Tales from the Lower Decks (Halloween Story!)

As we enter the second week of Stonewall's Halloween Fright Fest, we unveil "Tales from the Lower Decks", a spooky writing event, in this forum thread!  Together as a fleet, we want everyone to contribute to a scary story set on the U.S.S. Stonewall!  The story will run until October 21st at which point, one participant will be chosen at random to win some prizes once the story is complete.   Check out the instructions below on how to participate!




Participating is very simple:

1. Contribute to the on-going story by adding up to a MAX of 3 sentences per post
2. Don't hijack the thread and make this YOUR story; instead, build on the post before yours to make this OUR story
3. Allow AT LEAST TWO other people to post after your addition to the story before you post again
4. Make your contributions spooky and have fun!

Deadline for submissions is the end of the day on  Sunday, October 21st, at which point we'll post the completed story for everyone to read!  Encourage all of your friends to participate to make the story diverse and interesting!




Once the story is complete, we'll put every participant's name into a hat for a prize draw!  One lucky participant's name will be drawn and will win a 10x master key pack in Star Trek Online! 

Happy writing and happy Halloween!

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Let's kick off our "Tales from the Lower Decks" Halloween story!  

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"Helm, take her in..." ordered Fleet Admiral @NicholasJohn16, as the USS Stonewall sliced majestically through the outer membrane of the Mutara class nebula it had been surveying.  Suddenly, the deck of the Sovereign class starship lurched violently beneath the feet of the crew, as the ship's saucer encountered the first of the turbulent eddys in the gaseous maelstrom, throwing Lieutenant @Saintplazma clear of the security console that he'd been manning.  "Bridge to astrometrics - report!" demanded Commander Gareth @GXV3, as the ship's lighting flickered momentarily, before failing completely and leaving the bridge in darkness, with only the faint glow of instruments, serving as dim illumination.

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A second eddy rocked into the ship tossing her a-starboard, the narrow ships frame groaning out; audiobly for the crew to hear. M'Freya picked herself up from the deck, a twitch of the caitians tail indicating her annoyance. Long fingers tapped, before pounded at the flickering controles of her station; reaching underneath taking out a tricorder and begining a scan of the general area "Micro fractures, detected in the bulk heads, intermitten power surges Admiral."

After steadying himself, Lieutenant Kiki ran over to his fellow Lieutenant @Saintplazma, quickly pulling out a medical tricorder and assessing him for injuries.
"Eddie? come on Eddie, Stay with me Lieutenant." slapping his cheek gentle to get a response.
"Is everyone okay? what the in the heck just happened?" Kiki called out to the others.

The communications panel whistled, announcing an irritated transmission from the cargo bay: "I don't know what you people are doing up there, but I'm starting to think my merchandise and I would have been better off on that Pakled freighter!" Emil's voice rose in alarm as he said "Bridge, I'm pretty sure there's a hull breach down here somewhere because it looks like some gas and dust from that nebula outside has gotten in here and is contaminating my...wait, that's not supposed to move on its own, is it?"

@Dax_aussie_Boy awoken after the second eddy hit the ship to finding himself up side down on the floor in his room. He had completed a 12 hour shift in the medical department. He taps his comm badge, "Dax to Bridge? Did someone forget that the ship isn't a defiant class and you can't just flip people during their sleep like that?" He waited for a reply, but got no answer. "Great....... Comms are out from that assumption. Better find my clothes to find out what's going on." As Dax searches his once clean room, he hears a giggling of a child coming from outside of the door to his quarters. Quickly glancing over to the door, he notices the door is shut. He stops in his search for his clothes and rushes over to his secret compartment of a type 2 phaser that he kept under his bed and rushed back to the door, and as he points, he notices the door is opened half way.

With the ship being shaken twice already and the comms system going off and online it made communication on the ship near impossible.. Gareth motioned to the other officers that he will take the turbo lift to main engineering to see if he could get the ship working to standard.
As he walked past the ships counsellor @Halish he noticed he was curled up in a ball on the floor, sobbing to himself.
Having no time to console the poor man Gareth continued toward the turbolift .. as the doors slid open.. he was nearly knocked back by 2 officers rushing out of the turbolift.. they were both dressed up as little bo peep.. complete with head bonnet and sheep crook ... "Where have you two been"? gareth asked @calx and @caijamin ??

 As @Viethai ran down the “T” shape corridor, something caught in his eye. He quickly turned back to the “T” corridor and saw the fade shadow figure of child-like. However, the shadow vanished away quickly as Viethai came. He noticed the door opening half way. Out of curious, he walked toward the half-way opened door. As he approached the door, he noticed the name tag on the door belonged to @Dax_aussie_Boy. Viethai slowly peeked through the door. The buzz orange beam shot toward to his face. Suddenly, something grabbed  Viethai’s uniform collar and threw him to the wall of corridor as the phaser beam passed through the door. He collapsed down on the floor. With blurring visions, he looked up at the large black figure somewhat smiling before he completely knocked out.

"Why do you ask Gareth? Have you lost your sheep?" @caijamin smirks and continued towards the console in main engineering. He soon realised that @calx wasn't at his side anymore, he turns around and sees him bent down, head cocked, standing over @halish - who he asks "do ya need a bigger hanky?". Halish, in a confused haze takes his thumb out of his mouth and just as he is about to speak, @calx tears off his bonnet and stuffs it in his mouth.

Laughing @caijamin reaches the console and deactivates the forcefield. He walks towards the warp core, throwing off his ridiculous disguise, and as he shreds his clothes, he glaces back at @gxv3 and says, "now you're in for a real treat boyo".

He splits open his face and drops the flesh sack that used to be the human Caijamin on the floor. The Undine imposter places both hands on the core and clucks.

Leaning over a work table in Science Lab one Jim ( @JimJMcL1a), absently rubbed his Borg implant, while studying a specimen the away team beamed up earlier that day, when the ship was suddenly rocked by sever turbulence, throwing him across the lab. As Jim attempted to get back up a second wave of turbulence rocked the ship, when suddenly he thought he heard someone whispering.  Looking around, he slowly pulled himself up and checked the containment field confining the specimen, when he heard the whispers again, this time a cold sweat began to trickle down his spine as he realize that the voices were at the periphery of his mind, it was the Borg!  Tapping his comm. badge, "Jim to Bridge!", there was no response.  @JimJMcL1a grabbed a phaser pistole from a locker, checking to make sure that the Universal Frequency Modulator was working, and stepped out into the hallway, when he suddenly heard a high pitched shriek, that sounded distinctly like @Voleron.  Sprinting down the corridor, Jim turned toward where he heard @Voleron's scream, only to find a smashed case of wine leaking all over the deck....

(@NikoLunus) M'Freya studied the scans from her tricorder not paying much attention to her surroundings at the moment. "This doesn't seem right, lifesigns everywhere coming and going like the crew doubled itself." Her other hand held a second tricorder, durring the commotion on the bridge she had slipped out trying to track down some of the odder power surgers she had detected; small breaches had deffinately formed in the hull after the two impacts to the ship, with traces of the nebula filtering into the air. It prickled then, an old sensation, the hairs on her neck rising; fear rose quickly a familiar sound that haunted her at night bat'leths. The sound roared around her as fear increased so did this sensation that a blade was moving towards her.

Giving @gxv3 a hamsterish squeak and a wink, and having left his shepherd's sheep crook in the bit where the star dun shine, @calx took to completing the mission he and @caijamin were on.

Running through the corridor, "It has taken an eternity for this moment", he thought to himself, looking upon the body of the fallen @viethai. "Yes you will do nicely..."

KLAXON SOUNDS

=WARNING! STRUCTURAL BREACH IN PROGRESS! EVACUATE AREA! WARNING! STRUCTURAL BREACH IN PROGRESS!"=

"Dammit..... I missed. Whatever it was, it cant have gotten far." Dax_aussie_Boy resumed finding clothes to get changed into and slowly peered around the door, sweat is developing along his forehead. "Guess the Environmental System are offline, probably head there and make sure nothing else is damaged." As he peered through the opening of his quarter's to the main corridor, he couldn't see anything except for the condition red lighting going off. He proceeds to walk down the corridor to see if the turbolift system is working, but sadly it wasn't. "Well.... I was informed that I hadn't been exercising enough lately, guess Jefferies tubes are my friend today." He began his work out with the Jeferries tubes to get to Environmental System on Deck 12. As he went through the door to head down, a dark figure watched him from around the corner and softly giggled and a gleeful smile appeared across it's face.

With the air growing thinner in the cargo bay while the gaseous dust clouds grew thicker and seemed to move with purpose and intent, Emil heard the klaxon warning of a breach and muttered "tell me something I don't already know!" With a pained last look at his now-ruined investment, he decided that the 125th Rule's imperative for self-preservation was his only profitable course of action and sprinted for the exit, only to stop suddenly upon seeing a familiar short figure coalesce from the dust clouds in front of the opening door; in disbelief he uttered the single word, "Moogie?"

The unexpected apparition beckoned to him and said "Son, save yourself and forget the latinum you just lost!" Fondly remembering his dead mother's exemplary avarice and encyclopedic knowledge of the Rules of Acquisition, his eyes narrowed while he uncoiled his vintage energy whip (certified by Krem himself to have been used in the raid upon the Human ship NX-01) and fired, shouting "don't you know Rule 31: never make fun of a Ferengi's mother!?"


_{(Ed. note: since I only used 2 run-on sentences previously, I'm reclaiming the third one I didn't use here per Rule 193. If you don't like it, take it up with the Nagus.)}

Pulling his Tricorder from his hip, Jim (@JimJMcL1a) began scanning.  He could still hear the Collective in his mind, but the Tricorder showed no sign of them on board the ship, he did pick up faint traces of @Voleron in a near by Jefferies tube, and something else, but it couldn't be right.  Tapping the Tricorder against his palm, he looked again, and sure enough there were the distinct life signs of species 8472 on the habitation deck and engineering.  Thinking to himself, it was a shame really, had the Undine or the near by Borg smashed the case of wine, the rest of the crew wouldn't have to worry about them as the ships Chief Engineer @Milmar would easily dispatch them himself, but poor Dave (@Voleron) was probably hiding as he would now be at the not so tender mercies of @Milmar.

Making his way to the Jefferies Tube, Jim decided the would keep an eye out for @Voleron, as he made his way to the bridge.  He just needed to get there and have access to ship sensors, to locate where the Borg were hiding, in the nebula.

The red alert light flashed all way down the corridor with the crew running and along with @JimJMcL1a and @Dax_aussie_Boy separately crawled through the Jefferies Tube. In very small room whereabouts, the unconsciousness body of Viethai was dropped on the floor along with unconsciousness bodies of @calx, @caijamin, and unknown crewman. The imposter Calx transformed into @Viethai, “You are not needed, Calx.” Viethai left the room processing to complete his other mission...

As the crew of the U.S.S. Stonewall are rushing around with their own problems, @Dax_aussie_Boy has his own problems to deal with.

"See unknown cultures and civilizations they said, It would build strength of character they said." He looks across each crawl way access of the intersection in the jefferies tubes that he was in.

"I doubt they meant anything about this when you hearing giggling voices and Environmental System not working, as part of that catch phrase when signing up!" He begins to crawl through junction 32 on desk 11, when he hears scuffing around up ahead, he looks up and see a dark figure ahead of him, smiling at him.

"Either i am going crazy from this exercise or that smiles isn't friendly" He points his phaser in the direction to in the best defensive posture he could do. "Ain't got time for this".

Emil's illusory mother simply vanished as the energy bolt passed through her and struck the corridor outside the cargo bay, leaving a large scorch mark on the wall. Ducking into the corridor and sealing the door behind him, he began rapidly working the control panel to bypass the security protocols, open the cargo bay doors and disengage the containment fields with a tricky Hazari algorithm he had acquired on his last trade mission to the Delta Quadrant.

With the cargo bay sealed and depressurized, he shouted into the comms panel: "Bridge, intruder alert! Have there been any reports of attacks by telepathic or psionic species in this region of space, like Lethean raiders or maybe Undine?" Getting nothing but static in response, Emil sighed, readied his whip and started toward Main Engineering.


_{(Since we appear to be largely ignoring the sentence limit at this point, the above is governed by Rule 52.)}

Commander Jacien Mandrake came to on the floor of the conference room the pads he'd been working on littered about him. "I must have hit my head on the corner of the table when the ship hit the turbulents," he thought. This was supposed to be a standard Mutara class nebula and the USS Stonewall, though an older late 24th century ship, was sporting the most cutting-edge technology in the fleet. Nothing in here should have been strong enough to affect the ships' stabilizers and inertial dampeners, at least not without being detected first. Nothing naturally occurring at least.

"Jacien to bridge, what's happened?" When no response was forthcoming he tried hailing anyone in range. Comms seemed to be functioning but it was as though no one was answering on purpose. Quickly he made his away across the room to the door that led to the bridge but it refused to open. He tried to initiate the emergency override code but still the door remained uncooperative. Lightning flashed outside the viewports, casting the room in stark azure light, normally Jacien wouldn't have paid it much attention were it not for the shadow of a figure it cast across the door. Long limbs, sharp talons loomed as though they were preparing to grasp him from behind.

Jacien whirled to find nothing, the room and the space beyond the viewpoint showed no sign of the monstrous figure. "Computer, intitiate emergency ship-wide containment protocols. Enable preemptive transverse bulkhead initialization and restrict primary and secondary computer functions to senior level personnel only."

He made his way back across the room to the Jeffries tube access beneath the main systems display and began the long climb down into the bowels of the ship.

With the Dark figure still smiling at him, he isn't sure whether to fire a warning shot near it or to stun it.

"That creepy smile is really unnerving me, I hope you know that my creepy friend." The smile kept tilting back and forth from side to side as if its taunting him.

"Ah screw it." Dax decides to move backward instead of moving towards where the smiling is coming from, but the hatch way behind him closed on him. He turns his head to attempt to override it, but it wouldn't open. He turns his head back, and the smiling dark figure has disappeared. 

"O........K........!! Where did you go?"