Subject: [FANFIC] The Ship
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 20:43:33 GMT
From: rrc3813@yahoo.com (MKSheppard)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.vs.starwars




THE SHIP 

A Survival Horror Fanfic 
by Mark Sheppard and Col. Falkenhorst 
for the 2002 Halloween Fanfic Challenge. 

CHAPTER ONE
******************************

[Captain's Ready Room - Enterprise D] 

"Captain's Log, Stardate 5633.3. The _Enterprise_ 
is proceeding at maximum warp to the Getis System, 
responding to the distress beacon from the colony 
Getis IV." 

Picard paused, remembering the horrible distress call 
they had recieved earlier that night, during the 
midnight watch on the bridge. Even thinking about the 
call still gave him the willies. 

The intercom on his desk beeped. "Captain, we're 
entering the outer limits of the Getis system, 
and will be at the colony in five minutes." 

Picard stood up and straightened his uniform, and 
then walked onto the Bridge. Commander Riker stood 
up from the Captain's Chair, and greeted him. 

"Good morning, Captain. We should be there any minute 
now," motioned Riker, showing Getis IV slowly growing 
on the main viewscreen. 

"Good, Number One. Have we had any further communications 
from the colony since this morning?" 

Riker's face took on a crestfallen look. "Unfortunately, no sir." 

The turbolift doors swished open, and in stepped Counselor Troi, 
wearing her new standard Starfleet uniform, as opposed to her 
old counselor's suit. 

"Ah, Counselor, just the person we needed. Can you tell us what 
you're feeling from the planet?" 

Deanna scrunched her eyes in concentration, and then suddenly, 
her eyes widened in mortal fear and with a primal scream, she 
collapsed to the deck in a twitching spasmodic heap of insenate 
flesh. 

Riker was the first to her side, shouting her name over and over, 
as if that would wake her from her coma, while Picard slapped 
his commbadge. "Send a medical team to the bridge! Counselor Troi 
is suffering a seizure!" 

Suddenly, with almost superhuman strength, she knocked Riker off 
her and stood up, an insane look in her eyes as she began to spout 
gibberish. 

"CTHULHU NFPLATHGN, R'LYEH!" 

"What the devil is that?" stammered Picard as the medteam burst 
from the turbolift, their instruments at the ready to sedate 
the crazed counselor. 

"It appears to be an ancient linguistic dialect from Earth, sir" 
replied Data as he got up from his duty station at the helm and 
slowly began to circle the crazed Counselor Troi along with the 
medteam. 

One of the medtechs, a man, tried to get close to the Counselor, but 
with a snarl, the possessed woman backhanded him so hard he 
flew across the bridge and with a crashing noise, slammed into one 
of the science stations at the back of the bridge, demolishing it 
completely. 

Seeing that things were getting out of hand rapidly, Data moved 
with the speed of lightning and grabbed the Counselor, and found 
that even his mechanical strength was barely enough to keep 
Troi restrained. 

"Sedate her, now. I cannot hold her much longer." ordered Data, 
causing the other medtech, a freshly minted ensign straight 
from Starfleet Academy, Kelly Antilles, to reach in nervously 
and inject the sedative into Troi's neck with a hypospray. 

Troi, to the surprise of everyone, continued to fight Data's 
grip as fiercely as before. "Inject her all of the sedative, Ensign 
Antilles, NOW, before I lose control." ordered Data, now visibly 
struggling with Troi. Apparently the sedative had had the 
opposite effect. 

"But that'll kill a horse, sir!" protested Antilles even as she 
upped the dosage on her hypospray. 

"Do it, Ensign!" ordered a visibly shaken Picard. 

Nodding, Antilles pressed the hypospray to Troi's neck and with 
a loudly audible hissing noise, the entire contents of the hypospray 
was injected into Troi's bloodstream. 

The sedative quickly took effect once it had been injected in the 
quantitites necessary, and Troi slumped in Data's arms, her chest 
rising and falling shallowly. 

"Take her down to Sick Bay, and get Engineering up here to work on 
the damage. We have a big mess on our hands here people," ordered 
Picard as he sat down in the Captain's Chair. 

"Mister Data, I want you to begin a search for the meaning of 
what the Counselor said earlier. And someone get me a cup of Earl 
Grey." finished Picard as he tried to calm down from the show Troi 
had put on for them. 

TO BE CONTINUED......

***********

CHAPTER TWO

"Captain, We should be entering standard orbit over Getis IV
in two minutes." replied Data from his console.

"Good. Maybe we'll get some answers on this mess." commented
Riker.

Picard thumbed a button on his chair, opening a channel to
Sickbay. "How is Counselor Troi?"

"She's resting right now, although we had to heavily sedate her."
came the reply from Sickbay.

"Any indications as to what caused her collapse?" asked Picard.

"No, but we've detected an anomalous brain wave pattern overlaid
over her own patterns."

Picard thought about this for a moment. "Do you have any indications
as to where it's coming from?"

"Sorry, Captain, but the signal is too weak for us to locate it."

Picard nodded as he closed the channel. "Mister Data, any success in
translating what Counselor Troi said during her seizure?"

Data turned away from the forward viewscreen. "Unfortunately, no. We
are still searching our databases for references to 'Cthulthu'. I estimate
we will finish the search in six point seven hours, sir."

A beeping noise sounded on the bridge. "Sir, we are recieving a transmission 
from the colony." said Worf from his station.

"Put it on-screen." ordered Picard.

"Sorry, sir. Audio-only." replied Worf.

"Who....are....you? How dare you violate the sanctum of CTHULTHU? You
shall pay, vile interlopers...AHAHAHAHHAH!" 

"Turn that damned thing off!", ordered an irritated Picard as the voice
continued it's insane laughter over the communication channel.

A beeping noise sounded again. "Captain, the colony's defense grid is powering
up, and locking onto _us_!"

"Raise shields!" shouted Riker. A moment later, a heavy phaser blast struck
the newly-raised shields, rocking the starship.

"Shields down to seventy-five percent. Shall I return fire?" announced Worf.

"No. Send the transponder pre-fix code for the defense systems." ordered Picard.

"This is our only chance of finding out what happened here, and if we vaporize
the madman controlling the defensive systems, we'll never find out," explained
Picard.

Nodding, Data quickly searched the Starfleet database of prefix codes with 
lightning speed, and quickly sent the code.

For several minutes, nothing else came from the planet.

"It appears to have worked, sir." replied Data. "Shall I move us into
orbit?"

"By all means, Mr. Data. Commander Riker, assemble an away team and
find out what the hell has happened here." ordered Picard as he 
watched Getis IV grow bigger on the main viewscreen.

[15 minutes later - Transporter Room One]

"Is everyone ready?" asked Riker, his voice rendered tinny by the full
body biohazard suit he was wearing along with the other members of the
away team. 

Faced with nods from the entire team, which consisted of Worf, Data, 
two Security men, and a medteam lead by Ensign Antilles, Riker faced 
the transporter chief.

"Energize."

[The Surface of Getis IV]

The team materialized into a sight straight out of hell.

Dead bodies littered the streets, strewn about in every manner
of death imaginable, and some not imaginable with a rational
mind.

Data was the first to raise his tricorder, as he was untouched by
the scenes of slaughter around him. 

"Sir, the only living human beings on this planet, as evidenced
from our scan just before we beamed down are in a structure 300 
meters down this street. It is also the headquarters of the local
defense command, according to our files on the planet." announced 
Data as he lowered his tricorder.

As they walked through the street towards the squat grey building
where the order to fire had come from, they came upon more sights
of carnage, of walls completely covered in human blood and guts,
of pregnant women lying in the streets with their bellies sliced
open and men with their heads blown off completely, and the corpses
of other men who had been caught in the act of eating the brains
of the dead and apparently executed.

Most disturbing of all, was that everything organic was faintly pulsing, 
even the bodies that were obviously dead. The Medtechs couldn't explain 
it at all, except for some weird brainwaves being broadcast by an
unknown source.

Coming up to the Defense HQ, they found that the doors had been sealed
and that phaser burns were all over the doors.

"Data, can you open that door?" asked Riker.

Data studied the door for a moment before replying. "I believe I can do
so."

Walking up to the door, Data jammed his fingers into a crack between the
two halves of the door, and his android body whining under the stress,
slowly forced the jammed doors open enough for a single person to squeeze
through.

Squeezing through the door one at a time, the away team moved into the
Defense HQ, where there were signs of a tremendous battle, with huge pools
of blood congealing on the floor and squelching under their boots, along
with blood dripping off the walls in endless rivulets from unknown sources
in the ceiling which nobody wanted to look for.

Strangely enough, there were no bodies.

"Captain, the control room for the defense grid is approximately 
ten meters that way, sir." said Data as he consulted his tricorder 
for directions.

Walking through the blood-splattered corridor, the Away team came 
into a sight straight out of a madman's mind. Naked women in various 
states of dismemberment were strewn across the consoles of the 
defense grid control room, while a man in a torn Starfleet 
uniform manically wipped a gibbering wreck of a woman.

The man looked up at the new intruders and snarled out "Who....are....you?" 
before trying to burn them down with a Phaser he had tucked into 
his waistband.

Data pushed Commander Riker out of the way and blocked the beam 
with his android body, protecting the rest of the away team from 
the insane madman.

>From behind Data, Worf came up with a phaser, and was about to 
kill the madman, when Riker said "NO! We need him alive to tell 
us what happened!"

Shooting Riker an evil look, Worf changed the setting on the fly
and caught the madman in the chest with the beam. Incredibly, 
it didn't bring him down, and he continued to laugh insanely 
as he readied his phaser for a second try at killing the 
insects before him.

Growling, Worf ramped his phaser's setting up to the maximum stun 
setting and fired again. It took almost five whole seconds of maximum 
stun to down the madman.

Standing up, Riker took a look at Data's chest. The madman's phaser 
beam had burned away Data's uniform as well as his synthetic skin, 
revealing Data's innards.

"Are you okay, Data? Looks like he did a number on you."

"Do not worry, Commander Riker. I am still functional, if a 
little...what is the word? 'Worse for the Wear'?" replied Data.

"Antilles, check out the woman. See if you can do anything for her,"
ordered Riker as he took a closer look around the charnel house the
control room had become.

Ensign Antilles slowly walked up to the woman, and saw that her entire
chest had been removed layer by layer, by what appeared to be a potato
peeler, and fought the urge to vomit.

She could actually see the lungs expanding and contracting, along with
all kinds of internal organs that shouldn't have been exposed to air.

Kelly slowly and shaikily took out her tricorder and ran it across the woman. 

"I can't do anything for her. I don't know what's keeping her alive. 
She's lost over half her blood, and by all rights she should be dead."

Taking out some painkillers from her medkit, she set it to the maximum, 
lethal dosage and slowly injected the woman with it until her lungs 
ceased their rising and falling.

At that moment, the madman suddenly woke up from his deep-stun induced
coma, screaming "AAAAAAAAMMMMMMY! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!", scaring the living fuck
out of everyone.

"What the FUCK is going on here?" shouted Riker, unnerved by this sudden
turn of events, even as Data moved to knock out the madman for the second
time in so many minutes.

"I cannot answer that question, Commander," replied Data as he pried 
a woman's body off a console. "But I may be able to give you some 
answers."

Wiping the woman's blood off the panel, Data revealed the controls
for the Colony's main computer system. Working at a lightning fast
speed, Data opened a link with the _Enterprise's_ computer in orbit,
and began uploading the contents of the Colony's computer system
to a protected archive in the _Enterprise's_ computer cores.

"The upload will be completed in five minutes, sir. Once that is done,
we have nothing else to do on this planet. We cannot help these people."
commented Data as he took a look around the ruined command center.

[Five minutes later]

"The upload is complete. I recommend that we sterilize the surface of the
planet to prevent whatever disease caused this from spreading." said Data
as he entered the orders to begin the shutdown of the computer system of
the Colony now that it's last task had been completed.

Riker nodded, and turned towards Ensign Antilles, who was keeping a close
watch on the unknown Madman.

"Riker to Enterprise. Three to beam up to Main Sickbay, Isolation ward."

Moments later, the two medtechs and the madman disappeared in a shimmering
wall of golden light.

"Well, looks like we're done here." commented one of the Security guards, who
was visibly shaken by the sights around him.

"Indeed we are. Riker to Enterprise. Five to beam up."

The world then vanished into a shimmering wall of light for the rest of 
the away team, leaving behind the blood-soaked horror of Getis IV

[2 hours later]

"Mister Worf, initate program Alpha Omega One." ordered Picard with a
heavy heart.

>From the Enterprise's forward torpedo launcher, dozens of photon torpedoes
equipped with maximum yield antimatter warheads spat forth, and headed on
precisely programmed paths designed to totally annihilate all life in
the biosphere of Getis IV.

Moments later, the first torpedoes struck, wreaking enormous havoc, vaporizing
the entire capital city in a white-hot sun and igniting forests for hundreds
of miles.

As the enormous firestorms swept the planet, additional torpedoes slammed into
the continents, obliterating entire islands in the blink of an eye, and releasing
TriCobalt-65 into the atmosphere, which ensured that all life forms, even viruses would
be annihilated within 24 hours.

Picard turned away from the horrific visage of Getis IV burning under his orders,
with tears in his eyes. "Take us out of orbit, Mister Data."

With that, Picard fled into his Ready Room.

[1 day later]

The _Enterprise_ hung motionless in the LaGrange point between the now-dead 
world of Getis IV and it's moon Fall, while her crew tried to work out
what had happened on Getis IV through the fragmentary data from the
data dump from the planet's computer core.

Once enough data had been found, all of the section heads headed to
the Main Conference room to brief Picard on their findings.

"Doctor Crusher," asked Picard. "Have you found out the identity of the
man we found on the planet?"

Beverly nodded and stood up. "Yes we have." Walking over to the main display
screen, she triggered the data she had collated on the only survivor of
the Holocaust on Getis IV.

"Our mysterious survivor is Lieutenant Commander Raynor W. Cav, the officer
in charge of the mining operations of the colony."

Beverly continued on with her presentation. "Currently, he is under heavy sedation
in the isolation ward in sickbay, and we have discovered he is suffering from
the same symptoms that Counselor Troi is, namely a foreign brainwave intruding
upon his own brainwaves."

"So we destroyed an entire world for nothing..." said Picard, his voice trailing
away to nothingness.

"There was no other way we could be sure that this mysterious malady would 
not spread." countered Data. "Especially before we linked Lieutenant Commander
Cav's malady to Counselor Troi's malady, which is psychic in nature."

"I still don't like it," replied Picard. "Anyway, do you have any indications
as to what brought this on?"

This time, it was Data who spoke up. "Sir, after analyzing the data from 
the colony computer system, I have discovered that the outbreak of madness 
began approximately twenty-four hours after Lieutenant Commander Cav returned 
from a prospecting visit to the outer asteroid belt of this solar system, 
where he was surveying for a remote mining operation."

"It is logical to assume that he found something while on that trip that
seized control of his mind, and used him as a psychic anchor to attack the
colony," continued Data.

"We have to stop this thing right here, and now. There's no telling if it
may spread to other worlds in the Federation." interrupted Riker.

"I agree. Mister Data, lay in a course paralleling Mister Cav's 
ill-fated course." ordered Picard as he got up to leave for the 
bridge. "You're dismissed."

As an afterthought, he turned to Data. "Mister Data, any luck with 
your search on this 'Cthulthu'?"

Data was quick to respond. "Unfortunately, no sir. My data dump
of the colony computer core and the search of the dumped files 
took priority over the the search of our archives, so we're still 
searching."

[15 minutes later - Main Bridge]

"Captain, we are entering the outer asteroid belt," announced
Data from his station.

"Good. Sound Yellow Alert. Rig for collision." ordered Picard.

In the background, the annunciator lights began blinking yellow,
and the defensive systems of the _Enterprise_ began to power up.

Slowly, the _Enterprise_ threaded it's way through the
asteroid field, fending aside offending asteroids with its 
phasers.

Twenty minutes into the field, a beeping noise sounded from Data's
console. Scanning his instruments, Data then made an announcement.

"Captain, sensors are detecting a very large mass approximately
90,000 kilometers off our starboard bow, bearing 203 Mark 24."

"On screen," ordered Riker, and the viewscreen switched to a view of
several large asteroids tumbling through space. And then it happened.

A pair of asteroids tumbled out of view, revealing a massive alien starship.

"Mister Data, what the devil is that thing?" asked Picard.

"Unknown, sir. It does not conform to any known starship designs, 
and our sensors cannot penetrate it's hull. It appears to be 
approximately one point six kilometres long and triangular-shaped."

Standing up, Picard squinted his eyes to try and make out the details
of the alien ship. "Magnify by a factor of ten." he announced, and the
viewscreen instanteously zoomed in onto the ship, revealing more
details of the surface.

It wasn't completely triangular, as a large protusion extended from the 
stern, and appeared to be a bridge, while a dome protruded from the 
apparent bridge, next to the ruins of another dome.

The entire surface of the ship was a dark grey, mottled heavily by scorch 
marks and signs of great damage where hull plates were buckled inwards 
by some unknown force.

Data's console beeped again. "Captain, analysis of micrometeroid impacts
indicates that the alien ship has been floating here for the last ten thousand
years."

....TO BE CONTINUED