Parasite

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MetalHead
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Parasite

Post by MetalHead »

I'll write more if I seem to get a good response from this, if not I'll leave it
(This should remind you of a TNG Episode...)


Commander Jack Ryson slowly opened his eyes. Pain lanced through his head as he gingerly forced himself up off his back into a sitting position. The corridor he was in felt like his head; sparks were flying everywhere, dim lighting was flickering due to power loss and phaser damage to the corridor. His uniform was ripped, and there was dried blood matted into his short brown hair. He tried hard to remember what had happened but all he could remember past the pain of awakening after being placed into heavy stun by a particle weapon was that something had taken over a vast majority of the crew. There had been a firefight, preceeded by a large explosion and loss of power. He had been stunned by a young crewman. Everything else was fuzzy.

With a groan, he shoved himself to his feet, and surveyed the deck he was standing on. Rubble was everywhere, it had been a prolonged firefight, as was visible to the numerous peices of bulkhead supports and access panels that had simply been vaporized by phaser fire. A sharp pain in his spine paused him, but he had remembered a nasty detail. The possesed crew members had held nothing back. They had set their weapons to maximum, and not hesitated in vaporizing anyone in their way. Where exactly they were going, Ryson couldn't remember, but he knew it was on the lower decks of the vessel he was on, the U.S.S London, an Excelsior class vessel.

Jack muttered something as he walked up to a barely functional access panel. He entered a few commands and input his security clearance, and the computer called up what was left of the internal sensors on his current deck. The scan was flickering in and out with the severe shortage of power, but it revealed what he had thought. There were fires scattered along the main corridor, along with severe damage throughout the first seven sections, caused mainly by phaser fire. No life signs. Jack called up the next few decks. He was in the engineering hull, but oddly the computer told him that access was denied when he used his command codes. Jack frowned, but decided he should get to the bridge.

He moved slowly down the corridor, still fighting the ringing in his ears, and trying to force his eyes to adapt to the flickering lights coupled to the red emergency lights pulsing with the alert status of the ship. About five meters down the corridor, he found a body. Well, atleast what was left of one. He wasn't an expert at all, but it looked like a photon grenade had gone off and severed the poor...person was the only way he could describe what was left...the poor person's body into two peices, and then burned what was left. Not looking as he knelt, Jack put a hand over his nose and mouth and quickly scooped up the type-2 phaser that had been lying next to the corpse, and hurried on, feeling bile boiling in his stomach.

He made it as far as the turbolift before he could no longer contain himself. Ryson dropped into a half squat and retched in disgust. He forced himself through some unknown level of control to completely empty his stomach. It didn't take more than a few seconds, as his last meal hadn't been for awhile, but hunger was a long way off. As he stood, he noticed that the turbolift doors hadn't opened. He pressed a few commands on instinct before he realized that the panel had no power. Jack mumbled.
"Great. Just great." he said, turning for the 'tubes.

He climbed up to the next deck and, to his surprise, found it also without good power, though with no noticeable damage. Sparks occaisonaly flew from bursting power conduits but otherwise the deck was unharmed. Jack moved slowly along, looking for an armory station, a working panel, and perhaps most importantly, a tricorder. What he DID find was an armory station, but the results were somewhat depressing. He punched in the correct commands and the three panels swivled around to reveal slots where phaser rifles and hand units were kept. It was empty. Jack muttered, and punched in several more commands. The computer called up a time index of when the station had last been accessed. Jack blinked in surprise. 45 seconds ago.

Some long buried instinct resurfaced and Jack gripped his phaser, checking the setting. As he'd suspected, it was set to maximum. He tapped the unit, changing the setting to heavy stun. Jack felt fresh adrenaline being pumped into his blood stream as he moved with renewed energy down the corridoor. He needed to change to the jefferies tube at the other end of the deck, which should take him out of the engineering hull, as far as the impulse engine access, and from there he could easily make his way to the bridge. That was assuming there wasn't a powered turbolift between here and the bridge. Jack moved quietly but tensely down the corridor, and nearly ran straight into someone. Instinctively he stopped, and crouched as to present a smaller target. The person he saw ahead was standing near the turbolift, holding a phaser rifle. But there was something...wrong...with him. Jack had to squint to see it but there it was, a tiny kind of spike emerging from the back of his neck.

Jack was tempted to shout to the man, but instinct told him that it wasn't a good idea. With a tight grip on his phaser, he crept up quietly as possible behind the man and slugged him as hard as he could in the right temple. The man stumbled forward, and impossibly whipped around. Jack was not hallucinating, the person was human. Jack was not massively built but he was strong, and enjoyed martial arts as a hobby. A blow of that percision and force would have dropped a klingon on steroids, nevermind a human. Jack was completey stunned, and barely managed to half stagger half fall backwards as the man snarled and lunged at him with the butt of his phaser rifle. Jack balanced himself and swung a hard left which connected squarely with the jaw of the young man. His blue eyes were bloodshot, and he had an almost feral look in them. The punch landed solidly, with enough force to knock a strong man flying, but it did him not good.

If anything, the punch held Jack's attacker back by half a heartbeat. Which was NOT enough time to prevent Jack from being thrown a good three meters down the corridor. He grunted as he got up, and as the furious...creature....rushed at him, he fired his phaser. The blast slapped into the man's face, and he yelled in pain, stopping, but not being stunned. Jack kept firing, his finger mashed hard against the stud. The bright beam of orange phaser energy ripped across the space beteween them and raked itself all over the man's body. It took an excrutiatingly long twenty seconds of constant phaser fire to stun the man. Jack found himself pressed hard against the wall and panting. A shiver ran down his spine, but he snatched up the man's rifle, and found some relief in having acquired a tricorder.

As he walked past the man's slowly breathing form, he could have sworn he heard a crunching, sick like noise. He turned to investigate to see nothing, although the man's mouth was open. Jack decided it best not to ask questions and approached the turbolift. Amazingly, it opened, and seemed to have power. He stepped in and began to fiddle with the tricorder. After several scans he noticed that life signs were scattered around several decks, there were no more than 50 or so people left onboard aside from him. Jack didn't like the look of it, especially if everyone else was like that man he'd just super-stunned in the corridor. He wasn't going to kill Starfleet officers, not when they could be stunned, but if he was attacked by more than two he'd be done for. Jack reached up slowly to his chest and removed his com badge. He then opened the top hatch on the turbolift, and placed the badge ontop of the lift.

Once back inside the turbolift, Jack cleared his throat. "Deck two." he commanded. Nothing. He muttered, and punched in the manual commands. The turbolift began to move, although it felt far more lethargic than normal. He would take the lift to deck two, one deck below the main bridge. From there, he could scan the bridge and see if there was anyone on it. If not, though unlikely, he would attempt to seal it off and call for help from starfleet. If it WAS occupied, well...Jack tried not to think about what in hell he would do should that be the case. The turbolift stopped, and Jack stepped out of the turbo lift, already activating his tricorder before noticing that this deck was fully powered and in good condition. He paused, and raised his voice. "Computer, how many people are currently on the bridge?" he asked, in somewhat hushed tones. The reply was swift and precise, in an emotionless female voice. "There is one person on the bridge." it said.

Jack exhaled heavily. "Who is the person on the bridge?" he queried again. "The person on the bridge is not listed as ships crew." the computer responded. Jack sucked in his breath and let it out slowly. "Computer, perform a site to site transport, classify the person on the bridge as an intruder of a maximum threat level, and beam directly to the brig. Authorization Ryson Omega thirteen three seven." he chanted out quickly. There was a brief pause, and the computer's voice returned: "Transport complete, level ten forcefield holding." Ryson nodded, and stepped back into the turbolift. "Bridge." he said, drawing his phaser. The turbolift swished open and Jack rushed forward.

The bridge was empty. The only noises were the beeps of consoles and the thrum of power. Jack worked quickly. "Computer, emergency activation of bridge security seals, maximum threat level. Ryson, Omega 13!" he barked. There was an acknowledgement chirp and a slight hiss as pressure seals closed around every access point. Satisfied, Jack moved to the tactical station and quickly began trying to lock out the main computer. He managed to secure engines and weaponry before some one ELSE locked out the rest. Jack swore aloud, because the only people who could lock out the rest of the systems were the captain and chief engineer. That spelt more trouble. Jack slumped into the captain's chair and pondered what exactly could be going on.
"Beware what you intend to say, those words will always make you pay." - Soilwork

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DBS
Lieutenant jg
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Post by DBS »

Excellent start. Parasites never hurt a story...

:D :D :D :shock:

I really like what you've done so far. The voice is really nice.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."

Jean-Luc Picard, quoting judge Aaron Satie
MetalHead
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Parasite - Part 2

Post by MetalHead »

**CAUTION** this section contains graphic violence


Slowly, images and classified briefings strolled past Jack Ryson's face as he sat rooted to the spot staring at a console on the bridge. His bridge, as he had began to call it. The report he was reading was on an unknown alien organism, known simply as 'parasites'. The legendary Jean Luc Picard had uncovered the conspiracy behind the race, they had infested the highest levels of starfleet and barely been defeated. The only thing that gave them away was loss of memory and a spike on the back of the neck that was aparantly a gill of sorts. They latched onto the spine and controlled the host from there.

Jack was almost immediatly sure that they'd taken over the ship. The man he'd seen must have been recently infected, but he was sure that he heard skittering as he turned around to see what had happened. That had undoubtedly been one of the creatures leaving the host he had stunned so heavily. Jack then wondered what had happened to the rest of the crew. Counting him, there were 51 people aboard, and given the situation, he had to assume they were all infected. The situation gave no light on where the crew were. All the shuttlecraft were present and accounted for, and the transporter logs showed only one transport off the ship and it had been almost twelve hours ago from a cargo transporter. Jack knew that somehow he had to get help from starfleet, or else try and retake the ship. But 50-1 odds were not very good, nevermind the element of surprise and stealth. His access codes and knowledge of the ship would be helpful, but he had to assume that either the captain or cheif engineer or both were infected.

Jack assessed his situation. Currently, he had complete control of the bridge. No one would get in our out. He had told the computer to disable all site to site transfers to the bridge due to security reasons and then scrambled the access codes. The only ship-essential systems he could control were engines and weapons, which was favorable in a few ways. He could move the ship, and he could defend it against attackers or anything in the way. But anything else was lost to him. Primary sensor arrays, shields, enviornmental controls, communications, even the internal security grid (although it had proved accessible by his command codes). Jack speculated that the memory loss was preventing them from operating the ship properly, which was why they were assembled in main engineering, they were most likely trying to get to the engineering manuals.

Jack wasn't too worried, as he had control of both the impulse drives and the warp core, but communications could be a probolem. There were no active signals or transmissions since before the approximate firefight, but that meant one was likely to go out soon, if they intended to broadcast one. Jack could have calculated alot more but the main idea was that he needed to acquire control of communications system as fast as possible and get a message to starfleet regarding the situation. Beyond that, he didn't know what he was going to do.

He suppose if it came down to it, he'd have to destroy the ship somehow. Without authorization from other senior members of staff, he'd have no chance of the auto destruct. He supposed he could destroy the ship by planting several clusters of photon grenades around the deflector dish, detonating the anti-protons that charged the dish. He could also try rigging the entire compliment of photon torpedoes to explode at once as well. Jack shuddered. Thoughts of destruction came far to easily to him, he needed to focus on the task at hand - restoring communications. He would use the turbo lift to access stellarcartography and from there be able to adjust the long-range sensors to emit an inverted scan. In other words, instead of scanning the area for ships, life signs, or planets, it would emit a homing beacon as bright as a super nova to any ships within sensor range. A simple trick, but an effective one.

The journey to the science decks was uneventful. Stellarcartography was empty, as Jack had suspected in the first place (though he did check via the computer first). He entered and quickly accessed the specific sensor controls. They were under command lockout, but he managed to use his authorization codes to access smallers scanning subroutines that was tied into navigation - the sensors would scan the area for micrometeorites and transfer that data to the helm. It worked, the scan started, and all Jack had to do was invert it. Half way through the process, the computer came back with a report. Jack was nearly sick again as he viewed the scan results. He had found the crew. All of them dead, floating in space around the London herself. Jack felt ill, but he finished his task and marched out of the doors, welding them shut with his phaser.

That was when things turned bad. The deck went pitch black for several seconds before emergency systems kicked in. An attention chime came from the bulkheads. "Hello, Commander Ryson. It seems you've figured something out. I don't know what you just did, but you won't be around long enough to enjoy it. By the way, your phaser wont do you much good, we've activated a dampening field on that deck. Don't resist, when it comes, Ryson." the voice said. The voice of the chief engineer, Rix Staythen. Jack test fired his phaser and only got a low buzz of energy, nothing even visible. They must have activated a weapon suppression command instead of a dampening field, as phasers were regenerative and should have worked anyway. He scoffed, and walked to a replicator. "So much the better, Mister Staythen. So much the better." he said aloud, followed abruptly by "Computer, end all transmissions on this deck." The channel closed. At the replicator, Jack pressed several keys, and recieved a warning: "RESOURCE CONSERVATION WARNING: PHASER WEAPONS ARE AVAILABLE FROM MULTIPLE ARMORY STATIONS THROUGHOUT THE SHIP. NEAREST STATION, TWENTY METERS, CONTINUE?"

Jack smirked and keyed in his clearance. The replicator worked for thirty seconds before a fully functional TR-116 had materialized infront of him. Murder had been commited, a slaughter. And at the moment Jack felt enough rage coursing through his veins to commit some murder of his own. He picked up the weapon and checked it was loaded. It was fully loaded with a 35 round magazine. He moved down the hall. He would go deflector control to finish the homing beacon, by tricking the navigational deflector into thinking a massive swarm of unavoidable spacial debre had collided with the deflector screens, and automatic call for assistance would be sent out. Jack made it past three doors before he heard a footstep.

Behind him. Jack spun, ready to fire, only to find two men advancing towards him, holding Federation combat knives. They were three meters away, and had rather evil looking grins on their faces. "That phaser will do you no good. The suppression field has been long engaged now. You will surrender and join us." the other said matter of factly. Jack just took aim and fired. The heavy tritanium slug ripped out of the barrel and into the chest of the man who spoke first. A security officer by his uniform and rank, he went in less than a heartbeat from target to corpse. The massive round blew a gaping hole in his chest, sending him sprawling backwards, spinning him around. Blood sprayed across the deck and bulkheads and even across his companion, who snarled and charged, flourishing the suddenly much smaller looking knife. The first man was twitching on the ground as his body died, and as his companion rushed forward to avenge him.

Jack took aim again and fired as the man bore down on him. His momentum was instantly halted and reversed as the slug caught him directly in the forehead. His skull exploded at the front and rear as the impact flipped him directly backwards onto his face, landing him in a pile of his own blood and grey matter. Jack felt ill, but the sensation was somewhere buried behind rage and sorrow at the loss of so many people he had once been very close with. Bastards. His thoughts were interrupted when a mouth opened on one of the victims, and a small creature skittered out. Jack jumped in surprise and fired off a shot that ricochetted off the upper deck and starboard bulkhead into the floor. So that was the enemy was it. Odd how something so small could be so cold and calculating. Jack climbed to the next deck and took the turbo lift to deflector control.
"Beware what you intend to say, those words will always make you pay." - Soilwork

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MetalHead
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Post by MetalHead »

It was taking to long to count, and Jack was growing nervous. The TR-116 was close at hand, seeing as how phasers would most likely be useless all over the ship with the weapon supression command. They might figure it out, and soon, to start using TR-116's of their own. He had assumed so, and told the computer to alert him if anyone other than himself came within one hundred meters of the deflector control room. The idea was to trick the ship into thinking that the navigational deflector had suddenly been overwhelmed by some kind of large spatial body, which would instantly trigger an automated distress call.

The trick was fooling the sensors. What he needed to do was set up a basic deflector pulse, but in the form of a beam that would strike the inside of the navigational deflector. His hands had been dancing across the work station for hours, and he was becoming more nervous as more time ticked by. Doubtless, Staythen and whoever else was infected were working on a way to capture or kill him. They knew he had some kind of weapon that could be fired through the weapon supression field, and it had obviously set them quite far back. But it had been hours now, and surely, they were going to make some sort of move soon.

Jack let out his breath as he finally managed to activate the pulse. He looked out of a window and saw a massive flash of blue light as the ship's navigational deflector activated. Alarms screamed suddenly, and the computer informed the missing crew that critical damage had been sustained to the navigational deflector, and that message buoy's and logs had been jettisond. Jack had gotten the call for help out, but as a safety percaution, the computer would not allow any movement of the ship over 300 kilometers per hour, using only thruster systems. Jack focused his attention to his latest probolem: getting control of the communication systems. For that he had a good plan.

He would make a number of probes into the access of the com systems in an attempt to throw their guard off. He would then race to the shuttle bay and simply use the com system on the shuttles. He grinned despite himself, it was a good plan. Jack left deflector control, and moved quietly down the corridor to the turbolift, keeping his TR-116 at the ready, despite having a tricorder showing no life signs. He entered the turbolift, and punched in the manual commands to take him to the shuttlebay at the very stern of the vessel. The trip would take several minutes, and THAT made him nervous. The turbolift moved quietly along as Jack sat down onto the floor, resting his tired feet. His tricorder beeped moments later. Jack felt adrenaline and fear pulse into his veins. If he was caught by surprise, he was likely going to be dead or worse.

It showed nearby life signs...that faded quickly as the turbolift slipped away. "Computer, identify life signs on deck 13 section 14-alpha." he commanded. "Internal sensors report two humans and parasite organisms. None are listed as ships crew." the computer responded. Jack frowned. "Computer, are there any life signs within 100 meters of the main shuttlebay?" he asked. "Negative." came the cold response. Jack sighed, his fears allayed for the moment. The lift arrived a few minutes later, and Jack jogged to the shuttle bay, opened the door, and slipped into the shuttle bay. He hastily sealed the doors, and fired a few rounds into the control mechanisms. He could always use the shuttle's transporter to get onto the ship again if need be. Jack stepped quietly into a type 8 shuttle and sealed it off.

He pressed a few commands that raised the emergency heat shields on the shuttle's forward viewport. It made him feel a bit better, and eased the feeling of being watched from the base of his spinal column. Now all he had to do was wait for help...
"Beware what you intend to say, those words will always make you pay." - Soilwork

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