Stardate: 70512:0810
Title: When Gods Roam (Part 1)
Author: Ensign Andrew Keller
Time: After "All Roads Lead To Home"
Scene: USS Relentless crash-site
As Keller broke into a run behind the young crewman, the spears of the natives
flashed through the air: the first struck him on the side of the thigh, tearing
away a portion of flesh and material. The second spear wasn't so well aimed, and
whistled just past the back of Andrew's head. However, the shaft seemed to catch
a glancing blow on the back of his skull; caught off balance, he fell face first
into the sparse covering of grass.
The on-looking crew of the Relentless who had made it to the ship looked on in
helpless horror as their colleague fell and lay motionless on the ground. One of
the crewmen looked to make a move towards the stricken officer lying on the
ground, but as the natives moved closer to the prone body, Commander Winters
grasped the crewman's arm and pulled him back; other than to fire their phasers,
there was nothing they could do to save Ensign Keller, but in the darkness she
couldn't tell where the natives were, or how many - firing now could deplete
energy cells that they could well need later. She swallowed; her mind racing as
she weighed up her options...
On the ground, Keller stirred. The brief stunning blow of the spear had worn
off, and he looked around uncertainly to get his bearings. Around 40 metres
ahead, the Relentless lay in wait: it's massive bulk casting shadows through
pale moonlight. Looking around, he saw 4 natives closing in on him from his
right - he assumed they were the ones who threw the spears.
The spear that had struck his thigh hadn't embedded itself in the flesh, but had
torn away a strip of material from Andrew's uniform, along with a chunk of
flesh. The flesh that surrounded his cybernetic limbs had been designed to look
and feel like normal human tissue: it bled, it felt pain, it was receptive to
heat and cold.
Andrew remembered the time they were fitted. Medics had tried several times to
regrow the limbs he had lost in the Romulan conflict. Held in stasis in a cryo-tank,
medics had tried to regenerate Andrew's stem-cells and regrow his lost limbs. In
a lab environment it all seemed to work well, but once grafted onto the human
host, the surgery would fail and the new limbs would wither and die. Andrew
faced up to the prospect of being paraplegic, but he was a proud man and refused
to place this burden onto his wife. He decided to undergo a potentially
life-threatening procedure to have cybernetic limbs attached and a CPU implanted
in his neural cortex.
Now, as the natives closed to within 10 metres, Andrew pulled himself to his
feet. He still felt a little groggy, but facing the advancing natives he took a
step away - towards the Relentless and it's crew; relative safety he thought. He
took another backward step, then another; slowly moving towards his comrades
huddling against the hull of the stricken vessel. But every time Andrew took a
step, the natives took two and now they were nearly upon him, their wooden
cudgels in hand. Andrew felt like turning and running towards the ship, but he
wondered how far he would get before another spear struck him down. Slowly, he
continued to back away.
Suddenly, the natives started gesticulating wildly, pointing at Andrew and
speaking in their guttural, Neanderthal dialect that he couldn't understand.
Again, he took another step away, followed by another and another. The natives
had stopped moving towards him and now were pointing furiously at him, while
they continued their guttural conversation. As Andrew took another step away,
one of the group of natives stepped forward, again pointing towards the Ensign
and speaking something unintelligible.
Andrew stopped his retreat at the native's speech. Something in the guttural
tongue reached out to him. He looked quizzically at the native who again pointed
frantically and repeated what he had said...
"Graachakiman....carrickkalaman....marritahumana.....hatamach...ineiieak", the
words spoken to Andrew made no sense to him.
The native had stopped his advance but continued to point towards Andrew.
Again he spoke: "Graachakiman....carrickkalaman....marritahumana.....hatamach...ineiieak".
Again, Andrew had no clue as to what the native was trying to say.
The native continued pointing towards Andrew, repeating the snippet of speech
over and over again but made no further move towards him. Again, something about
the speech agitated the Ensign - there was something there, almost as if the
native was trying to communicate. At least it was preferable to having his
brains beaten in, he thought.
"Graachakiman....carrickkalaman....marritahumana.....hatamach...ineiieak" the
native said again, pointing to Andrew with gusto.
"Graachakiman....carrickkalaman....marritahumana.....hatamach...ineiieak" This
time, Andrew followed the native's finger: the native was pointing to the wound
on his thigh. The exposed area was ablaze with red and green lights, while
pulses of white light carried instructions to and from Keller's cybernetic
limbs. It clicked in him suddenly....
"Graachaki...MAN....carrickkala...MAN....marrita...HUMAN...a.....hata..MACH...INE...iieak".
Extremely broken it was, but there was no mistaking it. How had he missed it
before? Man - human - machine.
================
Ensign Andrew Keller
Helm
USS Relentless
NCC-11966
================
