Star Trek: Theurgy

"What... What happe-" said Nerina, disoriented and amused, but she was cut short by being yanked to her feet.

Jien Ives, now suddenly in his male form, pressed Nerina up against the railing and kissed her savagely - hands stroking his XO's slick body with complete abandon. Nerina had let out a surprised yelp, but welcomed her Captain with spread legs and hungry mouth - Jien sheathing himself fully inside her in mere moments. It was too late now, and just as little as Nerina did, he did not care one whit what had happened to Nolak Kalmil. All that mattered was the absolute and utter urge to finish what the Chief Engineer had started yet failed to complete. Jien ground himself hard into his First Officer, nipped and sucked at her breasts, all the while holding her up and suspending her upon the railing of the board-walk. Her body was weightless in his hard hands, and his thrusts made the railing groan and creak. He did not care. He did not care about Nerina's enjoyment either. He just needed to spend himself inside her - to finally let go.

And that he did, crying out as the virus imbalanced his brain cells. He came long and hard and Nerina came with him, throwing her head back in the frenzy of their joining. Though Jien's head rolled as the aftermath glory rushed through his body, and his hands immediately lost its hold.

Nerina cried out, unsupported as she was leaning out from the railing, and without Jien's firm hands, it gave away underneath her with a metallic shriek. While Jien fell to the cold board-walk - oblivion seizing him fully - his First Officer fell head-first. Screaming all the way down towards the distant floor.

Afterwards, there were no further sounds heard in the chamber.

In the meantime Rennan Cooper had a noticeable harder time to keep up with controlling the weapon systems. Due to the plan of Tovarek, some weapons responded slower than Rennan had anticipated and some turrets overheated and flared offline. Small growing sweatdrops formed on the man's head as he did his utmost best to keep up with the reavers soaring by. Yet it was rather delaying the inevitable... More and more his shot seemed to miss the oncoming Reavers as they unloaded their phasers onto the Theurgy. First by just a hair but more and more by a few inches. The sweat ran down the lieutenant his face and neck and his skin grew paler rapidly. The throbbing of his heartbeat was visible in his neck and his eyes were focused on the console as he cursed slowly to himself for missing.

Yet then it occurred, his pupils narrowed to pin points and in a flash of a second they dilated. The lieutenant's eyes eventually rolled to the back of his skull and he collapsed behind the console, slamming his head against it as he dropped down. Without any reaction to the people around him, he laid there as his skin turned paler and slowly his body temperature started to decrease. The first crewmembers around him would notice that his breathing had stopped. Simon turned around now and pushed some people aside to feel for a pulse, yet he could feel none

"Commander... He's gone." Tovarek reported with sigh and he got up again and with two fingers he closed the eyes of the young man that had joined them just a few days ago.

"Captain!" called Nicole Howard from the Engineering station, overriding Thea's order, "Inertial dampers just came offline and... the magnetic fields that control the antimatter containment is failing! The injector coils are overloading! There is no way we could... We are being sabotaged!"

Thea's fears came true. The shimmer of the transport lit everyone's faces. Moving to intercept, Thea's photonic hand phaser appeared in her raised two-hand grip - a gift from Lin Kae that was always at hand. Shouting was everywhere around her, deafening. Time seemed to slow down and yet speed up at the same time.

Out of the Transport beam materialised the figure of a woman, and while Thea had filtered out the assault rifle she had carried, she immediately went for one of the security guards - with barely any time needed to get her bearings. People were moving everywhere on the Main Bridge. Thea had to get though. The holographic intruder broke the security guard's arm and floored him in a singular wrenching movement - a hand phaser wrenched from numb fingers. Chief Tactical Officer T'Less was next to fall - the shot to her chest sending her into the control panel behind her back.

[...I respectfully request to see the Captain on the view screen and take my orders directly from him.]

"Why you little cunt, I will..." ThanIda zh'Wann murmured hoarsely, and though her temper flared, she was not pressing the transmission button. Yet she bared her teeth and leaned forward - fingers rubbing her temples as she tried to come up with the best solution to the situation. Her likeminded were about to depart the Theurgy, and they might be facing Wolf-03 as either an inactive observant or a very real threat. She wondered if the best solution might be for Lt. Lance - as the Chief Conn Officer and a damn good pilot - somehow swat her from the spatial sky with the considerate armament of their vessel. Yet even as she was thinking this, her antennae came up at the sound of a meaty thud behind her, and she whipped her head around.

Mr. Isley was driving the disoriented Lance towards her quickly - her likeminded evidently a good pilot yet an utterly poor Security Officer. Indeed, their captive fighter pilot seemed neither back-bound nor naked as she had requested, but rather not captive at all anymore. She instantly got to her feet and grabbed for her phaser with both hands, her slick fingers slipping over the weapon and jarring the settings before she got it up between herself and the hurled body of the Conn Officer. Three rapid bursts went off - cutting like hellfire into the naked man before she got his dead weight over herself - wedging her between him and the controls. Lance was screaming, not stunned at all, and on the view-screen behind Ida's head appeared the colossal image of Ensign Skye Carver's black visor and helmet.

A stroke of chance had made the commotion enable the video-feed between the vessels.

The feed was - in return - showing how Mr. Isley tried to strike out Ida where she lay pinned. The naked Andorian, however, had gotten her foot up and pushed Lance back towards Isley - intercepting the blow and making it thud into the PADDed pilot's chair. Lance was a disjointed, screaming rag-doll with three close-range phaser wounds having opened him up right through - the stench of burned flesh and spilling ichor dominating the front of the Yacht's bridge. After Isley had been pushed back, however, Lieutenant Lance fell silent upon the floor - effectively trapping Ida's phaser underneath his weight. She had lost it in the blow she took, and the sight of Lance - mind infected or not - had made her pause in minute horror.

They both saw the two Reavers heading their way, and Ida shouted while getting them in her sights. "Incoming!" she called, alerting Vessery as well as the personnel taking cover behind them. They all threw themselves to the ground in panic. Ida bared her teeth and screamed, her disintegrator spewing volatile energy against the grey enemy attack fighters. They opened fire with their phaser pulse canons at the same time. Vessery was also discharging his weapon, and the conflagration of the exchange cast everything in garish light.

It was a moment where fate balanced upon a knife's edge.

World upended, Ida was thrown into the ashen air, yet somehow still managing to hold on to her weapon. She landed on her side, air driven out of her lungs by the impact. Her ears were ringing from a detonation, and that may have meant anything. She struggled to regain her footing, gaze and antennae whipping about to get her bearings. She didn't even know if she was hurt. Her focus was the damage done upon others. Her uniform may have been charred and torn from shrapnel, yet she only had eyes for her fellow crew.

The metallic wreckage of a Reaver had torn a deep rift into the ground as it crashed, barely missing a cluster of crew lying on the ground. The second Reaver was nowhere to be seen. The ashen grounds around Ida were pelted with burns from Reaver fire, concentrated upon the spot where...

...Lieutenant Ben Vessery lay.

His body was riddled with smoking cavities form where both Reavers had shot him. Numbly, Ida realised that the new CSec and her had targeted the same inbound Reaver, just as they had targeted the same shooter on the ground. Just as she had survived, one of the Reavers had too... and she spotted it behind her - turning around for another pass. By Lor'Vela... Have some mercy.

The forcefield ignited. Screeched horrifically in protest. Yet Lucan's scream was louder; a blood-curdling sound that made Ida's eyes go wide. There has been no time to see it. It all happened too quickly. Acreth had been too fast.

Having reached out through the oculus, Sonya now held the Chief Medical Officer against the Level 10 forcefield - her grip white-knuckled around a fistful of the doctor's labcoat. She held him there, her free hand against the frame of the oculus on her side of the force-field, and her entire body was bent on the effort to hold Dr. Nicander there despite the energy surges that made him dance as if he was attached to strings. Overriding the noise, the prisoner screamed at them through the shimmering energy wall - her once angelic face contorted into a mask of death. "You know nothing, flesh-puppets!"

The CMO was going to die unless they intervened. Prolonged exposure to that kind of force-field would set him on fire just as quickly as the heart would give out. Hesitation. A tough call. The doctor could save countless lives. Ida raised her rifle and screamed to the Brig Officer, who had remained by his station. "Deactivate the force-field!"

"No! Belay tha-" shouted Dee while she drew her hand-phaser, yet it was too late, for the security guard had already heard the screaming and switched it off as soon as he'd heard Ida's call. "Vessery! Take her ou-"

Before Dr. Nicander's burned and smoking figure hit the floor, or the deafening clatter of the oculus against the deck plating hit Ida's eardrums... Sonya Acreth had stepped forth and wrested the muzzle of Dee's phaser upwards. Ida would remember the woman's facial expression forever, that bare glimpse before the shot whipped Dee's head backwards. If the crowd of people had not stirred before then, the killing shot was the point where everything fell into chaos.

"Run!" called the man who called himself Grayson, firing his rifle on the intruder with rapid bursts - the posterior of Rihen's shuttle gradually destroyed by the onslaught. Yet the shots that hit the woman seemed to only make her image flicker and waver in the air, before she raised the rifle that she had taken. Then, Rihen ran, but could not help looking behind. It all happened so fast, yet the fear made Rihen see everything as if it took forever.

With inhuman skill, the image of the woman fired without needing time to aim. David first, the blonde man going down with a hoarse grunt form a shot to the chest, then, the smoking muzzle went for Rihen, and that was the last she remembered.

Security Officer Adam Kingston was on the bridge and he was changing the setting on his phaser, walking closer to the two fighting holograms. He was evidently taking the Temporal Officer's advice and knew what frequency might penetrate force fields. Thea realised this at the same time as Cala did, and it was too late to stop her.

"You should never put your betters to the test," said Cala and whirled away from Thea, the blade of her carpus slapping the hand phaser out of Adam's grip. Thea was fast, but not fast enough to stop Cala from caving in Adam's skull against a titanium railing. Seamlessly, the Calamity's Ship AI turned to face the assembled crew - her body being immersed in a pending Transport beam away from the Theurgy. "The fact remains. I shall never desist. I will always hunt you until you are destroyed. This is merely the beginning."

Just as she vanished, the Harbinger's shuttle detonated - the shockwave sweeping across the sector.

As the woman shot past to kneel by the pilot - preparing to leave for Sickbay - Rihen walked up to the handsome man with her hands spread and a smile bright as sunlight. "Am I under arrest, officer?" she said and made her eyes very big and pleading, "I promise I won't be a naughty girl while I stay aboard."

The man began to smile... only to loose all colour from his face and raise his rifle. "Intruder alert!" he called, "Ferrik!"

Rihen whipped around, only to see a shadow behind the dark-haired security guard. The panicked woman tried to turn around and fire at the same time, only her head turned three times quicker than her body - the sickening noise of her neck being twisted around something that would stay with Rihen forever. Ghostly pale hands let the woman's head go, picking up her Type III assault rifle instead - changing the setting. A remote thought that circled Rihen's shock was how she could have picked up a passenger without knowing it. It was a woman in a black body suit and dark hair - the only colour to her being two ice-blue eyes.

"Behind me, Ridge-nose," she said to the celebrity-turned-outlaw, who only that morning held his a hand phaser for the first time. "Don't take any chances. Seek cover immediately and fire from that vantage point. Try to locate where it might have its emitter. It might even be projected from the shuttle. Ready? Go!"

The sliding doors opened and they barged through - Ida's eyes and antennae searching for the target. At first, there was no sign of movement besides the fire and twitching energy circuits of the damaged Yridian shuttle. Behind her, she felt rather than saw or heard the Cadet circling along the edge of the open area. Meanwhile, she moved to the two bodies on the deck, crouching down by one of them without lowering her gaze from her surroundings. She reached down with one hand and took the pulse - a quick glance down determining identity and the location of the neck. "zh'Wann to Jenkins," she whispered after touching her combadge, "Unknown woman down. Appears to have a phaser wound across her back and shoulder. Strong pulse."

The immediate area deemed safe, she glanced towards the other body. Images flashed before her eyes; her and the Pinkskin locked in sweaty intercourse on the floor of that holding cell. Now, Grayson just lay there with his eyes and mouth open, the gaping hole in his chest emitting smoke and a scent of charred meat. An uncharacteristic tightness to her throat made her stumble on the words she had to say. "Commander Grayson is... is..."

Shots went off. Reinforced glass breaking.

Ida ducked low and cast her aim about. Cadet Bellde'side was firing towards the large control booth in the back of the area from ten feet away - his hand phaser coughing panicked energy bursts. There was movement inside the rain of glass shards. Ida spotted a dark female sillouette and cold ice-blue eyes. "Take cove-!" she tried to warn the frightened Cadet. Too late. The figure in that booth turned her attention to the Security Officers outside her glassed-in cover and returned fire - shooting rapid pulse fire from her hip with her rifle.

Ida threw herself to the side and rolled into a sprint - her rifle never touching the deck. She reached the shuttle and dove in behind it - sliding into cover. The deck plating behind her erupted with the impact of the phaser bursts that chased her there. There had been no time to determine the fate of the Cadet, only a glimpse of his disjointed dance as the first volley ripped through his body. No time to think. The intruder paused only to change the setting on her weapon, Ida knew this by the massive hit against the shuttle she hid behind. She could tell by the nightmarish sound. A level 16 wide-field setting that could strip the walls from a building. Smoke and debris rained around her - ears ringing and visibility zero. Her white hair was frizzled by the residual energy in the air. The shrapnel had cut both uniform and skin.

"zh'Wann to starboard detail, I need back-up!"

Many people were severely injured and too many were so to an extent that Dr. Nicander had to place them in stasis in wait for a time where they could be taken to a proper starbase infirmary and get the medical environments and specialists in the individual fields that they needed. Some of the injured might still not make it, he informed the gathered Senior Staff.

"Yet as long as there is life, there is hope," he said, his tattooed hands folded upon the large table in front of him.

The highest ranking of those fatally injured were obviously the XO as well as the Chief Engineer. Also the newly promoted Chief Conn Officer had to be put in Stasis, and the SCO had nearly bled out his life on the Main Bridge, and to prevent brain injury, Dr. Nicander had also placed him in stasis. Blood transfusions might have aided the SCO, yet there was great risk that it was already too late and such would have to be done in a safer way with more doctors present, and thus the CMO judged it safer for the comatose alpha-leader of the Lone Wolves to join the others in stasis. If nothing else, to let him get the proper training and prosthetics for his missing leg.

"They are both blondes, you big bloody dimwit." Rawley rolled her eyes...

...and saw it.

Sudden terror made all the white show around her brown irises. She thrust her joystick forward and dove while screaming over the comm. "Evade! Evade! Evasive manoeuvres! Now, now, now!"

And then the hell-fire rained over them - orange bursts lighting up everything in sight. Like the hand of one of those 'gods' that had accosted them last, it smote down upon them in immediate and coordinated precision. Down, down, down came the phasers like a rainstorm, with not so much as a weapon signature registering in the Valkyries' sensors. Khorin was screaming statically in her ears as she kicked the thrusters to maximum and spiralled downwards with the rain. She was screaming as well, she realised, and could not help but turn her head around - the TVD seeing through her damaged bird and the energy emissions in her wake.

The flying that Khorin Douglas did would have made his House proud, and yet one hit sent him slightly off course and into another burst, then another and soon sent him spinning downwards in the storm of enemy fire. Her terror, whilst barely kept in check, was two-fold. Both because Khorin's fighter was shredded to pieces before her eyes, and that his shields had not protected him at all... as if...

"Our shields are not working!" she called as she tried to get away, to angle off at some point. This was confirmed as one hit made her spin out to the side. "Agrh!! It has our shield harmonics! Rotate them! Rotate! Its another fucking Prometheus! It's in MVAM, over!"

And not only was there a Starfleet Heavy Assault Cruiser hidden in the light from the closest star above, for down came also no less than a full sixteen ship squadron of unknown fighters... A third squadron now occupying the sector and descending upon them. What was worse was that none of the enemy showed up on sensors. The coordinated attack was launched upon them all; Theurgy, Harbinger, all of the Valkyries. It was like a butchers axe rammed down on top of their collective necks.

And the second swing held the torpedoes, with none of their shields working.

"I am the nexus of the crisis," he said, his eyes and his mouth still shining white. "The origin of the storm. The reason you are out here, all alone, where no one in the whole wide Federation can come to your aid."

Realisation dawned in Garen's eyes just before Lucan reached him. It was a disembodied feeling that came upon Lucan, watching what happened as if he was an observer. Closing the last distance with a leap, he landed upon the Counsellor like an eagle upon a rodent, ramming the scalpel into the base of Garen's stomach. The scream would have torn the air apart in the surgery suite if Lucan had not clamped his tattooed hand down upon the half-breed's mouth - shoving down his head against the deck plating. "Hush, hush, Mr Nelis..."

The light from Lucan's face blinded his prey; the dull mirrors of the Counsellor's eyes merely a hand's breadth away. Before Garen's bodily strength began to ebb, Lucan had to keep him down with his legs and his elbows. Placidly, like kneading dough, Lucan moved the exoscalpel sideways and up to shred the guts as if he was preparing a fish for dinner. The Counsellor fought for his life, yet neither beast nor Lucan really cared, he just found it irritating because he had to beat away Garen's flailing arms and knees. A tall man with good reach, Lucan knew the odds were not in the half-breed's favour.

Blood gushed against Lucan's lower body. "Ah, in case you are interested, that was your common and internal iliac arteries," he said and chuckled despite the strain of holding Garen down, who let out a muffled groan against Lucan's palm. Perhaps an animal was most dangerous when cornered, yet even if Garen fought for all his worth... he could not take hold on Lucan's bare skin since his hands were slick with his own blood. The beast inside gave him euphoria for committing the act, the disembodied feeling lasting. Perhaps it was the beast in truth that spoke? Lucan had not reflected on that, rare as these moments were.

The demonic doctor spoke again as he worked with the scalpel, affecting a seemingly deliberate, lucid tone. "Look, it would be a lie to say I don't enjoy this, but it is actually quite necessary. Someone has to do this, or your species will just go on living in ignorance." More feeble trashing. "I don't know why you feel the need to live that way, and I'm sorry if this sounds like a lecture, but you must know it's wrong. You are not unique and nor are you special in any way. I don't know how you justify it to yourself, but this cognitive self-deception really has to stop. You are all equal yet different breeds of cattle. Skin-puppets, to be worn like gloves and thrown away when you grow too old. Deep down, you know I am right about this."

Garen coughed blood through Lucan's fingers, shaking violently, hands covered in ruddy ichor and slapping against Lucan's sides. "Do you wonder what really makes up 'you'?" Lucan asked, smiling with his eyes still blinding the Counsellor's. "You probably don't, but that's okay, I'll tell you. It's just your brain, and yet you have this entire body attached to it. That's a lot of tissue and organs that are not truly you, and most importantly, a lot of nerve endings. You feel them, right? I will not bore you with how many nerves there are in your body, what is important is that they are not truly yours to begin with. They belong to us."

He emphasised his statement by throwing the scalpel away. Instead, he placed his hands on Garen'ss cheeks. There was still life in those eyes, but the strength had begun to leave his body along with his blood. Nevertheless, the Counsellor tried to twist away from the grip. "No," he whispered like a bared nerve, no voice left to scream with. Yet the process was underway, and neither man nor the fake gods could forestall it.

"Hush, skin-puppet..." said the beast, or was perhaps it was himself, either way, he shut the eyelids with his thumbs. "It's over now." Lucan was not pressing his thumbs hard against the eyes. All that was necessary was the physical contact. Electricity would do the rest. He closed his eyes to better guide it. It would slice down through the Counsellor's optic nerves, follow those twin highways into the brain, and there deal the final blow. It made him harder just thinking about it. Thought equalled action, ignition, and the power fluctuation made the lights dim and sparks fly. Enemy fire, they thought, the whole of Sickbay.

At the mentioning of hurrying to Deck 16, Lucan acquiesced the reasoning with a gesture to the corridor. "Certainly, examinations can wait for more opportune moments," he said, and the voice inside laughed at him - knowing what private moments he was referring to, "let's not dally."

Yet no more had he said the last word before cries were raised from the security guards. Next, at the time Lucan stepped out of Edena's doorway, he saw the half-naked Thea hologram twisting one guardsman's head around and acquiring his Type III rifle in a single swift movement. "Save yourselves!" she screamed with tears running down her cheeks even as she raised it towards them.

Alas, she had already opened fire upon them when Lucan grabbed Edena and dove for the deck. His Head Nurse - Jovela - was closest and went down with hissing open wounds. Then came the second security guard - his head slamming down in front of Lucan's eyes. Or rather, what was left of that head.

Lucan was quite certain that the barrage was returned by those still standing, yet for some reason - whilst lines of phaser-fire coursed through the hologram's fizzling and flickering body - Thea dropped the assault rifle and vanished from the corridor. She flickered out of existence as if she had never been there.

What was left was the aftermath - the smell of burnt flesh filling the corridor. The warmer air did not help at all.

Thea's voice was heard over the intercom across the entire ship.

[Please, forgive me... You were too late...] said the Ship AI, seemingly addressing someone in particular, [I committed murder...just before I was freed... I will now deactivate my holographic projection in wait for my trial as according to my directives...]

Then, the intercom fell silent, and Lucan slowly - numb from a mixture of shock and hidden elation - helped Edena to her feet.

Jien gasped as Nolak's tongue flicked her throbbing clit, almost throwing her over the edge. But then the licking stopped, and she opened her eyes to see him manoeuvring his waist between her thighs. She had one returning moment of clarity, in which she again realised the danger of her situation. She tried to struggle free, but Nerina held her fast in a surprisingly strong embrace, her wet tits dribbling milk down Jien's bare back. "You can't fight us, Captain," said Nerina, mouthing the words into Jien's neck as she sucked her flesh. Jien watched in fear-filled fascination as Nolak's massive cock drew closer and closer to her wide open crotch. There was no way to stop him - and she wasn't even sure that she really wanted to stop him. She whimpered when she felt its first touch, the hard warm flesh grazing against her moist vulva. The thick organ slid up and down her tender slit, smearing its bulbous pink tip in the preparatory juice that her own pussy had provided. Then it began to poke inside her - tentatively at first, then its rigid length was soon pushing its way past the lips and into her vagina, flooding her senses with indescribable sensations as it parted her inner walls. Rapture ossified Jien, and she threw her head back with a hoarse gasp as the hard cock continued to penetrate her, sliding deeper and deeper into her undefended love channel.

"Mmmm, I bet that feels good," Nerina purred, watching the penis sink all the way into her Captain's groin. And it was. Jien felt as though her mind was boiling with lust. Each time that magnificent cock plunged inside her steamy crevice, she took one step closer to utter surrender. She quickly become addicted to the pleasure of having her pussy filled, and the addiction only grew worse and worse with every meaty thrust. She wanted him to fuck her harder, faster. She wanted to tell him so, but all she could manage was a ragged moan. But the Chief Engineer seemed to understand. He was a Deltan, and he knew exactly what to do to a horny female. His thick cock surged into her sopping cunt, pumping her full of the stiff, hard meat that she now craved so desperately. Nerina giggled obscenely as she watched Jien getting fucked. Both women looked at Nolak, who grunted like an animal as he shoved his rigid manhood into his Captain.

No, he is about to... Mindless panic came through with Jien Ives' final lucid moment, and she cried out - twisting and throwing herself sideways. Yet Nolak was already coming inside her, the molten feeling of hot lava spreading inside her slippery grotto. She cried out and kicked once, twice, and by the third time, Nolak was stumbling backwards along the board-walk - still ejaculating out of his twitching organ. When he fell, he fell upon the broken computer terminal in the centre of the chamber with his hands raised to righten himself. Neither of them expected the detonation - the blinding light.

Yet the touch had triggered a detonation that sent Nolak, smoking and burning, over the railing. He was dead before the impact with the flooring far below.

The holographic figure shimmered and ignored the assault, instead whipping her weapon towards Jien Ives, rapid bursts discharged to take down the Commanding Officer.

Yet Nicole Howard had got to her feet, and in what Thea deemed an incalculable human choice... threw herself into the line of fire to protect their Captain. Jien and Edena were both pulled away by the arms of the Security personnel, saved by the red-haired engineer. The look in Captain Ives' hard eyes when the woman fell would linger in the forefront of Thea's memory banks for a long time.

Thea was pushing people out of her path, her phaser raised. Yet the path was suddenly cleared by external force. Since the inertial dampers were off, a hit against their Vector's shields sent all organics stumbling and falling on their faces. She had her clean shot, three bursts hitting the intruder's hand phaser - breaking it into pieces. No pause. No need to rethink tactics. The intruder simply dropped the smoking remains in her grip and went into hand-to-hand combat with Thea -  blows traded at an alarming pace and similarity.

They were programmed the same way. Starfleet-taught punches and kicks, some passing through the other as they entered passive mode as a means of evasive manoeuvre. The only difference was that Thea felt fear for the lives of her crew, whilst the intruder she fought held no remorse. At one point, where they locked horns in grapple, the ice-blue eyed hologram greeted Thea with a smirk. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mother," she said with a heavy British accent, "I'm Cala."

Rosek went to the controls of the relay system, leaving the generator for Tia. "By the way, you are out of uniform, Lieutenant!" he joked in a grim way. "If we get out of this, I will make sure you'll be cleaning out plasma manifolds for a week." Mere seconds passed, then the orange glow of lava slowly came to increase - its hellish glare covering them and the platform. Yet it was too early, no two minutes having passed yet. Rosek noticed this far too late, yet as he did, his blue eyes went wide. "Tia!"

While silicic magmas were more viscous, more likely to erupt explosively than the basalt kind that they were exposed to, dissolved gases of water and sulfur compounds would still - if they couldn't escape the sticky fluid - get bigger and bigger until the magma had risen as a tall bubble. When the bubble would burst, the explosive eruption cast molten rock and fire far and wide. The bubble they saw rose beside the railing of the platform, and the burst came before Rosek could escape.

Hellfire hit him mid-running and showered the control panel for the power relay, both covered in sticky flames. Like napalm from the yore days of warfare upon Earth. He screamed, rolled upon the scalding hot platform to quench the eating flames. Desperate hope all in vain. The power relay system might be lost in seconds if the touch panel wasn't saved, and the circuits could fuse by the heat. There was a single carbon dioxide extinguisher on the platform...

...yet there was not enough time to save both Rosek and the relay system.

Yet high above, at the edge of the Theurgy's hull, a certain Ash'reem stumbled by the fierce wind that came his way. Lucan did not have to turn around to look, for he could see it happen with his imagination and his understanding of Arcorn Neotin's medical scans. The Engineer would try to compensate for his loss of balance with his wobbly legs. He might even be quick about it, yet the wind was well timed, and quite uncompromising. Its course was perfect, ripping the last choked cry of ultrasonic panic from his mouth. Lucan knew that as Ash'reem, a species belonging to the water, Arcorn Neotin would not feel the wonderful feeling of flying that came with falling to ones own demise. The Chief Medical Officer also knew that he would have no time to feel the ground that greeted the front of his multi-coloured face, shattering the cartilage in his countenance into hundreds of pieces - driving them back into his brain. He wouldn't feel his pelvis straining against the sudden force of gravity, that they would give in quite immediately - dislocating both hips and breaking clean down the centre. Neither would Lieutenant Neotin feel his solar plexus cracking from the sheer force of the fall, nor his soft skeleton fracturing and breaking apart - spearing his amphibious lungs.

Luckily for Arcorn Neotin, he would feel none of this. In fact, he didn’t feel very much at all.

Only, perchance, dread for his surviving daughter's fate.

Smiling, Lucan clapped until the shouts from the back sent a ripple-effect through the crowd, which soon made him enact a futile rush to save the poor, poor, Ash'reem's life. "Clear the path! Out of my way!" he cried when word reached him of the terrible accident, and he ran while the beast laughed high and loud inside. It was the perfect murder made in plain sight.

While Eve Jenkins was breaking the glass to the manual decoupling controls, Ester Hamburg was staring into the distance where she lay at the base of the crane.

Her face no longer held any colour, and it had nothing to do with the coating of ash that lay upon her prone form. She had bled her life out underneath the support beam while the Reaver appeared; a sanguine flow along the hull plating - dripping off the edge and into the valley. She would never know if Eve managed to release the crane's docking clamps. Nor would she know if the Theurgy managed to get out of the valley in time. Not even twenty years old, the fourth year Cadet would never become an Ensign. Just as little as she would return to her parents in Athens Greece. They had been opposed to having their innocent virgin girl join Starfleet, probably distraught to hear that she had been branded a traitor in the Federation's eyes, yet thankfully, they were ignorant of how she had been violated during the Niga incident. They would never know, for their little girl had been taken away from them forever.

When Eve twisted the last handle a full turn, there was a metallic reverberation felt in the hull plating as the full weight of the destroyed crane settled on the edge. Three repeated warning signals resounded in the thick air, and then the crane came loose - tearing over the edge and into the sheer drop. The damaged support beams screeched and grounded against the plating in the commotion as they came loose, and the lifeless body of Ester Hamburg was flung into the swarthy air. The jagged support beam had hooked her crushed pelvis, an the massive forces at play had tossed her wide off the hull - making her vanish in the ashen rain.

The crane was gone, and at the cost of one young life, the Theurgy would be able to take off safely.

The second Ash'reem on the bridge besides Morali - CSO Amatras Neotin - tried to wrestle the phaser away from the intruder, only to be shot down by friendly fire from the Theurgy's Security - having opened fire as soon as possible. Thea was firing now too, with no immediate effect. The holographic figure shimmered and ignored the assault, instead whipping her weapon towards Jien Ives, rapid bursts discharged to take down the Commanding Officer.

William Regal had thought that he was on the verge of wresting the weapon from the Ash'reem strumpet, so he bared his teeth at Amikris in a sinister smile; a premonition of what was in store for her. Yet to his horrific surprise, he saw the young woman's gullet open up beneath his eyes. He barely registered the tongue before the impact made his feet leave the floor.

Disembodied pain. His teeth. They were all around him as he fell backwards; torn out of his gums as the tongue had struck into his smile and ripped them out mid-flight when it retracted. Gravel in the back of his throat. No, teeth as well. He did not have the time to feel horror for the fact that he felt the draft of his short flight through the back of his neck. He was still ignorant when he struck the floor - a meaty sound of flesh against the deck plating. He could not even feel the impact. He only felt his head rebound against it. Heard the wet clatter of enamel against titanium. There was something wrong with his jaw, although when he tried to raise his hands to check, they just flailed around with slack fingers. A warm metallic wetness spread through his ravaged mouth. He felt it dribble out his neck too. He felt some of the teeth lodged there fall out.

Only then he tried to scream, eyes staring wide-eyed around him.

He saw the Ash'reem strike the woman and use her as a shield, the rapid bursts of orange energy tearing through woman and making her dance a thermal gavotte in Amikris' grip. The shots were returned; the Cadet smiting the distance. William could not see what happened, but there was no return-fire so the young man had likely fallen. William did not reflect on it, his miscreant life instead flashing before his eyes as he bled himself out on the floor - lungs still pumping air because of the adrenaline rush.