With a growl, Forte stopped stabbing Clasher, took a tentacle, and knocked Cinnabar off of her feet. Then, the tentacle wrapped around her throat, and even though Cinnabar had the helmet and her spacesuit protecting her, her reflexes instantly had her hands on the tentacle, trying to yank it off.
Petri turned away and stayed flush against the wall. He didn't know what to do; he wasn't a hero, after all. He was just the Science Officer onboard and didn't have any knowledge on how to fight against a very angry and triggered Impostor.
"You know, Tal, I think I get why we settle for these human bodies," Forte said in a very disturbing voice. It was almost like the words were being pulled from his mouth; like Forte didn't have any control of what he was saying. "Even though they are fragile, their spirits are very determined. But I don't think you can hear me now, can you?"
"I... can... hear... you..."
"Hmm, I believe not. Too much stress on the body? You know, if we were still in Be'herle and Werserk, that would only be a warm-up. Unfortunately, my body has limits as well as yours, it seems like."
Petri didn't know what that meant, but he had to get all of them out of there quickly. He looked around the room, trying to find anything that could be used to immobilize or stun Forte. The only thing that he could think of was to break off a branch of the tree and whack Forte with it. Which wasn't a great idea considering the fact that Petri wasn't an athletic person.
Okay, plan B, then. (Not like there was a plan B.)
Petri risked a glance outside and his eyes fell on the two guns and the knife, the latter of which was the closest to him. But, with Petri's luck, he'd end up shooting or stabbing Commander Harrison before he shot/stabbed Forte. Besides, Forte was on the total opposite side of the room. A very bloodstained room. And with all the blood on the floor, it was bound to be slippery.
Plan C, then. (Again, no plan C!)
Petri poked his head outside, looked around the room one more time, and remembered the O2 canisters. They were so pressurized that there was a literal rule made in that they could only be handled with the claw.
The only problem... no. Petri, don't poke holes in all of the solutions when you don't have time to come up with better ones. Just do it.
He took a deep breath and rummaged through his pockets, coming up with stray test tubes and the petri dish that contained the ashes of his mother. The only thing that Petri needed was for Forte to turn his head the other way so that Petri could get to the O2 canisters unnoticed until it was too late.
The next minutes happened in a blur. The moment that Petri threw the test tube across the room and Forte turned his head, Petri burst out of hiding, managing to swipe the knife up while only fumbling twice. He slid into O2 and grabbed a mini-O2 canister. Stumbling back out, he realized what a stupid plan that he made and internally cursed as Forte came running at him, all other victims forgotten and the tentacles' target Petri himself.
He brought the O2 canister up just in the nick of time to have Forte stab that instead of his internal organs.
The force of the break pushed Petri back and very nearly shattered his visor, but it had a worse effect on Forte (he was, after all, in front of the exit point and with ten hector-tons of pressure, that was definitely going to hurt). Forte (and/or Dax) roared in pain and stripped off his helmet, clawing at his eyes. The tentacles retracted into Forte's back, revealing a mess of blood that had stained the green spacesuit red, and a gaping hole in which the wound was visible.
"I can't believe that worked!" Petri shouted. He dropped the canister and was grinning like crazy. "I can't believe that worked!!!"
Cinnabar turned over and staggered to her feet. Petri guessed that it was the tentacle that was holding Clasher down that he used to attempt murder. "Cuz, how could you do something... so stupid that it worked?"
"With a lot of luck!" Petri replied. Forte was still staggering around blindly, holding his eyes. Yeesh, the canister must have been more pressurized than he thought. Petri looked around and spotted Clasher still on the ground, holding his sides and coughing. He ran over to his friend and waved a hand over his face. "Clasher!"
"When did Mister Poindexter learn to fight?" Clasher asked in between coughs. He accepted Petri's hand and shakily stood up, leaning almost all his weight on Petri.
"According to my calculations, fifty-three seconds ago."
"You... you son of a gun!" Clasher started laughing hysterically, all the while Forte was still bellowing and Captain Foster was trying to get to Commander Harrison. Cinnabar was yelling something incomprehensible as if she was trying to get Forte to calm down. An admirable effort, but Petri could tell that Forte had gone off the deep end. Even if there was a chance, Petri calculated that the odds of success were around five million to one.
"I don't know about that, Peregrine was the one who signed up for the Army while Cin and I went to space," Petri muttered under his breath. He was grateful for the fact that Clasher's sanity didn't seem to have gone that far down the rabbit hole that he couldn't walk; otherwise Petri would have no idea how to move him. Petri got Clasher to the hallway and sat him down against the wall right next to the door. "Clasher, stay here. Cin's going to help you once we get to a safe position."
"The darned seagulls," Clasher slurred. "Go away! I don't have food for you!"
"Oookay," Petri said slowly. Cinnabar would definitely have to take a look at that. And maybe Clasher, too. If there was some sort of venom that threw Clasher off his rocker, then Petri would probably have to report that. "I'm just... gonna go help Cin."
Petri ran back out, only to see that Cinnabar had it. She and Captain Foster were dragging a semi-conscious Commander Harrison in between them, all of them sporting new red polka-dots on their suits. Well, except for Cinnabar. Her suit was already red. Feeling quite awkward, Petri gave them a thumbs-up and Cinnabar (probably) rolled her eyes.
"Yes we got it, thanks a lot!" Cinnabar snapped. They got close enough to see Clasher still laughing at seemingly nothing in particular and Cinnabar sighed. "Oh great. Who brought the unauthorized alcohol and why is our Sec. Officer partaking? Actually, who didn't invite me to the party?"
"Lieutenant, focus, please." Captain Foster sat Commander Harrison down across from where Clasher was laughing and snapped her fingers in front of the Commander's face. Blood was trickling out of the side of her mouth and nose. "Commander. Indigo! Indie! Wake up! Blast it!"
The captain gave up and went to the panel on the wall, opening it and furiously messing with the wires and breakers. Petri and Cinnabar looked at each other, then back at Clasher. He was still saying something about seagulls, but now he was saying something about wind as well, and how the seagulls rode the wind current.
"Do you know what's wrong with him?" Petri asked.
"He's either off his rocker, or he's lost blood, or both," Cinnabar grumbled. She yanked off Clasher's space glove and checked his pulse. Which Petri could have done himself if Cinnabar hadn't used his PADD as a makeshift rock. "Well, it's official. This is a bit weird."
"A bit?"
"Fine. This is a weird as weird gets," Cinnabar deadpanned. "We gotta get these two to MedBay before they get to the point of no return, or else they're going to die."
"Couldn't be more ominous, could you, Lieutenant?" Captain Foster muttered.
"Well, I'm going to have to check you as well, Captain. That amount of time when blood was being partiality cut off to your brain might have weakened the neural link."
"I don't believe that's necessary when we have people who might be dead at the end of the-"
"Nothing can survive alone," Commander Harrison whispered. They all looked at her in shock. "An ecosystem always depends on the one below you. But kill off all the prey too early, there will be nothing left for later years. The same for a society. Fight too much with each other and there will be soon nothing left to fight over. Dax is skilled, however, he's feeding off of Forte at a rate where Forte will be dead within a week. The partner-killer, oath-breaker doesn't have any knowledge on how to coexist with the host."
"Indie?" Captain Foster asked tentatively. One hand was still in the panel, probably trying to close the door on Forte and lock him in. So that's why she told Omega how to do that. "Are you... there?"
"She's here. Resting and unconscious. It was too much of a strain, but she'll be okay." Commander Harrison stood up and eyed the panel. "If you think you can get yourselves to MedBay, that'll be great. Justice, remember that not every decision to make is yours. Trust me. Trust us. And I'm sorry."
"For what?" Cinnabar asked with a hint of suspicion. Petri had to admit that he was curious as well.
"This." Commander Harrison, or perhaps now Tal, reached into the panel and yanked some wires out. She slid in between the doors as they were starting to close, just as Captain Foster yelped as sparks came flying out from the panel.
"Son of a biscuit!" She yelled.
Petri had a thousands thoughts whirling in his head. How was that possible? How could that happen? Could his cure work on Forte? What in the name of the galaxy was Tal doing?
Well, whatever it was, Tal might want to get it done before Clasher completely lost his mind.
"I bet you seagulls can't surf!"
----------------------------------------
Four thousand years wasn't enough for me to learn everything in the world. I never knew of Humans until Be'herle, may he find rest, infiltrated a ship to make sure that my knowledge was passed on.
Even now, I still don't know everything. Languages, customs, foreign species, all left to mystery for me. But to open your eyes to the possibility of others offers so much more to be discovered than staying safe inside of a prison.
But still, what makes us who we are? Language is simply sounds that had meaning attributed to it. Customs simply things or actions that hold an unknown meaning. Species something that came to be at the mercy of evolution.
Emotions, however, are somewhat more understandable. Universal, even. Every known species experiences them. What else can you use to communicate when all else fails?
Tal walked over to where Dax was huddled in the corner, grasping at his eyes and breathing heavily. Even though the head-cover-air-protector was around him, there was a chance that he could still feel it.
"Dax."
Dax lifted his head and looked at Tal with hate-filled orange eyes. They were the same shade as Werserk's used to be. The same eyes that were full of tears when Be'herle murdered Werserk's mother.
It was simply a curse that both of their families had a history of being unstable after the Joining. Or, it was a curse on Tal and Dax. Generations of being on shaky ground finally caused them to snap and get exiled for their crimes.
Tal and Dax were, technically speaking, siblings. They had grown up in the same pool, although they had been joined to their families at different times. Altera used to joke that they were more like parent and child than siblings, as there was a hundred-year age gap between the two.
At least, before he went rogue and murdered several symbionts in their pools. Killing of the symbionts, especially of you own kind, was a one-way ticket to banishment and the Void. To death.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending how you looked at it, they had all found suitable hosts to gain more knowledge and share the knowledge that they already had.
For poor Forte, though, it was probably more of a curse than a blessing. Dax's actions angered Forte to the point where he no longer could feel when to stop and back down. And now both of them were paying the price.
"Hello, Tal," Dax growled in Werserk's tone of voice. "So glad you could join me in this. For killing my mother. Thank you for that, or else I would never have gotten the chance to meet you here after I stabbed Father to death."
"I had hoped otherwise," Tal muttered. "Do I have to kill you again? I sincerely do not wish to do that."
"You're going to have to. I always wanted to make you feel how it was like to die at the hands of a person you once trusted. To quote something that Forte thinks often, 'I want you to hurt like you hurt me today and I want you to lose like I lose when I play what-could-have-been.'"
"I understand that reference." Tal let out a laugh, amused by the fact that Dax thought to even check out Forte's thoughts. "Believe me, for me to live, I have to kill the part of me that saw that I... I wanted you in my life more. I'm sick and tired of killing and I want one life in where I don't hurt anyone else."
"Well, it certainly won't be this one," Dax snarled. He lunged at Tal, tentacles extended and an expression of rage on his face, made all the more scarier by the cuts that came from the shards of glass from the visor.