Moooo..ving Out

Posted on Fri Oct 13th, 2023 @ 2:49am by Commander Kevin Lance
Edited on on Fri Oct 13th, 2023 @ 2:51am

Mission: The Return
Location: Outpost 382
Timeline: Current

on:

{Outpost 382}

Kevin’s ad-hoc team of three approached the Outpost’s medical building. It had taken some convincing as the executive officer was reluctant to split her forces even further but his argument that more ground would be covered quicker won the point although the evident tension between Kevin and K’ner might have had greater weigh in the Commander’s decision.

The outpost continued to be eerily empty as the small team advanced in travelling overwatch with Kevin taking point. The movement technique sacrificed security for speed but after emphasizing the urgency of collecting information from the final sites he could hardly dally. Even if it meant putting himself in a more exposed position.

The medical building was a squat two-story building painted in brilliant white with, Kevin imagined, a big red cross on the roof. It was situated well away from other critical infrastructure such as the command HQ, power generation, and weapons storage to prevent, one assumed, inadvertent collateral damage in the event of an attack. The large double doors to the facility were closed but there were still no signs of life, humanoid or Undine.
“Scan the building,” Kevin ordered the science officer that had been assigned to him, “Any life forms?’

“There are several large signatures,” the science officer reported, “but I can’t get a decent reading on them.”

“Where are they?” Kevin asked.

“In the back half of the building.”

“Right, cover my move,” Kevin moved out of cover and advanced towards the double doors of the medical building. Keeping his phaser rifle up in firing position, he swiveled left and right and up and down, search for potential targets. He reached door without incident and when he was satisfied there wasn’t anyone immediately inside the building, he opened one of the doors and signaled for the other two to move up.
All three officers moved into the reception area sweeping the aim of their rifle to cover the corners of the room. A single long hallway extended deeper into the facility.

Kevin gave the hand and arm signal to move down the hallway in a staggered file, checking the doorways as they went. All of the offices and treatment rooms were empty. The science officer continually checked his tricorder for any changes to the life form readings.

"The strongest signal is coming from the room at the end of the hallway," he reported to Kevin.

The team continued its swift search of room along the hallway as they advanced towards the double doors entering into the room that the science officer had indicated. A plaque on the wall indicated that the room was a medical ward. Unfortunately, there were no windows or other means to get a visual into the room. Kevin place one team member on either side of the door as he prepare to kick in the swinging doors.

On a silent countdown from three, Kevin breeched the double doors and the team of three burst into the ward.

“Moooooo,” was the only comment from the single occupant of the ward.

Kevin dropped the aim of his rifle as he contemplated the scene. What was a cow doing in the hospital? The bovine remained mute on the topic as she chewed her cud and stared at the group indifferently.

Kevin observed the hay that the cow had been eating as well as a trough of water and that it had been tied to a metal pipe extending from floor to ceiling. As he was putting together that the animal had been place there as a distraction, the cow gave a panicked low and it tried to press itself through the wall of the ward.

At the sound of a clatter behind them, Kevin's team spun as one and raised their weapons. In the doorway of the ward stood an Undine warrior with a pair of bedpans that it was tapping together making the clattering sound that had alerted the team. It was otherwise unarmed but a second Undine partly covered by the frame of the door held a biogenetic weapon like a rifle pointed at the team.

The Undine with the bedpans lowered them to the ground then slowly raised its fore limbs as if to indicate that it was unarmed. "Sir," the second team member, an enlisted woman, asked of Kevin without lowering her weapon.

"Hold you fire," Kevin ordered. The Undine has gotten the drop on them and could have attacked first without announcing their presence. But they hadn't. After a moment, Kevin lowered the aim of his phaser rifle and relaxed from the semi-crouch firing position he had instinctively adopted. The Undine relaxed in a similar manner or at least as much as the low ceiling of the ward permitted. The second Undine maintained its aim as did Kevin's two team members.

"Now what," Kevin wondered aloud.

As if in response, the unarmed Undine be began to undulate. Kevin half raised his phaser in alarm and the enlisted woman let off a shot before Kevin collected himself an reinforced his order to hold fire. Fortunately, the shot went wide of its target and the armed Undine didn't feel the need to return fire.

The Undine before the team shrank in size to only two meters and its third leg was absorbed into a humanoid body that was covered in a Star Fleet uniform of an operations officer. The Undine head remain mostly unchanged, albeit smaller to fit the humanoid body that it had shapeshifted in, except for the filling in of the neck cavity and a humanoid mouth.

Kevin did not consider himself adverse to alien physiology but he found the Undine final form somewhat unsettling.

"Don't shoot," the transformed Undine pleaded, "I mean you no harm".

Just when I believed that things couldn't get stranger, Kevin thought.

:off

Kevin Lance
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Norris