Star Traks: Banshee "Until Dawn" By Brad Dusen The silence of the bridge was pierced by the voice of Charlotte. "I was right, captain." "There's a first." Jad didn't even look at his first officer, a habit he'd established a long time ago. "The planet does have life on it." Charlotte glared at Captain Vorezze. "But only plants and small animals." Jad sighed. Another planet with life. Why is it the whole 'boldly going' part isn't all that bold? But still, it was his duty to explore these places. Plus the idea of stopping there for a short vacation, or until Starfleet notices, had crossed his mind. Screw the hundreds of ships patrolling the border to make sure the Dominion doesn't come in and enslave humanity. "Well let's go down there and look around. We can take a runabout." "Why a runabout?" Charlotte asked. "Why not?" "Good point." "Charlotte, Ben, Dan, Axik, Vince, you're with me." Jad got up. "Bridge to Dr. Issac, meet us in shuttlebay 1. Carn, you're in command." "Imagine my joy." Carn said unenthusiastically. The air of Fornax III was sweet with the scents of nature. Huge flowers bloomed off of almost every vine. Charlotte was the first to emerge from the Banshee's primary runabout, the Indus. A small cat-like creature wandered up to Charlotte and purring. "Oh, you are so cute!" She picked the cat up. The cat took one look at her, hissed, and ran away. "Smart cat." Dan whispered to Jad. Jad nodded. "Captain's log, stardate 52948.2: We are exploring Fornax III at the moment. Why the hell I'm lugging the log recorder around is a different matter. Though we have seen no signs of intelligent life, odds are if there was intelligent life, they'd be smart enough to stay away from us. I have decided to inform Starfleet that the planet looks to be good for a colony... after I get done with this planet." Tagel sat on a summit overlooking the forest valley and the landing spot of the Indus. Jad slowly walked up to her. "Beautiful sunset, isn't it?" He said. "Yeah. I've never seen a binary sunset before." "You know, we never really got to go on an official date." He said. "Well I don't think that there's anything to interrupt us now." Axik looked around. "Good point." The two moved closer, almost kissing Jad was cut off as the rock he was sitting on gave way and started rolling down the hill with the captain. "Ow ow ow ow ow..." He shouted on every bump. Dr. Issac wasn't much of a nature person, so he decided to stay in the runabout. He leaned back in the aft cabin, looking out the window at the forest around him and sipping slowly on a synthaholic strawberry daiquiri. It was just his time to relax. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and let in the sounds of nature coming in from outside the runabout. Funny. It almost sounded like something rolling down a hill. Brian turned as a boulder still attached to Jad came plummeting towards him. He screamed at the top of his lungs as the rock smashed into the side of the Indus. Brian dropped his drink and fell back as Jad was propelled at him by his own inertia. "Hello doctor." Jad said groggily before passing out. Vince walked into the aft compartment. "What the hell happened." "Big rock!" Brian muttered. "No, I meant that daiquiri stain on the carpet!" Axik came running into the room, knocking Vince out of the way. "Jad? Are you all right?" She looked down at the battered Betazoid. "No, mommy, I don't want to pet the razorbeast..." Jad mumbled. "He's lost his mind!" Brian said. "He had to have one to begin with." Vince said. "I heard that!" Jad said weakly, then blacked out again. As Brian treated Captain Vorezze, Tagel and Vince surveyed the runabout. "Fractured warp grille. Torn conduits. Hull ruptures." Vince said. "I didn't notice." Axik said sarcastically. The damages were pretty obvious. "What engineering school did you flunk out of?" "Zefram Cochrane High School." Vince smiled. "I'll bet Cochrane's spinning in his grave right now!" The sun had set at this point in time and the away team had returned to the runabout after realizing that this planet had bowling ball sized mosquitoes. Charlotte and Ben sat in the cockpit. "Burns to Banshee, please respond!" Charlotte pleaded into the comm but only got static in return. "Well since we may be here a while..." Ben got that 'look' in his eyes. "Burns to Banshee, PLEASE RESPOND!!!!!" She screamed. Dan walked up to the two. "Having a problem?" He asked in his morbid yet somehow ominous way. "Well let's see: we're wrecked here, we can't leave the runabout and Captain Vorezze has become a drooling vegetable." Charlotte groaned as she got up. "Think about it this way: things couldn't get much worse." Dan said. A crash of thunder sounded outside. "What was that?" Ben shot up. "Just a thunderstorm. We're perfectly safe in here." Dan shrugged. Ben looked frightened as greenish lightning flickered across the sky. "Oh Ben, you're scared of thunder and lightning, aren't you?" Charlotte asked with a demonic grin. "N-no!" Ben stuttered. "It's stupid to be afraid of such things in this day in age!" "Since when have you ever cared about being stupid?" Dan asked. "Shut up!" Ben said. A louder crash of thunder sounded. "I'm not here to be insulted by you people!" "Yeah." Charlotte nodded at Dan. "You manage to do that for us." Vince burst into the room. "God I'm hungry!" "The replicators are still online." Dan said. "The full menu is available." "So what's so bad about thunder?" Charlotte turned to Ben. "It's dangerous. Do you know how many people were killed by lightning?" Ben asked. "Do you know how many people were killed by having to listen to Hanson?" She asked. "Suicide was at its all-time high." Ben shuddered. "That's even worse." A terrible oder filled the room. Ben, Dan and Charlotte turned to see Vince eating a Klingon dish that looked like the head of a bear sliced open with the brains drenched in god-knows-what. "Ugh, how can you eat that?" Dan backed away. "I don't know. I just had a sudden craving for brains." Vince said, looking up with a tube of tissue hanging from his mouth. "Making up for lack of the real thing?" Ben laughed. "Ha ha, very funny, thunder boy!" Vince shouted. Lightning flashed, followed quickly by a crash of thunder that shook the ground. Ben ran under the flight control consoles and started shivering. "Wimp!" Charlotte walked over to a side chair and sat down. Dan stared at Vince. "Are you feeling all right, Vince?" He asked as Vince ate the Klingon brain dish ravenously "Yeah," Vince gulped down. "Why?" "You're just looking a litte... pale." Dan said, trying not to throw up from the nasty smells drifting from Vince's meal. "Well Vince has never really looked healthy." Charlotte said. "How are you feeling?" Axik asked Jad as he slipped back into the waking world. "I'm fine. It will take a lot more to bump me off." Jad said. "After all, a person's spirit is hard to destroy." "Even with a hacksaw." Axik nodded. "I'm sure you'll be fine. Now what were you talking about before you fell off the cliff?" The two went to kiss. "Captain!" Dan ran into the room. "What do you want!?" Jad shouted. "It's Vince!" Dan said. "He just bit me in the back of the head and ran off!" Charlotte clutched the back of her head as Brian ran his tricorder over it. "He's out there, somewhere." "Where?" Jad asked. "If I knew, then I wouldn't have said somewhere, now would I." Charlotte snapped. "Now wait, you said he bit you in the back of the head?" "Yeah." Charlotte nodded. "Uh oh!" Brian said from behind her. He had accidentally given Charlotte a new bald spot while healing the wound when she nodded. "What was weird was that just before, Vince was eating this nasty Klingon brain souffle." "What, are you saying he's a zombie or something?" Jad started to laugh. "And that he want to eat brains? Impossible! If he wanted brains, then why did he attack you?" Charlotte turned a shade of dark red. "SHUT UP... sir." "Brian, you and Charlotte go look for Vince." "Why me?" Brian asked. "It's bad enough you're making me walk through the forest at night in the middle of a thunderstorm, but you're making me go with Charlotte?" "Yup." Jad nodded. "Don't let the airlock hit you on the ass on the way out." Brian grumbled as he and Charlotte left. "The thoughts I'm picking up from him." Jad shook his head. "What about me?" Ben asked. "Work with Commander Tagel to repair the engines. As soon as we find Vince, I want to get out of here." Jad said, then staggered out of the room Dan quickly followed. "Hey there." Ben smiled at Axik. "The Prophets must be testing me." Axik shook her head. "You still don't know what these readings are?" Carn asked Dr. Lang in the Banshee's primary laboratory. "They could be a number of things." Liz said. "All I know is that the planet is generating some kind of low wavelength radiation that I've never seen. From what I can tell, though, it is capable of transforming people." "Into what?" Carn asked. "I don't know. If we could find the Indus, I might be able to figure it out." "Keep working." Carn turned and left. "What could be going on here?" Dan asked, pacing the back area of the Indus. "I wish I knew." Jad shrugged. "Vince goes nuts, not that I wasn't expecting it or anything, and bites Charlotte." "Of all people, Charlotte." Dan said. "Poor Vince. He probably has half a dozen different parasites from biting her." "Ahh!" A scream that echoed through the Indus. "Axik." Jad ran back into the cockpit. Axik was laying on the ground in a pool of her own blood, Ben was nowhere near her. "Axik, can you hear me?" Jad panicked has he picked up her limp body. Dan took a medical kit from a nearby compartment and scanned Axik with a tricorder. "She's alive, but..." "What is it?" Jad asked. "Her jugular has been punctured." Jad looked at the side of Tagel's neck. There were two small puncture wounds there. "You can't mean..." Jad gasped. "Ben is either a vampire, or gives terrible hickeys." Dan said. "Or both." Brain and Charlotte made there way through the forest. "Humanoid life-sign up ahead. 47 meters." Brian said, looking at his tricorder. After a quick dash, the two made it up to a clearing. "Vince!" Charlotte called out. "Where are you?" "I'm not here!" A voice called out. "Oh yeah, that's convincing." Brian said. A figure darted through the shadows. "Vince?" Brian walked forward, then heard a crack. He looked down and saw a Starfleet com-badge. He picked it up. "It's Vince's!" "Whoa, how'd you figure that out?" Charlotte was amazed. "Because he's the only Starfleet officer that's been here!" "Oh." "Look!" Brian pointed to some footprints on the ground. "He went that way!" He pointed in the directions that the prints went off in. "Your sense of direction never ceases to amaze me." Charlotte said as they ran off in the direction of the prints. "I don't know, Zeke." Liz shook her head as she looked down at her pet teddy-bear hamster that sat on the console next to her. "That runabout is down there somewhere, but I can't find it!" "Are you talking to that wad of fur again?" Carn asked as he walked into the science lab. "He's not a wad of fur!" Liz picked up Zeke defensively. "He's a smart, intelligent being!" "Yeah right." Carn smirked. "Hey!" Liz shouted, throwing her hands in the air defensively, accidentally tossing Zeke halfway across the room. "AHHH!" She ran over to her battered hamster. Carn shook his head. "Have you found this Indus yet?" "I'm looking!" Liz snapped as she cradled Zeke in her hands. "Okay, I'll be in engineering." Carn walked out. Jad sat in the aft section of the Indus as the lightning of the tempest flickered outside. He cradled Axik in his arms, who was barely awake. "Well, now that we're alone..." Jad moved in and Axik weakly complied as their lips almost touched. The Indus suddenly shuddered and the lights went dead. "God damn it!!" Jad shouted. "Dan!" The doors were slowly parted as Dan shoved his way in. "We were hit by lightning. The power system is shot." The doors closed behind him. "Great." Jad moaned in the darkness. "What else could happen." A low, heavy, labored breathing became audible. There was a scratching of something on top of the Indus. "You just had to ask that!" Dan shouted. "What was that?" Jad asked. The deep breathing got louder, as did the scratching. "Maybe I should go and get the lights back online." Dan backed off slowly. "You just stay back here, near the windows." He turned and ran. "Uh, Dan?" Jad asked. Dan slammed into the doors, then they opened, sending him falling into the hall. "The doors don't open right away when the power's down." Jad said. Dan staggered out of the room. Jad turned back to Axik. "It would be nice if you would wake up now, considering that I'm more frightened than a Cardassian at a Bajoran Militia Convention." He set Axik down on the couch positioned across the back end of the cabin and turned to leave. In the flashes of light that the lightning cast on the wall, Jad could see a human figure on the window. When he turned, he saw Ben come crashing through the window with his mouth bearing razor sharp fangs. "AHHHHHHHH!!!!" "Officer's log, Lieutenant Carn, stardate 51989.1: Our attempts to locate the majority of the command crew who are lost on the surface of Fornax III have failed and for once it isn't our fault. Though we are confident that the captain and the rest of the senior staff will return safely, we have also decided to prepare the morgue... just in case." "Lieutenant Carn, I think I've figured out what the radiation is." Liz reported happily as she walked into engineering. "What is it?" Carn asked while chief engineer David Riley was fiddling with his circuitry. "The radiation causes cravings for certain parts of a human's anatomy and can even alter a human's ability." Liz said. "So what are you trying to say?" "The crew down there is probably eating each other! They can turn into things best described as zombies and vampires!" "Well consider who you're talking about." Carn said. "Good point." Liz turned and left. "This way!" Charlotte said as she navigated between the trees. "What other way would we be going?" Brian asked as he followed Charlotte, who was tracing the footprints in the torrential downpour. There was a rustling in a nearby bush. "Is that him?" Brian asked. "No! The footprints go off in that direction!" Charlotte motioned to the trail of prints. "Then what is..?" Brian was cut off a something jumped from the bushes and attacked him. Jad fell back into the darkness, looking around as he traced Ben's form in the strobe effect of the lightning. "Ben! Where are you?" He called out but recieved no response. Something brushed past his leg. The material was that of a Section Thirty-One uniform. "DAN!!!" Jad screamed. The captain quickly found himself in a corner as Ben's dark figure neared closer and closer. "This is going to get worse before it gets better." Jad squeaked. Ben let out a labored breath, opened his mouth and jumped up, readying to make the kill. "Nooooo!" Jad cried out. He ducked and closed his eyes. The sound of a Starfleet phaser pierced the night. Ben looked up to see Ben laying in a smoking heap, not dead, but out of commission for a while. Axik stood there, holding her phaser. "That's for groping me in the cockpit." "Get him off! Get him off!" Brian screamed as Vince's figure attempted to bite into Brian's skull. Charlotte fumbled with her phaser, setting it to stun and shooting at the two. Vince jumped off as the phaser beam hit Brian. "Oops." Charlotte said innocently. Vince snarled, crawling on all fours. "Eat this, you man-loving, brain eating FREAK!" Charlotte screamed as she shot Vince. "This is too wierd." Jad examined Ben's newly grown fangs. "They just grew out of nowhere." Dan shook his head. "I knew he was weird, but a vampire?" "I'd wonder if it might have something to do with this planet." Axik said. She had managed to recover from the blood loss. "I find it hard to believe that both Vince and Ben start acting wierd in the same day. Turning into horrible creatures" "Good point." Jad paced the aft section of the Indus in the darkness. "One question: what happens when he wakes up?" Dan asked. Jad and Axik looked at each other blankly. "Let's hope he doesn't. The air-lock opened as Charlotte, carrying both Vince and Brian, walked into the Indus. "Hello?" "Speaking of horrible creatures." Jad noted. "Back here, commander. Charlotte entered, knocking the heads of Vince and Brian against the sides of the door frame. "What happened." Dan asked. "Uhh, phaser misfire." Charlotte smiled. Jad shook his head as he walked into the runabout's cockpit. Dan, Axik and Charlotte proceeded to follow the captain into the cockpit. "Dan, any luck getting the systems back online?" "No, sir." Dan said. "Maybe once we get back to the Banshee, but not from down here." "Shouldn't the Banshee be looking for us?" Charlotte asked. "I mean what the hell is Carn doing up there?" "Ah ah ah ah stayin' alive, stayin' alive! Ah ah ah ah stayin' aliiiiiive, i-i-ive, i-i-ive, stayin' alive, stayin' alive." The music was pumped loudly in through Carn's quarters. There was a loud crash in the back of the runabout. "Ben." Dan said as he ran back into the darkness. Ben and Vince were missing from the table. Dan drew his phaser and looked around. "They're in here." Jad said. "I can sense them." Something moved in the darkness. There was a low, labored breathing audible. "Ben, Vince, listen. Show yourselves, please!" Dan shouted. There was more movement in the darkness. Light suddenly filled the runabout as the sun peaked above the horizon, bathing the room in gold light. Ben and Vince looked into the sun. Their faces seemed to return to normal. They stood up straight. Vince shook his head. "Oh man, what happened?" "You became a zombie and bit Charlotte." Dan said. "AAAAHHHHH!" "Banshee to Indus." Carn's voice said over the communicator. "We have detected a field of radiation that just dissipated. Can you hear us?" "Yes." Jad said happily. "Prepare to beam up." "Captain's log, stardate 52949.3: We have tractored the Indus off of Fornax III to complete repairs and all of the senior staff have remained in their normal states... well, normal for them. Dr. Lang has determined that the radioactive field is dissipated by sunlight, and it was that field which caused the crew to transform. Therefore, I have placed warning beacons in orbit of the planet and informed Section Thirty-One of the danger the planet poses." NEXT: The Vorans are getting their asses kicked by their own: Species 8472. In the Star Traks: Banshee season finale, the Banshee and the crew become caught in the crossfire in "The Lesser of Two Evils."