“Infinity”
Stardate 75120.9;
February 14, 2398
Episode 76
Written by Chris
Adamek
Chapter 24
As his eyes
fell upon the dreaded Overseer Xi’Yor, Alan Christopher was quick to trade
his wrist-light for a phaser. In this
sole instance, Christopher did not consider diplomacy the most viable
option. “What are you doing here?” he
demanded, pointing the weapon directly at the Overseer’s chest.
Xi’Yor’s
malevolent grin was unwavering—just as it was nearly a year ago when
Christopher faced him in battle on the surface of Ciden II. The Overseer gently hefted his weapon, and
likewise pointed it at Christopher—and in the blink of an eye, all the old
hatreds returned. “My purpose here is
the same as yours,” he smoothly stated.
“My vessel has sustained damage.
It is in need of repair.”
Christopher’s
eyes narrowed to slits. “I didn’t know
you had a vessel. In fact, I was
under the impression that you were dead.”
Xi’Yor shook
his head to refute the statement, and his demonic eyes glistened in the harsh
light falling from Harrison’s beacon.
“You should not have dismissed me so easily, Captain.” He took a small step forward. “In fact, you should have terminated me when
you had the chance… You had the photon saber to my throat—one small maneuver
would have severed my head, and your troubles would have been over once and for
all.”
Evil glinted in
Xi’Yor’s eyes. “But you hesitated,” he
readily recalled. “…And I have
returned.”
Christopher
shook his head. “Not for long,” he
hissed, firmly pressing his weapon into Xi’Yor’s chest.
But if the
Overseer felt threatened, he showed no sign of it. “What will you do?” he beckoned, his voice calm as ever. “You do not have the will to terminate me.”
“Perhaps not,”
Christopher replied. “But then again,
I’m not a murderer.”
Xi’Yor
chuckled. “Ahh, the noble dignity of
the Federation,” he said, his grandiose—and sarcastic—words echoing throughout
the Odyssey’s cavernous bridge.
“They can clandestinely exterminate forty thousand individuals—but no,
they are not murderers…” Xi’Yor’s fiery
eyes narrowed to slits as he drew himself closer to Christopher. “If not a murderer Captain, what then do you
see yourself as? A hero?”
Having spent
weeks strapped to a chair in Xi’Yor’s interrogation chamber during the war,
Alan Christopher knew exactly how the Overseer operated—and to him, this was
little more than a mind game, an attempt to provoke Christopher into
action. It would fail. “The dark deeds committed in the Beremar
System were unfortunate,” he stated, “but I had nothing to do with them.”
“Of course
not,” said Xi’Yor. His brow suddenly
arched, and a curious look fell upon his face.
“So you were enraged by the treachery of your leaders? Infuriated by their total disregard for
innocent Elorg lives?”
His tone was
far more sympathetic now, but Christopher knew it was all a part of the
game. “I was disappointed by the
Federation,” he said, unwilling to give Xi’Yor any edge in the conversation—in
fact Christopher saw no need to further the little chat. “Unfortunately for you, the Beremar System
is not relevant to this conversation.”
“Not relevant?”
Xi’Yor scoffed.
Christopher
shook his head. “I wanted to know what
you were doing here—and since this is not your interrogation chamber, I
am the one asking the questions. Not
you.”
The statement
clearly did not please Xi’Yor, for his already narrowed eyes grew increasingly
malevolent. “So in your enlightened
opinion, the lives of the forty thousand are merely an unfortunate statistic?”
Unwilling to
perpetuate this conversation any further Christopher shook his head and
retreated to what he felt was a safe distance.
“In my enlightened opinion,” he tersely replied, “this conversation is
over.”
And the manic
gaze upon Xi’Yor’s evil face suddenly vanished, replaced with something far
more neutral. “You would make a pitiful
Overseer, Captain.”
Christopher
shrugged. “And you would make a pitiful
Starfleet officer.” His gaze lingered
upon Xi’Yor for only a moment longer.
“Bator,” he said, turning to the Phobian, “escort our guest to
the Starlight’s brig. I’m sure
he’ll feel right at home.”
Bator expelled
a satisfied grunt as he removed the disruptor from the Overseer’s hands. “You won’t be needing this anymore,” he
said, handing the weapon to Commander Harrison.
Harrison
swiftly took the weapon from Bator’s hand—and then grabbed the secondary weapon
adhered to Xi’Yor’s belt. “Expecting
trouble?”
The Overseer
flashed a devious smile. “Always.”
Erin Keller’s
heart thumped rapidly as she followed Lucas Tompkins into the Yelss lab. Like the rest of the station, it was dark
and foreboding. She could only make out
the faintest hints of her surroundings, but as far as she could tell, the lab
was a small, circular room—and it was hot.
The temperature was a good ten degrees warmer inside the lab, with
humidity so oppressive that Keller could feel her clothes begin to cling to her
body. “Pleasant place,” she chirped,
hoping to lighten the situation. “You
would think they’d build a few more lights into it, though.”
“As far as I
can tell,” said Tompkins, “a lot of the station’s lighting is
bioluminescent. There are tracts built
into the ceiling.”
“I know that,”
Keller replied. Apparently Tompkins was
not in the mood for humor, and she thusly decided to keep her side of the
conversation pertinent to the matters at hand.
“So how do we turn them on?”
“I don’t know,”
Tompkins admitted. “From what I’ve
seen, they work automatically—they turn off at night and on during the day.”
“Maybe they run
on a biological clock?” suggested Keller.
“I mean, we don’t know anything about this station. It could be far more organic that we
realize.”
“Or it could
all be a holodeck simulation designed to confuse us,” Tompkins summarily
suggested. “Or a virtual
simulation. I wouldn’t put it past the
Yelss to do something like that.”
“Of course, we
don’t know much about the Yelss, either,” said Keller, peering into the
darkness. Very slowly, her eyes were
starting to adjust, but she still had difficulty seeing anything more than
vague boundaries. She took a few more
hesitant steps forward—and then banged into the side of a table of some
sort. “I’ll have to have my eyesight
checked when we get home.”
“It looks like
a console of some sort,” Tompkins stated from the other side. Keller heard him tap a few commands into the
darkened interface, but his efforts proved fruitless.
“It doesn’t
look like anything to me,” Keller mused. She gracefully ran her fingers over the table’s smooth surface,
hoping she might activate something by happenstance—but she found little
more than Tompkins’ hand. “Sorry.”
He
grunted. “For what?”
“I didn’t mean
to interrupt you.”
“You
didn’t.” He tapped a few more commands
into the interface, but again, nothing happened.
Keller abruptly
paused, and took a step away from the console.
“So whose hand did I just touch?”
“That’s a good
question,” Tompkins replied. He
immediately abandoned his attempts to activate the console, and retreated to
Keller’s side. “Hello?” he tentatively
called—but the only response was a faint echo in the distance.
Keller
immediately tensed. Though it was
perhaps a bit childish, she had yet to outgrow her fear of the dark—but as something
began to rustle in the space before the console, Keller suddenly felt those
fears were justified. “Lucas,” she
whispered, “I don’t like this.”
“You still have
your weapon, don’t you?”
Keller suddenly
looked down—and though she saw little more than a shadowy outline, she realized
that she did indeed have the weapon she procured from one of the security
lockers. And without so much as a
moment’s thought, she quickly pointed the weapon at the ceiling and opened
fire.
A surge of
fiery green light streaked from the emitter, casting verdant shadows across the
chamber as it arced into the ceiling.
Keller found herself momentarily stunned by the chamber’s unique
architecture—but her attention was quickly drawn to the dimly lit figure
standing before the console.
“It’s about
time you got here,” said the entity, it’s voice cold and dejected. It quickly tapped a few commands into the
console’s interface, and within moments, both the console and the
bioluminescent lights were fully activated.
Keller
summarily found herself standing in the center of an expansive domed lab of
some sort—and unlike the rest of the Yelss station, this chamber was anything
but organic. The walls almost seemed
crystalline in nature, and shimmered in the fading beams of starlight from
above. A pair of immense liquid pillars
guarded a gateway toward the back of the chamber—and they seemed to defy every
last bit of physics known to Keller; the hazy liquid gracefully swelled toward
the ceiling without so much as a single forcefield to keep it in place.
“What is this
place?” Keller asked, her eyes slowly falling upon the frail Yelss standing at
the console in the center of the room.
The alien
extended its long, branch-like arms in a grandiose fashion, and its lone
bloodshot eye peered toward the starry sky above. “This is our salvation,” it happily rasped.