Mission Archive

"Shaking Things Up"
[previous "What a long, strange trip it's been..."]

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Setting: PI ALPHA III, Underground Akitashiinu Den
Stardate: 30148.1520

With Seska and Maro attending the injured Akitashiinu, Jayson decided to join Doctor Doyanne in her examination of the impaled Yxidii.  The growing pool of whatever liquid had come out of the alien creature had made it difficult to get close.  Still, both the CMO and OPS officer managed to get as close as they each cared to be.

"Those things appear to be as nasty as they are ugly."

The OPS officer said as he stretched his neck just a little more.  As curious as he might have been, Jayson had not been feeling brave enough to venturing within arms' reach of the thing, dead or not.

"Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder.  I am sure that we look just as strange to them as they look to us.  As I recall, the first time the Ferengi saw a Terran, they were disgusted beyond words."

Doctor Doyanne's words, as true as they might have been, had not reassured him in the least.  All that the OPS officer had seen of the fight had been the way the Akitashiinu had been tossed around leaving everyone to guess as to what matter of beast it had been fighting against.  Now that Jayson could lay eyes on the beast in question, all he could see was a monster born of someone's deranged nightmare.

"How was it able to be invisible?  I don't see any sort of device that could act as a personal cloak.  Even with nano-technology a cloaking device would still require some sort of visible emitter and a sizable power source."

"There is something different about their skin, some sort of residual energy field that leaves me to believe that the invisibility we witnessed is not technological in origin but rather biological."

Jayson could hear in the Doctor's words a mix of disbelief and interest.  If the Yxidii could in fact become invisible without the need of any external tools or equipment, this would give them a drastic advantage in any close combat.

"So you're saying that there could be more of those things around and we would not even know about them. I have to admit that I am not feeling overly safe right now."

Doctor Doyanne nodded in agreement and glanced back at the two Akitashiinu understanding that their feral abilities had been the perfect counter measures against the Yxidii's invisibility.  As long as the crew of the ANUBIS stayed near one of those wolf-like beings, the odds of them being surprised by an unseen attacked would be greatly reduced.

As the two Ensigns studied in more detail the dead creature, Commander Maya joined them. As a devout scientist it had been surprising that the acting First Officer had not been here earlier to take a closer look at the now visible attacker.

"Fascinating."

The Commander's admiration made the other two officers smile, but the sound of an oddly shaped metallic sphere rolling on the rocky terrain made everyone freeze.  No one had a chance to even think about what the object might have been when it suddenly exploded.

The force of the explosion threw the three Officers against the far wall so hard that all three were knocked out instantly.  In that state, none of them could do anything as large fragments of the cave's ceiling came crashing down near them.

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As he drifted in and out of consciousness, Jayson felt as if he had been floating, moving without the use of his muscles.  Thoughts and memories of being carried as a child came back to him until he was deposited with a certain amount of care back onto the rocky ground.

By the time he an the others regained their wits, they found themselves back on the moon's surface.  No traces of the Akitashiinu could be seen, which of course left the OPS officer to wonder if the Yxidii had not been involved with what had happened.

Just as Commander Maya had been about to speak, the three officers were engulfed in some sort of transporter beam. What immediately caught everyone's attention had been the fact that there had been a total of six forms being transported, three of them unseen other than by the transporter effect that surrounded them.

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