An icy wind tore across the frozen wasteland with angry force, carving eerily bizarre and wonderfully magical sculptures into the ebony colored ice. Graceful, obsidian ice spires pierced the leaden sky, etched by nothing more than eons of wind action. In between, bottomless fissures cracked into the Plutonian landscape plunged to unknown depths below.
Such was the Land of Black Ice on the northernmost fringes of the Serenity continent.
Normally, no life more complex than single-celled protozoa called this place home; no animals, no birds, not even hardy, cold-adapted lichens could survive in the harsh sub-zero environment. On this particular day however, two men walked cautiously across the windblown tundra a short distance from a Starfleet shuttlecraft.
At first glance, the pair seemed terribly out-of-place, dressed as they were in only standard Starfleet uniforms despite the lethal temperature, but upon closer inspection, the soft nimbus of their life support fields could be seen enveloping their bodies. First conceived in the late 2260's and briefly tested aboard several Constitution class vessels of the day, the 'life support belt' wasn't refined and perfected until the mid 2380's, but they were slowly beginning to replace the cumbersome Starfleet environmental suits.
Inside the protective cocoon of his life support field, Lieutenant Tony Banks enjoyed the warmth of a pleasant spring day even as the murderous wind whipped freezing snow flurries past his legs at fifty miles per hour. He glanced down at the tricorder he held in his left hand and checked his bearings.
"I think it's over that next ridge," he said to his partner, pointing to a saw-toothed line of peaks and valleys about a mile farther on.
Inside his own life support field, Lieutenant Mike Rutherford heard Banks' words as clearly as if he were standing next to him in a small room and not separated by fifteen feet in the howling wind. He pulled out his own tricorder and made a full sweep.
"Still reading a power source but no life signs."
"Who could survive in a place like this?" asked Banks rhetorically.
Rutherford didn't need to answer, because both men knew exactly who could live here. Both men drew their phasers, suddenly nervous and feeling the need for some reassurance that they were in control of the situation. Together, they advanced on the ridge.
"What have you found, Lieutenant?" asked Commodore Rick Hunter. He was standing in the foyer of the highest security cellblock deep beneath the Starfleet Headquarters building in the heart of Serenity City. It was the closest one could get to a real dungeon in the late 24th century.
The officer the Commodore addressed was a hard-looking man in Security yellow, Lieutenant Samuel Hagar. "He's been a hard nut to crack, Commodore," Hagar replied in a gravelly voice, "but the doctors found something the last time they checked him over. Something they'd missed until now."
Hunter's curiosity was piqued, though he disliked mysteries. He stepped around Hagar and stopped in front of the sole occupied cell. An impassible forcefield spanned the door, and inside lying atop the narrow sleeping shelf was the false pizza deliveryman who had tried to assassinate President Carlyle at Paladin Hospital.
He was a young man in his mid-twenties, lanky and freckle-faced, the last sort of person you'd expect to be a cold-blooded murderer. He was sleeping now, sedated by the staff physician, but even unconscious, his muscles twitched spasmodically and his eyes rolled agitatedly under his closed eyelids.
"What have the doctors discovered?" asked Hunter.
Before Hagar could answer though, the elevator doors behind Hunter slid open, disgorging Doctor Ford. "Lita can explain it better, sir," he said, pointing to the new arrival.
Hunter turned and looked at the doctor. She was a long, tall, blonde woman with an oval face and a very professional air about her. Before he could even open his mouth, she had handed him a large PADD.
"That's a report on what we found, Commodore," she told him.
Hunter thumbed the activation switch and watched various medical diagrams flow past on the device's screen. Finally, a cutaway view of the patient's head displayed. Hunter frowned. He was no doctor, but even he could tell something wasn't right with this picture.
"What's this thing in the man's head?" he asked Ford, pointing to an oblong object visible at the rear of the pizza boys' brain.
"You won't believe this," replied Lita, "but it's some sort of alien parasite. It's attached itself to the man's central nervous system and breathes through a small snorkel it pokes through the back of its host's neck. I'm guessing it has complete control over his actions. His own personality and will are completely suppressed. It's like a puppeteer and he's the dummy."
Hunter's frown deepened. "You mean it was this puppeteer parasite that was trying to kill the President and not this boy?"
Doctor Ford nodded. "As far as we can tell," she said.
Hunter considered the implications of this new information for a few seconds, then said, "I want to talk to him."
"He's sedated right now, Commodore. I don't think--"
"Wake him." Hunter's tone brooked no argument. He signaled for Lieutenant Hagar to lower the forcefield.
Doctor Ford didn't look happy about being told how to treat her patient, but she stepped into the cell with Commodore Hunter and Lieutenant Hagar right behind her and applied a hypo to the delivery boy's arm without further argument.
The youth's eyes fluttered and opened. He raised himself to an upright position and sat staring with unblinking gaze at the trio of officers standing before him. He turned his attention to the Commodore, and Rick knew instinctively that he was not dealing with a human intelligence here. It was just a feeling, or maybe there was something wrong with the boy's eyes or the way he sat so passively with that almost-smile playing on his lips, but the mind behind it was totally alien, and decidedly sinister.
The boy's eyes flashed white, then resumed their normal appearance, and when he spoke, his voice was deeper than expected. "Commodore Rick Hunter," the parasite said through the boy's mouth. "By now you will have discovered our true nature." The smile on its face sent chills up Hunter's spine.
It had taken Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford about a half hour to cross the remaining distance to the ridge in the driving wind. Backtracking to their parked shuttlecraft and then flying to the ridge would have been faster, but an aerial approach would be easily spotted if there was anyone waiting for them ahead on the other side of the ridge.
Finally, Rutherford poked his head over the jagged edge of the hillock and peered down into a sheltered dell carved into the ice. Tony Banks' head appeared moments later. He whistled when he saw what lay at the bottom of the depression.
A tangle of twisted metal and junk lay strewn on the shining black ice, but the large object at the center of the wreckage dominated the scene.
"Just what HQ thought," said Banks. "A surface-to-air missile launcher."
"Still no lifeform readings," reported Rutherford after checking his tricorder again. "Come on," he said, standing and starting down into the hollow.
Banks followed with phaser drawn and at the ready, just in case, but there was no need. The shallow depression in the ice field was abandoned; only the machinery remained. Rutherford walked over to the missile launcher while Banks poked around the scattered debris, but a sharp call from Rutherford brought him to the launcher as well.
Rutherford pointed at the launcher's control panel where a series of red numbers were ticking by in quick succession. "Recognize the writing?" he asked.
"Yeah," replied Banks. "Looks like Breen." He looked closer. "Looks like a countdown for something..."
The two men looked at each other, their eyes widening in sudden understanding and fear.
"Who are you? What do you want?" asked Commodore Hunter of the alien parasite inside the pizza delivery boy. "Why try and kill the President of the Federation?"
The creature did not answer, but just sat there smiling, though there was no joviality in the expression. Rather, Hunter felt nothing but contempt radiating from the Puppeteer.
"Was the missile launch against the President's ship part of your plan too? Do you work for the Breen?"
Still no answer, though the evil grimace grew wider and more smug.
Hunter backed off a step from the stubborn alien. "We'll discover your plans soon enough," he said. "We've got a team out retrieving the missile launcher system even as we speak. We'll find out what we want to know with or without your help."
The alien parasite inside the pizza boy finally decided to react to Hunter's interrogation, though its response wasn't quite what Hunter had been hoping for. "You will learn nothing from the launcher system, and you will never see your salvage team again."
Hunter didn't like the sound of that. Slapping his commbadge, he said, "Hunter to Ops! Recall the salvage team from the launcher site immediately! Repeat -- recall the salvage team!"
At the bottom of the icy depression amid the clutter of Breen machinery and the missile launcher with its flashing red numbers, Rutherford and Banks looked at each other, their eyes widening in fear and sudden understanding of the numbers' significance. Immediately, they spun around and began scrambling up the slippery slope of the icy depression that sheltered the Breen equipment, but the soles of their boots had a difficult time finding purchase and they made little headway. Five seconds later, it didn't matter anymore, as the little dell was instantaneously transformed from an icy wasteland to a fiery, molten cauldron by the time-bomb planted at the base of the launcher platform.
The voice of the Ops Center's communications officer came back across Hunter's commlink. "I'm sorry, Commodore. We just lost contact with the salvage team."
Hunter spun about and faced the disguised parasite still sitting calmly before him. He grabbed him by the front of his shirt and hauled him to his feet. "Why?!?" he demanded, shouting right into the young man's face.
'This is what comes of your resistance to us," replied the Puppeteer in a pitying tone. "Senseless death and widespread destruction. All we seek is peaceful coexistence." His smile upon making that pronouncement was the most soul-chilling thing Hunter had ever seen.
Sickened, the Commodore threw the creature back against the cell wall, heedless of the fact that any injuries he inflicted were to the pizza delivery boy's body and not the parasite inside him. "Who do you work for?" he growled through clenched teeth. "I won't ask again."
The delivery boy's smile grew wistful. "That is true, Commodore, You won't have the chance. My time is almost up, and you will learn nothing from the human who's body I inhabit, for he knows nothing."
With that, the pizza delivery boy convulsed violently and slumped down the cell wall until he was stopped by the narrow sleeping shelf. He twitched spasmodically, then began making gagging sounds. Lieutenant Hagar swiftly placed himself between the stricken youth and Hunter, a phaser magically appearing in his hand, while Doctor Ford quickly pointed her medical tricorder.
As Hunter looked on in horror, the boy coughed hoarsely and a small, purplish creature popped out of his mouth onto the cell floor amid a pool of bile and blood. Its six stumpy legs wriggled nervously and the relatively huge mandibles chomped at air. Moments later, it stopped. The delivery boy slumped backward against the cell wall, blood dribbling down his chin, unconscious.
The only sounds in the room were the stressed breathing of the three officers and the whir of Lita's tricorder.
"It's dead," she pronounced, and moved over to aid the delivery boy.
Hagar cautiously nudged the little creature with the toe of his boot, but it didn't react. "I think that might be the most disgusting thing I've ever seen," he commented, and holstered his phaser.
"Dammit!" said Hunter. "Now we'll never know what was going on here. That creature was our only link to whoever was behind the attacks."
The situation had just gotten a lot more complicated. What had before been a relatively straightforward case of presidential assassination now was beginning to look more like a galactic conspiracy of epic proportions.
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