boysofeden | Old Faces, New Places

It had been days since Dukat had one of his troubling dreams, dreams of a place he couldn't recall--alarming in its own right for a Cardassian--where he knew he was trapped. He awoke from them feeling frustrated and out of sorts, to the point he saw a doctor for a sleep aid that he subsequently refused to use. He believed he was back to himself now, and there was still much to be done. The minefield left behind by the fleeing Federation personnel was proving to be extremely troublesome. Damar's insistence that it could be disabled at first was heartening. As time passed, he found it nothing but annoying, as he did any time he was promised results with no follow through.

He left the bridge of the Rotarran with a headache throbbing just behind his right eye ridge, instructing his second that under no circumstances was he to be disturbed unless they found themselves under attack. In the solitude and darkness of his quarters, he found some small relief but no rest. Perhaps the sleep aid wasn't such a bad idea after all? As he lay prone on the hard bed, he tossed the idea back and forth with no resolution, taking himself down toward what he sought without being fully aware of it.

How long he slept he couldn't say, nor could he precisely pin what awakened him. A sound? A feeling? Yes, there was something definitely off in the sound of the engines. He was intimately familiar with the ins and outs of his ship as any good commanding officer ought to be. He activated his wrist comm. "Damar, report," he said. He received no response. "Damar!" he barked. Still nothing.

Disconcerted, he snatched up his disruptor and stalked out into the corridor to access one of the ship wide comm systems. Nowhere that he hailed provided answer, not the engine room, the bridge, the infirmary, nor any of his senior officers' quarters. As he strode the corridors, it seemed as though he occupied a ghost ship. None of his personnel were where they were supposed to be, nor anywhere else that he could find. He raced to the bridge to find long range sensors giving nonsense readings and the view screen inoperable. After some adjustment of the controls, he managed a static-y picture of an unfamiliar starscape. Navigation was no better with all logs currently inaccessible.

Cursing under his breath, he attempted to get a reading of life signs aboard the vessel. There were two, his own and that of an unknown species. It was located in one of the cargo bays on deck six. Transferring tracking abilities to his wrist comm, he set out to find the intruder. If it was responsible for the disappearance of his crew, he intended to find out how and why.

Threaded | Flat

Cold. She realised she was cold. Not why or how, but simply that she was. The sensation was alien and familiar all at once, like a far-off memory or the knowledge gleaned from skimming the pages of a book. She shouldn't be cold; ships didn't feel temperature. They didn't feel anything, and yet... There was a haze about her processors, slowing down her memory and blocking off neuropathways. Her engines sounded distant and off; there was something wrong with her interior space. No, not just her interior... her exterior, as well. And her sensors were offline. She recorded no data and saw nothing outside, but there was still sound and touch and smell--

Smell. She couldn't smell. Ships didn't smell and yet she was. Cold steel and ozone; dry, almost stale air. She took a breath she didn't realise she was holding, exhaling loudly, and snapped her eyes open. Breath. Eyes. Shaking, the TARDIS pressed at her face and the thick dark locks around her head, the fuzziness around her thoughts lifting even as she did so. Long-forgotten memories raced to the fore, thoughts she'd attributed to ghosts in the machine. An island. Flesh. Vague recollections of entrapment and a loss of self. They rushed forward and she clawed at her cheeks, suddenly terrified.

She was a ship. She was a ship. This couldn't be happening again. That had all just been a processing error, hadn't it? But no. The hands at her face said otherwise; the naked body, legs tucked beneath her -- they didn't lie. Something had happened, something far beyond her understanding at the moment, and she was powerless to stop it.

"Doctor?" she called, voice hoarse and thick as she pushed herself up on wobbly legs. She fell almost immediately and grit her teeth, dragging herself toward the wall to use it as leverage. It looked like a cargo bay on a transport ship of some sort, but the stillness was eerie. Where was the crew? Where was her pilot? "Doctor?"

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