Note: this is the extended version with an ending that I didn't include in the version I shared at writer's group for time purposes. So, without further ado I present you now
STAR TREK
INTO DOOM
A BLOODY TERRIBLE BIT OF FANFICTION
BY ME
CAPTAIN’S LOG - STARDATE 2213.928 - USS ENTERPRISE - CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK COMMANDING
It’s been two months since departing earth on our five-year journey to explore new life and new civilizations when we encountered a large photon rift that’s been interfering with our sensors. When we investigated our ship was pulled into some kind of temporal vortex and we emerged somewhere in uncharted space in orbit of a strange planet...
Kirk used his chair to steady himself as he got to his feet. He held his forehead in one hand to keep his vision from spinning as he looked around the bridge. His crew had been likewise thrown about in the typhoon of G-forces that spun the Enterprise like a football through the photon rift.
“Is everyone alright?” he asked. A cacophony of nausea induced grunts replied.
On the main screen Kirk saw twin blue green planets in orbit around one another. As his vision focused, both planets became one. He turned to his science officer. “Mr Spock, report.”
Spock seated himself in his chair, with more adroitness than the rest of the crew could muster at the moment, and peered into his console. “M Class planet. Previously uncharted. I’m picking up readings of a preindustrial humanoid society.”
Kirk regarded the planet. It had the look of earth. Although the continents were not the same shape, they were swathed in a mixture of greens and browns — a pallette of fertile forests, grasslands, as well as mountains, deserts, and desolation. On the south eastern end of the largest continent Kirk noticed a faint glow, like an ember of a dying fire. Even though the glowing area seemed small to Kirk, if he could see it from this altitude...
“Captain,” Lieutenant Sulu said. “We have readings of a massive volcanic eruption about to take place on the surface.”
“Spock, what happens when that volcano erupts?” Kirk said pointing at the glowing ember on the screen.
“Then there is a high probability that all life on the planet will be obliterated.”
“Then we’ve got to go down there, and stop that volcano from erupting.”
“Dammit, man! How many times do you have to lick a battery before you know it’ll shock you?” Dr McCoy piped up. Kirk hadn’t seen him come on the bridge.
Spock raised an eyebrow. “Captain, may I remind you that our previous endeavors in such a scenario resulted in violating the prime directive, and you being relieved of your command.”
“Yeah, but we learn from our mistakes. We’ll do it right this time. Are there any settlements within that volcano’s blast radius?”
“Sensors show a sizeable population of humanoid lifeforms well within those parameters.”
“We’ve got to get them out of there. Bones, you and me will beam down to the surface and draw those people away from the volcano. Spock, you, Uhura, and Sulu take the shuttle into that volcano and neutralize it.”
“Jim,” said McCoy. “I don’t see how this is learning from our mistakes.”
“Come on, Bones, we won't park the Enterprise in the ocean like we did last time. And we’ll wear better disguises.”
“Captain,” said Spock. “To replicate one’s actions under the same set of circumstances and expect a different outcome is illogical.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Spock, learning from our mistakes is part of what makes us human. And Bones, as ship's doctor you should know better than anyone that we’ve got a moral obligation to save those people.”
“Jim, I’m a doctor, not a philosopher!”
“And it’ll be fun. Let’s do it right this time, people! We’ve got a civilisation to save.”
Kirk raced to the turbo lift. As soon as he was out of earshot McCoy leaned over to Spock and muttered: “He’s not operating on full thrusters. That temporal slingshot we just went through must have fried his circuits.”
“Highly unlikely, Doctor. However I do agree with you in that I fail to see the Captain’s reasoning in this situation, even though this is the second time I have seen him make these same conclusions.”
A short while later, far below on the planet surface, next to the little glowing area that the Enterprise crew could see on the display screen, two glowing columns of light began swirling like fireflies being stirred in a glass. The glowing light brightened and then dissolved leaving two robed figures in its wake. They stood on a gentle slope of a dusty and charred hill. One of the figures pulled back his hood to reveal Dr McCoy’s pinched face.
“I thought you said we were going to have better disguises. This is exactly what we wore last time.”
“So they are, and they still fit, too,” Kirk said, brandishing a tricorder from the folds of his robe, and taking a brief survey of the area. After a moment of analyzation Kirk started up the hill. “Come on, this way.”
McCoy followed Kirk up the hill, taking a good look at their surroundings. The sky was dark and brown. Thick clouds of dust swirled around their heads. McCoy could see the large slopes of the volcano on the other side of the hill. The volcano was tall, and must have been a kilometer high from the base to the caldera’s rim, which vented fire and black smoke into the atmosphere. The two men crested the hill and looked at the bloody scene below. Between them and the volcano was a vast field of armored men and gray skinned humanoid creatures screaming and clashing against each other with swords and armor in a commotion of medieval melee.
“This is no settlement,” Bones said. “We just walked into someone else’s war. If that volcano doesn’t kill them all then they'll just slaughter each other anyway.”
Kirk nodded. “Yeah, I wasn’t planning on this.”
McCoy squinted at the gray skinned humanoids. “Are those klingons?”
“Looks like it. I should have brought Uhura with us. She speaks klingon.”
“Jim, we’re not going to get all these people away from the blast radius. It’ll be like trying to drain an ocean with a storm drain.”
No sooner had McCoy finished his metaphor than a group of fifty of the gray skinned, klingon looking humanoids broke off from the rest of the battle and charged up the hill towards Kirk and McCoy. They were yelling, and swinging swords that were curved and jagged.
“Phasers on stun,” Kirk said as he began firing blue bolts into the crowd of klingon-looking humanoids. McCoy followed suit. But they couldn’t stun their attackers fast enough before they were totally surrounded.
Meanwhile, in the thick black cloud above the volcano, the shuttle approached the fiery caldera. Sulu was at the controls bringing the small craft lower and lower into the pit, while still, with a pilot’s finesse that Sulu had always prided himself on, kept the shuttle craft obscured from any watching eye. Behind his chair, in the shuttle’s cabin, Uhura helped Spock into his heat shielded armor and helmet.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this again,” she said. “I almost lost you last time. What was the captain thinking sending you into another volcano?”
“The captain feels a moral obligation to protect any species from obliteration. However I must add that to do so is extremely unwise, as our actions are in danger of violating the Prime Directive. However, I must confess that having my home planet wiped out has given me a certain empathy towards any sentient species faced with extinction, even though it is against my better judgement.”
Uhura shot a Spock a deadly glare. “But don’t you remember what happened last time? You almost got killed.”
“Indeed. But not to worry. I have checked the tensile strength and durability of the tow cable, and I can say quite confidently that this time it will hold under these atmospheric conditions.”
Strapped into his suit and with the cold fusion detonator in hand Spock gave the signal to Sulu that he was ready. Once Sulu had the shuttle in position directly over the center of the volcano. Uhura activated the panel in the shuttle’s floor that open below Spock’s feet and she lowered him by winch and cable into the mouth of the volcano.
“There’s got to be a better way to do this,” Uhura said, peering down the hatch at Spock’s dangling figure, descending into fiery clouds.
Then without warning a black shape, winged and wraith like, swooped below the shuttle. It caught the cable in it’s jaws and snapped it clean through with its sharp teeth.
“Spock! No!” Uhura screamed.
One moment Spock was safely tethered to the shuttle, and the next he was falling, disappearing, into the fiery clouds of smoke and steam, just like before. Sulu felt the sharp tug on the shuttle and tried to compensate, steering the shuttle into the inside wall of the volcano. He veered to starboard to avoid crashing, pulled up to miss any more obstacles and stalled the shuttle in a hover above the volcano’s rim to recover his nerves.
“Spock, are you alright?” Uhura said into the comm.
“Affirmative,” Spock responded over the shuttle’s speaker. Uhura exhaled in relief. “Although I am baffled at how I could survive such a fall not once, but twice, under identical circumstances.”
“Stay there, Spock. We’re going to come back down to get you.”
“I copy. I am arming the cold fusion detonator now.”
Uhura turned to Sulu.
“Sulu, take us back down there.”
Sulu looked back at Uhura and nodded. His focus taken off the piloting controls for a moment. And in that moment Uhura saw over his shoulder a great, big, giant bird — it was as big as the shuttle! — come hurtling in a dive bomb towards them. The bird must have been aiming at some other prey, and the shuttle drifted into it’s flightplan. Shuttle and bird smacked into each other hard.
This time Sulu’s flailing hands couldn’t stabilize the shuttle as both he and bird alike fell into a tailspin and crashed on the slope of the volcano.
Kirk was in a pretty good mood, because he was in a fist fight with klingons. Or rather with a bunch of ugly buggers that looked like klingons. They swarmed all around him, hacking with their swords. His phaser had already ran out of juice, and now all he could do was punch, disarm, elbow, head butt, and punch again, one gray skinned brute after another. In the rhythm of his jabs and punches he hadn’t noticed that the flow of the crowd had separated him from McCoy, who was not in a good mood.
McCoy was surrounded by the gray brutes, and not doing as good a job as Kirk at fending them off. He wasn’t a soldier. This wasn’t a part of his skill set. Although, remarkably he hadn’t been cut up too badly yet. McCoy wanted to run, but the crowd of gray brutes became more dense around him. He was out of breath, his knuckles were raw, his clothes were ripped, and he was ready to give in and let these klingon things murder him and cut him up into pieces.
“Jim!” McCoy called out, but it was to no avail.
Where was Jim?
In the deepest moment of McCoy’s despair, a pack of gray brutes to his right were suddenly cut down like bamboo, and a rider atop a white war horse trampled the poor devils into the dirt. McCoy looked up at the rider. He had long blonde hair that fell out from the edges of a bronze helmet. His leather armor was adorned with icons of horses and other equestrian motifs. And although the helmet partially covered his face, there was something that looked familiar about him.
The rider shot his gaze down at McCoy, who was looking very pitiful at the moment. Their eyes met. If they had time to speak their conversation would have been awkward at first, but then take a turn for the profound, asking questions that probed the very nature of their existence, and of the identity of the human race. But as things were, the rider just tossed a spare sword down to McCoy and spurred his horse back into the fray.
McCoy couldn’t put his finger on it, but something in that rider’s face sparked a fire in McCoy’s bones. He tightened his grip on the sword and felt an electric jolt through his arm. Something deep inside him, a potential that had been abandoned long ago, burst through the floodgates of his soul. He was a warrior now, dammit! With renewed vigor, Dr Leonard McCoy surged forward, skewering, decapitating, and chopping the limbs off of any brutes that were in his way.
It had been several minutes since Spock lost contact with the shuttle craft. The situation was all too familiar to him. He stood on a small rocky island in a boiling lake of lava. This time his comm was dead. He was alone. He pushed all feeling from his mind as he armed the cold fusion detonator that would neutralize the volcano. Although the irony was not lost on him that not too long ago he was in this same situation, and was saved by his colleagues while violating the prime directive — forever altering the destiny of one species — only to face death again on this planet under the exact same circumstances. Based on the outcome of his previous experiences under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, Spock estimated his odds of survival to be around fifty-fifty.
The countdown on the cold fusion detonator was close to zero now. And as Spock resolved his fate to whatever that would be, he looked up and saw a fascinating thing. On a ledge high above him were two figures wrestling. One was clothed in what looked like apparel from eighteenth century earth, while the other one was naked and almost completely hairless. Spock watched them for the last few seconds of the countdown. At the moment the timer hit zero the clothed figure had successfully pushed the hairless naked figure from the ledge.
The detonation knocked Spock from his feet and he toppled to the ground. The entire surface of the lava lake froze in mid boil, cooling instantly. Jets of steam shot up all around him. There was one final tremor and then all was quiet.
Spock lifted his head. He was still alive.
“Curious,” he said. Apparently the armor shielding on his suit far exceeded it’s designed parameters. Spock wished the same were true for the tow cables that the shuttlecraft was equipped with.
The face shield on his helmet was fogged and crusted over with minerals, impeding his visibility. Spock undid the clasps around his shoulders and removed his helmet. The sulfur in the air did not bother him. He looked around at his surroundings. What was once moments ago a turbulent lake of fire was now a large cathedral like chamber. It was quiet except for the newly formed acoustics of the chamber were good enough for Spock to hear small cries of pleasure. Spock looked in the direction of the sound. He saw the naked hairless humanoid creature dancing from one foot to another clutching something to its chest. Apparently it had not died in the cold fusion blast either. Spock would have to reevaluate the effects of cold fusion detonations in seismic events on biological organisms more carefully when he returned to the Enterprise. But for now he walked towards the creature, who he could see now was much smaller than Spock originally perceived.
The creature saw Spock approach and immediately assumed a hunched, defensive posture.
“Nasty elvses!” it spat at Spock. “Theys not take preciouss aways from us.”
“I assure you I come with no such intent,” Spock said, raising a hand to try and calm the little creature. But the creature screamed and launched itself at Spock’s head. In a single leap it reached his neck and clenched its unproportionately long fingers reached around Spock’s throat.
Spock was startled, but did not panic. In an s curve motion with his arm, Spock broke the creature’s purchase on his neck and held it at arm’s length by its shoulder in a Vulcan Death Grip. The little creature screamed, wriggled, and then went limp.
Spock heard a clink below him. He looked down and saw that something small and metalic had fallen from the little creature. He set the creature down on the newly formed stone ground and looked at the object. It was a gold ring. Spock picked it up. The ring seemed much too big to fit on the finger of so small a creature. The ring looked like it was made for someone much bigger.
“Fascinating,” Spock said, and he slipped the ring onto his finger.
In the weeks and months that followed stories spread of a new enemy, the Dark Lord Spock, rising from the ashes of Mount Doom. Darkness covered the land. Smoke rose from burned villages. Once mighty castles were laid to ruin. The king of Gondor was dead, squished under the foot of a Mordor troll.
With a heavy heart, a despondent Samwise Gamgee trekked alone, setting one hairy foot in front of the other, trudging in a northwest direction back home towards the Shire. If only things had turned out better, he could have written a book of his and Mister Frodo’s adventures, like old Bilbo did, but all his friends were dead, and Sam was alone, the last surviving member of the Fellowship. Sam would have just fallen to the ground, buried his face in the mud of the Marshes of Morgul and let himself die as well, if it wasn’t for one thought: Rosie Cotton.
The thought of the one girl he wanted to marry kept him going. He remembered her dancing at Bilbo’s birthday party, before he and Frodo, and Merry, and Pippin left the Shire. She had ribbons in her hair. He thought about her during every footstep all the way back to the Shire.
When he finally got there he walked up to the old tavern where he knew he would find Rosie. He had been thinking about this moment for months. His clothes were dusty from the road, and his hair was clotted with mud, but he didn’t care. He would tell her how he felt, he would take her in his arms and...
Sam did find Rosie outside the tavern. And she was being held by another man! Not a hobbit, like Sam. A really tall man. He was gripping her by both shoulders, her feet were dangling off the ground, and he was giving her a big, smacking kiss.
“Rosie!” Sam blurted out.
The man stopped kissing Rosie and set her down on the ground.
“Sam!” Rosie said. She blushed, obviously embarrassed. “Sam, it’s been so long. Where have you … oh never mind. Where are my manners? I should introduce you. Sam, this is-”
“Jim Kirk,” the man said, reaching down to shake Sam’s hand.
The End
