'Not one word of the following is true.'

- Stephen Fry

The viewscreen showed a vast M-class planet gracefully rotating on its axis, clouds merrily chasing each other across its face as the sun began to peer over the horizon to look at a new satellite. The Compromise continued its somewhat stable orbit[1] as Euan glared at the terminal in front of him. Tired of having his orders ignored, he’d decided to take over the initial scan of the planet himself and had so far found out more about Triferlian insects than he really needed to know. Especially the gestation period. Ksenia watched on smugly as a few more buttons brought an up-close look at the face of the verblant eating its mate.[2] She kneeled down to look at Euan hiding under the terminal.

‘Ksenia, can you please scan the planet?’

‘Well,’ she smirked, ‘I suppose if you beg...’

With the rest of the current bridge crew gathered round to chuckle at Euan on his knees, Ensign Colin Morris scowled on deck 9. This wasn’t because of the deck itself, he had to acknowledge; seen one deck and you’ve seen them all. It wasn’t because of the work he was doing, this sort of detail was always the worst but that was the breaks. No, he was being irked by something else that he couldn’t put his finger on.

And the nameless irk irked him even more.

Being double irked was inexcusable, and he put down a small hand-broom to examine his surroundings to try and see why. At either end, strategically placed alterations to maintenance lists meant the corridor doors were out of order, so no one would be able to disturb his work. This being a maintenance style corridor, there were only two doors leading in here besides the end doors. He’d only recently left one and the other was merely painted on as one of Graham’s hideously amusing gags.

Sighing, he resumed his task before something caught his attention.

Looking down at an innocent section of the carpeted flooring, his nostril flared slightly as he took a closer examination. Frowning, he tapped a second comm badge hidden under his vest and, after a muttered conversation, left the corridor to its silence.

Just as the fun was starting to wear out of torturing Euan, who had stumbled into a touching speech he had lifted from a play he was in once, Ruth’s comm badge chirruped. The rest of the crew stopped their heckling and gawked. Not many badges sounded like drunken cuckoo clocks.

‘Well,’ she tried, ‘If I get buzzed in the field I’ll sound like some of the scenery...’

The looks she’d received properly noted, she glared angrily at Euan[3] and addressed the ceiling.

‘Crabb here. What?’

‘Tom here sir, we’ve just gone down to check on Large who was supposed to relieve us in bathroom guard duty...’

‘Guard duty?’ whispered Carmen.

‘Shh,’ Ksenia hissed, ‘She’s guarding the best bathroom on the shopping deck. You know how hideous the lines get there.’

‘Yes,’ continued Ruth, ‘I better not have to wait or there’ll be trouble.’

‘Oh nonono,’ continued Tom hastily. Large’s ‘Ruth Survival Booklet’ he had been reading had all too graphic details about disciplinary action from toilet duty failure. ‘It’s just that when we went to the holodeck to check on her, we found the place in a shambles and Annabelle out cold in a corner.’

Ruth stopped moving, frozen as her face gradually smoothed into a look of calm. This was accompanied by the sounds of rapid scrambling as the crew found very solid objects to hide behind. This included the sounds coming from the comm system.

‘Nobody plays with my toys...’ she softly told the world[4] at large, before whirling on her heel and stalking to the lift.

The crew peeped out from their spots, looking at the still smoking circle of carpet Ruth’s heel recently vacated. Glancing at each other faster than spectators at a male hard-court tennis final, the remaining crew element skulked into a different lift and followed. Ensuring to tell Barry to take his time.

When they reached the medical bay they found Graham bailed up against a corner, holding an irate Ruth at bay via a copy of some magazine he’d profess to never seeing before and an ordinary household egg whisk.

Whilst loath to physically touch either object, she proved her vocal capacity for violence on the bearded medic. He already was boasting the beginnings of a black eye thanks to a particularly strongly hurled verb.

Turning to glare full-force at the newly entered targets that were hopefully within an arms reach, Ruth’s neck made contact with a hypo held by a M^cMillan. Briefly crossing her eyes she collapsed to the ground quicker than a drunken house of cards.

Putting the unconscious weapon-phile to one side, the rest of the crew walked around to look at Large. Most of her face was purpled with bruising, the rest of her covered in a thermo-sheet preventing other injuries from being obvious. Graham pushed his way through to stand next to Euan, ostensibly to give him a report, mostly just to show that with his new hairstyle he was the tallest.

‘Well, Euie, she’s got some internal injuries that the bio-bed’s taking care of quite handily, bruises and all. I don’t suppose you can sign an authorisation form on her behalf for medical experiments while she’s under?’ Euan glanced at Graham’s eyebrow waggling manic features.

Holding the gaze for another few seconds was enough. ‘Ah heck, I’ll sign them myself as CMO. Just thought you wanted to get some credit on my new surgical procedure.’

‘Henstock, the last procedure you performed turned a perfectly normal crew member into an octopus.’

‘Yeah, and? He said he wanted to be handier at his job.’

Nurse M^cMillan, having snuck up on Graham quietly tried the hypo again, regarding it with anger when it refused to function.

‘Right,’ Ksenia began.[5] ‘Has the computer got anything to say about what happened?’

‘Nope,’ said Graham, ‘We checked when we saw what state she was in. Computer says she entered a running holo-program and when it was terminated she was like this.’

‘Safety protocols were in place?’ queried Leila.

‘Yup, so it had to be afterwards,’ answered Graham, beginning to feel like a game show contestant.

Euan had been looking thoughtful, drumming his fingers lightly on the bio-bed.[6] Abruptly he turned to regard the rest of the crew.

‘Well gang... we’ve got a mystery to solve.’ He smiled.

Carmen rolled her eyes. Just as long as she didn’t have to dress like Daphne this time.

A couple of ensigns walked along the corridor outside the holodecks. One of the newest serving ensigns picked up from the last space station gave the command crew a curious glance as they crowded around a replicator. The others didn’t even bat an eyelid; this was the Compromise after all. Hidden from their gaze via the amount of bodies was the replicator. It was terminally fried, the red light above it indicating its inoperability. This could possibly be contributing to the stench it was emitting, causing the entire crew to cover noses with everything they had available. This was all the proof Euan needed to conclude that the malfunctioning machine was a link to the Large problem on the holodeck. If unconnected leaps of deduction worked for Sherlock Holmes, why not him?

Euan had sent most of the command crew back to their posts, but as usual none had wanted to leave without finding out what was happening. Therefore, there was a large helping of ‘You’re in my way’, ‘I was here first’ and accompanying shoving. Euan, by basis of actually being there first, stood in front of said replicator with a deerstalker[7] on his head.

‘Computer, for the final time, tell me what the hell toasted this replicator,’ he growled.

‘Unable to comply, data unavailable.’

Euan smashed his hand into the replicator angrily, the light growing slightly redder. Glaring daggers at the uncooperative mechanism he didn’t notice a new mechano-voyeur stroll up. Ratbat had wandered over, dressed in a striking (eye-gouging) green outfit that actually came close to fitting. Slinging a bag over her shoulder, hard enough that it almost slammed her into a wall, she tapped Leila on the shoulder.

‘Eh up, what’s up?’

‘Someone belted up Annabelle Large, where’ve you been?’

‘It’s m’ day off, d’ya mind?’ She jabbed a finger into Leila’s chest. A look passed between the two just as Ratbat opened her mouth to comment on something, and she merely withdrew her finger.

‘Doing...?’ started Leila, and was hard pressed to contain surprise at Ratbat’s face. She looked as if stung, or some nasty tummy-bug had decided she was a great place for a party and invited all its friends.

‘Been doin’...stuff,’ Ratbat finished, her defensiveness hurried.

Leila had the inkling of something dancing on the surface of Ratbat’s mind, but it was moved out of reach as soon as she noticed it. Frowning slightly, Leila’s further questioning was halted as Ratbat quickly moved through the crowd to where Euan was nursing his hand. Finding him trying to compensate for both Sherlock mode and the urge to swear till the paint melted off the wall, she turned to Ksenia.

‘So whatcha--?’ she began but stopped, sniffing the air lightly.

‘Ah,’ she stated, before hurriedly pushing through everyone and scurrying down the corridor as fast as she could.

‘She’s got a point,’ ventured Sam, before pulling his nostrils closed again. ‘God, what is that smell?’

‘Haggis,’ stated Graham.

‘Not bad,’ said Euan, feeling having come back to his hand, ‘But it’s a bit tame, isn’t it?’

‘Not the expletive,’ Graham said. Taking a leaf out of Euan’s book from the recording of the Vlastafloorian incident, Graham decided to try his hand at converting normal words to vocal weaponry. He was actually going quite a long way; people all over the Compromise were finding themselves restructuring their speech to gloss over such words as ‘glimpse’, ‘river’ and ‘hello’.

It was getting bad enough for the crew to start trying to encourage his first loves. Even if they have to spring for his video rental late fees.

‘The smell. ‘s haggis, remember when we had that dinner where we each brought a plate? Ratti’s haggis vindaloo if I remember correctly.’

Every crewmember’s stomach gave an acknowledging nod, causing most crew to bend over slightly, hold their tummy and groan, the same reaction they had at their initial taste test. The crew had managed to assure Ratbat it was a lesser-known spatial race’s highest form of praise[8] so she stopped sulking and came out of the oven. A debatable trade off, but they all agreed on it, more or less.

More gastric Olympics were postponed by a number of engineering people wandering out of the holodeck.

‘Well,’ said Nick, ‘done.’ So completed he stormed through the knot of people and down the corridor. The bridge crew blinked a couple of times, curious how Nick had focused on their conversation, before turning to the other engineers, who were smiling wryly.

‘Just cos we wouldn’t let him see what’d happen plugging everything into the holodeck at once to see what system’d fail first. He’s got a really strange attitude to system testing.’

Ignoring Nick, Euan said, ‘What happened to the holodeck?’

Here, the slightly jovial mood of the engineers dropped a few levels. Wishing she hadn’t been the first to speak up, the ensign scuffed her shoes pointlessly before answering.

‘We... don’t know. The internal maintenance logs have been wiped clean, and there appears to be no sign of tampering at all. According to the computer, the holodeck did nothing at all from midnight this morning till the alarm was raised.’

‘Well,’ observed Carmen, ‘It’s patently obvious that something has occurred, and occurred into Large big time.’

Deck eight this time, and again the hurriedly altered maintenance list ensured the corridor wouldn’t have traffic in it for some time. Ensign Bondeson brushed his fingers along the edge of the door; a tingling in his head assured him that even the crewmembers that habitually ignored out-of-order signs couldn’t by-pass the lockout.

Glancing up, a background noise elevated into a constant giggling, the tone grating across the cerebellum like 10-inch fingernails over a pristine blackboard. Gently, he set aside the broom he had been holding.

While he watched, the corridor appeared to change slightly. It was almost a melting, but a melting of a toxic metal that left the corridors with a sick, oily sheen. The lights also appeared to become ill, an unwashed green that did nothing to illuminate the far end of the corridor.

Abruptly, twin pinpricks of baleful red light opened at the far end. Two more just to the side of it joined these.

‘Oh Gai-’ he had time to say before they attacked.

‘Medical Emergency, deck eight!’ came over the communication system.

Graham was off and running instantly, although this could have had something to do with his criticism of Euan’s Sherlock Holmes characterisation.[9] The more energetic of the command crew chased after him, while the rest wandered off to try out the other holodecks. Since they were off the bridge anyway, why not.

Leila, however, didn’t follow this mode of thought, still having her attention taken to Ratti’s rapid walk-by and brush off. Dodging past another running group, she made her way to Ratbat’s quarters.

Pressing the door chime, she leant against the wall as it played the entire theme to ‘Scotland the Brave’. Having a society where everyone is extremely highly educated is useful, she mused, but with some people you have to wonder whether it’s worth what you have to put up with.

A few moments after the tune stopped a dishevelled Ratbat peeked around the doorframe. This look was, naturally, spoiled by the fact the Compromise doors didn’t facilitate peeking, they were either open or they weren’t.

‘Oh,’ Ratbat said. ‘Hi.’

No more conversation appeared to be forthcoming, which in itself was unusual for her. Leila glanced into Ratbat’s room, which appeared to mirror Ratbat’s dishevelledry. Again a scent entered her nose, but it bore only a slight similarity to the earlier smell. Very, very coppery, it seemed to be emanating from the lump that was under a floral sheet in the middle of the room.

‘Can I...’ began Leila, but was cut off by a ‘No, ye can't...later.’

And the door shutting in her face.

Reaching up to knock the door until Ratti opened again or it fell down, she glanced up as the ship’s captain paged her.

‘Fetter, get down to sickbay. We need some serious counselloring, and we need it now!’

Leila again found herself moving rapidly as she could, this time in the direction of the sickbay. Normally given a choice between listening to Euan and wheedling something out of Ratbat, Ratbat won hands down. It wasn’t so much the tone of Euan’s slightly panicked voice that did it, more the tone of the screams behind it. Background noise like that should only belong in the minds of Stephen King or the authors of those really icky satanic thrillers.

In person, it wasn’t any better. One of Melanie-or-Anthea was attending to what appeared to be minor scratches on the other, and a number of instrument trays were scattered over the floor. Euan and Graham were watching the blue flashing of a level four security field between themselves and an injured crewmember. The flashing was caused by the crewmember bodily throwing himself at the field, bouncing off only to throw himself at it again. His eyes were mostly white; iris shrunk to almost a dot, drowning out the pupil, the rest of his face screwed up into blind anger.

His left arm was dangling at his side, flying disjointedly around as he continued to pummel the force-field. Euan turned to talk to Leila, Graham walking carefully closer to the field as the man dropped to his knees, sobs racking his body. His uniform was a mess with stains all down his front.

‘He didn’t start attacking until a little while ago, and we thought the screams were bad.’ Euan grimaced. ‘We found him and Ensign Suthers in an out-of-order corridor. Both of them were cut up pretty badly and out cold. One of the nurses gave Ensign Bondeson a stimulant, and he just went nuts.’

The uninjured nurse looked over, scowling ‘We have names you know.’

‘Err,’ stammered Euan. ‘Nurse McMillan,’ he ventured.

Satisfied, she went back to running the cell regenerator over her sister.

The rest of the recap was cut short, Graham hissing a shush at the two before nodding to another nurse to turn off the security field.

Cautiously he moved closer to the motionless ensign, holding out a tranquilliser hypospray and looking like a very conscientious knife fighter. No movement came from the patient, Graham’s injection eliciting only a sigh, and calming the ensign into a sleep. The nurses put him back on a biobed, keeping their noses as best they could aimed away from him.

Graham went to retrieve the tricorder that had the initial scan of the patient downloaded whilst Leila and Euan examined the ensign, pinching their noses. The scent was stronger than their noses could hide though, a stomach churning scent of cold, pseudo raw haggis.

Like the first victim, a large amount of bruising coloured most of his body. His dislocated arm was being reset as they watched, a mildly disconcerting process, but it all appeared to be very similar to Large.

All except two puncture wounds to the neck. Euan frowned, entire face darkening to an angry shade.

‘No fucking way!’ he expounded. ‘The Kindred have decided to take us on again?!’ Slamming the bio bed, it made a sad whirl-pinging sound that most inanimate objects make that are incapable of self-defence.

Peeking up from the other bio bed that held Ensign Bondeson rose Graham.

‘Actually,’ he said hesitantly, watching Euan for any moves false or otherwise, ‘I’ve just triple checked the data from the tricorder run over the bite-wound to find DNA matches.’

Euan spun to face Graham faster than housewives to a 1/2-price sale.

‘Who?’ he spoke with a voice dripping with menace.

‘Errr... actually,’ he said, as if he really didn’t want to, ‘the DNA matches Ratbat.’

Having unanimously decided that a meeting would be much better facilitated at 10-Foreplay, Euan led the stunned crew to storm the doors, all bright-minded crew members fleeing.

All except Zoë, who was wondering when the right time to pop the question to the hunk whose lap she was currently occupying, before sliding gracefully off her barstool and settling for the pot-plant.

The crew took positions around one of the fairly large tables as one of the caterers, dressed as a waiter, stepped over to them.

‘Good evening madams, sirs. This eve...’ he began, but was cut short by a simple look. A look that was fired from the face of every member of the table. Thusly magnified by intensity, the combined thought threatened to overwhelm the poor caterer’s synapses by brute force.

He turned away with one thought on the surface of his mind. Alcohol. Lots of it.

‘Impossible,’ voiced Leila, ‘We’ve known Ratti for how long? And apart from the sunlight allergy, and the fangs, and fashions that were hip centuries before there was a hip there’s nothing even remotely vampiric about her.’

‘But,’ countered Val, ‘she was part of the vampire away team. Hell, one of them was even in her mind.’

‘And,’ stated Euan, ‘She didn’t respond to the “all command crew to the bar” call I put through.’

‘She doesn’t listen to you anyway,’ countered Leila.

‘...’ said Euan, and stared at his drink.

‘Well,’ said Ksenia. ‘One thing is that all the blood was still in both ensigns, and Lieutenant Large. So why would a vampire bite someone after roughing them up, then dump them?’

‘Connoisseur?’ asked Val.

‘Possibly,’ said Euan, still in a slight daze, ‘The Ventrue clan of vampires have specific tastes of blood, so if Ratbat--’

‘Stop accusing her!’ cried Leila. ‘I can’t believe that after all this time a single incident like this would make you believe her capable of this!’

Leila stood up, chair flying back and knocking a passing caterer into the wall and ran out of the room.

The rest of the crew turned back to their drinks after a moment of quiet. The caterer crawled around the bar to hide near an agitated Emma the Klingon.

‘I told you this waiter idea was stupid. Give it to them in a large barrel and they’d be happy I said. They’d regard a tap each luxury I said.’ He didn’t realise that what he said wasn’t being listened to.

Emma regarded the door Leila left. After all, who counsels the counsellors?

‘This is getting worse, Bondeson’s down.’

‘I think we all know that, but Wilco puts us here for just this reason.’

‘If we get Ruth...’

‘NO. Just us. That’s how it has to be played out.’

‘But...’

guttural growling)

‘OK, OK.’

Leila stormed through Ratbat’s door without bothering to chime, stopping as the scent of copper rose up, nasal wrestling with the lingering scent of haggis. She stopped mid-step, startled.

In the middle of her room, Ratbat’s floral sheet was still covering a misshapen object. Behind it was Ratbat herself, in a stained coverall, who upon seeing Leila looked as if struck. A metal tool left her hand to clang to the ground out of sight as Leila sank against the wall and stared.

Both said nothing for a while.

‘Eh up,’ ventured Ratbat, quietly. Leila nodded.

‘I...err... ‘m sorry for not being very bridge-bound lately,’ Ratbat started again, ‘I’ve been workin’ on another project.’

Leila nodded again.

‘What’s going on? Karaoke down at the pub again?’ Ratbat’s attempt at levity sank like a uranium Titanic.

‘I...just wanted to see you,’ said Leila. ‘We need to talk about stuff...and then we need to go down to 10-Foreplay.’

Ratbat nodded.

‘It’s just like Pterry’s Narrative Causality.[10] There’s some serious things being said. Way too serious,’ Leila said.

Ratbat nodded.

‘And, when we arrive you know that they believe in you. They’ve just forgotten for a bit.’

‘Oh, I know that,’ said Ratbat smiling.

At Leila’s bemused face she reached behind and handed a padd to Leila. On it was a brief message, which read.

Ratbat.

We know it wasn’t you that did it, we’re just playing along with whoever did. I mean, hey how stupid do we look.

Bridge.

It even had a picture of them. They didn’t look that stupid to Leila.

After ten minutes of concentrated, civilised discussion, the Compromise crew decided to stuff it, and go back to the traditional Evil Bunny way of problem solving.[11] Volume.

Ratbat continued to protest her innocence, Val continued to berate her efforts and Sam IV added an odd boost to whichever side needed it at the moment.

In frustration, Val hurled the initial tricorder to the ground where it bounced twice and emotionlessly reported ‘Target: Ratbat.’

All eyes turned to look at the electronic device, surprised when it wasn’t pointing at the ‘bat at all but at the ship’s mascot, tail wagging furiously when he discovered he was the centre of attention.

Argument forgotten Leila knelt down, retrieved the device and again scanned Parker. The tricorder pronounced the canine Ratbat once more, to Ratbat’s chagrin and Parker’s apparent delight.

‘I don’t get it,’ stated Carmen, ‘How can that tricorder think Parker’s Ratti?’

Euan’s answer was lost to time, having arrived co-incidentally at the same time as Carmen’s foot descending on his.

Graham’s piped up answer of ‘Breasts’ was disregarded until he pushed the issue. ‘No, really. Security must have picked up my tricorder; it identifies people by scanning their breasts. Anything with more than two nipples is Ratti, just like anyone with less is...’ The words of a post-physical examination of a certain crewmember floated through his skull, by sheer luck his self-preservation node not inebriated into ineffectiveness.

‘...not.’ he completed lamely.

All turned to look at Graham, who started performing Beard Trick #75, before realising he only had 11 O-rings, and nowhere near enough whipped cream.

‘There’s not enough of us, we need to get them all!’

‘No, for the last time! I’m really getting sick of your little outbursts.’

‘Are you accepting a challenge?’

‘The leader is not challenged at wartime, especially by one like you so shut UP!’

*growling*

*deeper growling*

‘Hey you two! Deck four...’

‘This one’s mine. No mistakes.’

Dragging Ratbat by an arm, Euan took the protesting chiropteran to the brig. Ratti continued to be indignant.

‘Ach, ye know I couldnae done this! If it was I wouldnae been caught by this loser.’

‘We know,’ said Leila while Carmen patted a lightly sobbing Euan on the arm. ‘But we have to make it look like the lure worked.’

Euan dragged Ratbat to a corner of the cell before she slipped out of his grasp and attempted to look resigned. ‘Fine! I’ll just wait here while you blather about trying to find this sucker. So, how realistic is this? All communication from this room to be ignored?’

They all nodded.

‘All of it, all the way up the command tree?’

They all nodded.

Talking a deep breath and stalking through the door, she turned around and glared at the trio.

‘It really is for the best, we’re sorry,’ said Carmen before something nagged at her. Being a nag, she instinctively ignored it and mentally stuck her tongue out back. This probably wasn’t the best course of action, for when Ratbat hit the force-field they realised they were in the cell and a triumphant Ratti was stalking out.

The inner nag smirked.

Running a quick check over the maintenance lists for the Compromise, Ratbat discovered for some reason there were a large number of impromptu corridor closes happening recently around ship. Frustration mounted as she couldn’t pick any logic to it and she slammed a hand on the console. It gave a surprisingly helpful bleep, and the display swivelled around like the Klingon 3D roulette. Slowing to a stop, even Ratbat had no problem at all in seeing a spiral-like pattern forming in the saucer section, with a few sections remaining unfinished.

‘Cruk,’ she thought. ‘Why do they have to be symbolic about these things? Computer,’ she added out loud. ‘Extrapolate paths and this spiral thingy. Where’s the next likely target?’

A tense few seconds passed, Ratbat’s mind already anticipating the Compromise computer’s negative response. Then, a corridor section on deck 4 was highlighted. Smiling nastily, she ran for the turbolift.

Someone else’s attention was also focused on a layout of the Compromise. This too had the spiral pattern carving through it, and a corridor on deck 4 lightly flashing. Passing a glance at a number of other...well, not monitors but unconnected screens suspended in space, a clawed talon tapped out one nearby which showed an angry force of Ratbattian nature making her way through the corridors. The creature smiled without humour. While the Compromise’s universal translator could make out their language, it couldn’t remove the feral snarl behind the words.

‘Sorry, Ratbat. This time, four’s your unlucky number.’

Ratbat lounged against a wall. Whoever wrote the dictionary, she mused, needed to put more thought into words. For example, the word ‘boring’. If they’d made it about six syllables longer and slapped in a few Zs and Xs, you’d have fun saying it and it’d be a self-improving statement. As it was, after her detour to the weapons locker she now had nothing to do but lean against her chosen phaser rifle in a decidedly unsafe manner and wait. This didn’t bother her as, since she hadn’t fired phaser rifles since the academy, she’d removed all charge from the weapon as a safety precaution.

The corridor’s arrangement helped her out quite a bit, in that it was relatively short (about ten metres long) and had only a maintenance cupboard in the middle of it. Opening the door then hiding inside it, she was partly shielded from either entrance way yet kept a good field of vision. She wasn’t going to go back to the prison and get the others out to help her. Let them stay in there forever.

She blinked. Where did that thought think it was leading to? After all, now that the ship was hers she was above petty trivialtry and could do as she wished anywhere, to anyth...

She stomped her foot in frustration, looking around. Being a telepath even slightly, she knew when her mind was being fiddled with. Looking outside, she tried to feel with her mind the direction of where the intruding mind-link was coming from. Unfortunately, this meant she was completely unprepared for when a large hand from where she was sure there were shelves a second ago wrenched the rifle from her grip and lifted her up to an eight-feet-off-the-ground eye-level.

Ratbat froze in position as best she could, regarding the very close features of the face of her current vertical assistor. She was being held up by one very muscled hand that seemed to regard Ratbat’s weight as completely inconsequential. His chest was attempting to burst out of a stretched Starfleet uniform, as were his legs, arms and feet. But what she did get a good look at was his face.

At first she thought he was Klingon, dark hair more like a mane and very bestial features. However, he was lacking the forehead ridge and bizarre teeth arrangement, he looked more like a real life Mr Hyde than anything else. And his breath stank. She tried to turn away, but was shaken violently and forced to look into malevolent amber-brown eyes. Her legs kicked helplessly in the air.

‘WhY?’ she was asked in an accent that broke and shattered as it left his mouth.

This was answered when Ratbat decided legs kicking in air should be accompanied by feet kicking in crotch. A whoof of escaped air, aided by aforementioned breath, meant Ratbat too also landed in a heap on the floor.

At the doorway to a maintenance corridor, an ensign, Alison, stopped. She didn’t know why she had come to this corridor, her mind seemed to be a bit too fuzzy to think clearly. Surely the inaugral Ensignation drinking binge hadn’t effected her that badly. At least, not the first two.

Looking at the door again, she wondered why it was shut, not noticing the out of order notice on the wall. This meant that when it opened she wasn’t worried at all when she found herself walking in, followed by another young ensign with a smile on her face.

A grasping hand being directed by a disoriented mind finally got a grip on the fallen rifle, and Ratbat managed to bring it around to point the menacing end at her assailant. He had already recovered from what Ratbat considered a right royal crowning and was sitting cross legged and watching her. Distracted, Ratbat noticed a few things. First that the creature’s uniform was fitting better now, and second that the creature was actually a male, human Ensign. Morris according to his name-badge. Another was that this wasn’t an ordinary maintenance cupboard. In fact, now that she was thinking better, she never actually remembered ever seeing maintenance personnel or ‘cupboards’ anywhere on a starship before.

Whatever she was in now appeared to be much larger than the cupboard she hid herself in, and cupboards generally don’t have view-screens floating in mid-air.

‘OK, I've been on every one of the Meet the Command pub crawls on this ship, and Henstock’s made them part of the Mandatory Medical exam, yet I still don’t know who the hell you are.’

‘That’s right,’ was the answer.

It bought him a stab with the rifle that bounced Ratbat back more than it moved him.

‘So? Talk!’ she yelled.

Morris glanced at a nearby monitor and shrugged.

‘We’re the cleaners. You’ve never seen one, have you, but the ships always sparkling clean. This class of starship, with guest capabilities, can’t survive on Swab the Deck duty alone.

‘Cleaners are Starfleet’s most well trained secret force for the Federation. And we’re also trained for these sort of messes. Spiritual messes.’

‘Sorry, spiritual? What, someone’s got dirty karma?’ spat Ratbat.

Morris raised an eyebrow. ‘Right, this coming from a telepath. Where Vulcans meditate to draw energy to themselves, and with the amount of other weird-stuff that goes around?’

He had a point, she had to concede. But still, there’s spirits, there’s vision quests, there’s mental ability. That still doesn’t account for violating some of Newton’s laws.

‘What about your whole Jekyll syndrome?’ she asked, but Morris raised a hand and appeared to ignore the question.

‘Sorry, commander, but this isn’t a good time for a question and answer thing. I’m sure you thought you were stopping me from completing the spiral.’

‘And that’s what I thought ‘bout you.’ Ratbat glared. ‘I hate it when we work this out just before its too late. At least considering we’ve just spilt our guts to each other, you know what that means.’

The dawning realisation was rewarded by a soft clapping of applause from behind Ratbat. Not turning, she had a good view of Morris’ eyes, in which she saw recognition, surprise, then fury in close succession. Slowly, she turned. Things only got worse, she thought.

In the corridor were two beings, both women. They, too, had Starfleet issue uniforms, and also appeared to have problems getting replication-tailoring accurate. The closest woman appeared to frequent the same make-up store as Morris. Her teeth were bared and her face was framed with flame-red hair. She smiled briefly at Ratbat, serving to display more of her fang-like teeth. Her attention, however, was taken in by the other woman. An ensign by what was visible of her uniform. A thick orange haze floated around her, thick as to be a momentarily gravity free slime. Her features undulated slightly as Ratbat stared at her, a hate-filled smile washing across her face and leaving a trail of ooze. Another sickly ripple quivered under her skin, and Ratbat’s unfortunately highly developed imagination could quite vividly picture writhing things in there trying to get out. The other creature moved slightly which focused Ratbat’s attention back on her.

‘Ratbat,’ introduced Morris, ‘Allow me introduce Amanda, only just now a former Cleaner, and currently appears to be working for that spiritual mess that I was telling you about.’

Amanda bowed, growing slowly larger into a grey and green furred monstrosity. Werewolf special effects be damned, nothing beats individual hair follicles crash-banging into a fur coat covering an intensely muscled, wolf-headed killing machine. The grin, and the insane eyes remained.

The woman beside her, as if upset at lacking attention, screamed a note way too high to have been emitted by a normal human. Wincing, both Ratbat and Morris turned their gazes to her.

‘That’s what you get when a normal person gets bonded with the spiritual taint. A fomor. Note the general ickyness and spiritual corruption. Wyrm taint, if you ever want to drop a name.’ Morris finished.

Ratbat glanced from one to the other rather rapidly.

‘Now that introductions are complete,’ Morris said, slowly getting to his feet, ‘Amanda and I have got to talk severance package. Causing spiral-patterns of corruption is a no-no from my pack.’

With that Morris shot forward with a fixture-rattling roar into a black-furred version of the other werewolf.

The collision would have been far more spectacular, if it wasn't for the ships inertial dampeners. Ears just below touching the ceiling, the corridor wouldn't allow much of a run up for the two of them to slam, slash and claw ribbons in each others pelts. ‘Amanda’ appeared to have lost it completely, corridor’s walls bearing the brunt of her poorly aimed swipes more than Morris did. Ratbat only had a few moments to watch before the fomor’s leaping flattened her to the ground, into the cupboard and out of sight.

Being pinned by, and this close to, the fomor was multitudes less pleasant that just looking at her. The writhing things appeared to sense Ratbat so close, and thrashed against her through the creature’s skin in an effort to break free from their current confines. Holding her breath against the even worse than haggis stench and the feel of growing barbs under flesh, she flailed around in an effort to break free. Outside, she saw a blur as the Amanda creature’s jaws managed to get Morris by the throat, bringing him to the ground with her claws ready to finish the job. Reaching out again, this time with her mind, she struggled to find some way out of her predicament. Then she turned to face the liquefying eyes of her attacker.

‘Bitch,’ she said.

The fomor blinked, eyes returning to a somewhat more stable form.

‘Cow,’ she again informed the fomor. ‘I could use worse, but hey, I save those for people worth caring about.’

Again the fomor blinked before laughing, throwing its head back, insulting, mocking, dismissing laughter. It lifted a hand to wipes its eyes, which was the gap Ratbat needed. Snatching the phaser rifle from its nearby position, she smacked the thing off her with the butt, wheeling it around and pulling the trigger an instant before realising she’d removed the charge from it. Which meant both her and the creature were surprised at the beam of yellow-orange light that shot from her rifle, enveloping the creature. Surprised, the creature took a few steps forward but a second shot brought it to the ground. Not stopping to dwell too much, she peeked out the corner. The Amanda-creature was still racking at a downed Morris with her free claw, however he had managed to get her throat in a powerful jaw-lock. Bunching his muscles, he pushed the rest of Amanda away from him in a style that would get the cleaners rather upset. This mode of thought process stopped when Ratbat realised he was one of them, and was spitting out a very slick chunk of neck.

‘Right, well,’ she began, then stopped. Damned if she was going to try and start a conversation with something as wide as the corridor, as tall as the corridor, and had an arm that was as long as she was. And about as thick. However the furred form shrunk slightly down to a blood-caked Hyde-Morris, who frowned.

‘Other starships, worse you get is blackened/ blasted clothes and a few scratches. This is going to take some SERIOUS bleach.’

Ratbat frowned. ‘Excuse me, superior officer who happens to be pointing a gun at you here,’

Morris turned and smiled. Not a comforting image given what he was covered in...and leaking onto a nearby wall.

‘Sorry, sir,’ he said, as Ratbat noticed the slowly growing pool below him.

‘I thought only silver only worked on werewolves…’ she said.

Morris smiled. ‘Good spot, but no. We work on each other too. And phaser rifles, so if you could…?’

Lowering the rifle only slightly she waited for Morris to continue.

‘That’s right, explanation time for the big and decidedly messy fight you just had on your ship. We werewolves have been around long before humans left earth, or the trees for that matter. As you’re chiropteran, you aren’t effected by the instinctual fear of werewolves that others are, it’s how we’ve kept ourselves secret for this long.

‘Like what you just saw, werewolves fight a corruption of the spirit on a grand scale. Most of us didn’t care what got in the way, unfortunately it was mostly humans which explains some of the blind fear. Homo Sapiens have always been more populous than your kind.

‘This protection and fighting didn’t stop with space, we had to move with it. Hence, Roger Wilco formed the Cleaners, super-secret teams to seed across starships to help when this sort of corruption reared. Normally we try to avoid casualties and notice, but with a traitor in the midst it gets difficult.’ Morris took this moment to give Amanda’s corpse a very solid kick.

Ratbat let her phaser rifle hang from its strap, and rubbed her eyes.

‘Werewolves,’ she said, ‘No-one’s going to believe...’ she started before again she felt her mind being connected to again, like when the whatever it was moved the phaser rifle into her reach.

Sadly smiling, Ensign Morris caught her eye. ‘Not even you.’

Leila felt very vulnerable, standing in Ratbat’s quarters with a multicoloured blind-fold covering most of her face. She didn’t feel any contrition for a split second of worry about Ratbat’s motivation, because there hadn’t really been any. It’s just that no-one felt safe knowing Ratbat was around when you couldn’t see her.

‘OK,’ came Ratbat’s voice from far off, and Leila wrenched off the blindfold. In front of her was... a statue of sorts. Modern art maybe. She could see bits of starship models like she had seen in Captain Picard’s ready room welded together into one table-sized collaboration.

Ratbat’s face peeked at her from behind it.

‘I’ve been rememberin’ Vlastafloor a lot recently,’ Leila heard.

‘Vlastafloor? That’s going back a bit, isn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Well, some things take a bit longer. Anyway, I know there’s rules to this stuff ev’n if I never really listened. Calling you seemed a bit pointless, so I made you a present.’

Ratbat winced at seeing Leila’s reaction, air getting knocked out of her before realising that Leila was laughing. Not at the statue, or at her and her idea. Just...laughing. And laughing was good. They met at the same point halfway and had a huge, friendly hug next to the copper collection of starships.

Listening in felt rude, but he figured he owed it to her to make sure she was OK. That’s how he justified it to himself at least. Tapping the hidden comm-badge he made a connection to the closest Startfleet Cleaning Crew. The one-sided conversation was short.

‘Morris, Alpha Cockroach Migraine 2. The fomor’s been cleansed and the taint destroyed. The possessed ensign doesn’t remember a thing and is doing fine.’

‘Staying, yeah. They need a constant cleaner.’

‘No, after happy-hour/day/week.’

‘The rest of the pack, plus Amanda’s corpse, are returning now. Call if required.’

Checking the corridor briefly, he walked out of the cupboard and closed the door. Abruptly, precisely no cleaning cupboards were currently aboard ship.

Slinging a backpack containing some fresh haggis he started making his way to his quarters with his wolf-tastebuds aching. Might not be fresh sheep, but Gaia-damnit, it’s the next best thing.

Captain Euan Bowen

Commander Daria 'Ratbat' Sigma