It Always Watches: A Star Trek Discovery Horror Story

VII: The Horror Show

Their minds were completely fungible now, as malleable as their physical forms. They were appendages now, extensions of an existence that it controlled. It moved them along the darkened corridors of the ship, intensifying its gaze and further transforming them. They sprouted segmented limbs, claws, and tentacles—nightmares that defied the natural order of their universe.

But their universe could be rewritten--would be rewritten--and the inquisitive, expansive mind that had reached out to the void would make that rewriting possible...

And the things that had once been Lieutenant Colwyn and Ensign Lyssa lurched toward the secondary turbolift...

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Burnham's mind struggled to accept and conceptualize what she saw, and the result was flashes of cool, comprehensible reality interspersed with images of sheer madness.

--A tactical console similar to the newish design she'd seen fielded in the Magee-class research ships gave way to glistening rolls of perspiring epidermis.

--A tri-console scientific station displayed mundane sensor readings of the dark nebula embracing the ship...and biomatter tendrils extended into the human-sized living brain that still bore tattered remnants of a Starfleet uniform...

--A patch of standard deck plating eased into the support columns of a single-unit comm/navigation station, that was, instead, a writhing, squealing, tumorous mass of eyes and fingers...

"Don't be alarmed," the thing that had been Captain Crampton gurgled. "We have achieved perfect efficiency. Starfleet will be so pleassssedd..." The face—an obscene parody of a woman's, now blue/black and necrotic—grinned hideously and drooled more viscous liquid. It wavered back and forth like a cobra atop an umbilical of glistening, moist flesh meshed with plastisteel that connected the head to a pulsing, sweating lump of flesh and metal and plastic that had once been her command chair.

All around the darkened bridge, illuminated only in nightmarish fragments by the strobing a few still-intact lights, the remainder of the bridge crew had been similarly transmogrified into biomechanical horrors: flesh laced with synthetics, limbs bisected, operating independently of bodies, having sprouted dozens of tendril-like fingers that ran through throbbing, gargling masses of bleeding meat that had once been starship controls. Deformed heads swayed on willowy, swaying stalks, lips squirming asynchronously, making sounds unheard before by this universe, while starfish-like eyes reached tiny limbs out from their sockets.

Burnham's whole body trembled and she stumbled backward to the turbolift, hands fumbling with the phaser. Her mind was saved only by her Vulcan mental training, which managed to at last contain the psychological impact of the scene around her and channel it into the most logical question at the moment:

"What are you?"

"We are perrrfectt..." Captain Crampton said, "because we are perfectttllly....made by god..." The thing burbled more liquid and smiled.

Already thinking of a different communication tack, Burnham's attention was caught by the hiss of the secondary turbolift near the far corner of the room. She drew her phaser—

--too late! An indistinct shape exploded from the umber glow of the turbolift interior, crossed the bridge in a single, perfect arc, and knocked Burnham to the deck, landing atop her. The thing was a vaguely humanoid mass of appendages and tentacles which wound sickly around her limbs, pinning and immobilizing her. It no longer had anything recognizable as a head or neck, only a slight tapering to the tentacle mass. The deck beneath her exposed skin felt warm and slick like an organ.

"We need you. You are important. Isn't that an honor?" a reedy, lilting voice fluttered from somewhere near the edge of the bridge.

Burnham managed to turn her head and saw another figure gliding serenely toward her. It had clearly once been Lyssa—the uniform was still mostly intact, and there were traces of her long, coiled hair flowing from what had become of her skull—but the rest of her was something alien and monstrous. Compound eyes regarded her benignly.

"What the hell do you want?"

"Your mind," the thing that had been Lyssa answered simply.

And then the tendrils grabbed her face. She retched with the revulsion of the touch: like having a mass of worms dropped on her face. Then she felt the presence, the touch of a mind. Like the bridge, it was a patchwork of familiar thoughts and feeling, and something else incomprehensible save for horror.

My thoughts to your thoughts...

She reached out frantically with her mind, rode the unfamiliar waves of a partially alien consciousness like surfing a tidal wave, found a recognizable fragment—Ensign Colwyn!!!—and shoved through all the memories she could...

...The Sarcophagus Ship looming like a dragon before the undersized, undergunned Shenzhou...

--fear—

...The strobes of phasers, the last of torpedoes, the carnage of The Battle of Binary Stars...

--fear, humiliation, impotence--

Captain Georgiou's eyes widening with shock as T'Kuvma's blade tore through her body, rending the Starfleet uniform that contained it...

--self hatred, purposelessness, fury—

The thing recoiled enough at the emotions charging through its mind for Burnham to pull her gun-hand free and fire three quick bolts into it. It made an inhuman keening sound and loosened its grip.

Abruptly the whole bridge echoed with the same unnatural roar. Burnham pulled away threw herself bodily into the turbolift and punched the controls with the heel of her left hand.

The things rushed toward her.

Before the doors closed, she let off a long, blast that disintegrated whatever was left of the two Starfleet officers she'd rescued that morning.