Vampires Suck

[Crash Calestorm 0]

Captains Ready Room

Stardate 2260.53

12:56 PM

 

A Starfleet brat.

 

A former combat pilot.

 

A starship captain.

 

A habit (still) of doing flybys on operation control centers.

 

A woman who fought hard, played hard, wouldn’t go down without a fight.

 

Allergic to bullsh*t and fools.

 

Had a soft side that not many were permitted to see.

 

And, she was a history geek. Not many people realized that Crash Calestorm could be a competent historical researcher when she put her mind to it.

 

A scholar she was not, but Earth history had always held a certain fascination for her. There was a certain amount of influence from her Daddy, himself an Old Earth American Civil War buff.

 

Just don’t ever call her a history nerd, ‘cause that conversation wouldn’t end well and someone might end up horizontal and not in that good way. That was an exaggeration, of course, as she’d mellowed over the years. Mostly. Sorta. Kinda. Mmmm….

 

So, when all hell broke loose on the Comanche Creek, instead of shooting everything in sight as her well deserved and not well deserved ‘Border Patrol Captain’ reputation suggested, she turned to the ships computer system and broke out the personal research. The topic? Vampires and vampirism.

 

Earth based fiction always had a love affair with the concept. Dozens of entertainment vids and readers had been produced, featuring vampire slayers to interviews with the vampires to pretty boy vamps. Fads and mindsets had surfaced, people wanting to embrace the lifestyle and ‘become’ a vampire. Cults were formed where people actually bit one another to share mutual blood…and that was so unhygienic it wasn’t even funny.

 

Vampires had never been proven to exist and no evidence had ever been found. At least, no evidence had ever been found on Earth and this was the key point. There were other worlds and other cultures that did have some element of vampirism, but were not vampiric. It was similar to automatically classifying the Caitians or Kzinti as were-cats, and of course they were not.

 

But, facts were facts, and she couldn’t ignore that a vampiric-type infection and one unsolved murder had been uncovered. Captain Calestorm had opted for keyboard blazing rather than phasers blazing. For now, that is. Her findings were downright cool, the researcher part of her personality couldn’t help admitting.

 

The Ja’Kal of Orin Ten: primordial cousins of both the Vulcans and the Romulans, had slight physical deviations from their distant relatives.

 

“Pointed ears, check. Fangs, check. Look just like the classic vampire and/or elf stereotype? Check. Find Earth-based vampire and fantasy elf fiction amusing? Check. Drank blood? Nada. More on that in a bit…”

 

The Icartha of Nihal Prime, a nocturnal world: sensitivity to light.

 

Cale gave a derisive snort. “…permanent nocturnal world, huh? Remind me not to retire there…”

 

The Norinthia of Jentha Omega: a sentient bat species…giant bats, basically.

 

“…giant bats? We need to visit there…”

 

The Kilhani of Torcan Five: required a certain plasma based supplement to their diet, also known as blood.

 

“…I’ll take Klingon table manners any day…”

 

Back to the Orin Ten entry. Calestorm was no scientist or first contact historian, but she knew that speculation in the historical communities claimed the Ja’Kal may have been the forebears for the vampiric legends of Earth. Developing interstellar travel as the Humans were barely out of the Dark Ages, a Ja’Kal scouting party may have made landfall on Earth. Let’s assume things did not go well. You do the math.

 

Vampires did not exist. Species existed that had certain elements of the concept, and that was all.

 

So what in the hell were they dealing with here on ‘Creek? This so called vampire virus?

 

Crash sighed to herself and scrolled to the next document…

 

(TBC In Sim…)