"The Puppeteers"

[Joe Manning 0]

Zoalus IV's sensor grid lit up as a number of photon torpedoes streaked toward the planet's surface. Defensive turrets emerged from their concealed alcoves to lock on to the perceived threat, but they were too slow to catch the first two projectiles. The torpedoes slammed nearly into the center of a vast forest, rocking the earth with terrible explosions that set the alien vegetation ablaze. The turrets were simply not designed to intercept targets traveling at such high speeds from space. Drones swarmed from the nearest cities to extinguish the fire, scan for hostiles, and recover any in tact pieces of the offending weapons. With the sensor grid now alert and the turrets active, torpedo three was shot out of the sky ... then torpedo four ... then torpedo five ...

 

Two thousand miles away and over one hundred feet beneath the surface, monitors were flashing inside an expansive chamber of ancient design. The readouts that scrolled across the screens contained Zoalan symbols from an alphabet incomprehensible to all but a handful of individuals living in the galaxy. The message conveyed was clear, however, universal to anyone who had ever seen similar computer displays -- WARNING! THREAT! DANGER!

 

Overhead maps of the continent and the distant forest revealed radiating yellow dots which occupied the positions of the falling torpedoes. Broad, flashing overlays showed the two blasts and the ensuing blaze. Swarms of smaller blue dots were converging on the blaze, mechanical damage controllers set to their emergency tasks. Several monitors displayed the altitudes of the falling torpedoes complete with the laser fire that was halting their descent. Several revealed the gamma wave scans that were being conducted by the drones closest to the forest.

 

Zoalus IV had turned into quite the busy planet over the last 48 hours.

 

And in this Zoalan control room there was an audience. An audience that was alive, a concept virtually unheard of on the planet's surface. Three of them were human. One of them was a Klingon. The fifth was an Andorian.

 

Only they were not. In shape and form they were quite recognizable, down to the antennae atop the Andorian's head and the pronounced ridges above the Klingon's eyes. But there was a sickly greyness to their skin and a disturbing transparency to their flesh. Veins were barely visible beneath, but they pumped no blood that a physician would recognize. Rather, a thick black substance coursed there, causing arteries to slowly throb in places. Their eyes were similarly unnatural -- featureless white pools.

 

'Alive,' perhaps, was an exaggeration.

 

While the frenzy that was falling upon the majority of the room's monitors had drawn some attention, these five intruders into ancient history were focused upon a single video display which showed a cave, as still as the forest was tumultuous. The only movement was from the pool of inky black liquid, still undulating where two bodies had fallen in. Concealed surveillance equipment had begun watching the pair from the moment they entered the structure in the port city and had followed their progress through the subterranean tunnels to the point where one had tackled the other.

 

Nothing unexpected.

 

The Human man sitting at the monitor, bald save for a few decrepit wiry hairs that clung for dear life to flesh that it did not belong to, looked up with milky eyes at the towering Klingon. "Retrieve them."

 

The Klingon nodded once. He stood still for a moment as countless tendrils of blackness sprouted from his visible veins, and his flesh shifted slowly to an opaque rock-like dark grey. The oily vessels now concealed and his skin hard and shielded against the elements, the Klingon shuffled with an awkward gait through a tunnel opening that had been carved out of one of the room's walls.

 

"What about his ship?" the Human woman standing behind the leader asked. "They seem to be aware of our presence and attacking."

 

The bald man's head tilted slightly to the side. "That is not certain. The ship attacks a great distance away and with little discernible purpose. The team we observed earlier did not appear to share the goals of Ethan Neufeld. He disguised himself among them. Undoubtedly, he disguises his allegiances."

 

"So what is the ship's intent?" the Andorian man asked. "And what will we do if they prove a threat?"

 

"For now, we can do nothing," the bald man answered. "This facility's capabilities are limited to the surface and the atmosphere. But we will soon learn more of their identities and purposes. And if more come ... "

 

He looked to the side, where a younger Human man was seated at an adjacent terminal. The young man raised his arm and tapped at the attached ODRI, relaying precisely constructed Zoalan computer commands to the terminal. Its display showed a map of the port city -- an empty ruin, totally devoid of even the ever-present machine sentries that were Zoalus IV's hallmark. With a command from the ODRI, that changed abruptly. Blue dots appeared all over the city as deactivated drones were brought back to mock-life and instructed to patrol. The dots streamed through the streets of the city, into its watch towers, and out to its edges. Strings of Zoalan symbols flashed across the map in yellow, bearing a familiar message.

 

WARNING! THREAT! DANGER!

 

The bald man looked again at the footage of the cave and its now occupied pool. "They will not find this facility so easy to infiltrate."