“All God’s angels come to us disguised.”

James Russell Lowell (1861)

Three incandescent, shining figures bathed and clad in a startling ethereal light that the eye could not see, hung motionless above the undulating grey swell of the endless ocean and regarded the outsiders without emotion.

Awakened from their centuries – long slumber by the return of the storms, the trio could only watch in dismay as The Watcher (once the most venerated of their number – the one entrusted to stand the long vigil and remember all that they had once been, lest they faded completely from the memory of this world) tore apart the distant Rig in its incandescent fury.

The sky above was punctuated by the exhortations of the storm, a joyous hymn to their kind that returned vital energy to the core of their collective being, bringing them back into this world and was slowly awakening their people for the purgatory of nothingness where they had endured.

The coruscating flashes of energy that lashed the horizon line from the direction of the outsider’s strange structure were of an altogether different genesis, as The Watcher smote his rage upon the alien construction.

For beings primarily composed of energy, the Ionic particles of the planet – wide storms were as natural as breath to a newborn. The strange and harrowing energy – signatures that were emanating from the rig as The Watcher tore it apart, were as alien as the people that had invaded their world, and it sickened the trio just to experience the strange wavelengths washing out from the dark platform from even this distance– a poison to their purity.

They dared approach no further.

What effect this pollution was having upon The Watcher, they could only guess. Rage was virtually an unknown concept in their society and to bear witness to its progeny was terrifying to them. That this violence originated from the best of them – was utterly mortifying.

As the wind tore around them and the peaks of the relentless waves brushed at their very feet with enquiring sprays of effervescent foam, eventually one of the three turned its featureless face downwards to better regard the tiny fragile creatures that languished in the turbulent waters below.

Captain Monique McDowell felt both her last vestiges of strength and her resolve start to fade.

Clung desperately to the bobbing nose of the type-10 shuttle, as the “Sounion” ducked and rose with the undulating tide, Monique felt the pervading chill in her numb fingers as she tried to maintain a grip on the semi – conscious form of Natalie Søgaard and fought to staunch the nausea that gripped her stomach.

With the grey overcast negating any attempt to calculate how long the survivors had been in the water, Monique conceded that it subjectively felt like days, but the fact that neither had yet to fully succumb to the debilitating effects of hypothermia, conceded that it was more likely a matter of hours.

Her concern was not primarily for herself, but rather for the welfare of her Chief of Security. Nat had taken a phenomenal risk when she had placed herself between the terrible bolt of energy hurled by the mysterious creature of light, aboard the rig. That Nat hadn’t perished outright as a result of being struck by such a colossal energy discharge was nothing short of a minor miracle.

With both Starfleet officers consigned to the cruel mercies of the uncaring sea, it was impossible to accurately assess the extent of Nat’s wounds, but as her state of lucidity seemed as precarious as the ebullient flow of the waves – McDowell fervently hoped that their absence would be noted by the USS Astute or the Genodyne Systems staff at Mariner’s Deep, and rescue would not be far away.

It seemed such a tenuous and forlorn hope, but in such times the mind clung to whatever it could.

With her pale, sickly face alternating between the ghostly halogen wash of the strobing emergency beacon on her chest and the fierce cracks of vivid lightning above, Nat’s ravings were starting to wear on Moniques last vestige of nerves.

“Oh! One of them is looking right down at us….” Nat slurred and one of her hands emerged from the frigid swell to wave sluggishly to whatever apparitions she persisted she could see.

Monique frowned (this action giving her worsening migraine fresh rein) and worried that this obvious symptom of concussion would worsen and Nat would soon succumb to shock and drift into an unconsciousness from which she would never surface from again.

“You don’t say?” She muttered as she struggled to maintain her position, half in the water using Nat’s flotation device to try and maintain enough purchase to climb to the nose of the shuttle as it bobbed precariously, like some desperate limpet.

“It’s okay Captain.” Søgaard turned her addled attention to reassure Monique and smiled dreamily. “I didn’t believe in angels until I could see them either!”

Monique had, in fact, been raised in the Lutheran faith growing up in her native Philadelphia but had long drifted away from questions of faith and theology. Not that she did not believe that tents of faith and principles of science could not comfortably co-exist in a causal universe, rather that she did not want to believe in a God that had chosen to take her husband from her and leave her to endure without that perfect love.

It had only been little over a year since Darius’ entire expedition had been lost during the destruction of the Reliquary of Ost when a long – buried Alien Crystalline Entity, that had led dormant underneath it for eons in the desert sands of Primar – Majoris#7, had torn free into the heavens – taking all that she loved with it **.

Monique squinted against the dour, darkening sky and saw nothing that elicited such hope in her heart.

“Right now, Lieutenant, I’d settle for any miracle if it got us out of this mess.” She commented sourly.

“So pretty……” Nat gurgled happily, and Monique thanked whatever powers that be that at least her companion was still conscious, even if she was clearly hallucinating and deranged by the ordeal.

High above the pathetic raft of shredded hopes, one of the shimmering figures sought the attention of its fellows and with a brilliant shining gesture, it pointed down to where Natalie Søgaard peered up at them from below.

“It sees.” The figure signalled to its peers.

A long pause as the remaining two beings of pure energy turned their attention from the deplorable sight of the destruction of the rig and regarded the two, insignificant outsiders in the pounding surf below.

“Impossible.” The Second dismissed emotionlessly. “They have never seen us since they came here. They lack the means to do so.”

The First being peered closely at the fragile beings below, once seemed to be waving at them.

Although it shared its fellows distain for those that had come to their world and tamed the storm, forcing their inevitable retreat, it had long been the one of their company to always advocate for reason in the face of opposition.

“No…it sees.” The First persisted, convinced that somehow – the creature below could perhaps do what generations of its people seemed wholly unable to do and could actually perceive those that walked beside them – the unwilling that shared this world long before the outsiders came.

The Third of the beings regarded its companions and indicated the fury that The Watcher was unleashing in the distance.

“What of it?” It countered, “They are as poison to us. Even now their power corrupts the Watcher. In turn, his anger threatens to corrupt us all. What are we to do?”

The Second replied. “Maybe the Watcher is right? If we destroy these outsiders and scour any trace of their machines from the planet, maybe all will heal and be right once more?”

The Third shook its head and explained patiently.

“This is not our way. That is their way. To do so, we risk becoming like them and then all that we are will be lost.”

As the storm raged gloriously above, the First spoke once more, it’s tone thoughtful as it pondered other possibilities.

“If they can see, then maybe they can be made to listen. To understand the damage that they have wrought?  Maybe they can be reasoned with, they could be persuaded to leave our world perhaps?” The First ethereal being wondered aloud.

Not unkindly, the Second being challenged the First.

“Call then. Speak to these creatures and appeal as you may but know that they are primitives and cannot conceive of their trespass or even comprehend the scope of the damage inflicted by their petty transgressions.”

The First being nodded and reached its consciousness towards the tiny creatures below, imploring with every fiber of its being and entreating them to hear its missive, pleading for reason in the fractious chaos of their strange, organic minds.

Eventually it hung its head in abject disappointment and felt a pervading sense of sadness at the futility of it all.

“They cannot hear.” It conceded, full of regret and finality.

“Maybe they can, but they choose not to.” The Second replied, feeling it’s comrades’ disappointment. “They are fragile and impermanent things. They fear the storm that brings us life. Let us then turn our attention to greater matters?” It said gently.

As one, all three turned their attention back to the horizon, where bright explosions of light and washes of strange energy spoke of The Watcher’s fall from grace.

“The Watcher’s mind is lost to us.” The Third being spoke with a growing sense of trepidation. “What are we to do?”

“We must return to the others.” The Second reasoned levelly. “This doom is upon us all and cannot be averted by we three alone.”

As the trio of beings rose into the invigorating succor of the storm and purposefully ascended like indistinct seraphim into the wind – ravaged skies, the First that had spoken looked back thoughtfully at the tiny creatures that were left dwindling behind, mysterious organic interlopers clinging to the remains of their strange craft.

“Surely a sentient being lacking in a shared codex of communication, was a sentient being still? And where there was sentience, there must be empathy.” It mused as it lifted into the bruised skies.

“And with empathy, surely there is always hope?”

((** Authors Note – See archived Mission – USS Sacramento: All Tomorrow’s Yesterdays – Bravo Fleet )