Morning came all too soon for Jo Schmidt, she having slept fitfully, troubled even in sleep by her flagging self-worth, nowhere near well-rested. She turned her head, opened one bleary eye and looked at the clock on the wall of her and Alex's stateroom aboard the Longbow. The crimson digits read '0628'. Time to get up, though no rosy dawn waited to greet them here in the sunless void of the intercluster gulf.
She swung her feet onto the cold deck and stood. Alex was no longer in the upper bunk, and she suddenly smelled freshly brewed coffee. She pulled on her robe, ran her hands through her short blonde hair and stepped through the narrow door into the living space beyond. The other four members of Banshee Squad were already there, sitting around the small mess table sipping steaming mugs of their favorite morning beverage.
Lee Carter saw her emerge, looking like a bear crawling out of its cave after a winter's hibernation, and around a mouthful of toast said, "Good morning, sleepyhead. Coffee? Looks like you could use a mug or twelve." But Jo just yawned, grumbled something incoherent, and continued her shuffle towards the bathroom at the rear of the ship.
Looking to Jo's bunkmate Alex, Carter asked, "What's with her?"
Alex shrugged. "She was making noise all night long."
Carter worried a little. Jo was normally cheerful and optimistic, but the last few days had seen a subtle change in her science officer. She was more withdrawn and moody, seldom volunteering information during discussions of their predicament where before she wouldn't hesitate to offer her theories on anything. Carter and the others had found themselves listening more and more often to young Dexter Gray's explanations and hypotheses as Jo sat sullenly by, lost in her own thoughts. Carter wondered briefly if Dex's newfound popularity and success in deciphering their present situation had anything to do with Jo's funk, but dismissed the idea almost immediately, deciding instead to place the blame on the unrelenting blackness outside. At least for now.
After breakfast and with everyone back aboard their own ships, Banshee Squadron fell out of orbit towards the class-R planetoid. Overhead, the black dwarf star shed no light on the scene, and they were forced to rely solely on sensors during their approach, flying towards a surreal virtual-landscape painted on their HUDs by the computer.
"There is a large concentration of lifeforms surrounding the largest geothermal hotzone," said Dexter through the comm system. "It looks like some sort of subterranean city."
"We'll land on the outskirts of that," ordered Matthew Cross.
The Cat's Eye and five Scorpion fighters raced over the barren, lifeless landscape. In the distance ahead a dull red glow in the sky became visible to the naked eye, the source of which was still below the horizon, but could be nothing other than the geothermal hotzone. Probably the mother of all volcanoes, thought Jo cynically.
And then there it was, the cone of a shield volcano of titanic proportions towering above the surrounding mountains, its glowing caldera smoking, spreading poisonous fumes for leagues around, but at the same time bequeathing life to the land with its sustaining warmth and more benign outgassing. Thankfully however, Jo saw Matthew Cross steering the Longbow not directly towards the volcano, but towards a hilly region some miles south of the crater, no doubt at some new discovery made by Dexter. She turned her Scorpion to follow.
The six craft landed in a shallow valley. The infernal light from the volcano glowering down on them from behind a range of low hills to the north revealed the black maw of a cave in the near hillside.
At the sight of that, Jo's heart fell. Suddenly, old memories she'd been trying hard to repress resurfaced with a vengeance, threatening to overwhelm her -- memories of Rostella IV, the endless, black dilithium mines there, the horde of shambling horrors that hunted them, but worst of all, the monstrous thing that lived in the pit at the bottom of the mines, the Jelly Brain. She still had nightmares about the terrible ordeal, of Jazz Phoenix's face as she sacrificed her own life to save the lives of her teammates. She wondered if Max was feeling the same thing faced with the prospect of going into another black pit since she'd been closest to Jazz. Jo shuddered with a sudden chill, then mercilessly forced all thoughts of monsters and death from the forefront of her mind and set about shutting down her Scorpion's systems. That done, she popped the canopy, hopped to the ground and set out across the rocky terrain to join the others. While the temperature here was only mildly chilly, the volcanic fumes and ash in the air forced her to activate her life support belt, and its soft nimbus enveloped her in secure folds of energy and breathable air.
Minutes later, Lee Carter and her Banshees, plus Matthew Cross and his sidekick Dex were all assembled in the center of the circle formed by their ships eyeing the cave mouth with varied degrees of unease. Dexter was standing nonchalantly next to Alex pretending that his choice of self-placement was purely accidental, while Alex pretended not to notice his pretense. Jo ignored them both and took up station behind Max, and began taking tricorder readings.
"I don't see any welcoming committee coming to greet us," ventured Sam, eyeing the cave with her cybernetically-enhanced vision.
"Be thankful for small favors," replied Max. "The Great Bird only knows what lives in a dismal place like this." She unconsciously fingered the phaser pistol holstered at her hip, drawing reassurance from the weapon's cold metal casing beneath her fingers.
"Let's go," said Captain Cross. With him in the lead, the seven set off towards the hillside and the cave opening. The glow from the volcano's fires shed enough light for them to safely pick their way across the rock-strewn valley floor, though the going was slow and cautious.
The cave opening turned out to be a merely a shallow depression in the sheer rock face, but the rear was dominated by a massive stone portal. At least twenty feet high and ten wide, the entire surface was carved in bass relief, depicting images of humanoids, some prostrated before a ziggurat, some carrying spears and swords in a stylized depiction of ancient warfare, and some being sacrificed by men in fancy headdresses to a creature that looked like a huge scorpion with a man's torso and pincers for arms. In fact, upon closer inspection, the doorposts, lintel and walls were all carved, the gruesome scorpion theme predominating.
"I don't like the look of that," commented Max, viewing the carvings with distaste. "I say we try the next door."
"There is no next door," said Carter.
"Aha! The ultimate defense against door-to-door salesmen. No more doors."
Captain Cross cleared his throat noisily. "If we can get back to business, ladies?"
"Right," said Carter. "So how do we open this thing?" Out of habit, everyone turned to Jo, who traditionally always had the answer.
Sensing their stares, Jo looked up from her tricorder at the carved gate as if seeing it for the first time. "I uh.... Maybe there's a lock," she offered after some hesitation.
It wasn't quite the brilliant solution Carter had been hoping for, but she tried to be positive nonetheless. "Good thinking, Jo. Sam?"
Sam, who was standing closest to the portal, scanned its entirety with renewed diligence, tuning her ocular implants to their highest resolution and examining a wide range of physical criteria. "I don't see anything except normal stone, Commander. Nothing that remotely resembles a locking mechanism, mechanical or electronic. Not even a doorknob."
"Well, can't say we didn't try," said Max, not sounding the least bit sorry. "Let's head back." She turned to leave, but Matthew Cross clapped a restraining hand on her shoulder checking her retreat.
Dexter Gray now pushed his way to the front of the group. Showing the impatience of youth, he blurted, "Why don't you just try pushing it open?" and then did just that. Laying both hands on the worn stone, he shoved with all his might and was rewarded by the sound of stone grinding on stone. Under his influence, the massive stone door swung a few inches inward! He jumped back, as surprised as the rest of them that his impulsive act had actually worked, but he recovered quickly and turned an excited face to the others and said, "Help me!"
Seven pairs of hands were eagerly laid against the stone, and together the Banshees heaved. The massive stone portal ground inward, swinging on hidden hinges, slowly revealing a dark space beyond. A strong gust of wind blew from the widening crack like the sighing exhalation of a sleeping giant whipping their hair back and throwing dust in their eyes, but died down as soon as the pressure differential between inside and outside was equalized. When the opening was a few feet wide, they stopped pushing and Carter peered inside.
After the near-total blackness of the sunless, starless outside, the inside of the mountain seemed brilliantly lit by comparison even though a few flickering torches in wall sconces and a small glowing brazier in the center of the floor were the only sources of illumination. Carter advanced cautiously through the stone doorway into the large cavern beyond, Max with drawn phaser right behind her, then the others.
"Still no welcoming committee," said Sam softly, not wishing to disturb the profound silence in the cavern.
"Who cares," growled Max, sweeping the dark recesses with her phaser. "I'm just glad there's no giant scorpion-men."
"We're here to find out a way to leave," said Cross, feeling the need to remind the ladies of their mission. "Which means we had better find someone to talk to."
The others pressed a little deeper into the cavern inspecting some of the other doorways and tunnel openings that riddled the walls all around, but Jo stopped beside the brazier. It gave off a comforting warmth, and she just stood a few moments letting it soak into her chilled bones, drawing strength from the friendly embers. She instinctively mistrusted the concealing shadows that seemed to gather extra-thick around the tunnels and doorways, and more than once she thought she saw something skitter just at the edge of her field of vision, but when she looked there was never anything there of course. She refrained from mentioning it to Lee, sure it was just her imagination anyway. Besides, if anything was there, she was sure the little genius Dexter would discover it on his own without any help from her.
A small noise to her left, a tiny snick like someone stepping on a dry twig, distracted her then, and she moved to investigate. It seemed to have come from another of the dark tunnel openings, this one narrower and swathed in deepest shadow. Something was making the hairs on the back of her neck stand at attention, so she drew her phaser with one hand and flipped open her tricorder with the other and pointed both at the tunnel.
Suddenly, Jo felt a sharp pain on the side of her neck and immediately felt a blanket of wooziness fall over her and wrap itself tightly around her consciousness. Through blurry vision and eyelids that suddenly refused to stay open she saw rough hands reaching for her from within the dark tunnel and drag her forward. Drugged! shouted a voice inside her head, but her body could do nothing about it. Numb hands dropped what they were holding, arms fell limp at her sides, and knees buckled, no longer able to carry her weight. The rough hands caught her as she fell. She tried to scream for help but no sound came from her mouth. The last thing Jo saw was a giant scorpion-man leering down on her helpless form.
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