by Don DeBon
"The Phoenix will now impact in five seconds. We will follow six seconds after."
"Miles! Shut up!" Deven shouted.
Miles' camera focused him, the iris contracted then went wide, but he didn't say anything.
Aleshia screamed again and both ships felt as though they hit a brick wall, slamming to a dead stop. A second later they began to slowly float upward. Minerva redirected the power back to the gravity plating causing the Phoenix to gain altitude faster. They had stopped two meters short of the water.
The chair sparked several times and Leon broke the ring around Aleshia's head. He pulled her limp body free.
Deven's eyes went wide. "Aleshia!"
Leon held her and looked up towards Deven's face on the screen. "She is out but still breathing."
"Get her over here to the infirmary."
Otis shot forward and grabbed Aleshia's feet. "We're on it."
A shudder raced through the Defiant. "The engines are now online," Miles said.
"Wonderful timing," Deven grumbled.
"Better late than never," Galina spat.
A large green mass appeared in the distance. Halburn blinked as he shot from his chair and stood between Rechert and Naud.
Naud pointed "Sir? Is that—"
"Get the Defiant!" A second later Deven's face appeared on the screen. "We have a problem, how fast can you get here?"
"We can't. Destroying the Celloid Mothership took everything we had, and then some. It is only because of Aleshia and a lot of luck we aren't a hole in the ground. It will take us twenty minutes or more to reactivate our overdrive."
"Dang it. One more of the Celloids just appeared. I'm guessing it is a straggler. We're going to take it out." His eyes shot down towards Rechert. "Activate the relay, then leave. I want you both out of here along with the rest of the crew." He looked back up to Deven. "I will take care of it." The image shrank to a point and disappeared.
Rechert and Naud gave a questioning glare. "Sir? What about you?" They said in unison.
"Don't worry about me, I'll be right behind you. I need to make sure we're going to take this thing out. Now go!"
They both nodded, tapped in a few last commands, stood up and left the bridge. Halburn sat at Naud's console and tapped a few keys. The large engines glowed brighter as the Valiant began to accelerate. The Celloid noticed his approach and extended several tentacles. They glowed to life and began releasing deadly blasts of energy. The blasts slammed into the Valiant's shields causing a nearby console to explode under the strain. Smoke started filling the bridge. Under him, several decks down, fires broke out from overloaded systems.
Halburn swore as sparks flew from Rechert's console and the relay disengaged. He tapped the controls but it refused to accept any further commands. A light flashed and he saw Deven was calling. He tapped receive. "What are you doing? Minerva told me the relay was operational, but you turned it back off?"
"I didn't turn it off, it failed. This Celloid is fighting back." He swore again. "And it took out the automatic guidance system with it. But we're on target." He tapped a few more keys pushing the standard drive engines beyond their normal limits. The floating tower of biomass grew ever larger.
"Odell! Get out of there!"
"I can't." Sparks burst from another area of the bridge as a fire reached out and grew. "If I leave, all of this hammering the Valiant is taking will throw her off course. I will have sacrificed the ship for nothing. Do me a favor, love that girl you are with. Aleshia is one special lady. Goodbye my friend." He cut the link and few seconds later the Valiant slammed head long into the middle of the towering Celloid. Already on fire, the Valiant spread the infection throughout the biomass before the fire reached the power core. With a blinding flash the core went critical and cracks started raiding out from the hole growing ever brighter, incinerating the Celloid from the inside out. In a micro second the cracks reached around, touched the other side, and the whole mass exploded. In a few seconds nothing was left of either ship except pulverized ash.
Deven sat next to Aleshia. Her body lay on the bed, surrounded from the neck down by an opaque glass and metal half cylinder extending up from the sides. Another, smaller one, encircled her head leaving her face exposed. Monitors beeped in rhythm with her heart. Several monitors displayed transparent images of her, and the analysis. No damage was found, nothing physical anyway. Her mind was another story. She lay in a comatose state. Miles ran several more tests but still couldn't find the cause of her coma. Yet, they knew. The strain of stopping them from crashing into the sea when she was so weak, was too much for her.
She had saved them, but at what cost. Deven reached out and tapped several locations on the metal tube. It retracted sliding into the base of the bed leaving the band around her head. He took her hand and gripped the cool fingers between his palms. Something else they didn't understand, why her temperature was low. He reached out with his mind. Aleshia, my love. Speak to me.
Nothing.
He tried again, this time with more energy behind it. There was nothing at first, then he felt … something. He wasn't sure what but it was more than before. He did it again and the same reaction. It was almost as if she was there but too far away for him to hear.
He had contacted Karthish, but they didn't have an inkling as to what the problem was. It was far outside of their experience, and Karthish had apologized profusely. He would have never asked her to use her abilities if he thought there was a chance she could have been injured. Although, Deven knew Aleshia volunteered and nothing could have stopped her. They all knew there was a risk, even if slight with all the safeties and modifications Leon made.
Dakarth was also baffled at the outcome, and suspected it had to be due to the further modifications of the telepathic device. Akrath, was willing to help, but he had all the badly injured Lytherians to take care of first. Not to mention Dakarth's team needed to repair the wrecked landing bay before he could even make the attempt. There was no way Akrath would be here for several days at least.
She wasn't in any danger.
That they knew of anyway.
Deven closed his eyes and reached out again with his mind. Come back to me my love.
He heard a sound. He wasn't sure but it felt like her. Pushing harder he entered her mind, but he could only see blackness. "Aleshia? Where are you?"
Deven opened his eyes, but Aleshia was nowhere to be found. The bed in front of him was empty. He ran and slammed the base of his fist on the intercom. "Miles? Where is Aleshia?"
No response.
"Miles?"
Still no response.
"Galina? What is wrong with Miles?" Deven waited a full minute but nothing was said. "Leon? Gregory? Can anyone hear me? What's going on?" After another twenty seconds with no response Deven took off for the Defiant's bridge. But when he got there, it was empty. No sign of anyone, and even Galina's coffee cups were strangely missing.
He waved his hand in front of Miles' camera but it sat mute and motionless. He touched one of the buttons on Galina's console. "Can anyone aboard hear me?" Still nothing. He looked out the window but didn't see the Phoenix. He tapped another button. "Minerva? Where are you? I don't see the Phoenix." All he got back for several minutes was static varying from quiet to deafening and returning to quiet before the equipment shut down.
He reached out with his mind. He felt something. Aleshia he assumed, but something was different. Aleshia? Where are you? What is going on? Where did everyone go?
She didn't respond but he felt she was near one of the bow port energy cannons. Or someone at least. He walked down the empty corridors. It was odd he couldn't find a single sign of habitation. It was if they all evacuated, and took everything with them. But if that was the case, why was the ship still floating and intact? Leon's console on the bridge didn't give any indication of a failure that would justify abandoning the Defiant. Yet no one was here. And more important, why didn't they tell him.
He stopped past Galina's q
uarters on the way, and it was as empty as the others. No clothes, the rack didn't have any sheets, not even a toothbrush. Not one sign she had ever been there, much less it being her home for the better part of a year.
The Defiant seemed more quiet than usual as well. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something else felt different. Granted he had always been aboard with lots of people, but even without them the ship itself still felt different.
Deven approached the room housing the cannon and his senses tingled. She was here, yet different. Like the Defiant, something was wrong. He cracked open the reinforced steel door. Aleshia was there. She wandered around the room, as if in a hypnotic daze. He couldn't see anyone else, and more important, he couldn't feel anyone else.
The door creaked open the rest of the way and Aleshia spun around with her eyes narrowed, her arms raised. "Oh Deven! It is you!" She ran over and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing. "Where is everyone?"
Deven squeezed her back and stepped inside. "I don't know. I thought you might have a better idea. What are you doing in here?"
"I thought I felt something in here." She jerked a thumb towards the weapon taking up most of the space. "But as you can see, nothing here but the cannon."
"Didn't you feel me approach?"
Aleshia frowned. "No I didn't. In fact I haven't been able to detect anything for a while now."
"Since you came in here?"
She shook her head. "No, it was even before that. It is like being surrounded in a large wet blanket making my detection abilities cold and numb."
Deven squeezed her again and gazed into her eyes. "What was the last thing you remember?"
"Getting into that confounded chair on the Phoenix and trying to stop us from crashing into the ocean. Then I woke up here on the Defiant."
"In our room?"
She shook her head. "No, it was in one of the corridors. Which I thought was odd. But no more than finding the ship empty."
"I know. It doesn't make sense. Even if everyone had to abandon the Defiant, Miles should respond."
Aleshia sighed as her eyes drifted down. "Unless he left too."
Deven shook his head. "Not possible. Leon was several months away from having all the parts to repair Miles' old body, and set up some kind of transfer." Keeping his arm around Aleshia, they walked over to one of the consoles. He punched in a few commands but the console remained unchanged as though frozen. "Hmm, this one is the same as on the bridge. They look functional, yet when I try do give them commands, they don't respond. Or give me static."
"That is weird. I hadn't tried."
Deven squeezed Aleshia again against his hip. "Come on, let's head down to engineering."
Aleshia blinked. "What for?"
"If there is a problem with the ship, it should show up there first."
"Oh, right."
As they walked down the corridors, it finally occurred to Deven what had been bothering him so much. It wasn't only the feel of the ship, but the sound. The air circulation system wasn't running, yet the air wasn't stale. And now that he thought about it, the slight hum and vibration of the hover engines as also strangely absent. He looked down and his eyes met Aleshia's. She smiled and he smiled back forcing his eyes forward, saying nothing.
When they reached engineering it was as Deven had suspected, the engines and power core sat dormant. While they glowed as though active, when he placed his hand on the core it was cold to the touch. "No way power is flowing through this."
Aleshia pointed. "But the indicators all say they are running fine."
"I know, but they aren't. Here," Deven put her hand on the core, "feel that? It's ice cold. It would be warm if it was online."
She cocked her head. "It feels fine to me."
"What? It feels warm to you?"
She nodded.
Deven put his hand back on the front panel of the power core. "That is odd, it wasn't when I checked it a second ago."
On the far side of engineering, the heavy reinforced steel doors ripped from their hinges and were thrown clear across the room. "There you are!" A woman glared from where the doors had been. Her flame-red hair stood out of its own accord, waved by a non-existent breeze as well as the conforming dress she wore that matched her hair. The top had a plunging V-neck, as did the front wafting over her legs, hiding nothing. She floated in, her feet several inches from touching the deck plates.
"Aleshia? But—" He looked down at the woman on his arm. Aleshia was still there.
"Of course it is me! You lying sack of shit! You promised me so much, and all I wanted was you! Our honeymoon! Alone! Instead, all you did was use me!"
"But I didn't—"
"Silence!" She waved her hand and Deven's mouth felt as if a metal clamp held it shut. "You did! And I am going to make you pay. You are going to learn there is nothing worse than a woman scorned." She raised her hand, a ball of glowing red energy formed in the palm and she threw it at Deven.
The woman at his side raised her hand and the ball hit an invisible barrier, exploding without harming them. "You will not harm my husband."
The floating woman threw her head back, hair waiving as she laughed. "Your husband? He is mine to do with as I please. And when I am done with him, I am going to turn everyone of those tin cans into scrap metal. In the slowest way possible. It is what should have been done in the first place." Her eyes narrowed. "Don't even try to stop me. You don't have the will."
"You will not harm us." Aleshia held on to Deven as they floated an inch above the deck plate before rocketing backwards from where they came with increasing speed. The woman flung larger energy balls at them as they shot through the open doors. Aleshia shut them causing the following red energy to slam into the steel, melting where they hit.
Aleshia waved her hand over the hinges and they sparked, welding the door shut. They shot down the corridor with doors slamming shut as they past. When they were almost half a ship away, Aleshia slowed and lowered them back to the deck plates. She waved her hand over Deven's mouth removing the invisible clamp holding it shut. "I am sorry love. I don't know what that … that … thing is, but it is not me."
Deven coughed. "Well, it sure seems to have your abilities. In fact it could have more, I have never seen you throw balls of energy."
"Do you think someone cloned me? Perhaps the Nexus or the Lytherians—"
Deven shook his head. "No I don't think so. If it was a clone, it wouldn't have known about me in detail."
"Unless they trained it."
"No. Even if they did, it wouldn't be hell-bent on destroying me because I messed up our honeymoon. Or thought I had been using her all this time. Which I never did, for the record."
Aleshia grunted. "Of course you never used me! I would never think it for a second."
"Ah, but I suspect you did."
"I didn't!"
"Perhaps not consciously. Listen, I know where we are, your mind."
Aleshia's eyes went wide. "What? We're on the Defiant!"
"While it looks like we are, what we are doing and seeing is not real. It is all in our minds."
Aleshia pointed to the closed doors. "Then what is that thing?"
Deven sighed. "That, my love, is your other half."
"There is no way that … that thing is me!"
They heard bulkheads being slammed and torn from their supports. "It is. You are on a bed in the infirmary, and I am there with you. But all of this is in your mind. That thing is your bad side. I have a hunch the chair separated you into two distinct personalities. It would also explain why it is appears to be more powerful. Unleashed rage is hard to stop."
"That thing is not me. I love you. I would never, ever, want to harm you."
Deven held her face between his hands and looked deep into her green eyes. "I know you never would. But there is always a part of us with the desire. Monsters from the Id they used to call it, long long ago."
"But—"
"No matter how you deny it, that is still
you out there, your Id. And why didn't you tell me how mad you were?"
Aleshia shrugged. "I may have been a little miffed, but I wouldn't say mad."
Deven pointed to the sealed bulkhead as one eye narrowed and the side of his face scrunched up. "I would say you were more than a 'little miffed'."
They heard more pounding as a couple more bulkheads were ripped apart, a few seconds later all went quiet. Deven cocked his head. "Odd, wonder what your Id is up to."
