Past Prologue, Part 13

Posted on Mon Apr 8, 2019 @ 9:00am by Commander Caleb Ryan

1,156 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Things Past
Location: USS Winchester/The Borderlands/Omicron Nebula
Timeline: FLASHBACK: 2375/Toward the End of the Dominion War

The scene wasn’t any better in the rec room where they found the rest of Bravo Team. Phaser fire scored the walls, floor, and ceiling. One of the marines had obviously been downed by friendly fire and then finished off with a blade through the eye into the brain. Blood soaked into the carpet and squished beneath his feet as Artemis examined the bodies. They were, for the most part, quick, lethal kills: femoral arteries, throats, bowels. Efficient. Deadly. The rictus of panic on their faces cut Artemis to the quick.

“Upstairs. Now!” Artemis ordered.

Charlie Team stumbled into the landing and paused to catch their breath.

“Where’s Attai?” a Marine asked, looking around. They were missing a team member.

Artemis shone his light down the stairwell, spotting the Trill’s broken and lacerated body in a bloody mess at the bottom. “Nothing we can do,” Pierce said. “Go.”

These were some of the best, hardest combat trained Marines Artemis could find in Starfleet. All had done a significant amount of black ops work. They were cool, unflappable under fire. But Pierce could feel the tension, the fear, as this unseen assailant picked them off one by one.

The scene in operations was equally as horrific. Phaser fire scored the computer terminals, the Marine’s field of fire constrained by the small room. One Marine had obviously gotten his combat knife out and promptly lost his hand. Turil’s head was pinned to the main operations table with a traditional Vulcan sword. The computer specialists hadn’t stood a chance. They weren’t combatants, at least not of this caliber. Even the remaining facility personnel had been dispatched with a cruel, ruthless efficiency. The blood pooled and splashed beneath their feet as they swung their lights around the room.

“What the hell is it?” Wilson breathed, his voice trembling.

“Your worst nightmare, Captain,” Artemis murmured. “Pierce to Winchester! Artemis said, slapping his comm.

There was a garble of static.

Artemis looked around. There was no power in the facility. How could something be jamming their communications?

“Captain,” Wilson said, pulling Pierce’s attention. Off to the side several of the away team’s tricorders had been laid out on a side table. Their innards were spilled out and rewired, connected. “I think it built some kind of jamming device out of our equipment.” Wilson reached out to disconnect it.

The splash of bare feet in a blood pool was Pierce’s only warning. “Wilson!” Artemis yelled in warning.

It was too late. It all happened in slow motion. There was a flash of white as it dropped onto Wilson’s back. Pierce saw a spray of blood as a mek’leth stabbed into the back of Wilson’s neck. The small figure rode the blade down, the sharp, monomolecular blade and the weight and momentum of his assailant carving through the Marine captain’s flesh and armor.

The ceiling! We didn’t clear the ceiling! Pierce thought, horrified, as a second creature dropped onto one of the Charlie marines. Legs wrapped around his neck, the body swinging out like a pendulum. Pierce heard the snap of the Marine’s neck even before both figures splashed down to the bloody floor, the Marine dead before he even knew what happened.

Pierce had already started moving when he heard the slap of bare feet in the blood behind him. It was probably what saved his life. He felt the blade of the ushaan-tor scythe across his side. Unlike the Marines, he wasn’t wearing armor to blunt the blow. Not that it would have mattered, with what he’d seen as Wilson was taken down.

The sole remaining Marine swung his phaser rifle around, the light catching a flash of white, glinting off the blades of the Andorian traditional ice knives. Pierce’s assailant continued her momentum of attack against him, turning it into a roll as the Marine opened fire. Pierce gave a cry as one of the stun pulses slammed into his leg, numbing it and sending him to the bloody floor.

The attacker slid through the blood toward the marine. It jabbed up, shoving the ushaan-tor into the Marine’s groin. The other slashed across his hamstring, bringing him staggering down to its height. But she wasn’t alone for the kill. The other two monsters moved in and finished the Marine with silent efficiency.

Artemis tried to get up. His numbed leg wouldn’t respond, and his hand slipped on the bloody floor. He fell to his side. The monsters moved into the light of the Marine’s rifle lamp and he stared at his end.

Three girls – Artemis guessed them to be around nine or ten years old – stared down at him with dark brown eyes. There was nothing in those eyes, no emotion, no lust for his blood, just cruel, ruthless efficiency, perhaps a touch of disdain that he had been such easy prey. Their brown hair was matted down with blood. They wore only white sleeveless undershirts and underwear, though most of the white had been obscured by blood, as if they had rolled in it to better hide in the darkened facility. Their slender limbs, belying such strength as he had just witnessed, dripped blood. Pierce saw no visible injuries on them indicating any of his Marines had even harmed them. One of the girls wielded two mek’leths, the other a pair of ushaan-tor. The last one – the one that had killed the Marine with no weapon at all – bore a pair of Starfleet Marine combat knives.

Artemis reached for his phaser, dropped nearby. Even though he had just seen it, he still wasn’t prepared for the speed with which the girl reacted. Artemis screamed as the girl slammed the combat knife into his hand, pinning it to the floor.

Slowly, like jackals moving in for the kill, the girls moved around him, standing over him. The knelt down over his helpless form. Oddly, the girl with the combat knife leaned over, gazing curiously into his eyes. She pushed back his hair, smearing it with blood. He felt the tip of her blade over his heart as she leaned down to kiss his forehead.

Artemis flailed his free hand out, looking for something…anything. His hand flopped against a dead Marine and closed on something round.

Maggie… Artemis’s last thought was for his missing older sister. He yanked the grenade from the Marine, popping the pin and holding it up at eye level with the little girls. With satisfaction he saw their eyes widen in shock a moment before the stun grenade went off.

TBC

Captain Artemis Pierce
Commanding Officer
USS Winchester

Captain Edgar Wilson
Marine Commanding Officer
USS Winchester

E1, E2, E3
Augment Clones

 

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