Open Writing

Deep within her lair, the alien queen sensed the demise of two of the hosts carrying her children. She roared her fury, her head and tail whipping from side to side as she also noted the lift-off of the shuttlecraft from the alien ship. Her soldiers, being instructed only to capture the hosts, had not paid any attention to the one in the shuttle, since it was not impregnated. Consequently, she had not known of its existence, and this further increased her fury. Also, she sensed that the one remaining host was about to destroy itself.

Mad with rage, the queen tore herself free from the umbilical and began to move through the tunnels towards the surface, scattering minions from her path as she went. If she could not have her way this time in the realization of her grand scheme, it was only a minor setback, and of no great concern. Now that her planet had been discovered, others would come, and she still had the alien ship and its star-spanning drive.

For now, she would be content with revenge, but the last remaining alien must be stopped. Only it could alert others of its kind to her race’s presence here. As she ascended, she bent her will towards those of her servants who waited at the landing fields, several hundred kilometers distant.

She would send ships into the sky, and destroy the one who would escape. His vessel was only a small one, unarmed, and her pilots had brought down the great ship. This one would be no bother.

Her fury mounting, driving her on, she sent the instructions.

*

McCoy, ascending through twenty-five thousand feet, watched solemnly as the nuclear fireball erupted. His eyes misted, and his hands gripped the rail beside the portal. He had no time to grieve, however; an alarm began to sound in the shuttle, indicating the approach of several spacecraft. McCoy turned from the portal, returned to the controls and sat in the pilot’s chair.

He stared at the viewer and saw four U-shaped ships coming at him from all sides. Calmly, he made his decision. The alien in the hologram had been right, he thought. This was not a species; it was a plague, a virulence that had to be wiped out at all costs, and he had the cure in his hands.

With an icy calm, McCoy reached out and flipped back a red and white striped cover on the control panel before him, revealing a large, red firing button. He looked at the alien ships once more, and thought for a moment of his friends. Then, as the ship passed thirty-five thousand feet, and with no compunction at all, he slapped the flat of his hand down on the warp drive control.

“See you in hell, you bastards!” he said, as the universe erupted.

*

The alien queen hissed and roared her fury as she emerged from the tunnel onto the planet’s surface. She saw, in the distance, the mushroom cloud of the thermonuclear explosion, and she knew that her troops had been destroyed, and the space drive lost. This did not dismay her; she had many more minions, more aliens would come, and she would have more opportunities. She had waited eons; if need be, she would wait even more. For the moment, there were four of her ships in the atmosphere, about to take her revenge on the last of the aliens, and she would savor this small victory.

Eagerly she looked skyward, her long neck waving, her barbed tail thrashing, hissing in malevolent hatred of all living things. And then something horrible happened.

The sky changed color, turning to a bright orange hue, warmer than it had ever been before. The queen had time for one astonished squealing roar before the air turned to fire, consuming her and every other thing, living or dead, on the planet’s surface. The fire also penetrated into the tunnels and the underground caverns and crisped the legions of unborn aliens in their eggs. On and on it went, all around the hellish globe in a purifying inferno, until no trace of their kind remained, and the planet was cleansed once more.

*

McCoy turned on the rear viewer as the shuttle accelerated instantly to warp one. The ignition of the atmosphere by the anti-matter reaction had only taken a few milliseconds, but in that time the shuttle had been well clear of the planet. He watched the viewer as a bright orange glow enveloped the entire alien world, and thought of his friends. Jim, Spock, Sulu, Scotty, Uhura and Chekov. All gone, and lost forever.

Senses numbed, he watched the receding world a moment longer, then rose from the seat, wincing at the pain in his left shoulder. He looked around for his medical bag, then realized he had left it behind, on the surface of the newly sterilized planet.

Ah, to hell with it, he thought, too tired and sick at heart to care. Let the hypersleep’s autodoc take care of it until I reach earth, he thought. McCoy entered figures into the shuttle’s computer and set the craft’s controls to follow a reverse of the course that had brought them to the alien world, increased speed to the shuttle’s maximum of warp two, then slowly moved to the rear of the craft. Standing by the hypersleep chamber, he looked again at the viewer, but the alien world was now just another star amongst countless others dusting the cosmos.

Gingerly, favoring his injured shoulder, McCoy slipped off his boots and climbed into the chamber. Lying down and making himself comfortable, he set the controls for indefinite sleep; if no one found him, then he would sleep forever, or at least until the shuttle’s power ran out. The way he felt right then, he couldn’t care less.

If nothing intercepted him, he knew it would take twenty years to reach earth. This thought did not dismay him as much as he had expected it to. There was no one back on earth that he cared about, no one to age while he did not, no one at all. All of the people who meant anything to him were dead, back on that hell planet.

The transparent cover of the chamber began to descend, and McCoy lay back and closed his eyes. He had time for one brief thought, of the friends he had left behind; then the sleep field enveloped him, and he slipped into unconsciousness while the shuttle streaked away from that place at its maximum speed of warp two. When the dilithium crystals in the warp core were exhausted, it would simply coast through space, still at the same speed, still on course for earth.

McCoy, uncaring of any of this, slept.

***