"Explain yourself, Commander!" snapped Colonel Tarik impatiently. The tall Romulan commanding officer of the starbase's Marine contingent was in a stormy temper; his jaw muscles clenched and unclenched in syncopated rhythm and his fists were balled so tight his knuckles were white -- or at least a paler shade of green. News of the Banshees' escapades on the Mulluran border had reached him before the sextet of starfighters had even touched down in their hangar, and he had not liked what he had heard. Being responsible for the planning of the coming Mulluran conflict was a demanding and heavy responsibility, and incidents like this just made it all the harder.
Commander Lee Carter stood at rock-solid attention in Tarik's office, eyes locked front and center and her face wearing an exquisitely neutral mask, weathering the storm as best she could. It was not altogether unexpected in light of the fact that her team had failed one of the primary objectives of their mission yesterday.
Before she could comply with the Colonel's demand to explain, however, he raged on, unable to contain his disappointment. "Your orders were to remain undetected. How is it then that you left your cover and engaged the enemy? You and your officers have always been a little too callous about your duties for my liking, but this time you may very well have compromised our entire operation with your Wild West antics!"
That was one step too far for Carter. She knew her team was more than a little lax regarding military protocols, but they were the best pilots in the Federation and she'd stake her reputation, not to mention her life, on them getting the job done. "Begging the Colonel's pardon, Sir!" she snapped heatedly. "But that's not quite the way it happened."
"No? Well, then you had better tell me all about it, and pray it changes my mind about court-martialing the lot of you for high treason!"
Carter calmed her breathing, consolidated her thoughts, and began. "Our mission was to gather intelligence on a supply transport moving along the Mulluran DMZ, only the transport turned out to be a trap specifically designed to capture us. It was cloaked from sensor scans, forcing us to move in closer..." Carter proceeded to describe the entire mission in excruciating detail to Colonel Tarik, who, for his part, sat behind his desk listening intently to every word spoken, never interrupting once.
An hour later, Carter was finishing up. "Commanders Vasser and Phoenix took out the last remaining Mulluran fighters -- fighters that would have been used against us when hostilities finally do break out, I might add -- as the rest of us escaped from the mothership and re-boarded our own fighters, then we took out the mothership as a legitimate target of opportunity and came home."
Tarik leaned his elbows on the desk before him and steepled his fingers, contemplating the report he'd just been given. After a few eternal seconds, he asked, in a voice much calmer than before, "Were any distress signals sent from the Mullurans?"
"None that we could detect," replied Carter. "They seemed to be operating under a cloak of secrecy even deeper than ours had been."
Tarik seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. "Very well," he said at last, "We'll forego the court-martial this time, Commander. Good job on taking out the enemy assets," he said grudgingly. "Dismissed."
"Aye, sir," responded Carter smartly. She turned on her heal and forced herself not to run out of Tarik's office. If the Colonel only knew the things she'd left out of her report, she had no doubt the court-martial would be back on.
The second Commander Carter stepped out of the room, Tarik was overcome with a sudden wave of nausea, but even as he was reaching for the small trash can beneath his desk in case he lost his lunch, the feeling faded and was gone. Gone too were the overpowering emotions he'd been feeling since the meeting had begun; they simply drained from his body like someone had pulled a plug and let them run out like water from a bathtub. He sat back in his chair, feeling strangely depleted and empty now by comparison, and wondered what had just happened and why he'd been so rough on Carter.
"Explain yourself, Commander!" snapped Lee Carter impatiently. After her less-than-enjoyable meeting with Colonel Tarik she'd come straight back to 'Banshee Country' and stormed into Jazz Phoenix's quarters without even knocking.
Jazz was rearranging some mementos on the shelf behind her desk, still in the process of 'moving in', when Carter interrupted her. She set down the small starfighter model she held and faced her CO. How dare she just barge in here! she thought, suddenly livid. "What the hell are you talking about?" she demanded, stepping out from behind the desk.
"What am I talking about?!?" exclaimed Carter incredulously. "I just came from Colonel Tarik's office where I lied through my teeth covering for you! I'm talking about your attitude during our last mission, that's what I'm talking about! I'm talking about your constant insubordination, your subversive insinuations, and your mutinous actions, which almost cost us the entire mission and our lives, that's what I'm talking about!" By now, Carter was shouting at the top of her lungs, and had taken a few menacing steps forward.
Jazz countered with a threatening step of her own. "Maybe if Banshee Squadron had a better leader..." she left the insult unfinished but perfectly understood.
Carter snorted derisively. "Like who? You?" She gave another sputter of derision, making it unmistakably clear to Jazz how utterly contemptible she thought the mere notion was. "Don't make me laugh. You led us into an ambush and were captured by the Dominion the last time you led us into battle. Or have you already forgotten you ten-year stay on that Cardassian prison planet?" All through her tirade, Carter had been inching forward, her anger just a hair's breadth from erupting uncontrollably. A particularly nasty expression twisted her face now as she suggested, "We should have just left you there"
That was enough for Jazz. She closed the remaining distance between herself and Carter in a single bound, hurling herself at her CO fist first, an animal snarl disfiguring her face. It was her full intent to pound this upstart usurper, this over-ambitious pretender who she remembered as a clumsy ensign under her command, into submission. Carter was ready for her though. She grappled with Jazz, grabbing two fistfuls of uniform, keeping her off-balance.
Amid a plenitude of grunting, kicking, and eye gouging, Carter and Jazz slammed each other around the room, smashing Jazz's souvenirs and knocking furniture aside and against the walls. Jazz swung wildly at Carter's head, but Carter ducked deftly underneath and followed up with a solid punch to Jazz's stomach. Jazz doubled over and fell back a few paces, tearing herself away from Carter's hold, but as Carter advanced to land a few more shots, Jazz bolted upright and thrust her knee with tremendous force into Carter's midsection, doubling her over this time. An uppercut upside Carter's chin sent her flying backwards towards the door, which opened right then to reveal Max, come to see what all the shouting and ruckus was about. Carter flew right into her arms, sending both staggering back out into the Banshees' common room.
"What the--?" exclaimed a flabbergasted Max. Then she noticed the mayhem in Jazz's quarters, the torn uniforms, disheveled hair, bloody lips and black eyes her two friends were sporting. "Have you two lost your minds?" she demanded, grabbing hold of Carter to prevent her from launching herself at Jazz again. Unfortunately, she couldn't prevent Jazz from re-launching herself at Carter, and the three of them went down now in a tangle of arms, legs and hair, with a uselessly protesting Max on the bottom.
By this time, the frenzied foofaraw had rousted the other three Banshees, and together they rushed over and pried Jazz from off of Carter, forced her screaming to the floor and dogpiled on top of her to keep her from reacquiring Carter's throat. Max had Carter in a stranglehold to keep her from killing Jazz. If anyone had walked in at that moment to see six women piled on top of each other wrestling, he would either have been extremely turned on, or run for his life after getting a good look at the feral expressions on their faces.
As Carter struggled ineffectually against Max's vice-like grip and her anger towards Jazz abated somewhat now that Jazz wasn't right in her face anymore, a small blob of green jelly-like substance oozed from her left boot. Unnoticed by all, it squished and jiggled away from the crazed free-for-all, and disappeared down a small floor grate.
Instantly, the fighting stopped, and amid a tidal wave of nausea that washed over them all, the six women scrambled off each other in a panic, bile rising up in their throats, desperately looking for a safe place to throw up. Just as quickly as it had beset them though, the sickness faded and was gone. Gone too was the unrestrained anger and need for senseless violence they had been feeling.
Carter sat up when Max released her grip and shook her head, trying to clear out the fuzziness she felt there. From underneath Sam, Jo and Alex, a muffled voice was grunting, "Get off of me!" -- but more in consternation than in anger. Jazz dumped the other three off her back and sat up herself. She looked at Carter in confusion. She no longer felt angry at Carter -- in fact, she didn't feel anything at the moment; just sort of drained in a way she couldn't explain or even adequately describe. Hollow, maybe, or like a painting from which all the color had been leeched.
"What the hell just happened?" she asked, but by the expression on her face, it was clear she doubted she'd like the answer.
Carter's expression grew grim. This all had an unsettlingly familiar feel to it -- they had encountered similar situations during the last Mulluran War, instances of intense, mindless violence well beyond what was called for by circumstances, although back then it hadn't turned them against each other. She caught the expression on Jo's face and saw that the Banshees' science specialist had come to the same conclusion.
"Smelly Jelly," Carter said in reply to Jazz's question.
The small globule of green jelly glopped and shimmied along pipes and conduits for some time until it reached a cavity in between several massive blocks of machinery somewhere deep in the uninhabited between-decks spaces of the starbase. There it dripped onto a much larger conglomeration of jelly pooled at the bottom of the cavity, consolidating itself back into the whole. The large jelly mass pulsated with inner fire, illuminating the machinery walls around it with an eerie green luminescence.
It was happy now that it had fed.
Stirring up the emotions of the bipeds was so easy; they were volatile to begin with, but their preoccupation with the imminent conflict with a rival group of bipeds left them exceptionally open to violent suggestion.
Soon the Jelly would feed well indeed.
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