[ST XI] FIC: In Three Words (3/4)
See Masterpost for story notes and warnings.
In Three Words - Part 3
They rematerialized in a dim room, a large one from the echoes their own shuffling movements threw back at them. The air was warm and musty, heavy with the stillness of centuries. Lights snapped on as the security team fanned out, taking stock of their surroundings. Jim swept his own light across the room, finding little beyond cracked walls and dark equipment. The place was awash in personal detritus; fragile leaves of paper, empty cups, a pair of antique eye glasses, a collection of unfamiliar items surrounded by even less familiar machinery.
Olduvai had been a research facility. If Jim had to guess, he’d say this room had been some kind of laboratory. To his surprise, a few of the light panels were flickering faintly. The initial survey teams must have carried in and installed some power cells. The overall effect wasn’t reassuring, despite the lightening of the oppressive darkness.
“Ensign?” he prompted.
N’Choa lifted his head from the tricorder readings. “Conditions are safe, Captain. But the interference continues to affect our equipment.”
Jim bit down on a sigh of relief. There was a taste of something unpleasant on the air and it had worried him. “Good. Do what you can to get us a reading on the layout of this place. And let me know as soon as you find any clue as to where our people might be.”
The rest of the team had finished securing the room and arrayed themselves in defensible positions as a pair of them examined the door. The mechanisms were intact, they told Jim. Getting out shouldn’t be difficult. He stepped back and let them work, conversing quietly with the security lieutenant about how to proceed. When the door locks finally gave way, the team was ready to go.
The lab had been creepy enough, abandoned and in disarray, but the corridors were much worse. Power trickled only fitfully through the hallway systems, touching off unreliable fits of brightness. The team moved carefully through the shifting darkness but their shadows moved with them and it set all their nerves on edge. The shifting of loose debris on the walkways under their feet didn’t help, necessitating that they watch their footing as well as the empty spaces yawning to either side as corridors branched off into nothing. The walls reflected more noise than light, confusing their ears with the multiplied sound of their own passage.
N’Choa broke the tense silence to say, “I’m getting some really strange energy readings,” just as Jim noticed the hallway brightening with a weird orange light. From the way their shadows stretched jaggedly in front of them on the increasingly-visible walls, the source of the light was somewhere behind them. The foremost pair held their position as everyone else turned around for a better look. The mouth of the cross-corridor they’d passed about fifteen feet back was illuminated by a warm orange glow. It continued to brighten as they watched.
“What the hell is that?” someone muttered as something drifted slowly into view.
Jim was wondering that himself, squinting at the mysterious object. It was pale, round, and apparently floating under its own power, hovering about six feet above the floor. And it appeared to be on fire. Jim’s hands automatically tightened on his phaser rifle as the burning...thing bobbed further into the hallway, slowly rotating in place.
“Oh my fucking God,” Jim heard someone else say as the object’s lazy spin revealed that it had a face.
It was a head. A bald, disembodied head, hanging in midair. And it was on fire.
“I think this is the part where we try talking to it,” Jim forced himself to say, keeping his voice steady. Freaky as it looked, a flaming, misshapen lump of waxy flesh wouldn’t be the strangest sentient lifeform the universe had to offer.
And the candle head did react to the sound of his voice. Unfortunately, its reaction consisted of dropping its jaw unnaturally wide and screeching before it launched itself at them in an alarming burst of speed.
“On second thought, forget talking!” Jim shouted, raising his weapon. The security officers beat him to it, phaser bolts lancing out and staggering the thing’s approach. It absorbed a couple of strikes before vanishing with a grating hiss and a quickly-fading bloom of flame.
Unfortunately, it had friends. Four more candle heads drifted into the hallway. They reacted far more quickly than the first one had, almost immediately orienting themselves and speeding into the skirmish. To everyone’s relief, they were as easily dispatched.
Jim frantically tried to blink away the afterimages, squinting through the vivid washes of colour overlaid on his view of the newly-darkened hallway. He was starting to get a real appreciation for why Bones had been so adamant about not coming back to this place. When they got out of here, he thought he might take up Bones’ cause of getting Olduvai wiped off of the planet.
“Everyone all right?” he checked, reassured by the prompt chorus of affirmations. “Right. Then what say we get a move on so we can get out of here?”
Bones hadn’t offered too many details about Olduvai’s layout. Simple observation was enough to learn that most of the complex was subterranean, exacerbating their problems with scanning through the interference from the ship. In hindsight, Jim wished he’d asked a few more pointed questions. Like how damn big was the place? And where might one go to find wayward survey teams?
...Although the sound of yelling and phaser fire might be a clue.
The team went on alert, hands on weapons and eyes scanning the gloom for some sign of what was happening. Jim shook his head in frustration as he swept the corridor. The echoes were too disorienting to trust.
“Where’s that coming from?” Jim demanded of N’Choa, already studying his tricorder readings.
“I think - That way!” he said, pointing.
They followed his direction as quickly as they dared. As much as they wanted to find their missing crewmates, leaving themselves exposed to anything else that might blunder in from a cross corridor wasn’t an option. Stumbling out of the cramped hallway onto a raised walkway circling the top of another large, dimly-lit laboratory was something of a relief; at least now they could see the weirdness coming. Even better, it gave Jim a clear view of Ensign Heynor advancing cautiously into the room from one of the floor-level doorways.
“Clear!” she called over her shoulder.
Oh thank fuck. Jim clamped down on an incoherent rush of relief when Bones backed into the room from the corridor behind her, weapon trained on the shadowy doorway from which he’d emerged. Both of them were the worse for wear and they were four men short but Bones was there. Four condolence letters wouldn’t be any fun to write but at least Jim wouldn’t be writing them alone.
Bones stopped to fiddle with the control panel beside the entryway, shoulders relaxing slightly as the door slammed shut. He joined Heynor, saying something Jim couldn’t make out, and they moved further into the room. It only took Bones a couple of seconds to spot Jim and the others clustered on the upper level walkway and he reflexively raised his weapon, snapping a warning to Heynor. Even at this distance, Jim could see the surprise on Bones’ upturned face as he recognized them.
“Goddamnit! What the hell are you doing here?” he shouted up at them.
“You were late!” Jim called back with a grin, too pleased to see Bones to be properly contrite. “What did I tell you about that?”
Jim hadn’t known that Bones could curse like that. He’d have to remember some of those phrases.
“You about ready to get out of here?” he asked, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. “Our ride’s waiting.”
Bones’ response was lost under a deep, coughing roar. The opposite corner of the room, previously obscured by shadow, abruptly lit up as a fireball streaked towards Jim and his security team. They scattered as best they could, hampered by the limited space of the walkway. Jim felt hands on his shoulders, shoving him towards the safety of the stairway leading to the floor. He flung himself down the first flight, one hand catching the railing as the other steadied the officers hurtling after him.
N’Choa and Kallings had ducked back into the corridor for cover. Hexen and Parsons never got the chance to move before the fireball slammed into them.
“Shoot the son of a bitch!” Bones was shouting at Heynor, suiting action to words as he opened fire.
The flash of the phaser bolts showed a bulbous red shape, reflected off of rows of teeth and horns as it glided closer. This thing was no floating head; the round mass of its body looked to be nearly five feet across. Jim scrambled down the stairs, Harris and Lawlor at his heels, as the red thing’s mouth gaped open and it spat another fireball at them. Bones and Heynor kept firing as Jim and the others clattered to the bottom of the stairs, raising their own weapons. The thing shuddered under their combined fire, eventually disappearing in a burst of flame similar to the one that had consumed the candle head-things that had attacked them in the hallway.
There was no point in asking if everyone was okay, Jim realized, staring at the too-still, blackened bodies he could see lying on the grate of the walkway over their heads. He hadn’t been hurt and it seemed as if Harris and Lawlor had also escaped without injury.
“Bones?” he asked, turning to examine him and Heynor. They looked even more battered up close, uniforms torn and liberally splattered with blood and other gore. Jim was still ridiculously glad to see him.
Bones shook his head. “We’re okay,” he dismissed. “The others...are gone.”
Jim hissed a frustrated breath. He’d been expecting that but having it confirmed didn’t make him a happy captain. “I’m starting to see why you’re holding a grudge against this place.”
“That would be why I wanted you to stay away from it,” Bones retorted, the lines of strain on his face deepening as he scowled. “Which we are going to have words about after we get out of this hellhole. You said something about a ride?”
Jim nodded. “We’ve got to get a level or two higher but Spock’ll beam us out as soon as we get past the worst of the interference. Lawlor, Harris. Check out the integrity of the stairs.”
They’d taken at least a couple of direct hits from the red thing’s fireballs and Jim wasn’t inclined to take chances with the architecture. There were enough things trying to kill them in here already.
Stepping away from the flimsy cover the stairs had provided, he craned his head to check on the remaining pair of his team. They’d survived the thing’s attack, he was glad to see. N’Choa was peering over the railing at them and Kallings was picking his way across to see if there was anything to be done for Hexen and Parsons. The slow shake of his head, barely visible at this angle, was no real surprise.
That was six down, and yeah, Jim was really sympathizing with Bones’ hate-on for this place.
“You two keep an eye on things from there until we figure out a safe way to get back up to you,” Jim called, waiting until N’Choa and Kallings acknowledged his order before turning his attention to the investigation of the stairs. Lawlor was making his way up, pausing to test the solidity here and there. So far, so good, it seemed.
“Did you hear something?” he heard Kallings ask.
“The creepy head-things didn’t make that noise before,” N’Choa replied dubiously as they moved closer to the doorway, weapons at the ready.
They all heard the loud crackling and a rising, nerve-shredding hum. There was something lighting up the hall from which they’d entered, something that flared a bright orange-yellow.
“Oh God,” Heynor whispered and from the corner of his eyes, Jim saw her go ashen under the livid scrapes on her face.
“Fuck, no,” Bones spat, raising his voice to bellow at them. “Get out of there!”
Above them, something shrieked as N’Choa and Kallings opened fire. Lawlor cursed and ran up the remainder of the steps, Harris at his heels despite the way the stairs shuddered under their footsteps. When Jim moved to follow them, he found Bones’ arm blocking his way.
“Let me go,” he demanded, “I have to help -”
“You have to live,” Bones interrupted. “And you won’t do that if you go up there.”
He closed a hand in an implacable grip on Jim’s arm, dragging him away from the struggle above. “Get that door open!” he ordered Heynor, pointing at a sealed portal ten feet to the left of them.
“We can’t just leave them!” Jim protested, tugging against Bones’ grip.
Bones didn’t bother arguing. The bodies that came crashing through the upper railing to land almost at their feet pretty much said it all. Kallings was badly burned, groaning and stirring weakly but Lawlor had been torn open from neck to groin. Jim’s stomach lurched at the gaping wound and he hastily looked away from the slick ruin of internal organs. He forced himself to focus on the fact that Kallings was still alive but unlikely to remain that way if they didn’t help him, and soon.
A body crashed heavily to the grating over their heads and Jim reflexively hunched his shoulders as he dashed the few steps required to kneel hastily at Kallings’s side. Bones followed, muttering a steady stream of curses as he hastily assessed Kallings’ condition. From his strained frown, Jim didn’t think much of Kallings’ chances. N’Choa screamed overhead and Jim swallowed hard when the shrill sound broke off with a gurgle.
A heavy footstep rattled the walkway above them. Jim automatically looked up and shuddered at the sight of the tall, scaly creature leering down at them. Its grey-white skin was pulled taut across its bulging forehead and a multitude of eyes flickered open and shut as it spotted them. Its screech shocked Jim into action and he scrambled to his feet.
“Jim, move!” Bones shouted as the thing lifted one oversized hand, yellow energy crackling around its fingers. “Heynor, get the damn door!”
“It’s open!”
Scooping up Kallings as he rose, Bones shoved Jim ahead of him as they ran for the door. Heynor hovered anxiously in the entryway, jabbing frantically at the panel as they dove through. The door jerked to a close just ahead of the fireball that slammed into the floor outside of it, cutting off the grey creature’s frustrated shriek.
“What is it with these things and fire?” Jim demanded shakily as he leaned against the wall, panting. If the question had an ever so slightly hysterical tinge, he thought that was perfectly understandable, what with eight dead crewmen and a sudden preponderance of monsters popping up out of nowhere to try and set them on fire.
“Who the fuck knows?” Bones answered, busy propping Kallings up as he rummaged through his own pockets. Jim was almost surprised to see him come up holding a hypospray. Kallings was conscious now though in obvious pain, sucking in air in short, whimpering gasps. Bones shot Jim a sideways look, his expression almost guilty as he thumbed the settings on his hypospray.
“Don’t worry, Kallings,” Bones soothed as he set the hypospray against an uninjured patch of skin on Kallings’ neck. “We learned some pretty neat tricks back in the Marines. This’ll fix you right up.”
The lines of pain eased almost immediately from Kallings’ expression and he straightened up, cautiously at first but more confidently as he caught his balance. “That’s great, Doc! Thanks!”
Jim returned his relieved smile, careful not to react to the way the burned skin of Kallings’ cheek split as his expression changed. His heart turned over when Bones refused to meet his eyes, occupying himself with tucking the hypospray away. A neat trick, indeed.
“So where to now, Bones?” he prompted, kindly ignoring Bones’ slight start at his even tone. “You know this place best.”
“That way,” Bones said, gesturing ahead after a moment’s hesitation. “We found one of the salvagers’ setups when we were scouting earlier. It’s our best bet for a safe place to regroup.”
Jim nodded thoughtfully. “How long?” he asked, deliberately flicking his eyes over at Kallings before raising his eyebrows.
The hesitation lasted a bit longer this time. “Not long,” Bones finally said. “It’s not far.”
“Let’s get a move on, then,” Jim instructed. “Keep your eyes open, everyone.”
He fell into step beside Bones as they set out, nudging him with his shoulder. Bones glanced over and Jim flashed him a quick, sympathetic grimace. “Only thing you could do, Bones,” he muttered under his breath.
Bones shuddered and blinked hard before tipping his head in acknowledgement, then resolutely focused his attention back to their surroundings.
Jim followed suit, turning his thoughts away from the potential combinations of nerve-deadeners and stimulants that would keep a dying soldier on his feet. A killer cocktail and the only mercy Bones could afford to dispense at the moment. Goddamn this place and what it was forcing Bones to do. At least their luck was kind enough to hold out, seeing them through to Bones’ proposed refuge without anything more disturbing than a few more candle heads.
Funny how quickly your standards can change, Jim mused as he shot another one out of the air. Unnatural and unsettling creatures weren’t enough to cause alarm any more. Now they had to be unnatural, unsettling and outright deadly. The candle heads were still a bit disturbing but they didn’t stack up against the other monsters this place had to offer.
The salvagers’ camp was tucked into a small, reassuringly well-lit room branching off one of the main corridors. Jim figured it for an old supply depot, which Bones confirmed when he asked. The salvagers had managed some impressive work for the limited time they’d had. Jim saw that he’d guessed right on the power cells; there was a small cluster of them set up and patched into an open systems panel. They’d even gotten to work on the complex’s database, it seemed. Archeology wasn’t Jim’s specialty but he recognized a data retrieval system when he saw one spread out over a cracked-open ancient computer.
There was no sign of the salvagers themselves, beyond a spray of dried blood against one wall. They’d left their equipment behind but no clue about where they’d gone. Given what he’d already seen today, Jim didn’t think there’d be anything left of them to find by now. Bones ushered them into the room, set Heynor to keep watch and saw Kallings patched up and settled on a patch of cleared space before drawing Jim aside.
“The room is secure,” he began in an undertone. “Keeping watch is just giving something Heynor to do. With the door shut, this place is as safe as it gets here. Kallings will start going downhill soon but there isn’t much I can do for him. I’m thinking our best bet is the power cells there. You’re the genius - you think you can rig up some way of jacking that signal booster?”
“I can sure as hell try,” Jim told him, a few tricks already coming to mind. “And what are you going to be doing while I save our asses?”
“Giving you the chance to pull off another miracle,” Bones answered gently.
Jim was confused for a split second but it was half a breath too long.
“Shit!” he blurted in appalled enlightenment, making a grab for Bones. “Don’t you dare!”
“Sorry, Jim,” Bones apologized, slipping away from Jim’s desperate swipe. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
If I can, he meant but Jim was helpless to stop him from ducking out and triggering the door to close behind him.
Goddamnit, Bones! Jim raged internally. When they got out of this place, Jim was so not the only one in line for a lecture about charging off into trouble. In the meantime, Jim still had other people depending on him. He forced himself to take a deep breath and arrange his expression into something less furious (and terrified) before he turned around to face Heynor and Kallings.
“Okay!” he said, clapping his hands together. “Bones is buying us some time. Heynor, you make sure nothing nasty gets through that door. Kallings, you get some rest. You can relieve Heynor in a couple of hours. I have got a date with a sweet-looking power cell.”
If nothing else, sorting through the cobbled-together computer systems was challenging enough to provide an absorbing distraction. Under any other circumstances, Jim would have been all over the chance to poke through some of the ancient history that had created Bones. The data thus far recovered by the salvage team was incomplete and corrupted but there were intriguing hints of the crazy experiments Bones had mentioned - and if Starfleet hadn’t had its eyes on this data prize when it insisted on sending teams in after their lost personnel, Jim would eat the power cell that was currently refusing to cooperate with his patching attempts. From the spotty records on the recovery system, the salvagers had managed to fire off just enough information to rouse Starfleet’s curiosity. Though granted, assessing a threat to Earth’s neighbouring planet was a legitimate concern. And the critters swarming in Olduvai were definitely a legitimate threat.
Jim had been struggling with the power cells for a couple of hours when Heynor caught his attention.
“Captain?” she called softly, tipping her chin at Kallings when Jim looked up inquisitively.
Kallings, whose chin had dropped to his too-still chest and whose already weak colour had faded to waxy white.
“Damn,” Jim said quietly. That was nine men down now and Jim was going to enjoy ordering this place blown to dust. “I guess this means you’ll be taking second watch after all, Heynor.”
“Yessir,” she murmured, tightening her hands on her weapon.
Jim returned his attention to the recalcitrant power cell but he wasn’t at work long before he saw movement in his peripheral vision. Or thought he had. When he jerked his head up, everything seemed all right. He considered the far side of the room for a long few seconds but nothing jumped out at him, metaphorically or otherwise.
“Is everything all right, Captain?” Heynor asked uncertainly.
“I thought,” Jim started before shaking his head firmly. “Never mind, Ensign.”
Except that it happened again, almost as soon as he tried to get back to the computer. Heynor noticed something this time too, frowning as she followed his line of sight.
“I think it’s just Kallings, sir,” she offered, walking over to him and crouching to check his pulse. “He’s not quite -”
Her voice choked off as Kallings’ arm swept up and his hand latched itself around her throat.
“What the - Kallings!” Jim snapped. “Stand down!”
He couldn’t see what was going on, view blocked by Heynor’s back as she clawed ineffectively at the hand squeezing the breath out of her. She fumbled for her phaser but he clumsily batted it out of her hands, the movement swinging them around and Heynor out of Jim’s line of sight.
“Holy fuck!”
Jim couldn’t restrain the expletive. Kallings was dead. He had to be. His skin was a mottled grey and his eyes were filmed over. His movements were jerky and uncoordinated. But his corpse was moving.
“Jesus Christ, what the fuck is going on?” Jim muttered frantically, scrabbling for his own phaser, hands clumsy with shock.
Kallings might not have been graceful but apparently he was strong. He wrenched violently at Heynor’s throat, shaking her like a toy. She shuddered and went limp in his grasp.
“No!” Jim shouted in useless denial, closing his hands on his phaser.
Kallings moaned incoherently and flung Heynor to one side, fumbling to his feet.
Jim raised his weapon and fired, relieved to see the corpse stagger and fall. Terrifyingly, it kept moving so he spared a second to reset the power levels on his phaser and fired again. Dead flesh vaporized under the higher power setting and that was enough to put Kallings down again - for good this time, Jim hoped. He watched in paranoid alertness until his hands nearly cramped on the barrel of his phaser but Kallings never twitched and he finally breathed a shaky sigh of relief.
Until he remembered Heynor and pinned her crumpled body with a suspicious stare. One corpse had already gotten up and tried to kill them, what’s to say that this one wouldn’t do the same? He slowly got to his feet and picked his way across the cluttered room, carefully skirting Kallings’ sprawled limbs. He halted at a calculated distance, staring down at Heynor in indecision.
“I’m sorry,” he finally whispered and raised his phaser again. This place was too goddamn dangerous and Jim couldn’t risk leaving another threat at his back.
When it was done, he walked numbly back to the computer and sank into his seat. He slung his phaser across his lap and let himself shake for a few minutes. Ten crewmen down, Bones missing, and himself stuck in this abandoned camp trying to kludge together a means of rescue. Jim figured he was entitled to a minor breakdown.
Olduvai apparently did not agree.
Jim startled out of his chair, reflexively bringing his weapon to bear as something banged hollowly against the door to his refuge. He steeled himself and waited to see if the thing on the other side would batter its way through. Jim was so primed for violence that he nearly shot Bones when the door reluctantly gave way, sliding open to allow him to stagger inside. He blinked owlishly at the weapon aimed at his face, brow furrowing in muzzy confusion. Then his knees buckled, dumping him to the floor face first in a ragged heap.
Jim darted forward, barely remembering to shut the door behind Bones before he flung himself to the floor beside him.
“Bones? Bones! Oh my God, Bones,” Jim muttered desperately under his breath. His hands fluttered uncertainly as he looked for a safe place to touch; Bones was a mess.
He’d been torn and bloodied before. He was even moreso now and badly scorched, to boot. The reek of smoke hung thickly on the air and the rasp of his breath was so alarming that Jim gave up on being careful and pressed a trembling hand to his throat. He’d seen Bones shake off a spear through the lungs, for Christ’s sake. The kind of catastrophic injury it would take to drop him...didn’t bear imagining.
“Jesus fuck, Bones!” Jim sighed explosively when he felt a strong heartbeat under his fingers. “Do not scare me like that!”
Bones grumbled something incomprehensible and twitched under Jim’s hand, eyes clearing as he blinked himself awake.
“Ow,” he said distinctly.
Jim spluttered a laugh, grabbing Bones’ shoulder to help him as he struggled to sit upright.
“If you fell on that, I can see why it hurt,” he remarked, eyeing the object Bones had clenched in his right hand. Jim had been a bit too busy freaking out to notice it earlier. Landing on an object with that many pointy edges couldn’t have been comfortable. “What is it?”
Bones’ knuckles whitened briefly. “A fighting chance.”
Jim tilted his head and squinted at the oddly-shaped brown and gold cube. “So not just a funny-looking paperweight?”
“Never mind that for now,” Bones dismissed, wobbling to his feet. He spotted the bodies before Jim could find the words to warn him. His mouth tightened into a thin line and Jim was oddly comforted to see him look briefly sick as his eyes took in the mottled grey of Kallings’ skin. “I take it things didn’t go well while I was gone? Are you okay? Did you have any luck with the communicators?”
“No, yes and not really,” Jim answered succinctly. What was left of Kallings and Heynor was its own explanation of how well things had not gone but he was alive and he’d count that as a win.
“Shit,” Bones muttered tiredly, walking to the far side of the room and sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. “Suppose you having Spock on the line and waiting to beam us out was a bit much to hope for.”
“Fuck all else has gone according to plan in this place,” Jim agreed as he slumped down next to him. “And speaking of plans, what the hell did you think you were doing, running off like that?”
At least Bones had the grace to look guilty about it. “I - sorry about that. But last time I was here - the last time something like this happened - there was a focal point for it. According to Sam, those things were coming from the labs working on the teleportation experiments. I thought maybe if I could get there, I could shut off whatever the hell is causing all of this.”
Save the lecture about how pissed you are about getting ditched for later, Jim reminded himself. It actually hadn’t been that bad a plan.
“Did it work?” he asked aloud. “Hard to tell from in here.”
“No,” Bones admitted on an exhausted sigh. “The place is still crawling with whatever the fuck those things are. All I managed was - shit, I’m not sure. I think maybe I fell down whatever damn hole they’re crawling out of.”
Wow. Jim hadn’t thought he had any fresh surges of terror left in him. He reached out without thinking, wrapping a hand around Bones’ wrist and squeezing hard.
Bones glanced up at the desperate grip, expression softening at whatever he read on Jim’s face. “I climbed back out,” he added. “And I found this.”
Jim leaned forward to get a closer look at the ornamented cube that Bones held up. It didn’t look like anything he’d ever seen before: an irregular cube with a dull metallic sheen, ornamented with carvings and inlaid golden swirls and cylinders. One of its corners was a vaguely humanoid face sculpted in that same gold-coloured material. “What is it?” he repeated.
“You remember that ancient civilization I mentioned?” Bones asked.
It took Jim a second - the conversation felt days away, instead of just hours - but he nodded.
“I think they left us a present,” Bones said and let go of the cube.
Jim’s eyes went wide when it remained suspended in midair, hovering steadily in front of them. “Okay, that’s pretty neat. What else does it do?”
“It’s a weapon,” Bones answered. “A powerful one. Goes through those bastards like a laser scalpel. At a guess, we’re not the first ones to have a monster problem on Mars.”
“How do you figure that?” Jim asked, extending a curious finger to poke the cube.
“It told me so,” Bones replied as Jim’s finger brushed the surface and a voice of layered chimes whispered into his ear.
We are many. We are one. We are the Praelanthor.
Free us from our eternal prison, and we will help you.
Vanquish our enemies and we grow stronger.
Listen for our call, and then free us, to smite down the evil.
Jim jerked his hand back, staring at the cube in alarmed fascination.
“So," he managed, swallowing dryly. "It, uh, talks.”
“I noticed that, myself,” Bones said blandly.
Jim shot him a glare, mouth twitching into a reluctant grin. “Asshole,” he said, elbowing Bones in the side.
“Takes one,” Bones retorted, nudging him in return.
God, Jim was glad to have Bones back. Sitting there shoulder-to-shoulder as they considered the alien artifact serenely floating between them, Jim felt better than he had since Whitlock’s call. Creepy talking cube and all.
Jim rubbed his hand absently against his thigh as he looked at the weirdest thing he'd encountered in a day full of unnerving encounters. The cube was unaffected by his scrutiny but Jim remembered the undeniable awareness he'd sensed when it had whispered promises into his mind. Whatever else the artifact was, it was no mindless tool. On the other hand, it hadn't tried to kill them yet, unlike pretty much everything else Jim had run into here. And Bones trusted it, like he trusted nothing else about this place.
Jim took a deep breath and let it out in a slow sigh. The cube made as much sense as anything else did in Olduvai and Jim wouldn't throw away any advantage he could get his hands on. No matter how inexplicable it was.
“It says it’ll help us,” he finally said.
“We need all the help we can get,” Bones pointed out.
“That’s for damn sure,” Jim conceded. There really weren’t many options open to them. “We going to make a run for it?”
“Yeah,” Bones sighed unhappily. “It won’t be easy but it’s our best bet.”
“Well, I hope you remember the way out,” Jim told him. “I didn’t exactly get the grand tour.”
Bones smiled humourlessly. “I’ve been trying to forget Olduvai for over 200 years. Don’t worry about my memory.”
He pushed himself to his feet, then held out a hand to help Jim.
“Any idea how your new toy works?” Jim asked as he scrambled up.
The cube had moved as they did, smoothly taking up a position at Bones’ shoulder.
“Yeah, a bit,” Bones said. “It say anything to you about vanquishing enemies to make it stronger?”
Jim nodded.
“That’s about it. You kill things to charge it up. When enough of those bastards die, it’s ready to use.”
“Convenient,” Jim commented. Another good reason to shoot anything that popped out at them.
They took a few minutes to survey their remaining equipment. Once they left, retreating to this flimsy sanctuary wouldn’t be an option.
“Okay, so here’s the deal with the communicators,” Jim said as they prepared to set off. “Even with the power cells, I couldn’t punch a signal through to the Enterprise but I did manage to supercharge the signal boosters. If we can get beyond the worst of the interference, we should be able to yell loud enough that they’ll hear us.”
Bones nodded thoughtfully, grabbing a nearby PADD and stylus. “We’re in one of the lower sections, off of the secondary excavation sites,” he explained, sketching a rough image as he spoke. “If we head out and up, this hallway will link up with one of the major shafts and that should give us a pretty straight shot at getting out of here.”
“Mm-hm,” Jim acknowledged, watching him trace the pathway on the PADD.
“If anything happens to me, you should keep going this way,” Bones started, falling silent as Jim splayed a hand across his over the screen.
“If anything happens to you, I’m as good as dead,” he said simply.
“Damn it, Jim!” Bones scowled at him, clearly wanting to argue but they both knew Jim was right.
“So are we good to go now?” Jim asked with faux-cheer.
Bones stared at him for a long few seconds, then reached out and dragged him into a tight, hard hug. “If you die down here, I will never forgive you, you stupid son of a bitch,” he swore fiercely, then shoved Jim away and stalked to the door.
Jim swallowed hard and resettled his equipment to buy him a few seconds to do the same with his composure.
“Well?” Bones prompted impatiently. “You coming?”
“Lead the way,” Jim replied brightly.
Back to Part 2
On to Part 4
Back to the Masterpost
In Three Words - Part 3
They rematerialized in a dim room, a large one from the echoes their own shuffling movements threw back at them. The air was warm and musty, heavy with the stillness of centuries. Lights snapped on as the security team fanned out, taking stock of their surroundings. Jim swept his own light across the room, finding little beyond cracked walls and dark equipment. The place was awash in personal detritus; fragile leaves of paper, empty cups, a pair of antique eye glasses, a collection of unfamiliar items surrounded by even less familiar machinery.
Olduvai had been a research facility. If Jim had to guess, he’d say this room had been some kind of laboratory. To his surprise, a few of the light panels were flickering faintly. The initial survey teams must have carried in and installed some power cells. The overall effect wasn’t reassuring, despite the lightening of the oppressive darkness.
“Ensign?” he prompted.
N’Choa lifted his head from the tricorder readings. “Conditions are safe, Captain. But the interference continues to affect our equipment.”
Jim bit down on a sigh of relief. There was a taste of something unpleasant on the air and it had worried him. “Good. Do what you can to get us a reading on the layout of this place. And let me know as soon as you find any clue as to where our people might be.”
The rest of the team had finished securing the room and arrayed themselves in defensible positions as a pair of them examined the door. The mechanisms were intact, they told Jim. Getting out shouldn’t be difficult. He stepped back and let them work, conversing quietly with the security lieutenant about how to proceed. When the door locks finally gave way, the team was ready to go.
The lab had been creepy enough, abandoned and in disarray, but the corridors were much worse. Power trickled only fitfully through the hallway systems, touching off unreliable fits of brightness. The team moved carefully through the shifting darkness but their shadows moved with them and it set all their nerves on edge. The shifting of loose debris on the walkways under their feet didn’t help, necessitating that they watch their footing as well as the empty spaces yawning to either side as corridors branched off into nothing. The walls reflected more noise than light, confusing their ears with the multiplied sound of their own passage.
N’Choa broke the tense silence to say, “I’m getting some really strange energy readings,” just as Jim noticed the hallway brightening with a weird orange light. From the way their shadows stretched jaggedly in front of them on the increasingly-visible walls, the source of the light was somewhere behind them. The foremost pair held their position as everyone else turned around for a better look. The mouth of the cross-corridor they’d passed about fifteen feet back was illuminated by a warm orange glow. It continued to brighten as they watched.
“What the hell is that?” someone muttered as something drifted slowly into view.
Jim was wondering that himself, squinting at the mysterious object. It was pale, round, and apparently floating under its own power, hovering about six feet above the floor. And it appeared to be on fire. Jim’s hands automatically tightened on his phaser rifle as the burning...thing bobbed further into the hallway, slowly rotating in place.
“Oh my fucking God,” Jim heard someone else say as the object’s lazy spin revealed that it had a face.
It was a head. A bald, disembodied head, hanging in midair. And it was on fire.
“I think this is the part where we try talking to it,” Jim forced himself to say, keeping his voice steady. Freaky as it looked, a flaming, misshapen lump of waxy flesh wouldn’t be the strangest sentient lifeform the universe had to offer.
And the candle head did react to the sound of his voice. Unfortunately, its reaction consisted of dropping its jaw unnaturally wide and screeching before it launched itself at them in an alarming burst of speed.
“On second thought, forget talking!” Jim shouted, raising his weapon. The security officers beat him to it, phaser bolts lancing out and staggering the thing’s approach. It absorbed a couple of strikes before vanishing with a grating hiss and a quickly-fading bloom of flame.
Unfortunately, it had friends. Four more candle heads drifted into the hallway. They reacted far more quickly than the first one had, almost immediately orienting themselves and speeding into the skirmish. To everyone’s relief, they were as easily dispatched.
Jim frantically tried to blink away the afterimages, squinting through the vivid washes of colour overlaid on his view of the newly-darkened hallway. He was starting to get a real appreciation for why Bones had been so adamant about not coming back to this place. When they got out of here, he thought he might take up Bones’ cause of getting Olduvai wiped off of the planet.
“Everyone all right?” he checked, reassured by the prompt chorus of affirmations. “Right. Then what say we get a move on so we can get out of here?”
Bones hadn’t offered too many details about Olduvai’s layout. Simple observation was enough to learn that most of the complex was subterranean, exacerbating their problems with scanning through the interference from the ship. In hindsight, Jim wished he’d asked a few more pointed questions. Like how damn big was the place? And where might one go to find wayward survey teams?
...Although the sound of yelling and phaser fire might be a clue.
The team went on alert, hands on weapons and eyes scanning the gloom for some sign of what was happening. Jim shook his head in frustration as he swept the corridor. The echoes were too disorienting to trust.
“Where’s that coming from?” Jim demanded of N’Choa, already studying his tricorder readings.
“I think - That way!” he said, pointing.
They followed his direction as quickly as they dared. As much as they wanted to find their missing crewmates, leaving themselves exposed to anything else that might blunder in from a cross corridor wasn’t an option. Stumbling out of the cramped hallway onto a raised walkway circling the top of another large, dimly-lit laboratory was something of a relief; at least now they could see the weirdness coming. Even better, it gave Jim a clear view of Ensign Heynor advancing cautiously into the room from one of the floor-level doorways.
“Clear!” she called over her shoulder.
Oh thank fuck. Jim clamped down on an incoherent rush of relief when Bones backed into the room from the corridor behind her, weapon trained on the shadowy doorway from which he’d emerged. Both of them were the worse for wear and they were four men short but Bones was there. Four condolence letters wouldn’t be any fun to write but at least Jim wouldn’t be writing them alone.
Bones stopped to fiddle with the control panel beside the entryway, shoulders relaxing slightly as the door slammed shut. He joined Heynor, saying something Jim couldn’t make out, and they moved further into the room. It only took Bones a couple of seconds to spot Jim and the others clustered on the upper level walkway and he reflexively raised his weapon, snapping a warning to Heynor. Even at this distance, Jim could see the surprise on Bones’ upturned face as he recognized them.
“Goddamnit! What the hell are you doing here?” he shouted up at them.
“You were late!” Jim called back with a grin, too pleased to see Bones to be properly contrite. “What did I tell you about that?”
Jim hadn’t known that Bones could curse like that. He’d have to remember some of those phrases.
“You about ready to get out of here?” he asked, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. “Our ride’s waiting.”
Bones’ response was lost under a deep, coughing roar. The opposite corner of the room, previously obscured by shadow, abruptly lit up as a fireball streaked towards Jim and his security team. They scattered as best they could, hampered by the limited space of the walkway. Jim felt hands on his shoulders, shoving him towards the safety of the stairway leading to the floor. He flung himself down the first flight, one hand catching the railing as the other steadied the officers hurtling after him.
N’Choa and Kallings had ducked back into the corridor for cover. Hexen and Parsons never got the chance to move before the fireball slammed into them.
“Shoot the son of a bitch!” Bones was shouting at Heynor, suiting action to words as he opened fire.
The flash of the phaser bolts showed a bulbous red shape, reflected off of rows of teeth and horns as it glided closer. This thing was no floating head; the round mass of its body looked to be nearly five feet across. Jim scrambled down the stairs, Harris and Lawlor at his heels, as the red thing’s mouth gaped open and it spat another fireball at them. Bones and Heynor kept firing as Jim and the others clattered to the bottom of the stairs, raising their own weapons. The thing shuddered under their combined fire, eventually disappearing in a burst of flame similar to the one that had consumed the candle head-things that had attacked them in the hallway.
There was no point in asking if everyone was okay, Jim realized, staring at the too-still, blackened bodies he could see lying on the grate of the walkway over their heads. He hadn’t been hurt and it seemed as if Harris and Lawlor had also escaped without injury.
“Bones?” he asked, turning to examine him and Heynor. They looked even more battered up close, uniforms torn and liberally splattered with blood and other gore. Jim was still ridiculously glad to see him.
Bones shook his head. “We’re okay,” he dismissed. “The others...are gone.”
Jim hissed a frustrated breath. He’d been expecting that but having it confirmed didn’t make him a happy captain. “I’m starting to see why you’re holding a grudge against this place.”
“That would be why I wanted you to stay away from it,” Bones retorted, the lines of strain on his face deepening as he scowled. “Which we are going to have words about after we get out of this hellhole. You said something about a ride?”
Jim nodded. “We’ve got to get a level or two higher but Spock’ll beam us out as soon as we get past the worst of the interference. Lawlor, Harris. Check out the integrity of the stairs.”
They’d taken at least a couple of direct hits from the red thing’s fireballs and Jim wasn’t inclined to take chances with the architecture. There were enough things trying to kill them in here already.
Stepping away from the flimsy cover the stairs had provided, he craned his head to check on the remaining pair of his team. They’d survived the thing’s attack, he was glad to see. N’Choa was peering over the railing at them and Kallings was picking his way across to see if there was anything to be done for Hexen and Parsons. The slow shake of his head, barely visible at this angle, was no real surprise.
That was six down, and yeah, Jim was really sympathizing with Bones’ hate-on for this place.
“You two keep an eye on things from there until we figure out a safe way to get back up to you,” Jim called, waiting until N’Choa and Kallings acknowledged his order before turning his attention to the investigation of the stairs. Lawlor was making his way up, pausing to test the solidity here and there. So far, so good, it seemed.
“Did you hear something?” he heard Kallings ask.
“The creepy head-things didn’t make that noise before,” N’Choa replied dubiously as they moved closer to the doorway, weapons at the ready.
They all heard the loud crackling and a rising, nerve-shredding hum. There was something lighting up the hall from which they’d entered, something that flared a bright orange-yellow.
“Oh God,” Heynor whispered and from the corner of his eyes, Jim saw her go ashen under the livid scrapes on her face.
“Fuck, no,” Bones spat, raising his voice to bellow at them. “Get out of there!”
Above them, something shrieked as N’Choa and Kallings opened fire. Lawlor cursed and ran up the remainder of the steps, Harris at his heels despite the way the stairs shuddered under their footsteps. When Jim moved to follow them, he found Bones’ arm blocking his way.
“Let me go,” he demanded, “I have to help -”
“You have to live,” Bones interrupted. “And you won’t do that if you go up there.”
He closed a hand in an implacable grip on Jim’s arm, dragging him away from the struggle above. “Get that door open!” he ordered Heynor, pointing at a sealed portal ten feet to the left of them.
“We can’t just leave them!” Jim protested, tugging against Bones’ grip.
Bones didn’t bother arguing. The bodies that came crashing through the upper railing to land almost at their feet pretty much said it all. Kallings was badly burned, groaning and stirring weakly but Lawlor had been torn open from neck to groin. Jim’s stomach lurched at the gaping wound and he hastily looked away from the slick ruin of internal organs. He forced himself to focus on the fact that Kallings was still alive but unlikely to remain that way if they didn’t help him, and soon.
A body crashed heavily to the grating over their heads and Jim reflexively hunched his shoulders as he dashed the few steps required to kneel hastily at Kallings’s side. Bones followed, muttering a steady stream of curses as he hastily assessed Kallings’ condition. From his strained frown, Jim didn’t think much of Kallings’ chances. N’Choa screamed overhead and Jim swallowed hard when the shrill sound broke off with a gurgle.
A heavy footstep rattled the walkway above them. Jim automatically looked up and shuddered at the sight of the tall, scaly creature leering down at them. Its grey-white skin was pulled taut across its bulging forehead and a multitude of eyes flickered open and shut as it spotted them. Its screech shocked Jim into action and he scrambled to his feet.
“Jim, move!” Bones shouted as the thing lifted one oversized hand, yellow energy crackling around its fingers. “Heynor, get the damn door!”
“It’s open!”
Scooping up Kallings as he rose, Bones shoved Jim ahead of him as they ran for the door. Heynor hovered anxiously in the entryway, jabbing frantically at the panel as they dove through. The door jerked to a close just ahead of the fireball that slammed into the floor outside of it, cutting off the grey creature’s frustrated shriek.
“What is it with these things and fire?” Jim demanded shakily as he leaned against the wall, panting. If the question had an ever so slightly hysterical tinge, he thought that was perfectly understandable, what with eight dead crewmen and a sudden preponderance of monsters popping up out of nowhere to try and set them on fire.
“Who the fuck knows?” Bones answered, busy propping Kallings up as he rummaged through his own pockets. Jim was almost surprised to see him come up holding a hypospray. Kallings was conscious now though in obvious pain, sucking in air in short, whimpering gasps. Bones shot Jim a sideways look, his expression almost guilty as he thumbed the settings on his hypospray.
“Don’t worry, Kallings,” Bones soothed as he set the hypospray against an uninjured patch of skin on Kallings’ neck. “We learned some pretty neat tricks back in the Marines. This’ll fix you right up.”
The lines of pain eased almost immediately from Kallings’ expression and he straightened up, cautiously at first but more confidently as he caught his balance. “That’s great, Doc! Thanks!”
Jim returned his relieved smile, careful not to react to the way the burned skin of Kallings’ cheek split as his expression changed. His heart turned over when Bones refused to meet his eyes, occupying himself with tucking the hypospray away. A neat trick, indeed.
“So where to now, Bones?” he prompted, kindly ignoring Bones’ slight start at his even tone. “You know this place best.”
“That way,” Bones said, gesturing ahead after a moment’s hesitation. “We found one of the salvagers’ setups when we were scouting earlier. It’s our best bet for a safe place to regroup.”
Jim nodded thoughtfully. “How long?” he asked, deliberately flicking his eyes over at Kallings before raising his eyebrows.
The hesitation lasted a bit longer this time. “Not long,” Bones finally said. “It’s not far.”
“Let’s get a move on, then,” Jim instructed. “Keep your eyes open, everyone.”
He fell into step beside Bones as they set out, nudging him with his shoulder. Bones glanced over and Jim flashed him a quick, sympathetic grimace. “Only thing you could do, Bones,” he muttered under his breath.
Bones shuddered and blinked hard before tipping his head in acknowledgement, then resolutely focused his attention back to their surroundings.
Jim followed suit, turning his thoughts away from the potential combinations of nerve-deadeners and stimulants that would keep a dying soldier on his feet. A killer cocktail and the only mercy Bones could afford to dispense at the moment. Goddamn this place and what it was forcing Bones to do. At least their luck was kind enough to hold out, seeing them through to Bones’ proposed refuge without anything more disturbing than a few more candle heads.
Funny how quickly your standards can change, Jim mused as he shot another one out of the air. Unnatural and unsettling creatures weren’t enough to cause alarm any more. Now they had to be unnatural, unsettling and outright deadly. The candle heads were still a bit disturbing but they didn’t stack up against the other monsters this place had to offer.
The salvagers’ camp was tucked into a small, reassuringly well-lit room branching off one of the main corridors. Jim figured it for an old supply depot, which Bones confirmed when he asked. The salvagers had managed some impressive work for the limited time they’d had. Jim saw that he’d guessed right on the power cells; there was a small cluster of them set up and patched into an open systems panel. They’d even gotten to work on the complex’s database, it seemed. Archeology wasn’t Jim’s specialty but he recognized a data retrieval system when he saw one spread out over a cracked-open ancient computer.
There was no sign of the salvagers themselves, beyond a spray of dried blood against one wall. They’d left their equipment behind but no clue about where they’d gone. Given what he’d already seen today, Jim didn’t think there’d be anything left of them to find by now. Bones ushered them into the room, set Heynor to keep watch and saw Kallings patched up and settled on a patch of cleared space before drawing Jim aside.
“The room is secure,” he began in an undertone. “Keeping watch is just giving something Heynor to do. With the door shut, this place is as safe as it gets here. Kallings will start going downhill soon but there isn’t much I can do for him. I’m thinking our best bet is the power cells there. You’re the genius - you think you can rig up some way of jacking that signal booster?”
“I can sure as hell try,” Jim told him, a few tricks already coming to mind. “And what are you going to be doing while I save our asses?”
“Giving you the chance to pull off another miracle,” Bones answered gently.
Jim was confused for a split second but it was half a breath too long.
“Shit!” he blurted in appalled enlightenment, making a grab for Bones. “Don’t you dare!”
“Sorry, Jim,” Bones apologized, slipping away from Jim’s desperate swipe. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
If I can, he meant but Jim was helpless to stop him from ducking out and triggering the door to close behind him.
Goddamnit, Bones! Jim raged internally. When they got out of this place, Jim was so not the only one in line for a lecture about charging off into trouble. In the meantime, Jim still had other people depending on him. He forced himself to take a deep breath and arrange his expression into something less furious (and terrified) before he turned around to face Heynor and Kallings.
“Okay!” he said, clapping his hands together. “Bones is buying us some time. Heynor, you make sure nothing nasty gets through that door. Kallings, you get some rest. You can relieve Heynor in a couple of hours. I have got a date with a sweet-looking power cell.”
If nothing else, sorting through the cobbled-together computer systems was challenging enough to provide an absorbing distraction. Under any other circumstances, Jim would have been all over the chance to poke through some of the ancient history that had created Bones. The data thus far recovered by the salvage team was incomplete and corrupted but there were intriguing hints of the crazy experiments Bones had mentioned - and if Starfleet hadn’t had its eyes on this data prize when it insisted on sending teams in after their lost personnel, Jim would eat the power cell that was currently refusing to cooperate with his patching attempts. From the spotty records on the recovery system, the salvagers had managed to fire off just enough information to rouse Starfleet’s curiosity. Though granted, assessing a threat to Earth’s neighbouring planet was a legitimate concern. And the critters swarming in Olduvai were definitely a legitimate threat.
Jim had been struggling with the power cells for a couple of hours when Heynor caught his attention.
“Captain?” she called softly, tipping her chin at Kallings when Jim looked up inquisitively.
Kallings, whose chin had dropped to his too-still chest and whose already weak colour had faded to waxy white.
“Damn,” Jim said quietly. That was nine men down now and Jim was going to enjoy ordering this place blown to dust. “I guess this means you’ll be taking second watch after all, Heynor.”
“Yessir,” she murmured, tightening her hands on her weapon.
Jim returned his attention to the recalcitrant power cell but he wasn’t at work long before he saw movement in his peripheral vision. Or thought he had. When he jerked his head up, everything seemed all right. He considered the far side of the room for a long few seconds but nothing jumped out at him, metaphorically or otherwise.
“Is everything all right, Captain?” Heynor asked uncertainly.
“I thought,” Jim started before shaking his head firmly. “Never mind, Ensign.”
Except that it happened again, almost as soon as he tried to get back to the computer. Heynor noticed something this time too, frowning as she followed his line of sight.
“I think it’s just Kallings, sir,” she offered, walking over to him and crouching to check his pulse. “He’s not quite -”
Her voice choked off as Kallings’ arm swept up and his hand latched itself around her throat.
“What the - Kallings!” Jim snapped. “Stand down!”
He couldn’t see what was going on, view blocked by Heynor’s back as she clawed ineffectively at the hand squeezing the breath out of her. She fumbled for her phaser but he clumsily batted it out of her hands, the movement swinging them around and Heynor out of Jim’s line of sight.
“Holy fuck!”
Jim couldn’t restrain the expletive. Kallings was dead. He had to be. His skin was a mottled grey and his eyes were filmed over. His movements were jerky and uncoordinated. But his corpse was moving.
“Jesus Christ, what the fuck is going on?” Jim muttered frantically, scrabbling for his own phaser, hands clumsy with shock.
Kallings might not have been graceful but apparently he was strong. He wrenched violently at Heynor’s throat, shaking her like a toy. She shuddered and went limp in his grasp.
“No!” Jim shouted in useless denial, closing his hands on his phaser.
Kallings moaned incoherently and flung Heynor to one side, fumbling to his feet.
Jim raised his weapon and fired, relieved to see the corpse stagger and fall. Terrifyingly, it kept moving so he spared a second to reset the power levels on his phaser and fired again. Dead flesh vaporized under the higher power setting and that was enough to put Kallings down again - for good this time, Jim hoped. He watched in paranoid alertness until his hands nearly cramped on the barrel of his phaser but Kallings never twitched and he finally breathed a shaky sigh of relief.
Until he remembered Heynor and pinned her crumpled body with a suspicious stare. One corpse had already gotten up and tried to kill them, what’s to say that this one wouldn’t do the same? He slowly got to his feet and picked his way across the cluttered room, carefully skirting Kallings’ sprawled limbs. He halted at a calculated distance, staring down at Heynor in indecision.
“I’m sorry,” he finally whispered and raised his phaser again. This place was too goddamn dangerous and Jim couldn’t risk leaving another threat at his back.
When it was done, he walked numbly back to the computer and sank into his seat. He slung his phaser across his lap and let himself shake for a few minutes. Ten crewmen down, Bones missing, and himself stuck in this abandoned camp trying to kludge together a means of rescue. Jim figured he was entitled to a minor breakdown.
Olduvai apparently did not agree.
Jim startled out of his chair, reflexively bringing his weapon to bear as something banged hollowly against the door to his refuge. He steeled himself and waited to see if the thing on the other side would batter its way through. Jim was so primed for violence that he nearly shot Bones when the door reluctantly gave way, sliding open to allow him to stagger inside. He blinked owlishly at the weapon aimed at his face, brow furrowing in muzzy confusion. Then his knees buckled, dumping him to the floor face first in a ragged heap.
Jim darted forward, barely remembering to shut the door behind Bones before he flung himself to the floor beside him.
“Bones? Bones! Oh my God, Bones,” Jim muttered desperately under his breath. His hands fluttered uncertainly as he looked for a safe place to touch; Bones was a mess.
He’d been torn and bloodied before. He was even moreso now and badly scorched, to boot. The reek of smoke hung thickly on the air and the rasp of his breath was so alarming that Jim gave up on being careful and pressed a trembling hand to his throat. He’d seen Bones shake off a spear through the lungs, for Christ’s sake. The kind of catastrophic injury it would take to drop him...didn’t bear imagining.
“Jesus fuck, Bones!” Jim sighed explosively when he felt a strong heartbeat under his fingers. “Do not scare me like that!”
Bones grumbled something incomprehensible and twitched under Jim’s hand, eyes clearing as he blinked himself awake.
“Ow,” he said distinctly.
Jim spluttered a laugh, grabbing Bones’ shoulder to help him as he struggled to sit upright.
“If you fell on that, I can see why it hurt,” he remarked, eyeing the object Bones had clenched in his right hand. Jim had been a bit too busy freaking out to notice it earlier. Landing on an object with that many pointy edges couldn’t have been comfortable. “What is it?”
Bones’ knuckles whitened briefly. “A fighting chance.”
Jim tilted his head and squinted at the oddly-shaped brown and gold cube. “So not just a funny-looking paperweight?”
“Never mind that for now,” Bones dismissed, wobbling to his feet. He spotted the bodies before Jim could find the words to warn him. His mouth tightened into a thin line and Jim was oddly comforted to see him look briefly sick as his eyes took in the mottled grey of Kallings’ skin. “I take it things didn’t go well while I was gone? Are you okay? Did you have any luck with the communicators?”
“No, yes and not really,” Jim answered succinctly. What was left of Kallings and Heynor was its own explanation of how well things had not gone but he was alive and he’d count that as a win.
“Shit,” Bones muttered tiredly, walking to the far side of the room and sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. “Suppose you having Spock on the line and waiting to beam us out was a bit much to hope for.”
“Fuck all else has gone according to plan in this place,” Jim agreed as he slumped down next to him. “And speaking of plans, what the hell did you think you were doing, running off like that?”
At least Bones had the grace to look guilty about it. “I - sorry about that. But last time I was here - the last time something like this happened - there was a focal point for it. According to Sam, those things were coming from the labs working on the teleportation experiments. I thought maybe if I could get there, I could shut off whatever the hell is causing all of this.”
Save the lecture about how pissed you are about getting ditched for later, Jim reminded himself. It actually hadn’t been that bad a plan.
“Did it work?” he asked aloud. “Hard to tell from in here.”
“No,” Bones admitted on an exhausted sigh. “The place is still crawling with whatever the fuck those things are. All I managed was - shit, I’m not sure. I think maybe I fell down whatever damn hole they’re crawling out of.”
Wow. Jim hadn’t thought he had any fresh surges of terror left in him. He reached out without thinking, wrapping a hand around Bones’ wrist and squeezing hard.
Bones glanced up at the desperate grip, expression softening at whatever he read on Jim’s face. “I climbed back out,” he added. “And I found this.”
Jim leaned forward to get a closer look at the ornamented cube that Bones held up. It didn’t look like anything he’d ever seen before: an irregular cube with a dull metallic sheen, ornamented with carvings and inlaid golden swirls and cylinders. One of its corners was a vaguely humanoid face sculpted in that same gold-coloured material. “What is it?” he repeated.
“You remember that ancient civilization I mentioned?” Bones asked.
It took Jim a second - the conversation felt days away, instead of just hours - but he nodded.
“I think they left us a present,” Bones said and let go of the cube.
Jim’s eyes went wide when it remained suspended in midair, hovering steadily in front of them. “Okay, that’s pretty neat. What else does it do?”
“It’s a weapon,” Bones answered. “A powerful one. Goes through those bastards like a laser scalpel. At a guess, we’re not the first ones to have a monster problem on Mars.”
“How do you figure that?” Jim asked, extending a curious finger to poke the cube.
“It told me so,” Bones replied as Jim’s finger brushed the surface and a voice of layered chimes whispered into his ear.
We are many. We are one. We are the Praelanthor.
Free us from our eternal prison, and we will help you.
Vanquish our enemies and we grow stronger.
Listen for our call, and then free us, to smite down the evil.
Jim jerked his hand back, staring at the cube in alarmed fascination.
“So," he managed, swallowing dryly. "It, uh, talks.”
“I noticed that, myself,” Bones said blandly.
Jim shot him a glare, mouth twitching into a reluctant grin. “Asshole,” he said, elbowing Bones in the side.
“Takes one,” Bones retorted, nudging him in return.
God, Jim was glad to have Bones back. Sitting there shoulder-to-shoulder as they considered the alien artifact serenely floating between them, Jim felt better than he had since Whitlock’s call. Creepy talking cube and all.
Jim rubbed his hand absently against his thigh as he looked at the weirdest thing he'd encountered in a day full of unnerving encounters. The cube was unaffected by his scrutiny but Jim remembered the undeniable awareness he'd sensed when it had whispered promises into his mind. Whatever else the artifact was, it was no mindless tool. On the other hand, it hadn't tried to kill them yet, unlike pretty much everything else Jim had run into here. And Bones trusted it, like he trusted nothing else about this place.
Jim took a deep breath and let it out in a slow sigh. The cube made as much sense as anything else did in Olduvai and Jim wouldn't throw away any advantage he could get his hands on. No matter how inexplicable it was.
“It says it’ll help us,” he finally said.
“We need all the help we can get,” Bones pointed out.
“That’s for damn sure,” Jim conceded. There really weren’t many options open to them. “We going to make a run for it?”
“Yeah,” Bones sighed unhappily. “It won’t be easy but it’s our best bet.”
“Well, I hope you remember the way out,” Jim told him. “I didn’t exactly get the grand tour.”
Bones smiled humourlessly. “I’ve been trying to forget Olduvai for over 200 years. Don’t worry about my memory.”
He pushed himself to his feet, then held out a hand to help Jim.
“Any idea how your new toy works?” Jim asked as he scrambled up.
The cube had moved as they did, smoothly taking up a position at Bones’ shoulder.
“Yeah, a bit,” Bones said. “It say anything to you about vanquishing enemies to make it stronger?”
Jim nodded.
“That’s about it. You kill things to charge it up. When enough of those bastards die, it’s ready to use.”
“Convenient,” Jim commented. Another good reason to shoot anything that popped out at them.
They took a few minutes to survey their remaining equipment. Once they left, retreating to this flimsy sanctuary wouldn’t be an option.
“Okay, so here’s the deal with the communicators,” Jim said as they prepared to set off. “Even with the power cells, I couldn’t punch a signal through to the Enterprise but I did manage to supercharge the signal boosters. If we can get beyond the worst of the interference, we should be able to yell loud enough that they’ll hear us.”
Bones nodded thoughtfully, grabbing a nearby PADD and stylus. “We’re in one of the lower sections, off of the secondary excavation sites,” he explained, sketching a rough image as he spoke. “If we head out and up, this hallway will link up with one of the major shafts and that should give us a pretty straight shot at getting out of here.”
“Mm-hm,” Jim acknowledged, watching him trace the pathway on the PADD.
“If anything happens to me, you should keep going this way,” Bones started, falling silent as Jim splayed a hand across his over the screen.
“If anything happens to you, I’m as good as dead,” he said simply.
“Damn it, Jim!” Bones scowled at him, clearly wanting to argue but they both knew Jim was right.
“So are we good to go now?” Jim asked with faux-cheer.
Bones stared at him for a long few seconds, then reached out and dragged him into a tight, hard hug. “If you die down here, I will never forgive you, you stupid son of a bitch,” he swore fiercely, then shoved Jim away and stalked to the door.
Jim swallowed hard and resettled his equipment to buy him a few seconds to do the same with his composure.
“Well?” Bones prompted impatiently. “You coming?”
“Lead the way,” Jim replied brightly.
Back to Part 2
On to Part 4
Back to the Masterpost