Ansolon Season 02 / Episode 14
by Alan Tripp

2412

Unknown Forest
“The Straits,” Malstrom Expanse

Cmdr. Valyres Morgraz could feel the life flowing around her.

For the empath, it was unlike any sensation previously encountered, except for maybe that one time during survival training on Ephes VI.

“Primal … That’s the best way I can describe it,” she informed her captain.

Shallana Ironwolf wiped her brow. … The humidity making it hot as hell.

Even without the visual evidence surrounding them, she’d have trusted her first officer over scanning equipment any time, any day.

The Betazoid / Vulcan closed her eyes and fought to push through the primal to find any signs of something here that … well … didn’t belong here.

The crew of the now lost Crazy Horse had been force to quickly abandon refuge aboard the Duderstadt-class U.S.S. Sparhawk for the same reasons as the original crew.

No air … the crew dies.

So they followed the Sparhawk crew in beaming down to the surface.

It cost them the last reserves of energy from the batteries, but yet again the entire crew was alive and accounted for with yet another chance to live.

If they’d not drifted through the stargate and into the interior of a Dyson Sphere, the living part would have quickly become dying.

But they were alive and although they had no time to conduct scans from up above, they were alive and wandering around nearly blind in what seemed a tropical rainforest.

Life was so think that with whatever else was around, their scanners were useless.

“For the moment,” the captain had said with that ‘I refuse to give up’ attitude of hers.

But as was said a moment ago … ‘nearly blind.’

Because of her mixed heritage, her telepathic abilities from her Betazoid heritage was limited to her being empathic.

Because of her Vulcan side, those empathic abilities could at times seem magnified.

If not for that Vulcan genetic gift, she’d not be able to cut through the blinding primeval soup of life surrounding them.

So thick with life, it was like trying to hear whispers in a crowded room with everyone talking at once.

But there it was again … something that did not belong.

Or someone might be closer to the mark and that person was in a lot of pain.

“That way,” she said, holding up and arm and pointing east.

“Then that way we go,” Shallana said.

“MOVE OUT!” the captain ordered in a louder voice.

“Davidson … You have point. Heads on a swivel as who knows what’s out there,” she continued.

Ten minutes later, Davidson up front raised a hand, halting the column.

That same hand wiped sweat from his face on the way back down to his rifle … a rifle he slowly swung from one side in a slow sweeping arc to the other.

There was no need to hush the people as everyone remained quite, even that Bolian from engineering named Hronoc which in itself was rather surprising.

Valyres again closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to make sense of what the patterns of life surrounding them were telling her.

Slowly filtering out this and that mentally as best she could.

And then her eyes flew open.

“RUN!” she ordered, swinging her rifle down from should to ready position.

“I SAID RUN!!!!” she screamed.

And then her scream was overwhelmed in volume by another.

Davidson screamed even as he pulled the trigger on his phaser rifle.

Everyone finally saw what he’d seen seconds before as a giant reptilian head came down from above, clamping shut over the human to where the upper half disappeared down the throat while the bottom half fell limp to the ground.

And then it unleashed a primal roar that had everyone running for their lives.

Respectfully,

Cmdr. Valyres Morgraz
XO, U.S.S. Crazy Horse