PhweelueeHee gave up on shaking, kicking, or fluting yelling at the Chief Executive Operations Officer of the starship. Like the rest of Phwee's fellow Shretarawa, he had his face pressed against the deckplates, shivering from some unknown source as he mumbled to himself.
Phwee moved away, trying others, to no success.
The Servant of Narvaka had them in its thrall.
Moving carefully, Phwee sat down in the chair at the Chief Security Executive Officer's console. He quickly clicked through the different security cameras, looking at the various Shretarawa. Almost all of them were face down. A few were curled on their sides, eyes bulged out, blood having run from their noses and neck slits and mouths.
Movement caught his eye.
Four Shretarawa were dragging two others.
He followed them with the cameras.
The six moved into the main reactor room and when Phwee moved to those cameras he stared in shock.
Runes were daubed and painted on the walls. Strange runes that made Phwee's eyes and brain hurt just to look at them. There were Shretarawans around the fusion room, all of them stripped to the waist or completely nude. They had strange runes on their flesh and it took Phwee a minute to realize that they weren't painted on.
They were carved into Shretarawan flesh.
As he watched, the four dragged the two semi-conscious Shretarawans to a set of tables in the middle of the room. They threw the two Shretarawan onto the table, rolling one so he was face up.
And then carved out both their two hearts.
The onlookers cheered as the hearts were lifted up to be displayed. Some ran forward to hack of pieces of the dead Shretarawans to shove in their mouths, others threw themselves about wildly, as if they were having a seizure, in a bizarre dance.
Fluting quietly in fear, Phwee shut off the console, standing up.
It took him a few minutes to get control of himself. It felt as if those tentacles were squeezing harder, trying to writhe their way into his mind.
He held onto the anger that someone dared touch his mind as he moved off of the bridge. He was half panicked as he slumped against the turbolift wall, the images seared into his mind of the crew killing two of their own.
And the pile of bodies next to the tables.
They could destroy the ship! the thought rocketed through his brain.
He stood up slowly, thinking hard. The pressure on his skull was increasing, almost a physical thing, and he beat his face against the wall until the pain and anger drove the tentacles away.
By then, he had a plan.
He chose the mid-deck and waited.
He reached into his tool kit and pulled out a cutter.
I might have to defend myself.
Wee led the way, swimming slowly, with efficient movements carefully practiced. The others followed, looking for the faint bluish green lights on the heel of the flipper of the Demo Frog in front of them. They had set their equipment to no release any bubbles, using rebreather system that would recycle their waste gasses into gasses they could breathe. The mixture was rough on the lungs, designed to keep bubbles of air from forming in their blood when they dove deep or came up from a deep dive.
The slightly ruptured lung tissue had taught them a harsh lesson that they had learned and the Research Industry had provided a solution for.
The way twisted and wound. Twice the Demo Frogs had to pause to rest.
Finally, they reached the first goal.
Wee surfaced slightly first. His helmeted head breaching the water just enough to allow his middle eye to raise above the surface. He looked around slowly, turning his whole body first one way then another, then back.
Under the water he gave the hand signal.
The others slowly surfaced, not even causing ripples in the ocean water. They looked about with their middle eye as Wee raised up enough to see with his two side-eyes.
Wee moved forward to the ledge, climbing out first. He brought his weapon around and cleared it, letting the water drain out, checking the barrel and chamber for any blockages. He pulled the tape from the top of the magazine and slotted it in before tapping the bottom of the magazine. He pulled back the charging handle and let it snap forward before tapping the forward assist. A netted bag was brought out and he removed his flippers and diving gear, stacking it neatly inside the bag. The bag was closed and the drawstring was attached just under the surface of the water on the wall. He put the bag in the water, then turned and looked around.
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Still empty except for scientific equipment.
He motioned and two of his Frog's moved up next to him, quietly climbing from the water. Once they had readied their weapons and stripped off and secured their diving gear, Wee motioned and the two began moving to the equipment on the ground. As the others emerged two by two, they all began disabling the equipment.
Finally, Wee moved up to the door, looking around the corner.
The hallway was empty.
The others got ready, three behind Wee, including the Frog Priest, four on the other side with their Frog Priest. They went to infrared lamps on their chest to make use of their goggles and double-checked they could see the tiny bluish-green pinlights at the back of the Frog in front of them.
A quick silent blessing and Wee led the way, making hand signals to remind his Frogs to spread out at a five paces interval.
They moved silently through the darkness.
Time slipping away on an hourglass he had not known existed.
Still, if they hurried, he ran the risk of compromising the mission.
If he delayed, the mission could fail.
There was no Mission Control, no Operations Control, no Industry Executive to make the call.
He had to make it on his own.
Wee was the first Shretarawa to suffer his problems in centuries.
A quick hand motioned and he had his Frogs pick up the pace but stay as quiet as possible.
The Frogs jogged through the labyrinth's darkness.
Phwee had started to relax, convinced he was going to make it, when a door opened and two Shretarawa came out of the room, both reaching for him. Both had bloodshot eyes, had bled from their ears and nose. One's face was slack on one side and the other lunged out with a hitch.
"You must feed the Servant of Narvaka's hunger," one slurred, grabbing onto Phwee.
Despite every instinct to go along, to just go limp, Phwee did the unthinkable.
He thumbed the activation switch on the cutter and swiped it up the body of the one holding onto him then across the chest of the other.
He wasn't sure what it would do. Burn them, maybe? Maybe scrape them?
Instead the deck plating cutter moved smoothly, as if it hadn't encountered anything.
The guts and inside pieces of the one holding onto him fell out onto the deck plating like a bag that had been unzipped. The other's still beating hearts fell from its chest as the ribs, muscle, gristle, and everything else was severed almost clear through. Both of them the cutter notched their spinal columns.
The stench flooded around Phwee, who gagged and staggered away. Part of his brain screaming at him to curl up, to go comatose, to give into temporary bliss.
Instead, he kept staggering, heading down the passage.
He let his horror at what he had done turn to rage at the Servant of Narvaka, who had turned his crewmates against him, who had forced him to do what he had done.
The pounding anger pushed back the whispers.
The door for the Damage Control Command Center appeared before Phwee had thought it would, and Phwee realized he had gone further in his misery than he had thought.
He moved in, avoiding the Shretarawa on the floor. He sat down at the main console and looked it over.
He wasn't trained for it.
It took him repeated tries to find the menu he wanted.
Five times he had to pause to punch himself in his thigh muscles, to use the pain to turn to anger to push away the whispers.
He was fluting softly, the feeling that somewhere an hourglass was running out filling him, as he went over the controls he wanted.
He didn't want to kill any more.
The two he had killed kept appearing in his mind's eye. He knew both of them, even if he hadn't really liked them. He had trained with one of them, a fellow general repair technician.
He looked over the boards, then took his mask and neck wrap off his waist. He put it over his nose and the wrap around the slits in his neck, taking slow steady breaths just like training.
He altered the atmosphere.
Not bringing the pressure down.
No, the engineers making the sacrifices might detect that.
He altered the gas levels. Lowering the oxygen, increasing the nitrogen and carbon monoxide, so that they would feel like they were breathing normally but would not be getting the oxygen they needed. Not far enough they would suffocate and die, but enough to reduce them to unconsciousness or unable to move.
He closed his eyes and hit execute.
Every ship, every research cube, was having the same thing happen!
He opened his eyes, jumping to his feet.
A plan formed rapidly. He had done repairs to that system, had watched as the technician had used it.
He hurried toward the Boardroom Bridge, hoping that the Chief Flotilla Executive Officer was unconscious.
He had only one chance.
And he could feel the grains of sand running out of the hourglass.
The fact it glowed slightly was the only warning Wee got as they approached the main chamber.
It was a strange object, looking like it was made of crystal, a nearly transparent hologram of an object made of crystal.
He reacted without thinking, throwing himself to the floor.
The other Frogs followed him, going right and left in alternating order, throwing themselves down and rolling against the wall, some giving a half-roll so they were on their stomach.
The object suddenly solidified, gaining substance, as it aimed a barrel and fired shards of crystal over the heads of the Frogs to explode on the far wall.
Wee heard someone curse as he got his rifle into play and pulled the trigger.
The rounds cracked out, the weapon hammered against his shoulder joint even with the combat pad and his armor. The smell filled his world despite his breathing wrap's filter capabilities.
Two others joined, adding their fire.
The construct exploded with a squeal across the psychic shielding that made two men wince.
Wee waited to the count of ten to see if it had backup, then slowly got up in a crouch. When nothing happened, he motioned to his Frogs. They all got up, moving forward and tapping the man in front. Phah tapped the 'all accounted for' signal on Wee's shoulder.
Wee headed out, keeping his weapon down at a 45 degree angle, the butt plate loosely held into his shoulder socket.
Vrakta'akla felt the furthest of his phasic constructs go live, heard the hammering of ballistic weapons, and felt a flutter of fear.
Were the lemurs back?
Vrakta'akla didn't know.
He was still dangerously weak. The influx of phasic energy, doubled on a being's death, was still not enough to do much with.
For a moment he wondered if he should have dissolved the hibernation crystal and absorbed what little phasic energy had remained.
There was another hammering of weapons and another, closer, construct went dead.
Vrakta'akla made the decision.
He would fight here, die here if he must.
He had killed them before.
He would kill them again.