consistent…"
"Consistent?" Stevenson raised an eyebrow.
"The victims of the shadow entities on Gyltian died of this…" Tarses said as his team pushed
the stretcher out of the transporter room. "The molecular structure of her
left thigh was momentarily scrambled and it caused damage to the whole
area."
Kline frowned: "So now there's absolutely no doubt
about it…We're dealing with the interphasic organisms."
There was a brief silence.
"Stevenson." Kline said quickly. "I want a
way to track the shadow entities' ship…or whatever they used to get away from Amad. The sooner, the better…We don’t want them attacking
any other planets."
"I'll get right on it, captain." Stevenson said
and quickly exited the transporter room.
"I think we should go to sickbay…I'd like to be
there when our guest wakes up." Kline said.
"I'm right behind you, sir." Sutter said.
They walked through the corridors in silence towards
sickbay. When they entered into the medical area of the two-section sickbay of
the Valiant, Tarses was there to greet them.
"She'll be fine." He told them. "We've
replaced her disintegrated tissues with artificial ones, once the body gets
further into the healing process we'll remove them."
"Good
work." Kline nodded. "Is she conscious?"
"She is. She's resting over there." Tarses
said. "She can certainly answer questions but I would vote against an
interrogation at this time."
Sutter made a small smile: "Then it won't be
one."
The duo walked towards Parker who was lying on the
bio-bed, staring blankly up at the white ceiling of sickbay.
"Miss Parker?" Kline said, stopping by the side
of her bed.
Her head slightly turned to look up at Kline and Sutter.
"I'm Alan Kline, captain of this ship. This is my
first officer, Commander Sutter."
She blinked a few times, confused, then said in a voice
barely above a whisper: "What ship?"
"The USS-Valiant, a Federation starship…We
picked up the distress call sent by Amad three days
ago."
"Amad!" She sat up so
violently that the two Starfleet officers jumped back. "How is the planet?
What's happened?"
Kline's mouth became a thin line and his eyes grew cold,
Sutter lowered her eyes.
Parker stared at them for a long time, then shut her eyes
and fell back heavily onto the bio-bed.
"I thought it was a bad dream…" She whispered.
"I wish it was." Kline said, frowning deeply.
"Are there any survivors?" She asked.
Sutter shook her head slowly.
Parker opened her eyes, they were wet. When she shut them
again a tear ran down her cheek and was absorbed into the soft material
covering the bio-bed.
Sutter placed a hand on Parker's hand and said:
"We'll leave you alone."
Parker said nothing and they stepped away from her. Tarses
had been watching from the other side of sickbay, his arms were folded across
his chest and he was chewing on his lower lip.
"I'll get Nurse Davies to talk to her…" He
said. Davies was the only officer on board who had a little experience in
counseling and psychology.
"Agreed…" Kline nodded slowly, glanced back at
Parker lying on the bio-bed, and left sickbay, followed by Sutter.
* * *
Twelve hours later, in Engineering, Lieutenant
Stevenson's commbadge chirped.
"Stevenson here," he said, frowning at some
strange data floating about on his terminal. "Go ahead…"
"This is Tarses, would you fancy some help down
there, Lieutenant?"
"Um….Help, doctor…? What do you mean?"
Stevenson asked.
"Amanda Parker is up here, she was working with
some Amadian scientists on the planet during the
attack…She might have some valuable insight into the shadow entities' workings."
Stevenson shrugged: "Why not? Send her down whenever
she's ready."
"She's on her way. Tarses out,"
A few minutes later, she entered engineering. Stevenson
studied her as she approached him slowly. She was about his height, which meant
approximately five feet seven; she had brown/reddish hair that came about her
shoulders and piercing blue eyes that instantly caught his attention.
"Hello," she said, tonelessly.
"Hi," they shook hands and her hand felt wobbly
in his. "I'm Lieutenant Stevenson, chief engineer."
"You've been trying to track the interphasic ship
that came by here?" She asked.
He raised both eyebrows: "It was a ship? You're sure
of that?"
She nodded: "Absolutely…I saw them tear the planet
apart from orbit…"
There was an uneasy moment of silence, she kept her eyes
on him and he gazed back at her with a confused look.
A short moment later, Stevenson said: "Uh…Well…That
certainly helps. We might be able to pick up some sort of residual energy
signature left by their fancy propulsion systems."
"Agreed," she said, studying his consoles.
"Do we know how they move?"
He shook his head: "Absolutely no clue."
"Do you have any theories?" She asked.
"Well…" He pressed a button on his console to
bring up some random scans. "We've been going in the direction of
interphasic-related signatures but, so far, we haven't found anything."
She stared at the readings a moment without saying a
word. Her eyes seemed to jump on the steep sloped of the subspace noise and
interference patterns.
"This one," she suddenly said, pointing at one
of these waves. "This is their trail."
Stevenson bent down and frowned at the pattern she had
indicated: "That looks pretty much like subspace noise to me."
"It isn’t," she insisted. "I recognize
some of these waves and they're definitely of the same type as those we
detected when the interphasic ship came into orbit."
Stevenson still wasn't entirely convinced:
"Computer, run a comparative scan on wave pattern A-17 and interference
surrounding planet Amad."
"Working…" The computer answered and
they waited patiently.
A short moment later: "Comparison complete."
"Display results." He said.
A paragraph of information rolled onto the terminal's
screen and they approached it to be able to clearly read.
"There's a correlation…" Stevenson's face broke
into a wide grin. "Now how in the world did you manage to spot that?"
"The creatures that destroyed the planet below
carried this pattern with them…" She said coldly. "I'm not ready to
forget it."
Stevenson's grin faded in an instant. "I see."
He said after a short moment.
"Do you need anything else, lieutenant?" She
asked without looking him in the eye.
He shook his head: "I don't think so…We'll take it
over from here."
She nodded and slowly left Engineering, leaving Stevenson
alone with the pulsing warp core.