The air is suffocating. The antithesis of the open skies outside which are so dry and overwhelming, like the surface of a desert world. Outside the walls, the refinery sucks all the moisture from the atmosphere leaving the lips chapped and the tongue raw as sandpaper. Within this futuristic oubliette, it’s like stepping onto the surface of another, repulsive world.  The air crawls down the throat with long tendrils of choking humidity, soggy tentacles of distasteful miasma that carry on them the unwelcome tang of machine oil and flaking metal. With each vital inhalation, they undulate and slather against the walls of the mouth, leaving thick globules of bitter remnant.

To breathe in is to invite more of the repugnant air in.

To breathe in is to take in the sinful atmosphere.

I must breathe, I must allow the next wave of the invasion.

I push past the need to gag as my stomach acid lurches upward, desperate to purge the offensive clusters of now brackish saliva. My mother had always reminded me to trust my gut, though I doubt her statement was intended so literally. She had always been a wealth of old sayings and inherited rhyme, a flicker of the old ways buried beneath the cold walls of the trade port. In a different life, she would have been a creature of the hedges, all knowledge and rumour; all beneficent epiphanies and gifted wisdom. I had sat at her knee, listening to a soporific voice dance over the howling whine of impulse engines and creaking transport ships. She should have been a creature of cornfields and sunlight-dappled orchards, but we had only fields of duritanium and the endless lowing of cold starships.

‘Your blood will know what is right, what is wrong.’

‘Offer only that which can be given.’

‘Hold fast to your pagh.’

Even the strongest pagh would wail at this sickly reek. My stomach lurches again and I barely stifle it before, once again, I must take an unwelcome breath of fetid air.

Ahead of me, Bahir’s wide shoulders lead the way, slipping deftly through the narrow corridors formed by the rising cargo crates. Towers of multicoloured cubes, bearing a litany of sigils barely visible in the dull green glow that creeps around the corners of the rotting labyrinth. A flash of the brown catches my eye amongst the endless grey tesselation, emblazoned on its side is the silent watching figure of the Cardassian Union. In the twisting shadows, it spies me, smug in the safety of its wide cowl and my stomach protests once more. My mother had many things to say about the Cardassians. Her wisdom was not free of shadows.

Bahir’s closed fist is suddenly hovering above his shoulder and we stop. The barely perceptible shuffle of our footsteps gives way to the droning hum of machinery from further within the container maze. A hungry growl of energy transfer conduits and thrumming machinery has magnified a thousandfold as it bounces around the sharp corners and titanic walls of the warehouse’s twilight belly. It snarls with an insipid bass, with any luck it’s toothless.

‘Trust your gut.’ I hear my mother warn once again.

I risk a glance down towards the tricorder in my hand, the red pulse that indicates Aspis’ location still blinks steadily; further ahead by several metres, drifting in a sea of tepid horrid air. Around the edges of the small devices’ scan radius is only the dark unknown, it seems the disruption field that hangs invisible over the lonely building works in both directions.

No eyes in. No eyes out.

The red light blinks again, winking coyly on the tiny screen of the foreign scanning device.

The serpent woman continues to call us further, deeper, closer. Come little creature, trust in me.

I remember seeing an old movie one night back aboard the ship. Eyma had stumbled upon a trove of animated adventures once committed to celluloid strips, each frame painstakingly drawn with ink upon the flimsy plastic. She had spent weeks showcasing her new obsession to the crew and one night, nestled amongst the comfy cushions of her makeshift sleepover, it had been a showing of The Jungle Book. The sibilant hiss of the serpent makes me shudder even here in the putrid heat.

‘Trust in me,’ it said as its tongue had licked the delicious air.

‘Trust in me,’ it had whispered as it rocked back and forth.

‘Trust in me,’ it had lied.

Eyma had told me that the original book was different, that the serpent was to be trusted. That its disquieting undulations had been a protection for the young Mowgli, a poor boy wandering in a foreign land. Bib had said that Aspis was to be trusted, that she would lead us safely through the dangers of this dark and hostile world. But I cannot escape the warning words of my mother as Bahir signals we should continue onwards with a small wave of his gigantic coral hand.

‘Trust your gut.’