First time poster - my work in progress

[Gratis]

Hi everyone, I've got the start of a little something written down and I'd appreciate any comment people may have. Apologies in advance if it's a bit disjointed in parts but it is a bit of a work-in-progress that doesn't even have a name as such!

I'd really welcome any comments, so if you could leave some feedback, however brief or in depth, that'd be great!

 

[Gratis]

CHAPTER 01

Proconsul Rennet paced his vast stateroom with a mixture of both apprehension and anticipation, striding purposefully past the eye-shaped viewing portal that gave a stunning view out into space time and time again.

Rennet stood just over six-feet in height, loosing no more than an inch to a slight stoop that had developed during the course of the last decade. He was fifty-one standard years old, early middle-age for a member of his species, and like all representatives of the Arlac race, had two pronounced frontal lobes on his forehead. Even though self-praise was not generally considered to be an endorsement, Rennet felt that he kept himself in good physical shape, with very little trace of fat present on his lean, muscular frame. Whilst he privately admitted that his lifestyle as one of the premier political figures on his world, the representative of one of Arlac's three moons and member of the planet's elite ruling council, certainly loaned itself to his current physical fitness.

Whilst other proconsuls utilised their power and influence for their own gains, consuming only the very best in food and drink that Arlac and its neighbouring worlds had to offer, Rennet ate simple foods and primarily drank water. Of course, he would consume alcoholic beverages at those diplomatic functions where it was considered polite and necessary, but the Arlac homeworld was such a prosperous and peaceful place that such functions tended to be few and far between.

But there were certain affairs of state that left a lot to be desired, as there were in almost all developed cultures. Even the greatest civilisations of history were forced to deal with certain problematic issues, and as a student of history Rennet was well aware that no major ruling power in Arlac's past had achieved perfection. The current presiding body, the Arlac Ruling Council, was not unlike these other powers.

And it was one of these problematic affairs that had brought Rennet to this place today, a considerable distance from his homeworld.

Abruptly, the twin wooden doors that gave access to the stateroom swung open, and a helmeted guard appeared in the opening, standing to attention, his back ramrod straight and arms at his sides.

"Please forgive the interruption, my lord," the young man began, his voice wavering slightly as he addressed the proconsul, betrayingt he fact that he had recently joined the ship's complement.

Rennet turned to face the guard. "At ease," he told him briskly, annoyed that his impatience for excessive formality hadn't yet been communicated to the newcomer by his aides, "Your report?"

"Your contact has arrived, my lord," the other man stated, his eyes locked on a point slightly above the proconsul's head, "His shuttle has docked and he is being escorted here as we speak."

Rennet nodded, casually waving a hand to dismiss the officious young guard. "You're excused," he said crisply, turning away from the entrance and fixing his sights on one of the many sparkling stars that were clearly visible from the large viewing portal.

The unimaginable vastness of space stared back at him. This particular area of space, known colloquially as the Cimmerian Cluster, had been his home for over half a century, but even after five decades he knew only a fraction of it. It was a dangerous, mysterious place, the residence of billions of beings representing dozens of alien races. Some were friendly, most were hostile.

But if the forthcoming meeting was successful, and Rennet had no reason to believe that it wouldn't be, one of these hostile races would cease being a threat within the next few weeks.

The doors opened and closed a second time behind him, and Rennet listened to the approaching footsteps on the carpetted deck without looking away from the viewport.

The footsteps stopped.

The large suite was silent.

"Hello, Rennet," a heavily-accented voice greeted him.

The proconsul smiled wryly. "Captain Santiago," he responded, privately acknowledging that he still hadn't quite grasped the alien pronunciation of the newcomer's name, "It's been a long time."

Rennet's dark eyes visually scanned the visitor, and he decided that Santiago had aged perhaps too much during the intervening three years since their initial meeting on the Arlac homeworld. A handsome individual from Earth, Santiago now stood before him with a stubble beard and hair that was starting to become gray at the edges. He was also thinner than Rennet remembered, possibly a sign of increased stress and strains upon the man that had manifested themselves as physical symptoms.

"And I've been eagerly anticipating the day when we'd meet again," Santiago drawled sardonically, folding his arms across his uniformed chest impatiently.

Rennet grinned in mild amusement, wandering across to an ornately carved drinks cabinet, an ancient and highly-priced antique from one of his world's long-gone dynasties. "I see that you haven't developed a tolerance for preample during the last few years," he muttered, opening the cabinet and withdrawing a tall bottle of Arlac wine and two glasses, "May I offer you some refreshment?"

"Listen, Rennet," the human snapped fiercely, "I didn't put an important patrol mission on hold and risk a trip into the Cimmerian Cluster just to sit down with you and share stories about old times over a drink." Santiago ran a hand nervously through his thinning hair, pacing across the room to stand face-to-face with the other man.

"Of course not," Rennet acknowledged quietly, placing the two glasses gently down on the polished veneer surface of the drinks cabinet.

"Do you know just how far off-course I've come to meet you here?" Santiago demanded, obviously not ready to drop the subject of just how much he'd risked to make their rendezvous.

Rennet paused, taking a moment to decide whether or not the question being directed at him was rhetorical. "If I had to guess," he began cautiously, aware that as a politician he had little concept of the distances involved in interstellar travel, "Twenty light-years?"

Santiago scoffed, shaking his head in frustration and turning his back on the proconsul. "Never mind!" he exclaimed, apparently realising the futility of that particular conversation, "My shuttle is sitting in your docking bay, stacked to the gills with Starfleet spatial torpedoes which I'm sure your industrious officers are busy unloading."

Rennet looked up at the human. "I knew that you'd be successful," he said, "Congratulations, captain, your inginuity is a credit to you."

Santiago narrowed his eyes at his associate. "Damn right it is! Stealing a couple of dozen spatial torpedoes out from under Starfleet's nose isn't exactly a walk in the park! Its not a matter of simply running out of one of their stockades with a box tucked under your uniform!"

"I never intimated that it was," Rennet reminded him.

But Santiago was now in full flow, and continued his sermon undeterred. "You can't even get more than two from the same batch or the the Starfleet accountants will notice!"

Rennet found himself becoming increasingly frustrated by the direction in which the meeting was proceeding. "Captain," he said in a warning tone, "I might remind you that you came to me with this offer. You cannot eliminate this threat without my help."

Santiago's head snapped around, surprised that the proconsul actually dared to confront him. "And believe me, Rennet, that's the only reason I've been willing to deal with someone like you!"

"Someone like me!" Rennet exclaimed, his tolerance for Santiago's confrontational attitude now almost non-existent, "If your beloved organisation had a little more backbone they could eliminate the Torvans themselves! Your came to me because you know that the Arlac actually have the courage to do this!"

Santiago was silent for a long time. "Maybe you're right," he muttered, his voice barely more than a whisper, "But this agreement services both of us. The Cimmerian Cluster isn't safe until the Torvans are stopped wandering from place to place."

"And neither are your people," Rennet continued, "How can you allow them to go unpunished for aiding the Romulans during the war?"

Santiago nodded, his sullen demeanour having come upon him as suddenly as his anger. "You've now got thirty-six spatial torpedoes," he told the proconsul, getting back to the matter at hand, "They're the most powerful weapons in Starfleet's arsenal and should be able to overcome the shielding of any Torvan vessel you encounter. Have you reconfigured your ship's launching systems using the plans I sent you?"

"My engineers completed the reconfigurations earlier today," Rennet confirmed, sensing that the conclusion of this meeting was quickly approaching.

"Good," the human said, "Then I see no further reason for me to remain here."

Rennet opened his mouth to bid Santiago farewell, and assume him that the Arlac crew would doubtless have the shuttlecraft unloaded and ready to be launched by the time he reached the landing bay. But before he could speak, the doors to the suite burst open and the officious guard who'd brought Santiago to him practically threw himself into the room.

"Proconsul!" the guard gasped, sucking in irregular breaths of air as if he'd ran all the way from the command centre, "Another ship! Approaching! Massive!"

Rennet spun around to face Santiago. "Could it be yours?" he demanded.

Santiago shook his head quickly. "I left them orders to hold position!" he answered, "They wouldn't have disobeyed me!"

The proconsul ran for the doorway, charging out into the high-ceilinged corridor and running toward the prow of his flagship like a man possessed. The long passageway flashed past him as he sprinted past various officers who either stood aghast at the vision of a world-leader running past or hurled themselves out of his path to avoid a collision.

At such a breakneck pace, Rennet exploded into the command centre of his starship with all the fury and urgency of a supernova in what seemed like no time at all. He quickly surveyed the large-circular room, and was pleased to note that all of his experienced officers were in place at their various perimeter computer stations.

The captain of the flagship leapt from his central command chair, and came running up the short flight of stairs from the pit in which he customarily sat to where Rennet now stood. "Proconsul!" Commander Draden exclaimed, "They came out of nowhere! They're practically on top of us!"

"Show me!" Rennet ordered frantically, descending to the command pit and lowering himself into the chair with as much dignity as he could muster in a crisis.

As per the proconsul's instructions, one of officers manning the command centre manipulated his control panel and the image displayed upon the forward viewing portal changed.

Now portrayed on the large screen was the digitized representation of a colossal alien starship, a long sleek vessel whose smooth silver hull reflected the distant starlight of the Cimmerian Cluster. Its bow tapered off to a point which housed a green weapons emitter that glowed as if with an inner-fury, and the entire spacecraft looked every bit as deadly as the initial sensor-scans predicted.

"Status?" Rennet asked, glancing back at Santiago as the human strode out onto the upper-deck.

"Shields are fully powered and all proton-cannons are online!" Draden reported, leaning over the shoulder of an officer manning one of the perimeter stations to study the tactical displays, "We're not going to make a dent in them, sir!

"Proconsul," the young helmsman called from the forward flight-control station, "That ship is over nine times our size! Nearly a kilometre-long! Our scans are being reflected back but I've been able to determine that they're packed with weaponry!"

Rennet was suddenly faced the the terrifying knowledge that if this newcomer chose to attack his flagship, as its blatantly hostile high-speed approach seemed to indicate, there was going to be very little that the Arlac crew could do to resist. Faced with no other option, he rose and locked gazes with Santiago.

"Help us!" the proconsul pleaded, "Your ship is powerful! Together we may have a chance!"

Santiago's expression was one of genuine sorrow. "I can't," he said slowly, "If anyone tells Starfleet that I'm here I've risked everything for nothing."

Rennet looked at the human, aghast at what he was hearing. "YOU'RE NOT GOING TO HELP US!?" he screamed in raw fury.

Santiago's gaze never wavered from Rennet's.

The proconsul's jaw clenched in anger, and he actually spat at the other man's feet. "THEN YOU CAN DIE WITH US!" he cried, throwing himself into his chair in preparation for the forthcoming, pointless battle, "Seal the landing bay! Our guest is going nowhere!"

Two guards positioned near the exit instantly drew their weapons, aiming them directly at Santiago's head.

"HERE THEY COME!" Draden warned as the hostile vessel swooped in upon the Arlac vessel.

"OPEN FIRE!" Rennet commanded, "EVERYTHING WE'VE GOT!"

The cannons of the Arlac flagship discharged, firing lethal white proton bursts out across the silent void of space that hammered into the deflector shields of the opposing vessel.

Then, his quiet voice somehow carrying to the proconsul's ears over the cacophony of alarms and crewmen running frantically back and forth, Santiago spoke.

"For what it's worth," the human said slowly, deliberately, "I'm truly sorry, and I wish you luck."

Rennet looked at him, his eyes wide.

Santiago's hand rose up to his breast, and lightly tapped the small metallic insignia that was affixed to his uniform tunic. "Santiago to Trident," he said, "One to beam aboard."

An instant later, before the disbelieving eyes of the Arlac crew, a harmonic melody permeated the command centre, and Santiago's body dissolved into sparkling white molecules before disappearing entirely from the flagship.

"NO!" Rennet screamed, vaulting out of his chair and desperately flailing his arms around as he tried to comprehend what he'd seen. The human bastard had used the advanced technology of his starship to escape, been spirited away from danger by the miraculous, magical abilities of the other vessel.

"I'm detecting another ship!" Draden called, "It's leaving the magnetic field around the planet's northen-pole!"

Rennet was beyond anger. His eyes found the viewing portal, and the unknown alien craft that now dominated the screen, still being relentlessly pummelled by the proton burst weaponry of the Arlac ship. But the constant barrage was having no appreciable affect.

"THEY'RE PREPARING TO FIRE!" Draden shouted desperately, "I'VE LOCKED THE SPATIAL TORPEDOES ONTO THE SHIP!"

The hostile retaliated as the powerful Starfleet weapons were launched from the Arlac spacecraft.

Rennet stood facing the viewing portal, staring into the face of his enemy.

In his last moments of life, he thought of his wife, his children, and the laughing form of Santiago.

 

[Gratis]

CHAPTER 02

Shannon Devereaux stood in the darkness on the bank of the wide river, having walked the short distances from her small wooden cabin, momentarily weary of being inside. The evening was warm and dry, and all around her she could hear the gentle sounds of nature, insects and birds settling in for the forthcoming night.

She was thirty-two years of age, an attractive woman with long black hair and a slender physique. Shannon knew that her body was beginning to verge on thinness, aware that her eating habits over the last few years had left a lot to be desired. She lacked any trace of fat, but her bones were clearly visible when she looked at herself in the mirror. However, her current circumstance, completely stranded and with no means by which to get home, there was little she could do to improve her diet.

Directing her intent gaze upward, peering between the black silhouettes of the leaves of the branches that hung overhead, Shannon could clearly see the dense constellations of stars, like pinpricks of light piercing a black canvas. A stunning violet nebula cloud dominated that portion of sky, a beautiful phenomenon that the natives of that world continued to worship as some sort of deity, the being who had initially brought them and their planet into existence.

But Shannon was not native to the planet.

Her gaze moved downward to the fast moving water before her, watching how the river reflected the overhead starlight and the nebula cloud that shared its sky. The fact that the world's inhabitants still prayed every morning and evening to a vast collection of interstellar dust, something that would eventually condense to become a rocky planetoid, only served to remind Shannon of how primitive the Pleurans were.

Granted, the small group of natives with whom she'd had any contact had left her alone, and not burned her as a devil even if their reception hadn't involved her been welcomed with open arms. If an alien being had ever been sighted back on Earth during the middle-ages, the human era to which the current level of Pleuran development equated in her opinion, they would have surely met with a sudden death that would have likely involved fire.

In that respect, Shannon had long-since decided that the Pleuran populous were possibly more open-minded that their counterparts on Earth several-hundred years earlier.

The small council with which she'd met in the days following the crash had granted her the use of a small abandoned farmhouse a short distance from their town of Nessik, but only on the understanding that she stay away from their people and keep out of their affairs. Since the council had been largely composed of farmers, people who had never travelled out of their valley in their lifetimes and certainly not journeyed between the stars, they had neglected to try and extricate any knowledge of advanced alien technology that she may hold. They had simply wanted to forget that an off-worlder had crash-landed on their undeveloped world, and continue with their simple lives undisturbed by the strange extraterrestrial woman.

Shannon closed her eyes, recalling for the umpteenth time the events that had led to her current existence.

When the small vessel which she'd been piloting had come under attack whilst passing through that solar system, she'd had no choice but to attempt an emergency-landing on the Pleuran home world. With its warp-engines about to reach critical mass as a result of the damage inflicted by the alien warship, she'd somehow managed to get the ship down after cutting a swathe through a small forest, and stagger far enough away with her head spinning from the impact before her spacecraft had exploded. The resulting quantum-implosion of the advanced warp engines, built using technology three centuries ahead of anything created by a race that had only recently discovered the wheel, had decimated an area the size of a small town.

When a group of terrified and perhaps too-inquisitive townspeople had rode into the hills to the crash site, having watched the spacecraft come screaming out of the skies and erupt into a colossal mushroom cloud only kilometers from their homes, they had found the injured alien woman unconscious on the ground. Having initially believed that the crashing ship had been the first of a series of destructive bolts hurled at their planet by their nebula-god, bolts that signified and would soon bring the end of the world, the Pleurans had actually discovered the burned and pathetic form of a being that was unlike them.

Of course, she'd had two arms and two legs like them, but her unconscious face had lacked the cranial ridge that bisected their craniums from their nose to the backs of their necks.

Some claimed that the newcomer was obviously some sort of monster, perhaps one of the shape shifting beings that was spoke of in their ancient texts. Others maintained that perhaps her birth had been the result of two Pleurans unlucky enough to have some sort of hideous deformity mating, the mongrel offspring of an imperfect man and woman.

But some, perhaps those blessed with a greater intelligence and more open-minds than the majority, had suddenly been faced with the earth-shattering revelation that the Pleurans weren't in fact the only race to have evolved, and that their little world wasn't, as their religious leaders claimed, at the centre of the universe. Whilst some, generally those aforementioned religious leaders with the most too lose by the rejection of their teachings, cried heresy at this explanation, a surprising number of people had agreed.

But believing in alien life on other planets and being forced to live alongside one such alien on their own world were two vastly different concepts. The people of Nessik, the community closest to where Shannon’s ship had crashed, while they were now forced to acknowledge that an alien race known who called themselves Humans existed somewhere else in the cosmos, a race with seemingly magical abilities that allowed them to traverse the unimaginable distances between the stars, they didn't want an alien living in their town. It was generally felt that such an alien associating with them and their children would be a corrupting influence, and despite their not actually knowing what form this corruption would take, decided that Shannon should be kept separate from their lives.

As a result, the town-council had settled upon offering her the use of the abandoned farmhouse on a hill overlooking Nessik, far enough away that her presence on their world wouldn't affect them. With absolutely no other option, her spacecraft nothing more than a couple of shards of duranium composites scattered across the entire region, Shannon had accepted the conditions imposed upon her by the Pleurans. For all she'd known, her disagreement would have met with some sort of execution scheduled to be conducted as soon as possible.

So, Shannon had settled into her new existence as a primitive farmer, growing her own vegetables and tending to a small collection of cattle that'd been generously donated by some of the neighbouring farms. Over the preceding years, for she knew that her life amongst the Pleurans could be measured in years despite having no accurate means by which to calculate the passing of time, she'd managed to carve out a stable existence living off the land. By Pleuran measurements, for the Pleurans tended to use seasons to mark the progress of time rather than years, it had been nineteen seasons since the crash. Even though there was almost no chance of the Pleuran day being twenty-four hours long like a day on Earth, Shannon estimated that she'd lived on that primitive, isolated world for nearly five years.

By the end of the first year, or the forth season depending on one's perspective, Shannon had given up any hope of being rescued. The Pleuran system was perched precariously on the edge of the Cimmerian Cluster, the very limits of explored space, and the only reason she'd been in the vicinity was that it was between on her way back to the nearest Earth outpost. No one had known she was there, and no one was expecting her on Earth, and as a direct result absolutely no one was going to come looking for her, especially not in a backwater star system containing a planet stuck in the middle-ages.

Her acknowledgement that no starship was going to land in Nessik to take her home had been a turning point for Shannon, the point at which she'd been ready to put her old life as a space-traveller behind her and embrace her new one. She'd even decided that it was probably for the best.

The stars held too many bad memories for Shannon. She'd lost too many friends, close friends, and witnessed too much death in her relatively short lifetime. The hideous Romulan Wars had been the most costly conflict in the history of Earth, and seen thousands upon thousands of casualties on both sides. There was no such death on the Pleuran home world.

Yes, there had been wars, but people armed with bows and arrows could only cause a limited amount of devastation. Massive armadas of interstellar spacecraft armed with directed energy weapons meeting in the void of space could and regularly did cause pain and suffering that was on a completely different scale.

The incident that had eventually brought her to the Pleurans had been the sabotage and destruction of the starship she'd served aboard. When that ship had been lost within a nebula in the Cimmerian Cluster, very likely the same nebula that had looked down upon the Pleurans since their birth as a species, hundreds of her friends and colleagues had been killed. When the Liberty went down, one chapter of Shannon's life came to an end.

Looking back up at the night sky, she found herself wondering which of those tiny points of white light was Earth's sun. She came out most nights to stargaze, and had occasionally during her first weeks on the planet, as illogical as she knew it was, found herself offering a silent prayer to the Pleuran god.

Then, something moved high above her.

Shannon frowned, narrowing her gaze at the single speck of twinkling illumination that was quickly descending through the atmosphere. She held her breath, her heart thumping within her chest as her scientist's mind realised what she was seeing.

The object was more than just a light, it was a large object with flashing red warning lights blinking slowly so that they attracted attention. And trailing out behind it was a large white canopy, a parachute intended to slow its descent into the atmosphere of a planet. Whatever it was, it was an example of technology far in excess of anything that had been conceived of by the Pleurans.

Shannon spoke without thinking, her throat dry from the spectacle that was playing out before her eyes. "It can't be..." she whispered hoarsely.

An escape pod!

She staggered backward, struggling to comprehend how overwhelmingly unlikely it was that two alien visitors should land in the same place on the same undeveloped planet within five years of each other.

But however unlikely the situation was, it was actually taking place that evening on the Pleuran homeworld. Perhaps another alien ship had endured an attack near the planet by the same people who'd shot Shannon out of the skies and caused her to crash-land her spacecraft, and this pod was carrying the only survivors to relative safety. Or maybe a vessel had suffered some sort of mechanical breakdown in orbit, a catastrophic malfunction that had forced the crew into the last-resort action of evacuating themselves to the surface of that nearby world.

But whatever the circumstances that had led to the escape pod's launched, there was a chance that it contained technology that could be used to signal for help. Even though current Starfleet technology lacked the ability to transmit a subspace message unless the sending ship was travelling at warp, who was to say that these people also lacked the means to send such a transmission from a standstill?

With adrenalin coursing through her veins, her body filled with an urgency and hope that she hadn't felt in years, Shannon bolted away from the dark riverbank, frantically running toward the dirt-track that twisted its way down through the hills to the town of Nessik.

As she sprinted down the uneven path away from her farmhouse, she glanced erratically upward to see that the escape pod was now drawing close to hitting the dense trees of a nearby forest. Shannon decided that it was coming in too quickly, perhaps because the parachute hadn't been intended to operate in an atmosphere as thin as that on the Pleuran world, and would very likely suffer heavy damage in the forthcoming crash. And whatever survivors were sheltered within the protective casing of the lifeboat would likewise suffer damage, or more correctly, be badly injured by the jarring impact.

The faint glow of overhead starlight provided some illumination, and she Shannon was grateful of that fact since she'd neglected to bring any sort of lamp to aid her finding the downed escape pod. Of course, such an object was, by its very nature, designed to be found, and already she could see its red flashing strobes through the trees as it plunged through the leafy canopy and smashed into the ground with an ear-splitting crash.

Hurling herself frantically through the dense undergrowth, tripping several times before she reached the trees of the wood but managing to retain her balance, Shannon ran headlong into the forest. She weaved her way quickly through the closely-packed trunks, her breath now ragged from the sprint and her lungs aching within her.

And suddenly, she stumbled onto a hard object that she belatedly realized was a fallen tree, and was catapaulted forward by her momentum and plunged helplessly into a dark, stagnant pool of thick liquid that looked almost as repulsive as it smelled. Shannon forced herself upright, using a twisted overhanging branch to aid her ascent and heaved herself clear of the mud, wading forward into the clearing where the escape pod had struck.

Surveying the immediate area before her, Shannon realized that the pod had come down in a marshy swarmp within the forest, a small body of still water surrounded by reedy growth and buzzing with the constant sounds of insects. She dragged her feet through the mud before reaching the water, waving her way through a swarm of tiny flying creatures that she suspected were biting her exposed skin even as she staggered past.

The pod itself was covered in the mud and dirt that'd been flung into the air during its splashdown, but Shannon was able to identify a dark-grey hull that was contorted out of shape by the impact, and small alien markings stencilled onto the surface. She didn't recognise it as having come from any starship she was familiar with, but privately acknowledged that having been removed from the affairs of the galaxy for nearly half a decade, she was more than a little out of date. Nonetheless, the signage that probably identified the pod belonging to a particular vessel meant nothing to her, and she'd had as good a grasp of alien script as anyone she'd served with back on the Liberty.

Splashing through the marsh to where the pod lay, Shannon reached out and grasped the rim of the access-port. Feeling her way in the dim starlight, her fingers eventually brushed against a small lever set into the hull. She braced herself against the base of the pod and pulled the lever downwards, and the access-port responded by hissing open, the twin panels seperating in the middle and retreating into the walls.

Steeling herself against whatever she may discover inside, Shannon clambered through the narrow portal, trying as best she could to prepare to find the twisted corpse of an alien being. As she opened her eyes wide to see as best she could in the darkness, and realized that she was looking at the unconscious form of a young woman was sitting awkwardly in one of the three seats, the other two of which were unoccupied. Shannon couldn't make out many facial details, but she was reasonably sure that this individual wasn't a fierce Klingon, or another familiar species like an Andorian or Bolian.

Reaching forward, Shannon's hands grasped the buckle of the safety harness encasing the unconscious survivor and releasing it. The alien collapsed forward as the restraints were removed, and Shannon's arms came out to catch her, dragging her limp body out of the pod and into the fetid surroundings of the marsh. She pulled the pod's sole occupant through the water, heaving her out onto the muddy bank and laying her flat on her back.

Then she heard noises in the distance.

Voices calling out, people yelling and the sound of movement through the undergrowth.

(continued below)

 

[Gratis]

Shannon looked up, her head snapping around as she tried to identify the direction from which the voices were coming. But there was another noise, the almost unearthly howling of canine beasts straining against their masters' chains, a sound that she recognised as being the howls of Traken dogs. The animals were fierce, deadly creatures, similar to the Dobermans of Earth but larger and more powerfully built, with teeth easily capable of ripping a person apart.

Shaking the alien woman who lay before her, Shannon realised that a group of townspeople had likely rode up from Nessik on their horses after witnessing the latest arrival of an extraterrestrial being on the primitive world, and the fact that they'd brought a pack of their deadly Trakens with them was a terrifying thought. Even as she struggled against the panic, furiously gripping the alien's shoulders and jolting her in hopes of rousing her from unconsciousness, Shannon knew that this time, the Pleurans would not be as forgiving.

The accidental crashing of one offworlder was only narrowly accepted by this primitive race, and they certainly wouldn't respond well to the arrival of a second such being.

In a heartbeat, the other woman's eyes fluttered open, and her icy-blue eyes focussed on Shannon like laser-sights acquiring their targets.

"Where am I?" the alien gasped breathlessly.

"You're on the Pleuran homeworld," Shannon told her briskly, looking over her shoulder at the point where the bushes were beginning to rustle as people started to push their way through toward the swamp, "We've got to go!"

The alien, a slender and beautiful young woman with enlarged lobes on her forehead and a long ponytail of thick black hair, strained to sit upright, her brain struggling to comprehend the situation she now found herself in.

Shannon struggled to her feet, digging her feet into the mud and straining to lift her new found associate from the ground.

"I crashed?" the alien asked hoarsely, standing and visually scanning the small swamp.

"Yeah," Shannon confirmed, grasping her hand tightly and pulling her through the marsh in the opposite direction to the approaching Pleurans.

The alien stumbled along behind her on unsteady legs, still not fully concious and engaged in a situation that what was obviously playing out like a strange dream. Or more correctly, a nightmare.

Shannon dragged the woman out of the mud and into the dense wood, hoping that she could somehow circle around the Pleuran hunters and get out of the forest into the open, where they'd at least have a chance of getting back to her farmhouse. Of course, when the paranoia eventually gripped the townspeople of Nessik, probably terrified that some sort of alien invasion of their world was taking place, burning Shannon's beloved farm would become a priority for them. But at least it would provide a little safety for a limited period, probably no more than a few hours at the very most.

"Who's chasing us?" asked the alien, her voice becoming stronger with each passing moment and her stride more assured.

"The Pleurans!" Shannon called back, pushing branches out of their path as she heard the howls of the dogs and shouts of the townspeople drawing closer, "They saw your escape pod come down!"

Apparently satisfied with that explanation, the alien continued to bound headlong through the leafy undergrowth with her rescuer, zigzagging between the trees along what looked like a predetermined course. Then, the newest arrival on the Pleuran homeworld stumbled over something, sprawling on the damp ground.

Even as Shannon fell, she knew that she'd managed to twist her ankle on a root that had been snaking across her path. As her face slammed into the dirt with such force that she bit her gum and tasted blood in her mouth, she felt the intense pain shoot through her ankle like a lightening bolt striking the surface.

The alien woman ran straight into her, stumbling a few metres before finally toppling falling over. She scrambled to her feet, her instincts screaming at her to keep running and escape the Pleurans and their hideous dogs, but she hesitated.

Shannon saw a flash of compassion in the alien's eyes, resisting the impulse to bolt and leave the human curled up in agony to be beset upon by the Traken pack.

"Come on!" the alien urged, pushing both muscular arms under Shannon's and dragging her a few feet through the soil.

"No!" Shannon spat, her face contorted in pain as she was released and hit the ground for a second time, "Those are Traken dogs! They'll tear you apart!"

But the alien was undeterred, and dropped to one knee beside Shannon to inspect the twisted ankle. As she touched it, fresh waves of pain washed over her, and Shannon let out a gasp of agony despite her attempts not to make a sound. The Pleurans were right behind them, and the two women had mere seconds before they were discovered.

"Go!" Shannon commanded, "You can still escape!"

"I'm not leaving you!" the alien snapped fiercely, standing upright and bracing herself for the forthcoming attack by the Trakens.

At that moment, the people hunting them burst through the trees, the dogs barking and howling as they fought to escape their sturdy metal chains and leap upon their prey. Their masters emerged only a heartbeat later, three men in all who Shannon recognised even in the darkness. And these men weren't examples of the open-minded Pleurans who sat on the town-council.

The tall man in the lead was the individual who had campaigned for her execution as a devil five years earlier. His name was Jaryn, and he was the priest of Nessik, an intelligent and well-spoken man of around sixty with a long-face, large nose and hooked chin. The ridge bisecting his forehead was flushed red from the chase, and his small, beady eyes burning with anger.

"I knew it!" Jaryn exclaimed furiously, brandishing his Traken like the lethal weapon it was, "I knew that you would bring others!"

Wincing from the pain and gritting her teeth, Shannon stared up at the looming priest. "I didn't bring her!" she managed to choke out before sucking in a short breath, "She crashed here! Like me!"

But Jaryn was far from being convinced. Nothing was going to convince this holy man that the appearance of two aliens on his world had been the result of two unconnected events. "You dare lie to me!?" he howled at her, fighting to hold his Traken even as he shouted, "We gave you shelter! We allowed you to stay here!"

"You wanted me dead!" Shannon rasped, "You wanted me dead from the start!"

Jaryn was silent for long moments. "And apparently I'm finally going to get my wish," he said icily, as his thin fingers began to loosen their grip on the dog's chain.

The Traken strained against his master and finally tore free as Jaryn unleashed it, a sickening grin forming on the priest's face. Jaryn watched as the massive Traken bounded across the space between the two opposing sides, its jaws open to reveal frighteningly pointed teeth and frothy slaver falling from its tongue. To Jaryn, Shannon had always known that she represented everything his religion claimed was impossible, namely other life in the universe. Jaryn and his kind had always taught that the Pleurans were the only species in existence, and that their world was situated at the centre of the universe. Shannon was the antithesis of this belief.

As the Traken leapt into the air, letting out a growl of anticipation, the alien woman moved between it and Shannon, arms up in a futile attempt to fend the beast off.

Shannon held her breath and clenched her jaw.

The Traken knocked the other woman flat, charging at its intended prey, its master's greatest enemy.

And as the dog closed to within a few feet of Shannon, a flash of blue light lit up the forest, and the Traken was hurled backward through the air and crashed into one of its companions with a howl.

The three Pleuran men looked on in horror, Jaryn's face becoming a mask of terror as he realized what had happened.

"That was a warning shot!" an unseen man called from his concealment in the undergrowth, "This time I'm aiming straight at your head!"

Jaryn froze in place.

Shannon looked around in astonishment, straining to recall where she'd heard that oddly familiar voice.

A figure pushed through the bushes, holding some sort of weapon in his right hand. Even in the darkness, the uniform he wore could be clearly identified as being of military origin. Shannon watched as the man advanced on the group, the emitter of his weapon never wavering from its position trained on the priest's head.

Everyone in the forest could see that the newcomer's powerful directed-energy device was far from being Pleuran in origin. They could also see that neither was the newcomer himself.

"ITS AN INVASION!" one of Jaryn's associates cried out, just before turning on his heel and darting away into the trees. The other man who'd accompanied the priest followed an instant later, along with their respective Traken dogs who left their fallen comrade where it'd landed.

Jaryn, since he was the one with the gun trained on him, remained in place.

Shannon studied the newcomer, not believing who had rescued her.

"Derren Weatherby," the man said jovially by way of an introduction, "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

The edges of Shannon's mouth began to turn up into a grin despite her current circumstance, the pain of her injured ankle momentarily forgotten as she watched one of her closest friends, a man she'd known since her teenage years, kneel down beside her.

"I didn't expect to find you here," Derren told her with a warm smile, keeping what she now recognised as a phase-pistol trained on Jaryn. He spoke with such familiarity that any observer would've thought he'd seen last seen her only yesterday, as opposed to the five years that'd actually passed since their last meeting.

Shannon felt her eyes begin to well up with tears.

"After the Liberty went up," Derren continued, placing a hand on her shoulder, "No one knew quite what had happened to you. To be honest, we all thought you were dead."

Shannon narrowed her gaze at her friend and former colleague, one of the other five survivors of their old ship's destruction. "How did you find me?" asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

Derren shrugged, an apologetic expression descending over his handsome features. "I didn't," he admitted, gesturing upward toward the alien woman, "I actually came here to find your new friend. My ship has been tracking her escape pod for days."

The alien approached them, frowning at Derren's statement. "Why were you following me?" she inquired, her voice adopting a suspicious tone.

Derren shot a glance in her direction. "I wasn't hunting you if that's what you're worried about," he assured her with a slight air of impatience, lowering his weapon "Besides, I can explain later. I think it's time we got out of here." With ease, he pulled Shannon upright, supporting her so that she could balance on one foot.

"What about me?" Jaryn asked quietly.

Shannon looked at him. The priest was shaking with terror.

"You're free to go," Derren said, holstering his phase-pistol, "And thank whatever God you worship that I don't shoot you where you stand. I have the ability to destroy your little planet if the mood takes me, so imagine what I can do to you. And make no mistake, I'm going to be watching you."

Shannon smiled at her friend's threat, allowing him to help her limp toward the centre of the small clearing in preparation for recovery by whatever spacecraft Derren had awaiting them in orbit.

Derren tapped the communicator-badge on his uniform. "Weatherby to Terminex. Three to beam up."

Shannon regarded the Pleuran priest, still rooted to the spot. "Nice to meet you, Jaryn," she said finally.

Then, the trio were consumed by brilliant white illumination, and Jaryn watched in terrified amazement as the three alien beings vanished before his very eyes.

Then, Jaryn started screaming.

He didn't stop for nearly an hour.

 

[Trelane]

Here's a header for your fic, if you're interested.

http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/4926/stnv.png
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