Lifeforce: A Star Trek Discovery Horror Story

The Beginning of the Horror

They ran through dim, sporadically lit corridors, Landry only occasionally noticing the damage, the shattered instrument panels, the scorch marks. A corner of her brain thought man, someone really did sabotage this ship...

"We didn't know what we were bringing aboard!" Paredes said breathlessly. "By the time we found out what they were--what they were doing—it was too late."

"The bat-people?" Landry asked as they skidded to a halt outside the transporter room. Paredes gave her a perplexed look. "Whatever you call them," Landry said.

"No," Paredes said. "They were dormant. It was the humanoids we found that was the real danger."

"Humanoids? What--" Landry's question was cut off as the door slid open. Inside the dimly-lit room the main transporter console glowing like an altar. Warrener and King were indistinct silhouettes beside it.

"Who's this?" Warrener demanded, taking a step toward them.

"Captain Gloria Paredes. Are you the ones that beamed me over?" Paredes asked as she headed to the console.

"I, uh, yeah," Warrener blustered.

"Good. You got it working. Now we need to destroy it." She began to work the controls.

"What?" Landry and Warrener said in unison.

"We could set one of our phase pistols to overload," King suggested.

"We just got the thing working!" Warrener said peevishly.

Paredes ignored him and looked over at Landry. "Is there a planet below us?"

"That's where we came from."

"Damn. That makes this exponentially worse," Paredes shook her head.

"Why?" Landry asked, joining Paredes by the console. "You still haven't told us what's going on here."

Before she could get an answer, the doors exploded inward in a spray of plasticine shards. Landry fell into a defensive crouch, reaching for her gun, anticipating the concussion. It didn't come. There was no blast, no heat, no force at all. It was as if a great, invisible fist had simply punched through the door. Behind her, she heard Paredes gasp in terror. "It's them!"

But the figures that stepped implacably through the jagged, gaping hole in the doorway were not the bat-like things she'd seen in stasis on Wilco. Nor were they any other sort of beast, demon, or monster plucked from her nightmares.

They were beautiful.

Two men and a woman. All nude, their bodies perfect as if some omnipotent entity had created an avatar of the ideal human form for each gender and set them loose upon the Universe. Their limbs were long and roped with muscle, their abdomens flat and taut, their skin as smooth and perfect and membrane of cell. The woman stood before the two men, the apex of a triangle of pure physical perfection. Her flesh was a perfectly-even alabaster, which made the deep, glossy black of her thick, flowing hair even more pronounced and seemed to highlight the small, clean wedge of pubic hair.

Landry wanted to fire, but between the intention and the action the circuit was blown by a rush of pure, consuming desire. It wasn't the simple biochemical reaction to pheromones—her nights with Linnea had left her well-versed in the flavor of those sexual urges—but something incalculably more potent powerful.

The woman's raven-maned head swiveled to face Landry, and the gaze of her rich, hazel eyes beneath arched brows seemed to pierced her, to violate her more deeply and intimately than any man ever had. Landry didn't just want the woman carnally; she wanted to be as naked as the mystery woman. She wanted to tear off her constricting uniform for the woman, to kneel before her, to worship her womanhood and perfection, to commune with her mentally, sexually, spiritually...

"Use my body." The woman said, her voice seeming to reverberate inside Landry's mind.

"Shoot her!" Paredes's voice snapped through Landry's brain like a whip being cracked. She aimed in...

...too late. Warrener stepped in her way, his body all but totally blocking her shot at the woman. She inhaled to scream at him to move when the room began to strobe with pulsing, blue energy. She watched as Warrener leaned in, as if for a kiss, and was abruptly tethered to the woman by a crackling, arcing ribbon of energy, as violent as any raking phaser blast. Warrener's body shuddered spasmodically, and in the blue/white glow of energy she saw his face collapse in on itself as if the skull supporting it had suddenly turned to taffy. His skin grew grey and oniony, and in mere moments he looked like one of the crewmen she'd seen down on Wilco.

The two men surrounded King, who looked back and forth between them, overwhelmed. Landry fired, her beam cutting deeply into the chest of the blonde-haired man. If the man/god felt the pain or the effect on his body he didn't show it.

"We have to go!" Paredes shouted. Landry ignored and fired again, at the other one this time. Her beam blew through his abdomen, but he gave no more acknowledgement than the other.

The woman/god thing was done with Warrener and let go of him. His body hit the ground, the environment suit just a sack of bones now. Landry recoiled at the woman's sudden attention, terrified of what it might make her do.

"Let's go!" Paredes screamed. Landry spun and saw the captain standing at the rear entrance to the transporter room. Landry ran for it, and Paredes pivoted through the doorway ahead of her. Behind them the room throbbed and flared and screamed.