<USS Cervantes> "Pursuit Pt II" (the REAL part TWO)

?Pursuit Pt II?

Ashne?e Al Kiara

 

When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows
himself at another.

Henry David Thoreau

 

            They were too late.

            The Ss?thla were underground. The trap door leading into the
hidden chamber peeked open a fraction. Tiny rays of sunlight were
clawing toward the shadow, but like a leviathan the dark consumed them
into its great bulk. A stench of musk and decay flapped from the depths
on wings of blackness. 

            Ashne?e glanced at Kennedy. The tall woman drew her phaser
from its holster and aimed it into the darkness.

            Arm extended and hackles raised, she began the descent into
the darkness. Dropping her cloak in a puddle beside the steps, Ashne?e
followed silently. The foul decay clawed at them palpably, trying to
chase them back up the stairs.

            A flash of white glinted from the pale reflection of the
light above, a mysterious glimpse of a limb unknown. In answer, a
fluting scream like a steam whistle barreled into the recesses.

            ?Halt!? shouted Kennedy, firing her phaser into the
blackness so that it illumined the small underground space.

            Beneath her foot, the light revealed the rotting face of a
Ss?thla. Black insects wove their way through his jaw, and viscous fluid
dripped from his eye into a yellowed stream of gore. Maggots wriggled in
the pool, consuming the nutritious jelly of his sight. His chest had
been laid open by an unknown predator, exposing his inner workings like
an autopsy for feasting parasites.

            The flash of phaser fire died away.

            ?Fuck, fuck, fuck,? chanted Kennedy. Ashne?e could hear the
fear wafting through the high tones of her voice. She tried a quavering
quip. ?Can you get eye j-? her voice broke. She cleared her throat and
tried again. ?Jelly out of suede??

            Silently, Ashne?e crouched, groping through the darkness for
the corpse. Her fingers encountered the dry mass of scales, and she
thanked the gods protecting her from encountering unidentifiable fluids.
With her other hand, she fumbled for her phaser, drew it from the
holster, tuned it to its lowest setting and fired at the cadaver.

            Instantly, the recess was filled with rosettes of flame
casting great distorted shadows on the walls. Rahssh?s corpse lit up in
a bonfire. The parasites feasting on his innards screamed inaudibly as
they burned alive.

            The glare of new light settled on a silent scene. Feline
faces distorted by extreme emotion ? agony, despair, fear, anger ?
formed a ghostly choir. In front of them, a Ss?thla ? Ss?lih? ? lay in a
pool of blood silver like melted bullets. His claws rasped ineffectually
against the pavement.

            The aggressor was nowhere in sight.

            ?Oh, god,? murmured Ashne?e, throwing her phaser into its
holster and bolting down the steps. She felt the alien blood ooze around
her boots, but knelt in it anyway, its strange too-thick consistency
flowing over her hands as she turned over the victim. The blood was
spurting from the Ss?thla?s throat with his breaths; she pressed her
fingers deeply to stymie the flow. It pulsed around them, bubbling like
water in a fountain.

            The victim stirred and opened oddly colored greenish eyes
set in scales too bright, too green, too impossibly fluorescent for an
adult...

            ?Orschh?? Ashne?e stammered in recognition. The slit pupil
flickered toward her before lapsing behind his lid.

            ?Kennedy!? exclaimed Ashne?e. ?I ??

            Soundless movement streamed through the chamber. Claws
embedded themselves in Ashne?e?s back, and she rolled with the scales,
trying to struggle her way out of a grip as unforgiving as an iron cage.


            In a swift motion like a waterfall flowing in reverse,
Kennedy sprang onto the back of the attacker. They rolled over and over,
the three of them, entangled almost inextricably. The silver blood
washed over them like an aching baptism. The Ss?thla was coiling like a
pistol shot, his sleek, well-muscled movements slicing through the
unassuming air like the whistle of a keenly sharpened talon.

            Someone ? and they never could remember which of them it was
? fought a phaser free from its imprisonment and overwhelmed the coiled
threesome with its pale lava beam. 

It passed through Ashne?e like a warm wave, freezing her in place while
its waters tickled her limbs. Pinched by shadow, she saw Kennedy
mirroring her own pose, surprise and relief curled in her expression.

            The Ss?thla poised for a moment in terror, his claws
extended and talons still pumping in and out like a crude heart beat.
Then with a terrible overwhelming gravity, he fell backward at a ninety
degree angle, catapulting into the grave-haunt statues behind him. Like
dominoes they cascaded downward until the room was a mass of corpses and
injured, a seabed of tangled weeds. 

            Ashne?e and Kennedy, upright, stared at each other until
movement returned to their limbs.

            Disentangling their attacker from the mass of feline
statues, Ashne?e felt his scales cold beneath her fingers. ?It?s
Ss?lih.? The revelation should have stunned her, but she felt her voice
go flat into monotone, and no wave of surprise or even horror shook her
abused system. ?Dead,? she continued, letting him slide back into the
heap. ?You must have forgotten to set your phaser to stun??

            ?Me?? Kennedy was daintily trying to wring the rivulets of
silver blood from her designer Beldashi cotton tunic. ?I thought you
shot him.?

            ?I don?t think so? I don?t remember.? Fleeing the eerie
shapes, she returned to Orschh?s side. The young Ss?thla was still
clinging to life with the tenacity of the naïve and joyful who fear
nothing so much as an end to life?s brightness. ?At least Orschh is
still alive.? She shook her head, trying to shake reason into her
uncooperative mind. ?Why would Ss?lih betray his own people? Why would
he ?? Orschh gurgled sharply. ?His breathing is so irregular ?he needs
real medical help.? 

             ?Oh, hell.? 

Kennedy?s voice was dry and cracked like old paint. 

?Look, look at the statues. I didn?t notice. They?re all children. Every
one of them.?

            Pressing her fingers against the weakening stream of blood,
Ashne?e gazed in Kennedy?s direction. Young, dirty faces, many of them
starving, gazed up through large almond eyes. Their features were
distorted, but unmistakably youthful, undeveloped; this pit was a tomb
for dozens of dead children. Dead children marked for sale. 

            ?We read the fragment wrong?? Kennedy was continuing
wearily. ?The Dark Ones are killing the children. God. They were killing
the children.?

            Orschh roused from his crippled stupor. ?My friendssss?? he
moaned. ?Sssshouldn?t make my friendssss sssstatuesss. How will thhey
play??

            ?We have to get him to the ship for medical attention,?
Ashne?e insisted.

            ?No.?

            The trap door yawned wide, and sunlight bathed the macabre
scene. The dead children?s eyes sparkled in the brightness.

            Ss?thla hovered on the lip of the entrance. Ssarish
descended first, and Hisaj and Risah followed her into the chamber,
hanging back a few steps, until Risah noticed Ss?lih?s corpse heaped
atop the statues. 

            ?No!? she screamed. She raked her claws across his corpse,
moving his chest in the patterns of breath, perhaps trying to inspire it
to remember the habit of life. ?But how could Orschh kill him?? she
keened. ?My Ss?lih, so strong??

            ?Your Ss?lih tried to kill both of us,? Kennedy said,
rolling her eyes. She despised women who went for ?bad guys.? As one of
them, she figured she had the right. ?Looks like he killed Rahssh and
Lisith too. Not to mention the fact Orschh is over there lying in a pool
of his own blood.?

            ?We must get him to the ship for proper medical treatment,?
Ashne?e repeated. ?We don?t have time to argue. He?ll die. If you want
to sort this out with me later, then we?ll do it, but I?m not going to
let him fade away while we discuss the details of what happened here.?

            Hisaj glanced between the three women, and made a decision.
?Shtor. Isorrh. Tend him.? To Ashne?e, he added, ?Your doctorsss are not
familiar with our physsiology.? In Ss?lih?s absence, Hisaj commanded
considerable authority; the Ss?thla hastened to obey his suggestion.
Drowned in silver fluid, Ashne?e retreated a few steps as they tended to
the child?s wounds. 

            Risah was still keening over her mate?s corpse.

            Ssarish shot acidly across the room to her, ?Sssstop
sssshrieking, Risssah. He did it for you. How many timessss a day do you
remind him the thingssss he isss unable to provide for you??

            Enfuriated or humiliated, Risah contained her
verbalizations. Her claws still rasped despairingly against Ss?lih?s
dehydrated scales.

            Standing tall and in her best Starfleet poise, Ashne?e
confronted Hisaj and Ssarish. ?Your people have been ravaging the
Khefiraan population. They?ve been killing the children,? she pointed
furiously to the mass of statues. ?Why didn?t you stop them??

            ?We didn?t know,? Hisaj said, quietly. ?We didn?t know??

            ?We sssshould have known,? Ssarish countered in a low
growling purr at the back of her throat. ?We have been too blind and
sssselfish to noticcce poor children in the ssstreetsss.?

            ?We ssshould have known,? Hisaj agreed.

            ?What will you do now?? Ashne?e asked. Her anger was
receding. They should have known. Yet there was no point in dwelling on
the tragedy despite the dead children?s accusing eyes. Now was the time
for reparation.

            Ssarish and Hisaj glanced at each other, indecision ready in
their gaze.

            At length, Hisaj looked Ashne?e as closely in the eye as he
could. With slight hesitation, he offered, ?We?ll have to work that out.
Give ussss a few hours. After? thissss ? you desserve our assssurancce
it will not happen again.?

            ?Lieutenant Rhune and I will return to the ship,? Ashne?e
agreed. ?We?ll hail you before we transport down again.?

            Hisaj and Ssarish flickered their tails to acknowledge
consent.

            Ashne?e made eye contact with Kennedy from across the room,
and the two of them prepared to retreat from the gory underground
chamber. As they loped from the room, bruises blooming on their skins
and their limbs drooping with exhaustion, Ashne?e waved Kennedy to pause
for a moment. 

            They halted beside Orschh?s corpse, still laboring to
breathe as the two medics worked. Ashne?e bent over so only Isorrh could
hear her. ?Will he be all right??

            Without even glancing up, Isorrh offered an affirmative
tail-flick. Her talons never stopped flashing.

            Ascending the steps with aching joints was a horror even as
the stale air above replaced the decay that had cloyed in their
nostrils. The sun beat down on their sore limbs, offering no balm for
their pain.

            They stumbled out onto the sand above. The desert stretched
desolate and untouched on all sides.

            ?Two to beam up,? Ashne?e croaked into her comm. badge.

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