"Cat and Mouse 2"

(Occurs immediately after 'Cast and Mouse')

Principal Characters
Vice-Legate Kylar Curran
Lt. Ella Grey
Flight Officer Angelienia

****

USS Galaxy
Deck 30
Jefferies Tube LS Delta-77

"Duck." Angelienia reached out, grabbed Ella by the collar, wrenched her to the side, and fired past her down the Jefferies Tube.

Several meters ahead, in a darkened juncture, a figure dropped to the floor of the tube and lay still.

Ella's groan was muffled into the ground. Landing on her stomach was not fun by any means and she rubbed at her neck. "Who is it?"

"Security," the Ktarian said, still watching the downed crewman. "Must be one of the Vulcan's mind slaves, looking for new recruits."

Ella pushed herself up off the ground. "Think there are more?"

"God hates you, remember?" Angelienia replied without looking down. "How do you think She would answer that?" She cocked her head to the side, listening. "Do you even know how many Security officers there are? Do you know who works on the shift with Victor and me?"

"I need to get to that panel up ahead to check the Legate's position." Ella said, ignoring her questions. "Go check and make sure the coast is clear."

"Me?" the pilot returned with an amused smile.

"I don't want to make you miss out on the opportunity to flex those big, overly masculine muscles of yours." Ella said with a smile.

Angelienia bared her teeth in a silent laugh and slipped down the corridor on quiet feet. A moment passed, then another, and then there was a short scuffle and the soft thud of a body landing on the floor.

"Angie?" Ella whispered. As whispers went, it sounded like a recording set on a notch above mute but she had to work with what she had.

The only answer was a soft, throaty purring sound that might have been a laugh.

"Flea-ridden house cat." Ella muttered, getting her phaser ready and walking carefully towards where the junction. She hoped they'd find the Legate soon and then he could deal with the responsibility of whether or not to blow up the ship. Then again, the Legate was an infuriating sort of person who was probably going to sneer down his nose at her and make snide comments.

Ella gave a mechanical sigh. She wondered if being a mind-slave was really so terrible a proposition.

When Ella arrived at the juncture, Angelienia was standing over a second unconscious Security officer - this one, like the one she'd stunned, an enlisted rating - and turning over her phaser in her hand. "It stopped working," she said with a frown that Ella was pleased to note lessened the Ktarian's attractiveness. "I checked the power and it's still got plenty - but it won't fire. His won't fire either."

"That's not good." Ella commented. Really, what else could she say?

"No, it isn't." Angelienia glanced at Ella. "You worry about the panel and finding the Kelvan, I'll worry about why the phasers don't fire."

Ella looked over at the panel and sighed. "It's fried. Apparently, the phaser was working a few minutes ago for our friend here."

The Ktarian spat wordlessly. "All right, where's the next panel we can use?" She glanced down at the unconscious security officers and kicked one. "Weak-willed fool," she hissed. "If you'd been a real man this wouldn't have happened."

"His possession or playing with the phaser?" Ella asked with some amusement. She enjoyed how ugly Angie looked when she was angry.

"If he'd been like Victor, he would have killed the Vulcan when she tried this," Angelienia snarled. "No one that sees him as a thing could ever understand him well enough to make him theirs." She kicked the rating again. "Where do we go... wait." The Ktarian bent down and picked up a tricorder from the security officer. "Can you set this to find the Kelvan? There's only one on the ship - let's just stop worrying with the ship's computer and do it this way." She thrust the device at Ella.

"I think so. Yeah." Ella said as she set herself to the task." In a few minutes, she had his coordinates.

"Let's go then. We want to be there in case the Vulcan's mind slaves are waiting for him and cart him off to the Central Brig. We don't have enough people top get him out of there if they get him confined." Angelienia started off down the Tube. "You can keep up, can't you?" She smiled. "I'll have to carry you if you can't..."

The very thought made any pain that Ella was feeling completely disappear. "Of course I can."

"I thought you might, Mouse," the Ktarian chuckled as they set out.

****

USS Galaxy
Deck 9
Corridor Near Mooring Umbilical Connect Hardpoints

"I demand to know what's going on!" Kylar felt strong hands pull him up from under his arms.

"In due time, Kelvan. Let's go." They half-pulled, half-dragged the Liaison Officer on down the corridor, leaving the Efrosian behind.

****

USS Galaxy
Deck 9
Atop Turbolift 4

"You're sure he's with this group, Mouse?"

"Yeah." Ella said, staring hard at the coordinates as if she could make the others disappear. There were a lot more of them then she would have liked.

"And the Vulcan is where?"

"The rear," the engineer replied.

"Bad." Angelienia frowned. "You did good with this idea - hijacking the lift car by rewiring the controls so it only accepts local commands, but looks like it's still in the system so we can isolate and ambush them - but you're not up to either a Vulcan or the two others. and you have to be anyway. I can't handle all three at once." Her green cat's eyes luminous in the dim light of the turbolift shaft, she looked at Ella and shook her head. "No help for it. I'll finish mine as soon as I can, but you have to hold one or the other of them for me. Choose."

Ella wanted to say no, that she'd rather go after the Captain now and leave the Legate to whatever fate was in store for him. After all, she wasn't a fighter and it had been months since she'd been training with Victor. But she'd never live that one down. "The Vulcan."

The Ktarian nodded once. "I'll drop first when the doors close, then you when your prey starts to move up to phaser me." She smiled once, a predator's grin. "Don't get dead, Mouse. It wouldn't be any fun if you weren't there to see me with him."

The anger helped, Ella thought. It helped with the sudden knot in her stomach that was competing with the dull ache from the phaser wound. "Go to hell, Angie."

The pilot only laughed in her low, purring way, and readied herself over the opening that Ella had cleared. She held up a single finger, then two, then three, as the party that included the Kelvan entered the lift car beneath them and the doors closed - and dropped silently with a feral look on her face that told Ella if nothing else had, that the predator-ancestors of the Ktarians still lay close beneath the surface.

"From the rest of the World" Part one

Principal Characters;

Dr. Artim (Ens.) Medical Officer

Private Alliya Yhwalyan, Marine Resonance Scout. (APC)

And

Ensign Jeffries (NPC)

(OOC NOTE: Clips from several posts (ones that stuck out in my memory) from various writers of the Galaxy. hope ya don't mind, had an idea and went with it. something a lil different, and sorry for the length of time this has taken to complete and send out.)

NOTE: This takes place directly after CSI part 2

Alliya winced as her hand was yanked from Krieghoff's arm. His mind, the silence she found there, was all torn as she was pulled, yanked away from the tactical contact.

She began to protest as Ensign Jeffries escorted her away, rather forcibly. The comment from Henderson ringing in her ears,

~"Which you unlawfully did to me about five minutes ago," Cass said, "I'm ordering you to report to sickbay and remain there until the CMO tells me you're released for duty. Ensign Jeffries, escort her there, please."~

Sometimes it infuriated her just how little people understood about her culture. Mind reading was not unlawful! It was communicating!!! It wasn't her fault that humans said one thing and thought another. It wasn't her fault that they contradicted themselves *all* the time. Why couldn't they just say what they meant? Why hide behind words? The clarity and truth of thought was all they needed. she hated liars. In fact that was one of the culture barriers, the fact that humans told lies almost every time they spoke, and this one was no exception. Betaziods preferred to call a spade a spade, never hiding behind deception and falsehoods. Yet if anyone called them up on it, especially a non telepath, it was a breach or something, unlawful, illegal, invasion of privacy. She would love to show him exactly what was unlawful in the eyes of her people, just what sort of telepathy was in fact a breach of privacy and ethics.

But now was not the time. As she was shoved, pushed, dragged away from the respite of Krieghoffs presence the voices began again in her mind. Screaming, yelling each one persistent to rise in decibel, until at last Alliya had no idea where she was, what she was doing or even remembering to put one foot in from of the other.

Walking was no longer a motion she could grasp and she sunk into ensign Jeffries arms, her head falling back against his shoulder, her eyes flittering upwards in their sockets.

For a moment there was darkness all around. She tried to scream, scream out against the unprecedented pain rising in her skull. Her mouth opened and shut, like a goldfish in a tank, unable to form a sound, unable to alert anyone to the distress she was in. Unable to fight it.

And then it was as if a million light bulbs went on all at once. Alliya didn't have the chance to realise what was happening as her mental walls crumbled into preverbal dust.

With no barrier from her and the rest of the world, thoughts and feeling bombarded her in an array of pain and colour, her head felt like it was about to shatter. Her body curled tightly into a ball in ensign Jeffery's lap. And then as all the energy was sapped from her, her body fell limp against the crimson carpet.

"Medical Emergency Deck 12 turbolift." The call came into sickbay, rousing Artim from his near sleep at his console that was displaying various test results. Within seconds a medkit was over his shoulder and he was leading two nurses down the corridor towards the turbolift.

***

Alliyas eyes flickered open for a moment, she expected to see the bobbles of the crimson carpet beneath her, or maybe even the dull covers of a bed in sick bay. Her mind wandered as she stared at the nothingness before her.

As her senses began to come back to her she could feel the ebb of the fluids around her, hear the soft crescendo of a symphony of wood instruments and as strange as this sound and feeling was to the young marine for a moment it didn't bother her.

Her body felt relaxed, it felt at peace. Contentment washed over her as the gentle current flowed warm water across her body, gently rocking her with its wake. Thoughts flowed through her mind as tranquil as the sensations that flowed through her body, ~There were no humans, no insidious flatulent odours, no grating counsellors..~

Alliyas face scrunched up for a moment, her mind back tracking over the thought. ~no counsellors?~ She questioned. ~No humans?~ As annoying as humans were with there lack of fluidity of thought and communication she didn't wish to never be around one, and she had never seen a counsellor in her life!

As she began to question the randomness and nonsensicalness of those thoughts her body stretched out. She hadn't thought about stretching out.maybe it was an unconscious act, prompted by the almost overwhelming contentment of this place. She could almost feel the barriers of the fluid itself, more like being encased in goo rather than any form of water. It almost seemed opposed to her flexing and stretching out her tentacles.

Alliya stiffened, she felt her breath still. ~Water? Tentacles?~

***

"What happened?" Artim said to the security ensign that was escorting the collapsed marine, already scanning her with his tricorder.

"Just passed out on the way down here." He replied a little shaken. He stared down at the woman in his arms and shook his head, "Just collapsed. in my arms." he muttered. Weird things were happening all over the ship and so far he had managed to stay clear of it. But now he was in the middle of something. 'Something' being the word of the day. He looked back over his shoulder, staring at the corridor he had just come from. Down there was a dead senator, here was a collapsed marine and somewhere along the line he remembered hearing someone say this was not the first person in the last twenty four hours to experience a rapid deterioration in health.

"Lets get her to sickbay. This might be serious." Artim said to the nurses who were way ahead of the youngish looking doctor and were already carrying her in that direction.

"Whatever Happened to Corran Rex?"

The Mind of Rex - Trill Hosts and Dithparu possessors alike

---------------------------

Well, this was embarrassing.

The entity known as Corran Rex still hosted over a dozen of the Kind, the Dithparu, in the recesses of his joined mind. He had traveled the ship quietly, at the others urging, releasing more and more of their brethren into every Starfleeter who proved susceptible to the Kind's telepathic manipulations.

And then he had tried one of the pilots... that Teyri woman..

And gotten locked in a closet.

It was humiliating, it was embarrassing, it was..

The perfect way to hold someone like him. Without line of sight, he couldn't possess anyone further. And in this remote section of the ship, no one heard his mental cries, no matter how hard they tried to reach out to the others of the Kind.

They had spent hours trying to break free, had even damaged the Host's shoulder trying to batter the door down from the inside.

Now that that had proved fruitless, the Kind turned their attentions inward, to focus their energies to call to another of the Dithparu.

And found themselves surrounded.

----------------------------------------

There exists a place called the Astral Plane, that the telepaths like to refer to. It's not a real place, but a place of thought, of imagination. The scientific truth of it has never been fully quantified, but it exists nonetheless.

It is, in essence, the mind given form.

And Corran - or rather, the beings that comprised the symbiote known as Rex, had figured out how to use it in the war for control of his own body.

The limitations of the physical world were immaterial here. He had summoned up the essences of his past hosts. There stood Jalen in his white lab coat, the universal symbol of a scientist. Funny really,how that had developed in so many cultures.

There stood the impish Venara, in the regalia of her career as a thief, and Nomar, scowling at her from under the hat of his Peace Officer's uniform.

Mekaela, Captain of the TES Surveyor, her uniform all crisp lines and spit and polish shine on her boots. Remy in his conservative business attire, critically taking everything in around him, as Vorzin, a lawyer and a politician, looked on.

Lanet, in the well-worn clothes she'd worn as a "salvage expert" alongside the Doctor, Esanza, and the starship security officer, Jaal.

Baledra stood at the base of the Wall, looking critically, the deep maroon of her century old Starfleet uniform standing out in the washed out colors of the astral plane. That left, along with Corran, only Vorrin, the rogueish smuggler.

All of them stood before one of two Walls. This one, in their own mind, was a mystery. The larger wall, surrounding them, was no mystery at all - it had been erected by the Dithparu, blocking Rex and all it's selves from control of their body.

Unable to topple it, the hosts of Rex had turned to the other, inner wall.

And it was coming down.

"Awakening" - Part II

Lieutenant J.G. Saul Bental, Chief Tactical Officer
Lieutenant (JG) Victor Krieghoff
Ensign Artim, Medical Officer

NPC's:
Rena Lanford (Inhabited),
Medical Officer (Ian)

Appearances:
Commander Karyn Dallas (unauthorized)
Second Officer/Chief Counselor

Rayne Sutea (injured),
Marine

Le'on Khatrowren (injured),
Security Officer

*****

Deep Space 5
Sickbay Main

The stasis pod opened, revealing the still form of a male form, features set in the calm visage of one in deep in the sublime of unfathomable repose. With the since re-cut power flickering lights around the consoles, the occasional spark setting off a chain of flares around them, it gave the figure a somewhat nightmarish look whenever one flashed nearby. His skin was almost translucent, revealing a wiry maze of blue veins that wrapped throughout his paleness.

Karyn Dallas' tricorder chimed off. Anxiously, she pulled it to within view, noticing telltale signs. "His synaptic impulses are increasing. Life signs increasing..." Artim moved to monitor the readings while she warily kept an eye around them, as their security personnel were both out of action.

"Dallas to Galaxy." The comm frequency was met with dead air. Tapping and trying again, she shook her head at the Miran, verifying once more her phaser was set on heavy stun.

Artim tried his own communicator, but realized before he said his own name that it wasn't working. The Miran had nothing else to do but make sure whoever it was in the stasis pod came back ok.

Deep in the haze of memory, the being slowly became aware of himself. Coming out of the almost comatose level of consciousness that had been induced, he now arrived in the dream layer where he floated on a gaseous plane of existence of sheer white. There was no wind, but he drifted, his soul free to fly anywhere he wanted.

He guided himself on a bank of (non)currents of (not)air where the (not)clouds broke to reveal a starkly contrast landscape of black. As he drifted closer, his memory surfaced a single word - Dithparu. The sea of ebon was not dead drab, for as he (not)flew closer, it became apparent that it was *alive*. Forms slithered along atop each other. Many were dead, many more were dying.

He (a name - Taru - came to thought. Was it his own?) (not)coasted to a standing position atop the undulating wave of hungry spirits who desperately tore at his leggings and bare feet. They writhed in revulsion as they could not touch him. The being stared down upon the wave of evil that he rode upon. The dark sea extended as far as his mind could see. Wails carried themselves upon the (not)wind. Each spirit he touched with the bare feet screamed in terror, shriveling in a torturous mutation, teeth and claws bared as it died under him.

Many were dead, these Dithparu. He stored their memory even as he contained the rest. He would take no chances. These deadly creatures were his sole mission; they were his destiny. His memories ebbed back in as he came to a balance. More Dithparu died as others tried to scamper away. The pile grew higher. He felt them battering at his mental defenses, but he knew they would not escape. They couldn't.

An image of a metallic room came to him. A door, surrounded by rock appeared in front of him, even as the room took more shape. He still walked on the ocean of black; that would never change. He knew nothing else.

It came to him as he touched the door. So many... so many had escaped. His abilities had become taxed, strained... he had drawn his entire energies together in a last attempt to take them away once and for all. He was unprepared, and it came close to killing him. His mental faculties had shut down to prevent the others from escaping his own entrapment. It had been close.

The door disappeared. His eyes opened. And he knew. He felt the touch of a Dithparu nearby, and many more in the vicinity.

"They're still here."

Across sickbay, someone else opened his eyes. And screamed in agony.

Saul Bental rose from the blood-stained bio-bed his was layed upon. He reached for his chin, and then withdrew his hand as though he was bitten by a snake. The pain was extremely sharp.

Commander Dallas, hovering nearby between Sutea and Saul, snapped to his voice. She'd seen Artim sedate the CTO. Now the mystery beckoned as to how he awoke. Rushing to his side, she scanned his form.

As Karyn reached him, Saul reached for a nearby PADD with trembling fingers. With his jaw shattered, he was unable to speak without suffering tremendous pain, so he used the PADD as a substitute.

After a few moments, a sentence emerged on the PADD's display.

~He was in my dream. Saying he's against our enemy. Maybe a lie.~

Saul's reddened eyes were fixed on the stasis pod, making perfectly clear who was the 'He' Saul referred to.

*****

USS Galaxy
Deck 9
Brig

Victor dropped the last individual into the holding cell and activated it, sealing the unconscious personnel off. He looked at the controls for a moment, opened the access plate, and removed a module, then removed the same module from all the other cell controls and dumped them in the replicator and hit 'recycle.' It wouldn't stop anyone who knew what they were doing from freeing the four individuals he'd locked up, but it would make it difficult - and short of killing the mind-controlled ratings, it was the best he could do.

Mind control. Who would have believed that that was what was happening? He'd thought it to be some side effect of the ion storm driving the crew mad in the beginning, but what he'd seen inside the mind meld that the entity possessing Lieutenant Hunter had shown him the truth. The parasites inside the Vulcan Science officer had been stupid, greedy, not taking time to understand before they did things. Vulcan melds worked both ways. They were you. but you were them, too. He hadn't seen much of what was inside Lieutenant Hunter's mind because she hadn't been in control during the meld, the Diparthu woman had, and he doubted that she'd seen much o him. The second Diparthu, the male, had seen everything and he'd been torn apart by it, destroyed. The woman had only escaped by fleeing, or she too would have been torn asunder by what he was inside.

The parasite or parasites inside Lieutenant T'lan, however, they were different. He'd learned that much by listening to the four ratings talk among themselves as they manned the brig he'd just cleared. She was trying to take over the ship, had seized the captain, and was making her way to the fool of an Admiral that they had aboard, to suborn her. Commander Corgan had deliberately kept Victor out of Admiral Proctor's path, either out of fear of what Victor would do to the woman if she tried to play tin god over him, or concern that she'd try and demand Victor's transfer to her staff as a pet to be kept on a leash to demonstrate her power. Either would have ended badly. Idiot or not, though, Proctor was still an Admiral, still had access to knowledge and resources that would be useful to the parasites - and that couldn't be allowed.

Nor could T'lan be allowed to keep making slaves to her will with forced mind melds. She'd already suborned the Commander, he knew that much, and had most of the Security staff under her control - people that Victor worked with every day. They weren't his friends, no one was, but they were part of his crew, they'd been given to him by Starfleet, and the thing inside T'lan had no right to their souls. Just because he didn't want them, didn't mean they were free for the taking.

He frowned at the useless phasers he'd confiscated, Commander Corgan had implemented the standard security protocol for an incident like this, and all Starfleet-issue phasers, even the ones issues to the Marine contingent, were locked out and would not fire. except for those matched and issued to individuals that Corgan approved. Victor doubted that he was on the list. Corgan didn't approve of him even when he was in his right mind.

That meant that his old-style Phaser 1 and the compressed tetryon beam pistol he carried were possibly the only weapons aboard that weren't in the hands of the enemy. The Marines might have a way around the lockout - he would if he were in their position - but they couldn't be counted on here. That meant he was going to have to handle the problem. Alone.

As he discarded his combadge to make tracking him harder, and opened up a tricorder to remove the circuit that tracked relative position within the ship - and told the ship where it was - he wondered if Lt. O'Rourke had been taken over. And if telling the thing inside her that he was going to kill the Commander would fulfill his promise to the woman.

"Exorcism" -- pt. 1

Lt. Cmdr. Brian Elessidil
Asst. Chief Counselor

Ten Forward

A diabolical smile distorted the counselor's otherwise pleasant features as he stood over the body of Indigo Renkert. Of all the sensations It had experienced through this host body, the feeling that followed watching another die by Its own assault was nearly euphoric. It knew from Its access to the host mind that this was not an action Elessidil would normally have taken. Something about that made it all the more pleasurable.

The opportunity to relish the experience was short-lived, however. As if a searchlight had suddenly been turned on, the awareness of another presence diverted Its attention. As if the current host were no longer sufficient, It sensed the presence of something far better, something It wanted. Focusing the host's strong telepathic sense It determined it was not on this vessel but farther away. Most of all, It sensed it must have it at any cost.

The two Dithparu-controlled Vulcans It had brought into Ten Forward seemed to sense the same thing. As they looked around in confusion, the Elessidil Dithparu decided that whether they were of Its kind of not, they would not have it. Without a word, It raised the phaser It held and killed both hosts. It would be more difficult for the two Dithparu to get off this ship without corporeal form. By the time they acquired new hosts, It would have Its prize.

Turning on Its heels, It immediately left Ten Forward, Its thoughts running wildly in an effort to figure out a way to get what It wanted. The corporeals' inoperative transporters were not an option, so It set off to procure a shuttle, oblivious to everyone and everything around It.

With every step, Its hunger for what It sensed grew exponentially. If the Others sensed it, surely they would want it too. It knew It must prevent that from happening. Somehow, It would have to fight off not only the corporeals, but Its own kind to get to such a wonderous host. Almost driven mad by Its obsession with the possibility of a new and vastly superior host, It was barely even aware It still occupied this one. That was Its first mistake.

Deep within the host mind, the consciousness of Brian Elessidil, which had been all but snuffed out since It took control, sensed the change in Its focus. For the first time since acquiring this body, It was more interested in something that lay beyond, something It could sense but not see or touch. If It had decided It wanted another host, the Betazoid would be glad to oblige. Gathering all the mental force he could, Brian pushed outward, uniting sheer will and concentration with whatever shred of telepathic and empathic energy he could grab hold of. It was an offensive technique only the strongest Betazoids could muster, one that could cause considerable pain and in some cases, mental damage to an unshielded mind, and he was basically turning it on himself.

With a gasp, the host body doubled over as It felt the sharp stab of Elessidil's assault. "No!" it screamed, staggering to steady Itself. Grabbing Its head, It fought back to reassert Its control over the host mind.

For the first time, It feared the dual possibility of not only not acquiring the new host It so desperately coveted, but the current one as well.

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