Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Miriam Cross (Doctor) in Main Sim - Underground Cave System - Landing Party

Posted by Captain John Tiberius Glen (Captain) in Main Sim - Underground Cave System - Landing Party
[snip]

Across the gap from the team the large Mother Serpent was being shot at by NE McGuffin and McSlovia two twin red shirt security guys, their shots were mostly it seems scoring small furrows or wounds on the beast, slowing it down some, but its thick hide was clearly quite tough and resilient on normal stun or heavy stun settings. “..SIR!” Cried McGuffin, “..I think we should turn up the settings here!!” He said barely ducking under cover to avoid having his hair seared off by the snake’s laser beam eyes.

“Any higher and you might have this whole cavern down on our heads,” replied Glen. “We’ll have to try and escape some other way.” Glen didn’t want to admit that Cross was right, but it looked as if they were going to have to climb back up that cliff again.

Cross did not know whether to laugh or faint at the sight of the baby snakes wrapped around Tia’s legs. “Lt I did warn you about the ducklings!”

Meanwhile too NE All’ins one of the other security NE’s dove for cover as a lance of red laser beam eye shots came his way, the clipping of the energy though caught his left foot searing off his black boots but thankfully nothing else. Crying out in pain and under the cover and overhang of rock for now at least he was out of the line of fire, “..Argh damnit one of you doctor’s able to get to me?!” he cried out asking for help to tend his injury.

‘’Ssh..ssh stop shouting let’s all be quite ‘’Cross suggested as she made her way to the injured man ,herself moving pretty much like a slithering snake in the hope of not being the second one to be vaporized.Taking a look at his injured foot the female doctor rolled her eyes ‘’Why all the screaming its not as if your leg has been sliced of your body’‘ she mumbled while taking the medical kit off her back and started rummaging through it.

Gritting this teeth in pain as Cross got over, she would see the boot had been burned off on the left side, as had the boot sock, leaving his ankle heavily burned through skin and muscle and lightly down to the bone. “..Well it feels like I got my foot shot off doc!” He snapped a bit unable from his angle to fully see his injured rear ankle. The nerve damage clearly had made him feel like he had no left foot and probably that was more the worry then anything else.

The Serpent Mother had now landed across the cavern out in mostly the open on the ‘floor’ (actually the ceiling like the rest of them) only partly here and there hid by nearby hanging rocks or the like.

“While she is partly hidden, we have a chance to get away! We might not get a chance like this again,” said Glen.

Cross gave a quick glance over the rocks that was shielding her and the man from view’‘Oh dear that’s one hell of a big serpent’‘ she stated ‘’Say it’s your boots I should medicate here’‘ her tone dead neutral as usual.

”..Urgh just do something doc!” he snapped clutching his type-2 phaser and glancing from side to side trying to see the Serpent but being unable too.

Jasper tried again to convey his wishes to the mother snake as he attempted to get better coverage. We are not here to hurt your young. He started again.

Jasper’s efforts again, clearly made the Momma Serpent pause in her attack turning her massive head his way. The glowing red eyes, were clearly one of fury and protective motherly instincts, and what little emotional reading if anything he might get was that the Mother was angry and wanted to probably kill the invaders of her nest.

“Our best way to demonstrate that we mean it no harm would be to get away from it’s eggs and young,” said Glen. “Can we please try not to stand on anymore of them too?”

“Mthunzi!” said Glen, “Now is the point where you tell us how to combat disintegration rays shot out from the head of a giant mythical serpent… And if that isn’t on the syllabus at Starfleet Academy, well then it damn well should be!”

Meanwhile on Tia’s legs, the clutch of litle baby snakes had entwined themselves around her legs, little suckers on the bottom of their bodies she could feel were like suction cups on her skin keeping them in place, their heads seemed to swivel in time to the motions of her body and in time with her heart rate.

Cross was nowhere near the eggs, that much sense she had ‘’That’s a good idea Captain but how will Tia get those baby snakes off her foot? And mummy might think the cavern as a nursery,our best bet is if one of the ships transport us as far away from here sooner rather than later’’ she replied while glaring at the suppose injured man ‘’And you do stop whining like a baby lest that monster gets curious and come over to take a peek!’’ this time her voice was hardly audible.

William for some reason hadn’t thought of ducking or running out of the way, he was much too interested in the reactions of the children snakes. Although the laser had startled him “Turning into a cat to fight Apep seemed to work for Ra” He called out still staring at the children. He looked at the beast from behind whatever cover he’d found with great interest.

They didn’t have much to work with but Glen used what they had. “Cross, attend to Tia and remove those babies, then get the injured out of the way around the corner of this rock! I have an idea! William, you thought turning out the lights wouldn’t help but I’m going to try something anyway. Everyone, turn off your torches and headlamps, then get ready to run, on my mark! Jasper, give me your safety helmet!”

‘’Aye Captain’’ Cross replied going over to Tia ‘’Now do stay still Lt cause something tells me the Captain wants me vaporized for touching the baby snakes’’ she uttered in dismay, as her head was practically inside the medical kit ‘’I knew I had some....Lord of the heavens let it be here’’ the doctor practically cried .

Whatever she must have been looking for Cross must have found since this time she was thanking her Gods,opening up the wrapper Cross crushed the vanilla wafers and threw it on the ground hoping against hope that the small snakes would make a go for it.She looked up at the Chief of Engineer and communicated with a glance no words were needed in the situation they had found themselves in once off run like mad.

Unfortunately the baby snakes didn’t seem interested in it, but what did catch the attention was the Mother snake who broke off its emotional staring contest with Jasper to lance another twin eye laser beams upon the offending wafer vaporizing them. An interesting note though that also happened was one of the beams lanced apart one of the bug buildings in the small city nearby melting or vaporizing many of the bugs.

Not everyone had opted to take a helmet, but Glen had, and so had Jasper. Glen waited for all the lights to go out, and for Cross to finish with Tia and the injured men.

The Doc had set a sweet treat not to far from Tia’s feet and the young engineer, careful to keep her left leg straight, shifted to her right and did a half lunge to see if placing them closer to the morsels would work. But curiosity was one of Tia’s strong suits in the engineering field. Her desire to know how things worked, and how to fix them, was one of the reasons she had been in the top half of her Academy class. Unfortunately, that curiosity wasn’t limited to mechanical things. As she waited to see if the little slithery babies would come off her leg, she reached out a tentative hand and lightly stroked the back of one of the middle creatures wrapped on her appendage. She was curious if it was as slimy as it looked, or dry like Terran scaled creatures. A soft soothing sound fell from her lips as she reached to gently caress one of the babies that had adopted her. “Shhhhhh…. that’s a good slither… you are pretty, aren’t you?

Cross was biting at the inside of her cheek as she watched Tia about to bend down to touch the snakes ‘’You’re not suppose to touch them’‘ she murmured to herself.
As sure as the doctor was looking on,so must be the female snake and that thought alone made her hair stand on end.

At Tia speaking the baby snakes seemed to cease their ‘suckling’ body suctions on her skin and seemed to lull into a sort of nursing movement, all their tiny heads turning up towards the sound of her voice, even though they couldn’t see up to her face/mouth.

The doctor turned back to obey the Captain’s second order and caught the ‘Non injured’ man by his tunic.’‘On the word ‘Go’ from the captain we’ll run like mad understood?’’ she asked the poor guy with only one boot.

The last thing Cross did was try the transmitter again.

No results came in on the communicator to or from the Merrimack.

“Are you quite finished?” Glen asked Cross. “Dammit Cross, I’m a Captain not a Parasitologist!”

‘’Neither am I’’ Cross was at breaking point and thought if the snake won’t get Glen she would ‘’I’m waiting for you to shout run, my dear Captain’’ the doctor responded through clenched teeth.

One at a time, Glen switched on the headlights on the two helmets, and then he threw them over the head of the giant snake and behind it. He hoped that the combination of the bright lights, the movement and the noise as they hit the stone floor, would distract it in the opposite direction and away from them. If it worked, he would call out the signal for them to run away.

As Glen had thrown the helmets, their movements caught the Mother’s attention, the lights spinning about in the air also made the bugs which had scurried out from the cover of the destroyed building the Mother had destroyed freeze from whatever they had planned to do falling still.

Just as Cross and the injured (but not injured?) NE security guard limped off for more cover, there was a rumbling sensation greater then even the mother serpent’s arrival. The whole caveran seemed to splitter apart as if by some giant shockwave struck it. Peering all around them the entire surface of the cavern was peeled back as if by the hand of the gods. One would expect the vacuum of space peering in with the endless void of space to suck them out, but seems luck was in their favor as a noticeable faint shimmer of some kind of forcefield was evident, but all this was then sheared away when a all encompassing red-fiery explosion just slammed all around the shield bubble the result further being every got thrown this way and that.

When the felling of the hell itself visiting them passed 10 seconds later it was to find themselves floating within the moon strewn rubble on a chunk which contained the shield bubble. Peering into the now vacuum of space, sparks of energy and the swirls of what seemed a black hole or some other kind of vortex was drawing in it seemed a massive Serpent ship with several smaller ones already breaking up behind it. Somehow they werent being drawn to it…

With a wink the vortex as quickly as it seemed to appear winked out sucking in the massive ship and its smaller escorts, to some size far smaller then their vision could see. With that wink out, there was another baleful cry coming from the Mother Serpent, something akin to sorrow/anger before it seems as it ended the fight seemed lost upon it. Its cry also caused little tinier squeaks of sorts to come from the baby Serpents around Tia’s legs still thankfully uninjured. These squeaks turned the sorrow/angered looking Mother to look her way but thankfully now no fiery laser eyed death was coming their way for the moment.

”..Orders sir?” the two mobile NE security guards spoke up from their own cover nearby.

It took Glen some seconds to process what had just happened. I turned around to see that the option of climbing back up the cliff was no longer on the table - the cliff had vanished, along with everything else. The whole planet had disappeared, just exactly as history would later record. However, they had somehow survived, still within the odd upside down force-field that now seemed to be the right way up. “By Fingale, what just happened?… Er… maintain a weapons lock on the creature… and er… standby!”

“I need some answers,” Glen said. “What exactly is this force barrier causing this bubble?”

Glen, CO

Cross decided the best thing to do was close her eyes and hold on to the injured man .The doctor had given him a rather potent painkiller since there was no time to do anything else ,knowing it would make him drowsy she had no choice but to grab him from his tunic making sure she held on to him.

Cross Dr.

William looked around in astonishment. He frantically grabbed his scanner and started to get to the bottom of this “Well captain I’d take my hat again if I could, you might be the first man to unmake a planet with two helmets and some flashlights” He called out, masking extreme nervousness with humour.

CSO