The rumble of weapons fire from outside the ship came to an abrupt end and gave way to an eerie silence in the halls of the Nausicaan ship.

The away team moved methodically through the halls, clearing corners with caution but moving with pace. There wasn’t time to be lost. “The Hej’ogt should be just up ahead,” said Alex, reviewing his Tri-corder readings one last time.

He approached the right-angle corner and his composure faltered for a moment as he emerged in the threshold without first clearing the danger.

Wham!

The butt of a disruptor cracked him in the head. Almost immediately, he felt a tightness in his chest as a dump of adrenaline turbocharged his heart, like a shot of nitrous into the cylinders of a combustion engine.

“Captain!” K’vagh growled as he saw a group of four Nausiccans emerge from the corner, weapons in hand. He sighted his rifle and squeezed off a bolt into the first Nausiccan’s chest, knocking him back as sparks erupted from his armour.

The sound of the shot drew his fellow Klingons to charge the enemy. Slinging their rifles, they drew their blades and rushed their opponents with ravenous roars. The clash of metal upon metal echoed through the halls, as bat’leths met the cold casing of the Nausicaan’s disruptors that they had no option but to use as shields against the onslaught of baakonite.

Alex calmbered to his feet, dazed and partly disoriented. Where there were four Nausicaans, he saw eight, shifting in and out of focus like a faulty camera lens. K’vagh dragged him back, narrowly avoiding being clipped by the point of his ally’s blade, “You’re bleeding!” He barked, shifting his attention between he fight and his captain’s wound; a superficial laceration to his right eyebrow, sending a trickling stream of blood down his face.

Alex pushed through the discomfort, blinking his eyes to regain focus. “I’ll be fine!” he said, wiping his hand across his face.

The body of one of the Klingons landed at their feet. A deep lavender fluid oozed from the warrior’s neck where a Nausicaan blade remained lodged.

Alex drew his sidearm, unable to bring his rifle to bear in the close quarters. Pointing the barrel at the owner of the blade, who was diving to retrieve it from the fallen warrior, he fired, stunning him in a blast of nadions.

The remaining two Nausicaans collapsed lifelessly. Their throats, slashed by Klingon blades. There was a brief moment of respite before the victorious warriors approached the stunned Naussicaans and raised their weapons for a killing strike.

The first Bat’leth fell, aligned for a piercing strike at the unconscious creature’s head.

Clang! Its edge scraped against baakonite, a flash of sparks. K’vagh’s Mek’leth was crossed with his brother’s sword, defending the helpless creature. “We do not kill that which we have already subdued, brother,” K’vagh growled, “Or was your mother a backstabbing Romulan?”

The two Klingons locked eyes and snarled like vicious beasts, “Enough!” Alex interjected.

“I’m not here to exterminate the Nausicaan crew! We need to find the Hej’ogt and neutralise it; that is our only objective. Leave these men alone!” he added, regaining his focus.

The Klingons remained at a stalemate for several seconds, and tension built in their bodies as they anticipated the others’ next move. The swordsman yielded, “As you wish!” he uttered in disappointment.

“K’vagh, the door,” Alex ordered, pointing towards the room his scans indicated was their destination.

K’vagh sheathed his blade and cautiously approached the threshold, withdrawing his Tri-corder, he scanned the room ahead. “It’s shielded, faint Triolic readings!” he reported.

Alex nodded, “Everyone, cover us as we make entry,” he said, taking up position beside K’vagh as he prepared to breach. “Go dynamic, flash and clear!” he ordered.

K’vagh nodded, retrieving a small charge from his pouch and affixing it to the door. Alex readied himself, avoiding the fatal funnel and preparing a stun grenade.

“Breach!” K’vagh exclaimed, triggering the detonator. The shaped charge cracked the duranium alloy with a thunderous boom. Through a veil of smoke, a shower of debris littered the corridor as fragments of the shattered door scattered in all directions.

Alex tossed the grenade into the room as K’vagh shouldered his rifle, ready to make entry. A bright flash burst from the room, accompanied by several more loud bangs. K’vagh proceeded first, taking a point of domination as Alex followed behind, crossing behind the Klingon to clear the opposite side of the room. “Clear!” they both said one after the other, verifying there was no one in sight. A moment to relax, Alex took stock of the surroundings.

Inside the room stood a pedestal behind a forcefield, radiating with energy. The Hej’ogt was nowhere to be seen, but upon the pedestal, a serpent’s effigy hovered weightlessly; apparently defying gravity.

‘What is that?’ Alex thought to himself. K’vagh approached the forcefield and took a reading. “This appears to be an incredibly powerful forcefield, scans cannot penetrate it!” he said in astonishment. “It appears to be drawing power directly from the warp core!”

“Can you disable it?” Alex asked, mesmerised by the intricate detail of the effigy. It bore a striking resemblance to the serpent carving of the Hej’ogt, and the serpent head was around the same size, though now apparently bonded to a staff resembling the coiled body of the snake.

“Not from here, we will have to—” Interrupted by the sound of disruptor fire, K’vagh dropped his Tri-corder and drew his weapon, pointing it towards the door. There was a brief but furious struggle occurring beyond the threshold. Moments later, the sound of metal crashing to the deck, and the room went silent.

“Captain Dubois!” a raspy voice called from out of view. “You are proving to be much more troublesome than I anticipated!”

“I can’t let you keep the Hej’ogt!, you don’t know what it’s capable of!” Alex yelled in response, keeping his weapon pointed at the door.

“Oh, I know exactly what it can do! The question is…do you?” A pair of hands presented themselves across the threshold, showing no threat. A moment later, the Nausicaan captain emerged and revealed himself. “I’m unarmed. It’s time we talked,” he said.

Alex didn’t have an ounce of trust for the creature; he kept his rifle pointed and saw out of the corner of his eye that K’vagh was doing the same. “You’ve got two minutes, start talking.”

“And then what? Are you going to kill me?” The Nausicaan said with swagger. “We both know Starfleet doesn’t execute the unarmed!”

“Why did you attack the Azurak and my ship?” Alex barked.

“It wasn’t personal, just business. My employer would rather have kept our operation a little more clandestine; some drastic measures had to be taken,” the Nausicaan explained.

“Lies!” K’vagh bawled, feeling his anger boil under his skin.

“Your opinion, Klingon!”

“Explain yourself, what do you want with the Hej’ogt!” Alex said sternly.

“The Hej’ogt, as the Azurak call it, is more than just a religious artefact. It’s a beacon to another dimension. Half of two pieces, a technology that was thought to have been destroyed millennia ago, when the Iconians reigned over the galaxy!” The Nausicaan said, deviously.
“My employer is a collector of such artefacts from a bygone era. And needed this piece to complete his collection!”

“I find it hard to believe your employer wants to pose a biological weapon for prosperity!” Challenged Alex.

“What he does with it is his business, so long as he pays handsomely for my talents.” Said the Nausicaan dismissively. “It took me two years to locate the first half, and another two to find the second. Only the completed article will satisfy the contract!” he gazed upon the serpent effigy behind the forcefield with admiration; even to him, it held some beauty.
“Individually, the two halves are deadly, the curse of the Iconian purge. But together, they bridge the gap between worlds. ”

“Are you suggesting the Iconians created the Hej’ogt?” Alex asked, a little curious.

“Who knows, it wasn’t relevant to find out who made it, just where I could locate one.”
Surreptitiously, the Nausicaan captain reached into his pocket, out of view and retrieved a small device.
“But, I did discover one thing, very surprising when the two halves came into close proximity.”

“And what’s that?” said Alex

The Nausicaan grinned, “The veil between our two worlds is thinner than you might think!” With a flick of the wrist, he depressed a button on the device in his hand.

Almost immediately, the forcefield dropped, and a deep blue glow flickered and filled the room; apparently emanating from the effigy.
Within seconds, the effigy began to twist and contort, hissing and screeching like the wretched creature it bore the resemblance to. It appeared to be alive.

Around the room, ghostly amorphic apparitions appeared, gathered in worship to the serpent. The spectres appeared to levitate off the floor as balls of energy began flowing from the serpent to a single orifice on their foreheads.

Alex and K’vagh, caught off guard by the display, failed to recognise a squad of Nausicaan’s assembling inside the threshold to the room, effectively outnumbering them 2:1.

“What trickery is this!” K’vagh snarled.

“No trick, Klingon. They are as real as you or I!” the Nausicaan captain said feigningly.

Alex whipped out his Tri-corder and verified, triolic waves were registering at dangerous levels, irradiating the surrounding floors and walls.

“Now, captain, it’s time you—” Suddenly, a bolt of green energy shot past the Nausicaan’s face and interrupted his statement. At the door, Korgh, Vekrah and a trio of other Klingon warriors burst into the room, blades and disruptors cutting down the Nausicaan crew as they fought with ferocity.

“batlh poH!” Korgh cried as he took aim at the Nausicaan captain and pulled the trigger. The creature fell in a lifeless heap on the floor, his wound smouldering.

Within moments, the squad had been dispatched, and one of the Klingons attempted an overhead strike to one of the spectare’s heads. The blade passed right through, slicing only into a conduit, sending the Klingon flying backwards from the power of the discharge.

“What madness!” Vekrah reacted, passing her hand right through the body of another ghost.

“Impressive timing again, Korgh!” Alex stated, impressed.

“The ship is disabled, the crew is routed! We should destroy this… thing and be done with it!” Korgh replied, unimpressed by the apparitions that surrounded them. His many years of experience left little that could surprise him.

“Agreed, but I’m not sure how. These readings…” Said Alex, reviewing his Tri-corder data.
“The room is becoming saturated with Triolic radiation. If we don’t leave now, we could receive a lethal dose!”

“What about the Hej’ogt?” Korgh asked.

“The composition of the alloys in the walls and floor is changing rapidly! Spatial charges might not cut it!” said Alex, his voice carrying his frustration.

“Then we destroy the ship!” Korgh proclaimed

“No, it might not be enough; we need to be sure!” Alex scratched his head and thought for a moment. “The forcefield!” he yelled, rushing over to the dead Nausicaan captain’s body, “He reached into his pocket just before the forcefield dropped!” After a moment of frantic searching, Alex found the device. A small pebble-shaped piece of equipment with a single interface.

He depressed the button, and the forcefield began to flicker, but shorted out almost immediately. “Dammit!”

K’vagh took some readings of his own, scanning the pedestal below the serpent. “Captain, the pedestal. It’s feeding power to the serpent directly from the warp core!”

“If we overload it, it might just work!” Alex said, drawing his phaser and setting it to maximum. At the same time, K’vagh took up position by his side, aiming his own phaser and prompting the other Klingons to do the same.

With synchronisation, the group discharged their weapons at the base of the pedestal. The serpent screamed as if in immense pain. As if tied to the serpent somehow, the specteres let out their own shrieks of agony. They began glowing brightly, charging with excessive amounts of energy before fading away back beyond the veil.

As the pedestal vaporised, the serpent absorbed a torrent of energy and fractured like glass. Scattering across the room in countless pieces.

The glow of the triolic waves faded, and the danger was subdued.

“Captain’s log: Supplemental.

The U.S.S. Cunnungham has departed with the remainder of the Nausicaan crew in custody for questioning over the events of the past few weeks. I have extended my gratitude to the Klingon captain Korgh and his crew for their assistance in bringing this crisis to a close. I have set a course for Starbase 93 to put the Fairfax in for repairs. All that remains now is to reflect on some of the finer details of this plot and what the consequences might have been if we failed.

Captains’ Ready Room, U.S.S. Fairfax

Alex set down a cup of coffee in front of his first officer, a well-deserved luxury to unwind with after the events of the past few weeks. “I’ve been reviewing the federation database to see if I can find any reference to the spectres we encountered with the Hej’ogt,” he explained, logging into his terminal.

“The ghostly beings you mentioned?” Wallace confirmed, taking a sip of the steaming beverage.

“Exactly, only one thing came up when I cross-referenced the description with Trioloc waves… Stardate 46001.3. The Enterprise-D reported encountering a species on Devidia Two that existed out of phase with the rest of the universe… by a 0.004 variance.” Alex explained, presenting the log entries.

“That’s a big coincidence, similar to the virus that infected the ship,” Wallace said.

“And the description of the beings they encountered closely resembles what I witnessed on the Nausicaan ship,” Alex added. “There’s more, Dr Harper thinks the virus possesses a microcentrum cell membrane. Consistent with the life-forms discovered on Devidia.”

“You think they’re connected?” Wallace asked curiously.

“There’s no way to be certain, but it looks that way… Maybe the Hej’ogt was some sort of seed that would allow the Devidians to terraform an environment to their needs. We know so little about them, it’s impossible to tell.” Alex leaned back in his chair, nursing his coffee. “One thing is for sure: we need to be wary of an encounter with this species again,” he cautioned

“What about the Azurak? They found the Hej’ogt originally. There could be more of them out there,” Said Wallace.

“I’ve already sent word to the diplomatic corps to pass on the message. Hopefully, they’ll be a little more cautious about gathering their relics in the future.” Alex explained.

“Here’s to hoping,” Wallace toasted.