Dark Territory: Pandora's Jar

[CeJay]

"We are Null. We are infallible…most of the time."

Like the pope.

No but seriously, Unity is beginning to crack and even they are realizing it. I suppose that's what happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object.

Love the way Glover remains flippant even in face of death ... or worse. Can't rattle this guy easily.

Still a lot of stuff going on here, still curious as hell to find out how it'll all develop.

 

[DarKush]

Thanks for the shout out, Darkush!
I'm happy you found my suggestions useful.
I'm very behind on this story, so I'm sorry about not offering feedback thus far. You do write complicated tales which one can't just speed through. (So I blame you, of course.)
But I will get up to speed at some point.
If you'll excuse the vague remark here, I'd like to at least say that what I have read so far is pretty damn good!

Yeah this is perhaps my most complicated, dare I admit convoluted, story ever. I also think its my biggest story ever. No need to apologize for not being up to speed on it, this is a monster. Though I'm glad you've liked what you read so far, along with every one else who has commented.

I haven't been as pleased with this story to be honest, but I do want to finish it. I wouldn't feel right dropping it when you and others have invested so much time in reading it. Plus, I've grown fond of writing some of the scenes, especially the Monarch scenes. However, I'm still not sure how coherent the story is and I can't help but feel I've given in to excess with this one.

But at the same time, I've been trying to nail this story for years, and I've written various versions of it, as I alluded to in a post a long time ago it seems. I'm closer now than I have been in being satisfied with it, but I'm considering altering it before posting it on the United Trek website. Perhaps breaking it up to give each storyline more focus. Then again, I might not and just move on to something else before tackling the next piece of this proposed trilogy-even though I'm not sure its a trilogy anymore.

Also thanks CeJay for your comments. I'm winding my way through it. I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel for this story.

 

[DarKush]

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Dark Realm

Ivan Cherenkov was at war with himself. His every cell screamed at him, his heart galloped in his chest, his breath had drawn shallow as his muscles tightened. His flight or fight response was heightened to the nth degree, but yet the Russian did none of the things that had kept him alive all these years. He knew he had to do something different. “I won’t run. I won’t leave you,” the words were quiet, but firm, and more forceful than any he had yelled to the Marines or Special Missions teams once under his command.

“Please Ivan, please,” the black mass writhed in front of him, Aquiel’s face dissolving and then reforming in rapid succession. “I…I can’t…hold on….”

“Yes you can,” Ivan declared, “Yes you will.” He dropped his rifle and slung off his bandolier. He opened his arms wide, presenting an open target. “I’m tired of running and I don’t want to blow up this ship. I’ve killed too many people in my life Aquiel, and I don’t want to let this bastards make me kill more. Make me kill you.”

“You have to Ivan, it’s the only way,” Aquiel’s voice grew faint and only the rudimentary outlines of a humanoid face appeared on the black surface before him. He was losing her!

“I’m not going to let them take you away from me, not after I’ve found you,” the Russian roared. Holding out his arms in a fatal embrace, he ran toward the darkness.
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USS Monarch
Main Bridge

Commander Livana blinked as the green sparkles of the transporter affect faded, the bright contrast with the darkness beyond momentarily blinding her. On instinct, she raised her disruptor. Centurion Sergius and the boarding party fell in beside her. “What type of trick is this?” The Romulan demanded.

“Whoa,” a gruff voice she recognized as Captain Walker replied. “This isn’t a trick. We’ve experienced a ship wide power outage.”

Livana’s eyes narrowed. “Lights,” she ordered, and her soldiers produced hand held beams that they swept around them. The first arc caught the captain. The tall human was standing between the flight control and operations consoles, with a shaggy haired young pink skinned human male and a brown hued human female. All three winced as the light cut across them. Walker held up his hands in surrender.

“Check them for weapons,” the Romulan commander ordered. Sergius rushed forward and quickly, but carefully checked the trio, while the other soldiers spread out and searched for weapons among the other bridge crew.

“You really think I would surrender if there was a sliver of a chance we could defend ourselves?” The Starfleet captain said.

“What happened to your ship?” Livana asked.

“We’re still trying to figure that out,” Walker answered glumly, but then his expression grew fierce. “With your timely arrival, we suspect sabotage.”

Livana nodded. If something like this had occurred on her vessel, it would be one of the first things she suspected herself. Despite their protestations and propaganda, the humans were just as deceitful and power hungry as everyone else, though they hid their imperialist designs behind saccharine labels and faux goodwill. “Have you found this saboteur?”

“Care to help us out?” The shaggy-haired human said, clamming up after receiving a hard glare from the female. Livana shared the woman’s displeasure.

“If you want this prize for your empire, you’re going to have to jumpstart her engine,” Walker replied.

Livana’s frown deepened. Nothing was ever simple, but then again the path to glory should be fraught with challenge. It would only make her legend even greater. “I will assign my engineering team to assist you in restarting your vessel.”

“Okay,” Walker replied laconically.

“You and your command staff will be transported to my ship,” the Romulan said. “And your remaining crew will be restricted to their quarters, except for designated engineers and computer technicians. You will see to this.”

“Of course,” Walker said, his voice tightening as he restrained his anger. The man’s struggle gave Livana the impression that he was being honest, but still, one could never trust humans, or any one non-Romulan. Or ninety percent of Romulans for that matter. “Our communications system is one of the few that’s still operational,” he added.

“If you are deceiving me, I will find out,” Livana promised, “And you can’t even imagine how I will make you and your crew suffer.”

“After today, a threat like that doesn’t impress,” Walker riposted. Livana liked this human.
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[CeJay]

It's hard being a Romulan ... you simply can't trust anyone. But the commander has every reason to be suspicious here. Walker and Astar are not going to give up this easily, I'm sure.

 

[DarKush]

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IRW Cuirass
Command Deck

“Another escape pod just ejected from Aegis,” Lt. Basri called out.

“A second malfunction?” Lt. Baird was skeptical.

“Likely,” Basri was equally doubtful.

“Why isn’t that ship space dust already?” Baird growled. It seemed like he had sent Doriss to activate the polaric ion generator. Destroying the virus infesting Aegis was his number one priority.

“I’m sure that Doriss is working on it,” the security officer snapped back. “What do you want to do about the pod?”

“On screen,” Baird ordered. The main viewer shifted to an image of small, boxy silvery craft falling away from the doomed starship. The burly tactical officer shrugged. “Any life signs?”

“No,” Basri called out.

“You can let it go, or blast it to hell, it doesn’t matter to me,” he groused. “Just send another message to Doriss and tell her to speed up on bringing the generator online.”

“Aye sir,” Basri replied, a bit too crisp.

“You got a problem Fatima?”

“Actually…” the woman paused, “Sir, the escape pod has altered course!”

“What?” Baird whipped around in his seat to stare at her.

She looked up at him, just as surprised. “The pod is heading toward the Cuirass, maximum impulse.”

“I thought you said there weren’t any life signs onboard?” Baird said, turning back around. He glared at the screen. The small craft was charging forward. “Blast it out of the sky!”

“Aye,” Basri called. Two green beams stabbed the pod seconds later, demolishing it.

“What happened?” He demanded after he grew tired of watching the dissipating cloud of dust and debris.

“I don’t know,” Basri’s voice was distracted; her hung down and her head pressed close to the screen. “Perhaps it was Glover’s final gambit.”

“The sooner we can get the generator working, the sooner we can make sure the dearly departed captain didn’t leave any more tricks under his sleeve,” Baird concluded.

“I’ll contact Doriss immediately,” Basri replied.
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Outside the IRW Cuirass

Terrence Glover stilled his rapidly beating heart and fought his gag reflex for the umpteenth time. He had allowed the creature to shroud his body from head to toe, forming a black cocoon that surprisingly could survive in the vacuum of space. Not only that, the ooze was durable enough that it allowed him to survive the explosion. He had tethered himself to the outside of the escape pod, hugging its undercarriage.

He had pushed himself free as soon as he saw the warbird’s gunports light up. The Null suit had thinned around his eyes, granting him limited sight. The shockwave caused by the pod’s destruction had hurled him toward the ship. He spun wildly, trying in vain to gain some control of his body. The captain was afraid of smashing into the hull of the vessel and breaking every bone in his body. “Damn, if only this thing came with a flight manual,” he muttered, recoiling as his lips touched the slimy blackness covering his face.

Glover did his best to remember his orbital diving training, but those techniques to slow him down as he entered a planet’s atmosphere did him no good in the vastness of space. So he spread his body out instead, hoping to minimize the pain of impact by spreading it throughout his body. The last spin revealed the large, gray-green hull loomed near. The next rotation and there would be an impact. The captain closed his eyes and tried to pray. But the only word that came out was “Jasmine.”
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[DarKush]

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Dark Realm

Ivan walked into the darkness and through it. It didn’t clamp around him, suffocate him, or engulf him. It split apart like a plastic wrapping and then reformed as a black pool on the floor. “Aquiel,” Ivan called, his voice hoarse. “Aquiel, please, please be all right.”

He heard movement around the corridor. Hopeful, but still wary, the Russian reclaimed his compression rifle and bandolier. He crept to the edge of the wall and pressed his back against it. “Aquiel,” he chanced. “Aquiel, is that you?”

“Who’s there?” A raw voice clotted with confusion called out. “Who are you?” The voice was male, and it sounded as frightened as Ivan felt. He didn’t know if it was a trick or not, but the Russian felt he had little left to lose. If Aquiel was truly gone, he had lost his one ally in stopping these creatures and he didn’t think he could do it alone.

He stepped from behind the wall, his rifle at the ready. “If you have any weapons, drop them now!”

“I wish I did have a weapon,” the sludge covered human said. Ivan assessed the situation. The human and several others, including Captain Rahul, were standing aimlessly in the hallway. A couple were using the wall to prop themselves up and one was retching a black stream on the floor. The Russian glanced down and noticed similar puddles around the others.

“I’m Erik Rydell,” the human said, holding out a hand. “Just what the hell is going on?”

Ivan didn’t take the hand, but gruffly replied instead. “Welcome back to the land of the living. And if you want to continue living, you’ll do exactly as I say.”

The walls trembled around them. “Well, whatever it is you want us to do, I suggest you tell us quickly,” Rydell quipped. Ivan disliked the man already.
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Dark Realm

Strong hands reached out to Dr. Cole. Strong arms embraced her, and a fire that she could only imagined flared through her. A strong, familiar face pulled her from the brink. It was Terrence’s face.

“Love,” the voice replied. “Love is the key.”

“I-I love you,” she murmured, “I didn’t know, I was afraid to hope that you felt the same way.” The light blazed away, and the image changed. Cole’s heart sank.

The person was still beaming, but it wasn’t Terrence. It was Aquiel. “Love! That fills the void! That’s how we can beat it! You’ve got to find your heart’s desire.”

“I-I just did,” Cole said, as a different kind of blackness blanketed her. “And what am I going to do now?”
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Dark Realm

Skia’s basso rumble shook all creation. “WHAT IS HAPPENING?” Chaotic rippling tore through the black sea as the Null experienced a cacophony of thoughts, feelings, and sensations not sensed for millennia.

“It’s sickness, disease,” Genip spat, “We’ve been infected! By these germs!”

“Yes,” Heol barely restrained an amazed chuckle. “We sought to spread Unity among the lesser races, but they’ve given us something instead, they’ve restored our sense of mortality, and fear, and wonder, and love.”

“We must purge ourselves of these creatures,” Genip declared. “We can’t allow them to poison us anymore!”

“No, this is the natural way,” Heol replied, with more force than he thought possible. He was starting to lose his mental link with the others, and finding a stronger voice he had once thought lost in eons. “We sought to be gods, when we should’ve just sought to be good. We were punished, and we were altered. Now we are merely returning to that which we should’ve always been.”

“No,” Skia roared. “We are beyond flesh.”

“If that was the case then why do we need the Carriers?” Heol replied. “Why do we feed off the energy provided by their darkness? We were never beyond the flesh.”

“Silence,” Genip hissed seconds before Heol felt intense agony. He formed eyes to look down at the black shard piercing his chest. Genip had pierced him with her arm. Pain was a sensation, while not all together unpleasant, was something he would have to get used to again.

“We will eliminate this disease, we will be one with the Sacred Dark,” Skia promised. “And these humanoids you admire will give us the power, the ultimate weapon to do so.”
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[CeJay]

And just when you think you got them beat. With Genip out of the picture, Skia will have a free hand in pursuing her nefarious plans to the fullest extent.

Love is the answer? That's rather hippyish. But it kinda makes sense considering the history of Unity.

And your were of course right. Never count out a Glover.