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squarefriend · 3 years ago

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Mermay ended yesterday, but I’m sitting on the beach at this very moment so let’s fucking do this:

🌴🐬BEACH HEAD CANNONS!!!🐬🌴

Chara

❤️ They are actually rather neutral over the ocean. Far more of a skipping stones and playing in the lake kind of kid. Though, they do have a respect for the water’s raw power and changing tides. (Also seeing how much Undyne loves it made them want to appreciate the ocean more)

❤️ Thanks to being attached to Frisk’s soul, they kinda have to go to the beach all the time now. They like to go out as far as they can and walk along to the bottom, or float above Frisk and try to freak them out.

❤️ All that being said, they ADORE sharks. They nerd out every time they get to go to the aquarium. (Then get kinda embarrassed about it).

❤️ They have (on more than one occasion) convinced Frisk that because they’re a ghost they can see all the ghosts of everyone who’s drowned, and that yes, pirates ARE coming to get them...... It backfired at the notion that now Frisk WANTED to go meet the ghost pirates.

❤️ Had a brief period of wanting to be a mermaid, purely because A) Not a human and B) Typically man eaters. It suited their style

Frisk

❤️ They LOVE the ocean.... or rather, they love the beach. There’s one right at the edge of Ebbott City, so in the summer, they get to go up every weekend or so. And you can bet on that weekend, they have an absolute ball with whomever family/friend took them this time.

❤️ Their favorite part is exploring. They love to run around on the beach, looking for shells or any critters, as well as going out into as deep as the can in the ocean (usually only to be called back by their mom). Speak of the devil, Toriel bought them a snorkeling kit for their gotcha day and that thing has been used religiously ever since!

❤️ Every time they go the the car to go home, Frisk has to be checked by an adult (not either of the skelebros, they are WAY to lenient on this one) to make sure that they don’t have any stow away sea critters. One too many times of Frisk trying to keep a pet crab.

❤️ They take swimming lessons from Undyne! There were only a couple of misunderstandings over wether or not a humans could breathe underwater, but its all been sorted out! They’re doing really well!

❤️ They refuse to learn how to dive. Undyne has been trying to teach them for MONTHS now. It’s cannon ball or nothing, and they’re determined to keep it that way.

Flowey

❤️ Back when he was Asriel, he’d wanted to see the ocean. They don’t exactly have HUGE bodies of water in the underground like that, basically only the river. And no one swims in the river. Add in Chara’s talk of mermaids and their stories about lakes and skipping stones and all that.... It had been a big goal of his. Now that he’s there, and without the capabilities to swim or get in the water, and without the person who said they’d show him the surf.... it’s uh, it’s lost its appeal.

❤️ Frisk and Papyrus tried to get him to go out in one of those dog floaties. It looked pretty ridiculous and nearly tipped over a couple of times. Inevitably it was decided that it was just best to just keep him on the shore or in the shallows strapped to someone’s chest.

❤️ Usually he just sits on the shore with Paps, Frisk, or Toriel. He (begrudgingly) likes to make sand castles. He’s actually gotten quite good at them. Either that or eat nice cream.

❤️ Papyrus made him tiny sunglasses. He wears them every time they go to the beach.

❤️ When he does go into the water, he likes to stick his head under the serf and try to find fish. He actually managed to catch one in his mouth once, both impressive and terrifying.

Toriel

❤️ She is fond of the beach. Not so much the water, but she does enjoy the occasional swim with Frisk. Would probably like going out on a boat, though she has never tried it.

❤️ Usually while the rest of the family swims, she’s on the shore in her beach chair, reading a good book and keeping a watchful eye on her kids. She can usually get through half of the thing before its time to go home.

❤️ That being said, when she does go out in the water (usually to cool off or check on Frisk and/or Flowey) she is remarkably good at floating along. That, and she’s abit of a beast when it comes to X-treme monkey in the middle. That lady is huge and can use that height when she needs to. Also she has to shake off when she gets out of the water.

❤️ She ALWAYS has a beach bag on her, and in that beach bag is pretty much anything you’d ever hope to need. Pool toys, goggles, fresh water, extra sunscreen, at least three books, money, Your scocial security number, you name it.

❤️ Toriel’s usually the go to ‘hold tired swimmer gently’ person. And has done so for everyone in the main cast but Mettaton and Undyne. You could just fall asleep in those big ole’ arms.

Sans

❤️ He’s, as with most things, pretty nuetral about the ocean. Though, he adores the fact that it’s a day he can just slack off and relax in the sun (and sometimes water). He’s usually on the beach in a beach chair or sitting in a pool floaty, just drifting along. Sometimes he’s just latched onto Paps or Toriel, it’s kinda a wild card where he is at any given time.

❤️ He has never been sober ONCE while at the beach with the family. Mostly thanks to the fact that he somehow always has a martini in hand. No one knows where he gets it, let alone how it is almost always at least half way full. Needless to say, he’s at least buzzed by the end of the day.

❤️ Every time they go to the beach, he wears the most insane sunglasses. I’m talking Elton John style, but if they came from dollar tree. Normally it’s a pineapple pair, but they change on a whim. Once again, no ones entirely sure where they come from.

❤️ He briefly moved the illegal hotdog stand to beach, before the threat of getting fined was close enough to scadattle. This, the limited addition ‘Colddogs’ (now for 5g, wait he meant 50g, actually its 500-) became a thing. They were followed shortly by ‘Frozendogs’ (available in 50 flavors!)

❤️ The two never breathe a word of it, but every once in awhile Papyrus will rent a canoe and the two of them will go out on the water. They only do this at the dead of night, when the water is still and clear. Way out past the buoys, where it’s hard to see the shore, the moon and the stars bounce off the water in a shifting, funhouse esc reflection. Being out there, together, in practically silence..... It brings a lot of comfort to the two of them. It reminds Sans that yeah, this is real, and some things are worth remembering.

Papyrus

❤️ Paps is very fond of the shallows, but not a huge fan off big, open water. Unless he’s in the comfort of a canoe or boat. It’s just too big of a space. One can feel so... alone out there. But!! If he’s in chest or higher or with a group of close friends, he’s good!!

❤️ He bought special spandex gloves to wear in the water, ones that cover his fingers and palms without being skin (bone???) tight. They help him tread the water better, since he’s the opposite of buoyant. Which is definitely the only reason he bought them! No other reason in sight! Why would you even ask that?!

❤️ He, Undyne, and Frisk play ALOT of beach games, all far more extreme than their originals. The current turnomemt is over X-Treme volleyball, this time featuring antigravity magic and spears. Frisk is, somehow, winning.

❤️ A good portion of the time, he eats nice cream and makes sand castles with Flowey. Their creations are startlingly structurally sound and flourished. Though, they are also usually next to a life sized sand-Papyrus. No one knows where the sand came from.

❤️ He tried catch and realease shark fishing with Undyne once. It um, got interesting to say the least. Especially when they tried to use Papyrus as live bait. They only had to go to the ER twice!

Undyne (Aka my entire reason for writing this)

❤️ Undyne doesn’t love the ocean. She doesn’t even like the ocean. She ADORES the ocean. You can find her there almost every day after work, sun or storm. She never realized how much she would thrive in salt water until she was there, and now she can’t believe she lived without it. Its so raw and passionate and buetiful, and she’s just at home in the waves.

❤️ Her favorite time to be out is during a good storm, when the ocean is at her roughest. Undyne has learned how to boogie board and body surf since she got on the surface, and uses those huge waves to catch some air. She WANTS to learn how to surf, but has yet to find someone to teach her. Storms are also the best for letting the water roll over her and letting herself drift in the tides, both are pretty damn amazing feelings.

❤️ Because she can breathe and see under the water, she also likes to swim out really deep into the open ocean. No one in the family can follow, but it gives her a lot of time to think. Also, there are sometimes HUGE fish out there, which she greatly enjoys seeing and interacting with. She’s. she’s fought a tiger shark before. And probably other, larger and more dangerous things. (Also when she gets home, Alphys always talks about how her kisses taste like salt. Undyne loves it).

❤️ Before she became Asgore’s body gaurd, Undyne was pretty much out of work. Not a whole lot of people wanted a massive, sharp toothed, she-shark selling retail in their stores. But, being a fish and all, she got managed to get a job as a life gaurd over the summer! This ended in her actually giving swim lessons to a couple of kids (starting with Frisk)!! She is actually a pretty good trainer and still teaches a few kids every once in awhile over summer breaks.

❤️ Her and Asgore went on a fishing trip once! The boat nearly capsized, Undyne ended up going in to fish instead of using the pole, there were life lessons taught about patience, and Asgore got horrendously away sick. Needless to say, it was a good trip. They still have pictures on Asgore’s fridge!

Alphys

❤️ As much as her girlfriend loves it, she’s not actually a huge fan of the water. It’s overwhelming and dries out her scales, and when she’s in super deep it makes her really uncomfortable. She’s stared into oblivion before and, well, it’s not a good feeling. The deep sea reminds her of that.

❤️ That being said, she LOVES the beach itself. She could sun bathe for hours while Undyne is swimming. Just pop on her head phones, lay on the sand, and embrace her lizard heratage! Also, she likes to watch her hot girlfriend do hot things like catch fish in her teeth and throw skeletons, so it’s a win win.

❤️ Naturally, this means a lot of her and Undyne’s date end up at the beach one way or anouther. Every time they go now, Alphy makes a point of collecting a seashell. They all hang on a string over her bed, it’s her favorite part of the room.

❤️ More times than not, if the sand is particularly nice and warm, Alphys falls asleep on it. Like, hard core passed out asleep. She just loves the fluffy parts of the sand so much??? And it’s so comfortable??? And she’s gotten more than afew overheating from sleeping ALL day, but she can’t help herself. It’s just too cozy!

❤️ Her favorite thing about the ocean is always going to be seeing Undyne’s smile though. She loves it. She loves the way her girlfriend’s kisses taste after she’s been in the sea. She loves how content the girl is after a good swim, and how cuddly they get in the living room. She loves smelling the air and holding her hand and seeing the sun on the water. She wants to spend forever in her arms, on the sand, eating nice cream and watching the sun set.

Mettaton

❤️ So. He’s a robot. Alphys is currently working on waterproofing his body, but until then he’s shore bound. That doesn’t mean he won’t done his best sun hat and glasses, steal a life gaurd’s chair, and pose dramatically on the beach though!

❤️ Truth be told, he actually quite enjoys long walks on the beach. His boots are well protected enough to go a way into the water as well, so he takes them sometimes with Alphys. Also, night time on the beach holds SPECTACULAR song writing material! There’s something so inspirational about the atmosphere.

❤️ That being said, summer concerts are the bomb. Litterally. There’s pyrotechnics. He’s not as big a star as he was in the underground, but some local beach performances are well within his pay grade. The thrill of the stage! The cries of the people! The personality and connection to his adoring fans! The one time he crowd surfed! The fashion! It’s all just perfect!

❤️ He also frequents beach side shops, thanks to the atmosphere and outfit selection. One can NEVER go wrong with a floppy hat and a sheer coverup. It’s just impossible.

❤️ He relates WAY too hard to the little mermaid, both in the original story and Disney. There’s just something that hits too close to home about longing for humanity and a new, more comfortable body... He gets Ariel man, he gets her.

Asgore

❤️ He likes to go on long morning walks on the beach alone. There’s something comforting about the sun rise and the sound of the waves rolling around him. There’s something even more sweet about the rare conversations, only lasting a hello and small talk, all few and far between. Sometimes he finds himself wishing he had a dog to walk with him, but in the end decides against it. He’s been alone a long time, he can last one more day.

❤️ He really enjoys going shelling. Sometimes, he even likes to paint his finds and put them up in his windows. Frisk helps him, he likes that.

❤️ He’s become a vollenteer to help find and aid sea turtles’ hatch sites. He loves watching them hatch and get to the sea safely. Though he’s not supposed to, he’ll protect them from the gulls.

❤️ Thanks to being in so close to the sea, he had a brief phase of being rather in love with verities of seaweed and kelps. He tried to keep afew using water tanks, but could never quite get them right. Ah well, at least the petunias and roses are doing nicely.

❤️ He has a hard time reading or watching things about mermaids. They make him sad.

#undertale #whole cast #Asgores section made me tear up a lil ngl #I love him so much #Also!!! Fun fact of the day!!!#A lot of the stuff put on Undyne’s section are based on my own experiences and feelings! minus the breathing under water parts tho #I just. love the ocean man.#Can you tell I wanted to be a mermaid as a kid?#Because I wanted to SO bad #long post

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years ago

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Humans Are Space Orcs, “Sandstorm.”

Hope everyone is having a good Monday, Hope you like the story )

Sunny stood beneath the blazing hot son. The Iranboo market on Irus was hot and dusty with clouds of blue sand puffing up into the air with every step. The little domes of white rock that made up the houses here, were draped in colorful cloth which stretched from roof to roof to cast the sandy market into a measure of shade.

Sunny was used to the heat, though volcanic heat and the heat of a star were much different, the volcanic heat coming in waves, while the heat from above seared downwards with ever-increasing intensity that made her entire body tingle with heat, and so she stayed in the shade near one of the tents, perusing a table full of decorative daggers, lorded over by a dark-skinned human, covered in colorful cloth from head to toe, to the point that only his upper face was exposed.

She wondered how the man could wear so many layers in heat like this, but didn’t ask.

Off to the side, Adam was busy taking the statement of one of the market herb sellers.

They had come here on the wind of some disturbing rumors.

Apparently, someone had got it into their heads that ground up Drev carapace had some sort of medicinal properties, sort of like ivory -- or at least that is what Adam had compared it to. Either way, they weren’t sure if the rumors were true, but a slow trickle of calls had been coming into the UNSC and revolved around Drev and their missing friends or family members.

Sunny shivered at the idea.

What kind of person would have the audacity to hunt Drev.

It was her impression, for that reason, that this in some way involved humans. That was not because she thought humans were the only ones sick enough to do something like this, but primarily because humans were the only ones capable of challenging a Drev. Perhaps a team of humans headed by a Tesraki mastermind, or others, but it remained her opinion that humans, or spirits forbid, other Drev were involved.

She glanced back at Adam, pleased to see that he was taking this as serious as any other investigation that they had done. Things were slowly changing, but the war hadn’t left the Drev in a good light and there were still some who didn't take the issues of her people as seriously as they should.

Obviously Adam was an exception to that rule and followed the plight of the Drev very seriously going so far as to say ‘ive been adopted into two Drev clans; your business is my business, and I intend to do everything that I can to help.”

So far he hadn’t lied, and she was more than pleased.

She turned her head away from his questioning and back to the rest of the market. Iranboo was a center of trade on Irus, far out in the desert, but close to at least three major interstellar docking stations. At least two of those three docking stations regularly received travelers from Anin, her home planet, and was often the last place some of the Drev were seen before they vanished completely.

With Adam still talking, Sunny walked a little further into the crowd following her ears and eyes. If she were a drev come off Anin for the first time, what would she be looking for? Food for sure, but the weapons would surely catch their eye.

So she made her way along the sand fruit stalls examining tier wares cursily before moving on. It was not their items that she was interested in, but the aliens who sold them.

She took a turn around the other side of the market, losing sight of Adam behind a brightly colored green banner. She lifted her head, and, off in the distance, she saw alow haze beginning to form on the horizon.

It was a familiar sight, from a memory long ago when she had passed through Irus.

The deep blue of atmospheric haze was growing even deeper, until it appeared that bright blue clouds were forming on the horizon.

A sandstorm.

It was far away right then, but she knew from stories how fast they moved and how dangerous they could be.

She walked through the market stalls and past one of the low marble domes, her feet seering in the scorching sand as she stared out at the gathering dust cloud. Behind her the sounds of the market merged and roiled into one great amalgamation of sound.

Her thoughts grew distant as she stared out upon the alien landscape.

And then something clamped around the base of her throat. She gasped and choked but was assailed by an acrid smell hissing through her breathing holes and into her lungs.

Something gripped her tight about the arms and waist.

She choked and struggled, kicking at the legs of whoever held her, but even as she struggled, her body grew weak and her knees gave out. She felt her legs burning as she slumped to the scorching sand.

Her head spun.

“Hurry, get her on the truck, we don’t have much time.”

“You get her feet, I’ll get her hands.”

“Hurry damn it.”

Her vision faded in and out, but she felt her body growing light, suspended through the air by unknown hads.

Her head lolled slightly. She watched the city recede upside down into the distance as she was unceremoniously chucked onto the back of the hover truck, whose engine roared and slowly began to slowly accelerate forward.

***

Adam clicked the top of the pen and slipped it into his jacket pocket, “Thank you for your help, sir. If you hear anything, call the number on the card I gave you, and a representative of the GA will take your statement, and dispatch a ship if needed.” The man nodded and raised the sand fruit he was eating.”

Adam turned on the spot, “You know I never thought th-” He paused when he found himself alone, and Sunny nowhere to be seen. He turned in a wide circle searching for her blue carapace in the surrounding crowd, but found nothing.”

That was strange, where could she have run off to

He walked a few steps forward, a tiny bit surprised when he found a good portion of the vendors to be packing up glancing nervously between the buildings and out towards the horizon. He Followed their gaze and paused nervously when he saw the large blue cloud rolling up over the horizon.

A sandstorm.

He really needed to get Sunny and get out of here. They might be able to beat it to the docking bay if they were quick enough.

But where the hell was she.

He took a few steps into the quickly vanishing market, and an arm suddenly caught his bicep, squeezing tight enough for a shock of pain to be sent up his arm. He jolted to a stop and turned to look at the one who had grabbed him.it was the man from the knife stand, with his colorful head coverings, and dark skin.

His eyes were wide and wild.

He placed a hand before his face, one finger over his lips to sush adam, and then motioned his eyes towards the side of the market fervently. Adam nodded and the man let him go. The wind was beginning to kick up around them, and he pulled up his jacket collar against little particles of sand as they flew up into his face.

He broke into a jog as he headed towards the side of the buildings.

He broke from between two houses, his eyes scanning over the wide horizon. At first he didn’t see anything, but flipping up his eyepatch and taking a look through his augmented eye, he zoomed in on the landscape, and managed to make out a little white hovercade of vehicles driving towards the storm.

He zoomed in a little further, and froze.

Froze at the blue body who lay listless on the back of the rear truck.

His heart turned to stone, and rage welled up inside him the likes of which he had never experienced. In that moment, it felt as if he could have melted the sand below his feet to glass.

“Sunny!” He screamed, catching a mouthful of sand kicked up into his face.

A man rode past him on a hoverbike nose turned towards one of the distant docking stations, but as he passed, Adam grabbed him by the jacket and yanked him o a stop. The man yelped, “Hey, what.”

“UNSC, I’m taking your vehicle.” The man toppled and fell into the sand hand raised as Adam swung himself up onto the back and gunned the engine. The man’s yelling voice faded into a background of wind and spitting sand.

Adam pulled a pair of goggles down over his eyes, pulling a bandana up from his neck and over his face as little particles of blue sand stung his skin.

His one mechanical eye zoomed in and focused on the retreating hovercade. He switched gears and the engine roared as he pushed it to the max speed. The sand flew by below him in great waves and before him a wall of blue sand rose high into the air what seemed like thousands of feet in the sky. His heart pounded against his chest as the first wave of sand rolled over the hovercade, and Sunny was momentarily lost from his view. He screamed Sunny’s name, but his voice was lost in a massive gust of wind.

Darkness enveloped him as great waves of sand slammed against his body. His hands stung as did his hairline.

Up ahead the hovercade, which had been growing closer, was almost completely lost from view.

He screamed again in frustration and toggled his mechanical eye for ALL heat sensing wavelengths hoping that at least one of them would be able to penetrate the sand. Through the pulsing waves of darkness, little pinpoints of light managed to make it through to his eye.

He switched gears and gunned the engine, fighting against the wind and sand that whipped past him.

The wall of sand towered over him into the sky, impenetrable and powerful.

He snarled as his mechanical eye zeroed in on a source of heat flickering in and out in the ghosts of sand, and reached down to the sidearm at his belt.

And that is when the wall hit him.

It was so powerful it drove the wind from his body and threatened to throw him back off the hovercycle, but he lowered his head against great waves of whipping blue sand pelting his face and completely darkening the sky above. His mechanical eye was his only saving grace at that moment

***

The Hovercade pulled into the sand like they had done thousands of times. It was dangerous, but it was good cover, and no one would be willing to follow them. The half unconscious Drev lay hal in and half out of a tarp in the back of the vehicle which whipped back and forth with the powerful sand. A Tesraki sat at the front of the vehicle hunched against the sand blowing in through one busted out window,goggles low over his face as a scarf whipping out behind him.

Two humans stood in the back, crouched against the cab against the worst of the wind and sand.

One of them turned his head staring at the wall of blue behind them which broke and undulated like the depths of the sea. Great towering rifts opened up in the san, and light filtered down from above only to be enveloped again. It was in one of these beams of light, that he saw it.

A figure roaring through the whipping sand.

A lone rider on a hoverbike crouched low against the roarin sand.

He stood, and was nearly blown over hissing in pain against the sand. His partner turned to look at him and he pointed back to where the sand had obscured the figure. He tried to scream over the wind, but his voice was caught up in a gust. Another rift opened up, and his partner saw it.

The figure even closer now than before.

They pulled their weapons, hanging onto the bars on the side of the hovertruck to stead themselves. One leveled a weapon, but the figure was faster taking a single handed shot that tagged him high on the cheek and slammed into the metal of the cab.

He screamed and put a hand to his cheek firing another round.

His partner slammed his fist against the caburging the Tesraki to go faster.

The man on the bike saw what they were , and slowly stood on the buddy pegs, bringing his feet up to stand on the seat, hands still resting on the bars.

This crazy bastard wasn’t actually going to-

He jumped.

Flinging himself into the air, impossibly high, with great billowing drapes of blue behind him, and lines of light nursing down from above. The boke turned sideways, was caught by a gust of wind and then plowed into the sand, erupting with a gout of fire that lit up the sand with a momentarily burst of orange light.

The figure slammed into the side of the cab hands latching on to the metal bars.

They leveled their weapons, but the figure lashed out, grabbing the first man by the front of his jacket and pulling him into the line of fire. He jerked once and then twice before falling still, two bullets in his back.

The figure threw the corpse aside and it bounced once before vanishing into the sand.

The second man brought up his weapon to fire again, but the gun was knocked from his grip and out into the sand. An elbow to the face, and he was knocked to the round. A fist was drawn back plowing into the side of his head and knocking him out cold.

***

Sunny woke up with a roaring in her ears and sand spitting at her face. Her vision was cloudy and uncertain as she looked around, feeling something tugging at her.

She looked up, and through the sand and wind she saw a face. His skin was plastered with blue, and his usually blond hair looked almost green. It was Adam, kneeling next to her on the truck.

Sunny had no idea where he could have come from, but there hewas, standing over her. Her vision faded in and out, and she felt almost nauseous.

She could see the bandana he wore moving, indicating that he might have been trying to speak, but the wind was too loud. SO loud that it was almost impossible to hear anything.

That was probably why neither of them noticed the man slide from the front of the cab to lean out the rear window, didn’t notice the gun he held until it was too late.

There was a flash of bright light, and a sharp burst of sparks as the bullet took him high on his right thigh, bouncing off the metal but imparting enough force to cause Adam to slip back.

Sunny saw, as if in slow motion as his foot was whipped out from under him, and he lost his balance. He fell forward slamming hard against the bed, hands scrambling against the smooth metal. She reached a hand for him,but her fingers were lethargic and stiff.

His right hand caught hard against the back metal, his body whipping with the sand behind the vehicle.

And then a boot came down on his hand grinding into his fingers.

Sunny watched in quiet horror as Adam’s fingers wen limp and then detached.

H was suspended for a second with his hand reaching out towards her, before he was sucked backward into the sand and vanished.

Sunny tilted her head looking up at the human standing over her, just before the boot came down and she was gone.

***

The white sun beat hot down on the blue dessert. The sky above was a uniform green grey and the air was completely still devoid of wind.

The ground was awash with large dunes of blue sand blown over from the sandstorm the night before, an unblemished mass of blue untouched by any living creature.

Until a hand burst from the blue sending grains of blue cascading down its arm. A shoulder broke through, followed by a head, hair completely saturated with the grainy azure sand.

It gasped and coughed, clawing it’s way to the surface, hands against the sand, palms burning in the scorching heat.

Adam pulled himself for the hole in the sand kneeling against the blazing heat.

He was breathing hard and his entire body ached and burned. But worse than that, worse than that was the thought of Sunny.

He had HAD her, he had been SO CLOSE.

He bent forward pounding his fists against the sand, “He could see her face, obscured by a swirling of sand as the Hovercade drove away.

They were going to pay for this.

They were going to die.

He leaned his head back and screamed, a raw animal sound made worse by the grainy san clogging his throat. He screamed and screamed and screamed until his throat choked with pain and blood came welling into his mouth.

He spit it onto the sand teeth clenched.

They had taken the wrong Drev.

And now they were going to PAY

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per-ineptia-ad-astra · 6 years ago

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Star Trek Episode 1.17: The Squire of Gothos

AKA Come Away O Human Landing Party

Our episode begins with a nice relaxed scene on the bridge, everyone hanging out, drinking coffee, and charting a course through a great big patch of nuthin’. They’re headed to Colony Beta Six to deliver some supplies. What kind of supplies are not specified. Hopefully not more plague medicine.

McCoy, leaning on Kirk’s chair as is his wont, picks up Kirk’s comment about how this place is a ‘star desert’ and starts talking about deserts and the imagery the word evokes, mirages and sand dunes and all that, with a surprising amount of fondness for a man who grew up in Georgia. Spock helpfully points out that the definition of ‘desert’ is “a waterless, barren wasteland” so he doesn’t really get why McCoy would be waxing poetic about such a place, which is a surprising lack of fondness for a man who grew up on a desert planet. McCoy just rolls his eyes and says that he couldn’t imagine any mirage “disrupting [Spock’s] mathematically perfect brainwaves” anyway, which Spock takes as a compliment.

All the conversation about deserts comes to a halt when Spock suddenly picks up a large “space displacement” up ahead. The navigator says they must be in some kind of light warp (???) or they would have noticed it earlier. Their sensors seem to be registering a planet, and sure enough there’s one on the viewscreen up ahead, clear as anything. Which is super weird, because this whole section of space has been explored and documented and they’re pretty sure there wasn’t a planet here last time. Strange as it is, though, Kirk says they’ve got no time to explore, they’ll just have to make a note of it so someone else can come check it out. Well, I’m glad to see you learned one lesson from last week, at any rate.

Uhura tries to notify someone over subspace radio about the strange case of the mysteriously appearing planet, but she’s getting interference, and thinks the mystery planet might be a natural radio source. What a nuisance. So Kirk tells Sulu to get out of range of that thing, and Sulu starts to—but then, suddenly, he disappears. And I mean really disappears. There one moment, gone the next, accompanied for some reason by an extremely over the top “BOING” sound.

Kirk rushes over to see what happened to his navigator, only for him to freeze in place and then vanish as well, also with a boing. Spock is so busy looking into his scanner he completely fails to notice any of this, even with the boinging, until the remaining helmsman yells out. Man, if I were that helmsman, I’d be getting out there, just in case whatever that was has an area of effect.

Spock whips round to find that the captain and one of the helmsmen have noped off into thin air, which calls for a bellow of “EMERGENCY! FULL REVERSE POWER!” I don’t really know how that’s going to help, but okay.

After the titles, we get a ‘ship’s log’ given by Spock to fill in for Kirk (how this differs from a captain’s log, I don’t know): they’ve misplaced their captain and helmsman and they’ve been circling around this weird mystery planet for four hours now, scanning it with everything they’ve got, but they haven’t picked up so much as a sneeze. Scotty says they’ve checked all over the ship and haven’t found the missing men anywhere, not stashed under a bed or in a closet or anything, which means that if they’re anywhere around here they’ve got to be on that planet. Of course, that’s assuming that they’re anywhere nearby on a cosmic scale, or that they’re currently on this plane of reality, or that they didn’t get zapped outside and are now floating slowly away through the vast emptiness of space, but none of those are really productive options so yeah, let’s look on the planet.

The other helmsman, DeSalle, immediately wants to beam down there with a search party, a suggestion that McCoy jumps on as well, but Spock reminds everyone that he’ll be making the decisions around here, thank you very much, we went over this enough last episode. He’s got a pretty good reason for being hesitant about that search party, as we learn when he asks the blueshirt who’s come in to sit at Sulu’s spot (for...some reason) what his readings about the planet show. The blueshirt, Jaeger, says that the planet has no detectable soil or vegetation, extremely high temperatures, a toxic atmosphere swept by tornadic storms, continuous volcanic eruptions, and is deadly to any life form as they know it without oxygen and life support systems. So that’s fun. Asked how long two humans without any of that protective gear could survive down there, all Jaeger can say is “not very long.”

This cheerful conversation is interrupted by a startled cry from Uhura. A message has suddenly appeared on one of the smaller viewscreens: “Greetings and Felicitations.”

[ID: Uhura sitting at her console with Spock standing behind her chair, both looking up at a viewscreen that reads ‘Greetings and Felicitations’ in ornate gothic text.]

That font does not bode well.

Spock tells Uhura to send a message back asking whoever this is to identify themselves. A moment later the viewscreen displays new text, as Spock reads out in a hilariously serious-yet-puzzled voice: “Hip-hip-hoorah, tallyho!”

Well, this is turning out to be a pretty weird day, alright. Spock tells the bridge he’s open to any theories at all, because really, what could anyone suggest that would be stranger than what’s already happened? McCoy points out that if someone’s sending them messages, there must be some kind of life on that planet. For once, Spock agrees with him, and orders the transporter room to be prepared. Scotty all but jumps into frame to volunteer for the landing party, but Spock tells him no, neither of them can be spared from the ship. Wait, you’re saying the person in charge of the ship isn’t going to be the first to beam down into dangerous, unknown territory? Spock, I don’t know if you’re really cut out for this command business.

Spock orders DeSalle, the helmsman, to lead the party, along with Jaeger, for his geophysical knowledge, and McCoy, because let’s be honest he’s gonna go anyway so you might as well let him and make things easier for everyone. They’re to go equipped with full armaments, communications and life support gear. “If those peculiar signals are coming from Captain Kirk or Mr. Sulu,” Spock says, “their rationality is in question.” Generally I’d agree, although really, with Kirk, anything’s possible.

The landing party soon meets up in the transporter room, equipped with full life-support equipment, which is...breath masks. Just breath masks, nothing else. Not even goggles or, hell, even a hat and scarf. Budget cuts hit hard, huh.

Spock comes in to see them off, and Uhura reports from the bridge that no more messages have come in, but she’s managed to pinpoint their source, so the landing party is going to be beamed there. Spock tells them to contact the ship as soon as they arrive, like your parents reminding you to call them when you get there, and to use the laser beacon if necessary. So...laser beacon. That’s a thing. I guess.

So the landing party heads down, but when they materialize, it’s not in a toxic, infernal hellscape...it’s in a nice grove with some trees and bushes.

[ID: McCoy, Jaeger (a slightly older white man with light brown hair) and DeSalle (a white man with dark brown hair) standing in a sandy clearing surrounded by trees and bushes, with a green sky in the background. All three men are wearing breath masks attached to devices on their belts, and looking around in confusion.]

“wtf, I know I’m a better geophysicist than this”

A quick reading reveals that the air is also quite breathable, so they take off their breath masks. As one might expect, they’re all pretty baffled. McCoy asks Jaeger (mispronouncing his name in the process) what the heck, what’s up with all those storms you were talking about? Jaeger can only shrug, with the half-confused, half-annoyed look of any expert who’s predicted something bad only to have it inexplicably averted.

DeSalle tries to calls the ship but his communicator isn’t working at all, and neither are the other two. As instructed he tries to use the laser beacon, but it seems something’s blocking it, so he says they’ll need to find more open ground.

The three of them separate a little bit to go looking around, but DeSalle quickly spots something and calls the other two over. It’s...a castle? Or possibly just a large and castle-like house, I’m not really sure.

[ID: Broad stone steps leading up to a stone building, with a large banded wooden door, torches on either side, and assorted gargoyle-like decorations.]

Well that definitely has no business being here. But once you see an inexplicable castle-house, there’s pretty much only one thing to do: go inside. The front door is unlocked, so the three of them slowly creep in.

Through the door is a small balcony overlooking a large, fancy room filled with as many historical-looking things as they could raid from the Desliu prop stores.

[ID: The interior of a lavishly decorated but old-fashioned room, with some assorted couches and chairs, suits of armor, a large globe, a bust of a man in a tricorn hat, a row of flags, and various other decorations.]

Also there’s this weird thing on the wall.

[ID: The mounted head of what appears to be some strange gray-skinned creature with big green googly eyes.]

seriously, what IS that

McCoy is like “where in the entire fuck are we” but no answer immediately presents itself. They start to head down the balcony stairs, but get distracted by the sight of something in an alcove to one side. It’s...Salty?? Yes, the ol’ salt monster themselves, apparently dead and now on display. McCoy looks about as happy to see them as you might expect.

[ID: McCoy, DeSalle and Jaeger pausing on the stairs, phasers at the ready, looking at the still form of the furry gray-skinned salt monster tucked into an alcove.]

“oh man, I had a really bad day the last time I saw this dude”

Inexplicable as it is for Salty to be here, they don’t show any sign of being a threat anymore, so after a moment the three of them carry on. Not for very long, though, because they soon see something even more interesting—Kirk and Sulu! Dang, things always turn up in the most unexpected places after you lose them, huh. Only one small problem: they’re...frozen. Well, kind of frozen. You can definitely see George Takei moving a bit there.

[ID: Kirk and Sulu standing on a balcony in stiff, awkward poses, lit from above by a strange greenish light.]

The landing party naturally rushes forward. McCoy does a scan of the petrified goldshirts and says, “There’s no reading. They’re like waxworks figures.” That’s a disturbing thing to find out, but before they can contemplate it very much, the door suddenly slams shut all on its own. Oh great. Now we have to worry about ghosts too. As if this day wasn’t stressful enough already.

Just as suddenly, there’s the sound of music. They all turn to see a man playing the harpsichord on the other end of the room, a man who definitely wasn’t there before. He’s, uh...interesting.

[ID: A white man with brown hair and thick sideburns, wearing tall boots, green trousers, a fancy blue coat with gold leaf embroidery, and a white cravat, sitting at a harpsichord and looking over his shoulder at the camera.]

“I must say they make a perfectly exquisite display pair,” the man says, in pretty much exactly the kind of voice you’d expect from a guy who looks like that, “but I suppose you want them back now.”

He waves his hand and the strange green light shining over Kirk and Sulu goes out, and the two of them seem to wake up. Sulu starts moving at once, but Kirk just kind of stays in position for a moment with only his eyes moving around in confusion before he straightens up.

“Welcome to an island of peace on my stormy little planet of Gothos,” the guy at the harpsichord says, but everyone ignores him for the moment. Kirk and Sulu climb over the railing to join the landing party, and Kirk tells them to fill him in on just what the frell is going on around here. McCoy tells him that the two of them disappeared and they’ve been looking for them for four hours—which, as far as ways the sentence, “You disappeared and we’ve been looking for you for--” could end, is pretty good, all things considered; better than, say, “You disappeared and we’ve been looking for you for ten years.”

“You must excuse my whimsical way of fetching you here,” Ruffles over there continues, “but when I saw you passing by I simply could not resist.”

Kirk, still looking real dubious and a bit like he has a headache, goes over to introduce himself, which really sends Ruffles into full-on “OH HO HO HOW WONDERFUL SMASHING BRAVO” mode. When Kirk asks him who he is, he says that he’s “General Trelane, retired, at your service,” and tells them to make themselves at home and all that before going back to the harpsichord.

The landing party does a huddle, and DeSalle tells Kirk about how they’re out of contact with the ship, leaving them pretty much trapped here. Trelane interrupts to say that he’s delighted to have visitors from “the very planet that I’ve made my hobby.” Oh boy. It is never a good sign when someone tells you they’ve made the place where you came from their hobby.

Trelane says he’s surprised, though, because he didn’t think they were capable of such voyages. Jaeger quietly points out to Kirk that this place is about nine hundred lightyears away from Earth, and it all looks about nine hundred years out of date, indicating that maybe Trelane’s been looking in on the ol’ home planet without realizing his information is on a bit of a delay.

That really bums Trelane out because he so wanted to make them all feel at home, but he bounces back pretty quickly. When Kirk addresses him as General, he says, no, call me Squire-- “yes, I rather fancy that.” Okay, Squire, why are we imprisoned here? Trelane insists that they’re not prisoners, they’re guests! And he wants to hear all about “your campaigns, your battles, your missions of conquest.” Kirk says that their missions aren’t for conquest, they’re peaceful—well, y’know, most of the time. Romulans notwithstanding. Now, can we please go back to our ship?

But Trelane won’t hear of it. He insists that they stay and have a “repast” with him while they tell him all about their feelings on war and killing and all that jazz. “Did you know,” he asks them, “that you’re one of the few predator species that preys even on itself?”

Oh lord, not this “humans are the only species that kill their own kind!!” nonsense. Predators prey on each other ALL THE DAMN TIME. You think that, say, a lion, in direct competition with other lions for food, territory, and mates, is going to go “well I could have all of that lion’s stuff if I killed him, but of course I would never sink to such lows”? Animals will kill each other, they’ll kill each other’s children, hell, chimpanzees will wage full on war against other chimpanzees. Humans are just the only ones that feel bad about the whole thing. I suppose Trelane could mean humans are one of the only sapient species that does it, except that doesn’t track either—the vast majority of aliens we see in Star Trek seem to be fine with it. Even Vulcans got a whole lot of killing each other in before they settled down.

Kirk reacts to this statement with more or less the same expression that I did.

[ID: Kirk with a distinctly unimpressed look on his face.]

DeSalle has his hand on his phaser, but Kirk tells him to hold off for the moment, and to put it on stun rather than kill. Trelane overhears DeSalle’s name and gleefully asks him if he’s French. DeSalle admits he has some French ancestry, and Trelane promptly rattles off a whole bunch more French, then tells DeSalle that he “admires your Napoleon very much.” DeSalle looks appropriately perplexed about all this.

Kirk introduces the rest of the crew. Trelane gives Sulu an extremely overwrought bow, prompting Sulu to mutter, “Is he for real?”. Then he turns his attentions on Jaeger and starts shouting in German and goose-stepping in a circle. Oof. Jaeger stiffly tells him that he’s a scientist, not a military man, so cut that shit out, but Trelane just says “we’re all military men under the skin.”

He then turns to admire himself in the giant mirror hanging on the wall. Unfortunately said mirror also shows him DeSalle sneaking up on him with a phaser. DeSalle, I’m going to guess that stealth isn’t your strong suit, so here’s a beginner’s tip: don’t try to sneak up on people while they’re standing in front of large reflective surfaces. Trelane promptly turns around and freezes DeSalle in place with a gesture. He doesn’t seem upset about the attempted sneak attack, though, instead taking the phaser from DeSalle before unfreezing him and then gushing over the phaser like a kid with a brand new Nerf gun. It doesn’t take him long to figure out which setting won’t kill and which one will, and he promptly starts shooting it all over the place, destroying Salty—who just can’t catch a break—and another taxidermied monster, while raving about how this awesome gun could kill millions!

At that point Kirk grabs the phaser away from him and says, so what, are we going to be your next targets, is that it? Trelane says that’s just typical of humans, they don’t understand something so they fear it. Really? Really? You were literally just firing a lethal weapon in their direction while talking about how great it would be to kill a lot of people with it. At that point I think we’re in territory where fear is pretty reasonable.

Trelane goes on to “anticipate [Kirk’s] next question,” which he presumes is going to be about how he’s doing all this stuff. He explains that “we—meaning I and others--” yes, thank you, that’s what ‘we’ usually means—he and others have perfected a system by which matter can be transferred to energy and back again. Kirk asks if it’s like their transporter and Trelane sneers that the transporter is just a crude version of their much better and way cooler technology, because unlike the transporter their tech can not only move energy around but change its shape.

But Trelane’s tired of answering all these questions now; he wants his guests to relax and enjoy themselves. Kirk is immediately like “well, I would really enjoy leaving, so bye” and starts herding everyone out of there. This really pisses off Trelane, and, deciding that Kirk needs “another demonstration of my authority,” he vanishes Kirk with a sweep of his hand. Kirk suddenly finds himself somewhere barren and dark, filled with clouds of vapor that have him choking and coughing in seconds. Then, just as suddenly, he’s back in the room. Trelane tells him that that was a sample of what the atmosphere on this planet is like “outside my kindly influence” so he and the rest of them better behave from now on unless they want another taste of that.

After the break, Spock gives another captain’s log for Kirk—specifically a captain’s log this time, and not a ship’s log. I don’t know what the difference is. Maybe Spock just got more ambitious in the interim. Anyway, they’ve orbited the planet fourteen times now and still haven’t found or heard from the missing crew. They also still don’t have communications, but they have gotten their sensors working again by diverting power to them. Oh, huh, that actually worked this time.

Said sensors have located this one tiny little Earth-like spot down there in the midst of all the kill-you-in-minutes stuff. Scotty is, appropriately, extremely confused by how the heck that spot is there, but Spock is not, at the moment, terribly concerned about that; however the spot got there, it’s evidently there now, so we’re gonna work with that. He tells Scotty to fine-tune the sensors to detect any lifeforms that might be down in the oasis and beam them up. Scotty points out that they have no guarantee that any lifeforms down there will be the crew, but Spock counter-points out that if the crew are on the planet, that’s the only possible place they could still be while also still being alive, so they can either see if this works or continue doing nothing.

Meanwhile, Trelane is showing off all his battle flags and going on about how cool armies are while the landing party stands around looking distinctly annoyed. They might have escaped dying in a toxic hellscape, but listening to this guy talk is almost as bad.

Eventually he goes back to the harpsichord, leaving them free to confer. Sulu wonders to Kirk just who exactly Trelane is, anyway. McCoy says the question is more what he is—he did a scan of Trelane and got nothing. No signs of life, no signs of recently deceased life, no signs that anything was there at all. Jaeger also points out that the fire in the fireplace looks like it’s burning but isn’t giving off any heat. Oh my god, he has electric fireplace capability! We’re really in trouble now, lads!

The combination of the faulty fire and the fact that Trelane’s historical knowledge is almost a millennium out of date leads Kirk to the conclusion that Trelane is not omniscient. He’s clearly capable of making mistakes. And if he can make mistakes he has vulnerabilities, and if he has vulnerabilities we can exploit them, and if we can exploit them maybe we can defeat him. It’s a slim chance, but that particular line of logic has served Kirk pretty well in the past.

Trelane interrupts them to say oooh, are they making their little plans? How wonderful! Kirk tries to say that actually they really aren’t, but Trelane waves him aside, saying that he’s not mad at them—on the contrary, he loves this whole martial deception and strategy thing, it’s one of the many things he just admires so much about their species. Welllll, in that case, Kirk says, you must admire our sense of duty, too, right? Our sense of duty that’s making us really need to return to our ship to actually do our jobs?

Nice try, but it doesn’t work—Trelane’s having far too much fun to let them leave now. Kirk asks how long they’re going to have to stay, then, and Trelane says, “Until this is over.” Asked “until WHAT is over” he just brushes the whole thing aside: too many questions, enjoy the moment, etc, etc. Kirk persists that there are four hundred men and women up there on the Enterprise who need their captain and crewmates back. Unfortunately, Trelane fixates on precisely the wrong part of that sentence and immediately flips out because WOMEN?? DID YOU SAY WOMEN??

Oh dear. Yeah. Trelane is absolutely amazed to find out that there are members of the, ahem, fairer sex in the crew, and starts going on about how, “Oh, how charming. And they must be very beautiful. And I shall be so very gallant to them.” Great. He’s one of those guys. What a surprise.

He’s all ready to bring down all the female crewmen here and now, but Kirk has now really had enough and tells him that this game is over. Trelane is all set to throw a big temper tantrum, but McCoy’s communicator suddenly beeps, and he says he’s receiving a transporter signal. I didn’t know that was a thing that the communicators did, but apparently it is.

Well, looks like the party’s over, thanks, as Kirk says, to Mr. Spock. Trelane pitches an absolute fit about how he hasn’t dismissed them yet and he won’t stand for this, but the group is beamed up all the same. Spock comes into the transporter room to meet them, and if he’s at all relieved to see Kirk back after having been mysteriously gone for several hours on a planet with little hope of survival, he, of course, doesn’t show it. Kirk doesn’t offer much explanation, either, sending everyone back to their jobs as soon as they step off the platform, then asking Spock how they were able to pick up the landing party on sensors through all the radiation. Spock says, well, they didn’t—they just scooped up everyone in the vicinity. Which means, as McCoy points out, that Trelane really isn’t any kind of life form as they know it, since he didn’t get beamed up as well.

No time to stand around and think about that one, though—Kirk orders them to hit the gas and get away from this obnoxious planet as quickly as possible. Everyone returns to the bridge, where some random redshirt has the conn (why must Scotty be so often denied his command?). As Kirk takes over, McCoy goes to hang out by Uhura’s station, and she asks him what the heck was going on there. McCoy gets about as far as saying, “Well, there was a--” before giving up entirely, and really, who could blame him.

They’re all set to skedaddle when who should suddenly appear on the bridge but Trelane himself, startling everyone. Well, mostly everyone. Kirk just sees him and immediately looks extremely tired.

Trelane looks around the bridge and asks where the weapons are—don’t they display their weapons? Well, you know, there’s not a lot of empty wall space on the bridge, so what are you gonna do. Anyway, he tells Kirk not to worry, he’s only a bit upset with him. The person he’s really upset with is this Spock fellow who took away his playmates. Trelane wants to know just which one of these people is Spock, and Spock obligingly gives himself up. Sadly, this does not prompt a Spartacus-like scene where everyone else on the bridge starts yelling, “No, I’M Spock!”

This revelation is surprising to Trelane, who scoffs that, “Surely he’s not an officer, he’s not quite human.” Wow. Rude. Spock tells him that indeed he has a Vulcan dad, and Trelane asks if Vulcans are a predatory species. “Not generally,” Spock tells him, “but there have been exceptions,” with an expression that indicates that he might be willing to make one of those exceptions right about now.

Trelane expects Kirk to have Spock appropriately punished, and Kirk says that on the contrary, he commends Spock for his actions. I might have gone with, “Oh, yeah, sure, I’ll punish him. We have to go far away to do that, though...so we can...put him in time out...” but that works too. He then tells Trelane to get off his damn bridge already so they can leave, but Trelane won’t hear of it. They’re all going to come back with him because he has “an enchanting sojourn” planned.

Just like that, they’re all back at Trelane’s place—all of the original landing party plus Spock, Uhura, and a yeoman who was on the bridge. There’s now a large dining table in the middle of the room, which Sulu and DeSalle find themselves seated at. Despite nothing else seeming to have changed, Trelane boasts that “the décor of my drawing room is much more appropriate and tasteful, don’t you think?”

“No,” Sulu cheerfully tells him, because Sulu does not have a single fuck to give this episode.

DeSalle promptly jumps up to have a go at Trelane, which only results in him getting frozen again while Trelane coos over the impressive savagery of humans and all that. Kirk tells him to let DeSalle go, which he does, leaving DeSalle to be quickly grabbed and led away by the much more collected Sulu, admonishing him not to try that shit again.

Well, never mind that display of bad manners, Trelane says—let’s eat! He’s quite anxious for them all to sit down and sample the victuals. The men glance at Kirk and he gives them a nod, so they sit down. No, you fools, don’t eat the food! If a mysterious and powerful entity living in a place that shouldn’t exist offers you food, do not eat the food. That’s how you get trapped in the Otherworld forever!

But Trelane isn’t paying much attention to his dinner guests anymore, because he’s suddenly remembered that there are ladies here and insists on being properly introduced to them. Kirk begrudgingly introduces him first to Uhura, whom Trelane starts fervently admiring in terms that...well, let’s just say it starts with “a Nubian prize” and only gets worse from there. Then he starts in on the yeoman, one Teresa Ross, with “is this the face that launched a thousand ships” etc, etc, and tries to go for a kiss, but Kirk wearily grabs him by the arm and pulls him back.

He then formally introduces Trelane to Spock, whom Trelane is rather less enthused about. He thinks that Spock’s tone is “challenging” (it’s really not any different from Spock’s normal tone) and asks if Spock is in fact challenging him. Well, since you asked, Spock says, “I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline. I object to power without constructive purpose.” Kirk listens to this little speech with an expression I can only describe as “smitten.”

[ID: Kirk listening and smiling as Spock, offscreen, says, “I object to power without constructive purpose.”]

Trelane comments that Spock does have “one saving grace after all. You’re ill-mannered. The human half of you, no doubt.” Gee, thanks.

He then goes back to bothering the women, asking—well, ‘asking’--Ross to dance with him while Uhura plays them some music. Uhura protests that she doesn’t know how to play a harpsichord, but Trelane says that of course she does, makes a sound effect happen, and suddenly Uhura starts playing with a surprised look on her face. Personally I would freak right the fuck out if someone just up and inserted an entire skill into my head, but she seems pretty chill with it. The poor yeoman, who most surely did not expect her day to wind up going this way when she woke up that morning, gets swept into a dance with Trelane.

I’m not quite sure how to take Trelane’s attitudes here. His information about humans is very dated, so it makes sense that his outlook towards women and black people (and Japanese people and German people, for that matter) would be likewise dated. It’s not a thing that the episode really calls out, though; at most there’s some exasperated eyerolls and polite befuddlement. Now, I don’t mean to come over all “if a work of fiction doesn’t explicitly and firmly condemn bad behavior that means it supports it!!” but it’s a little trickier when you’re dealing with a work that doesn’t necessarily have a great track record with those things to begin with. When you’ve got a show that’s unironically said some rather discriminatory stuff, it makes it more difficult to tell where the line is between that and a character who’s intentionally been written to be offensive in a way that we’re not supposed to approve of. I mean, some of Trelane’s behavior is quite obviously supposed to be outdated, especially what he says about Uhura; it might be more uncomfortable today but I’m sure it was always intended to be uncomfortable to some degree. But a few of the things he says aren’t real dissimilar from things that get said quite seriously throughout the show, so it’s, y’know, kinda weird.

While Trelane is distracted, McCoy and Sulu get up from the table to come talk to Kirk. Sulu wants to know how long they’re gonna be putting up with all this, and Kirk says they’ll have to put up with it until they can think their way out. In the meantime, they’ll just have to go along with Trelane’s hospitality—such as it is. Speaking of that hospitality, McCoy’s noticed a distinct flaw in it: all of Trelane’s dinner, as nice as it looks, is completely and utterly tasteless.

[ID: McCoy, Spock, Kirk and Sulu gathered in front of the large, ornate fireplace. McCoy, holding a glass of brandy, is saying, “Well, you should taste this food.”]

“And this brandy just tastes like apple juice! What’s up with that.”

Spock comments that actually, this makes sense; the flavorless food and drink indicates that Trelane “knows all of the Earth forms but none of the substance.” In other words, he may have observed what their food looks like, but has no idea at all what it should taste like. Kirk points out that this means Trelane isn’t infallible. I thought we already had that conversation, but okay. He also thinks that Trelane must have some kind of device or machine that’s helping him do all this.

Meanwhile, Trelane and Ross are still dancing, which Ross, understandably, does not look super happy about. He stops and says that her dress “hardly matches this charming scene,” and magics her into a fancy new pink one. She doesn’t look super happy about that, either, and really, who would be? The idea of someone being able to just instantly change you into whatever clothes they want you to be wearing is disturbing enough on its own even without all the other stuff Trelane seems able to do.

Trelane then pauses to preen in the big mirror on the wall, and Kirk notes that Trelane seems to have a thing about that mirror and never gets very far away from it. He figures this is just because of Trelane’s enormous ego, but Spock thinks there may be something more to it. Is there something special about that mirror, maybe? The two of them talk about what kind of machine Trelane could have that could do all this. Spock says it would have to be extremely sophisticated. “Like a computer,” Kirk says, “only much more.” ...Sure.

Kirk then asks if the device that’s keeping this whole area in livable conditions could be inside the house. Spock doesn’t think so because anything that could do that would surely be too big to fit in there. Kirk’s glad that Spock agrees on that one because it leaves him free to act. “If I’m not mistaken,” he says, “I think I can turn his lights off at the source.”

He then turns and starts loudly dissing Trelane, talking about how his actions are “those of an immature, unbalanced mind.” Trelane, hearing this, stops dancing and starts getting upset, but Kirk says he’s only just getting started. He wants Trelane to leave his crew alone, then pulls Ross away from Trelane and says that she’s not to dance with him or accept his gifts because Kirk doesn’t like it. Trelane is excited about this apparent display of jealousy, which, like ‘savagery’ and ‘killing things’ he seems to regard as an admirable trait. When Kirk says that he’s “had enough of [Trelane’s] insulting attentions to [Ross]” Trelane responds, “Of course you have. After all, that’s the root of the matter, isn’t it? You fight for the attention, the admiration, the possession of women!” Oh geez.

If Trelane wants a fight, Kirk says, then he can have it, and then he smacks Trelane across the face with Ross’s glove. Trelane gleefully asks if Kirk is challenging him to a duel. “If you have the courage,” Kirk tells him.

Oh boy, a duel? An actual duel? Trelane, practically beside himself with excitement, runs over and grabs a box from the mantelpiece. Inside it are a couple of pistols. “A matched set,” he says, “just like the pair that slew your Alexander Hamilton.” (Insert your own Hamilton joke here.) He then informs Kirk that “Captain...I never miss.” Kirk looks rather rattled, as if he wasn’t expecting to have to fight with guns, geez, how primitive, although I really don’t know what he would have thought they were going to duel with.

(Given that Hamilton died in 1804, and that dueling was falling out of favor in England by the 1840s and in America by the 1850, where it pretty much died off (even in the South, where it was way more popular) after the Civil War, we can estimate that the time period Trelane’s been looking at is roughly the first half of the nineteenth century. (Maybe someone with better historical knowledge than me could narrow it down more—or maybe not, I kind of doubt they were meticulously accurate with their period references here.) The earlier comments about this being nine hundred years out of date would therefore place the show in the twenty-seventh century, four centuries later than what they would eventually settle on. The best Watsonian explanation I can come up with for this is that they overestimated just how much of a delay Trelane’s information was on, and that Jaeger, being a geophysicist and not a historian, didn’t realize that his whole get-up was five hundred years out of date instead of nine hundred. A bit weak, but it’s better than “we forgot what century we were in,” which is the only other thing I can think of.)

After the break, Kirk narrates a “delayed log” (presumably meaning he made it after all this was over, although it’s still in the present tense so who knows) about how they’re all prisoners of Trelane and are weaponless and powerless--’cept for this gun—and the only way out is to play his games. Kirk has chosen this game, and now everything depends upon him and this ancient dueling pistol. Man, I bet Sulu’s feeling jealous right now.

They get into position and Trelane, still all giddy about getting to fight a real human duel, says that as the one challenged, he gets the first shot. Kirk is like, “...no? You don’t? That’s not how this works?” Not that they’re really following any dueling rules at the moment, but that one’s going a bit too far. This is like when my brother used to insist on setting up both sides whenever we played Battleship together. Trelane immediately starts throwing a fit and says that it’s his game and his rules, and if Kirk doesn’t like it, he could be persuaded...as he points the pistol at Spock. Okay, okay, Kirk says, you go first, geez.

So Kirk stands there, waiting, as Trelane prepares to fire. There’s a long, tense pause...dramatic music...and then Trelane fires harmlessly into the air (well, harmlessly in this instance. Please don’t fire guns straight into the air above you in real life) a move known in dueling as deloping. It can be done as an attempt to avoid actually killing anyone should you get dragged into a duel you don’t want to be in, but it can also be taken as an insult, implying that your opponent isn’t even worth shooting. I couldn’t find any examples of it being done by godlike beings toying with their victims, though, so I don’t know what the regulations on that one are.

[ID: Kirk, standing the foreground with his back to the camera, facing off against a grinning Trelane, who has just fired his gun into the air with a puff of smoke.]

“YOU’RE NOT WORTH THE POWDER!”

Trelane grins and says his fate is now in Kirk’s hands, and hold his arms out all ready to be shot. Well, that looks far too easy. Kirk evidently thinks so as well, because instead of shooting Trelane, he shoots the mirror. Unusually for mirrors, it promptly explodes. Not sure how that’s covered under the whole “break a mirror and get seven years of bad luck” rule.

The lights in the house start flickering on and off—yes, that includes the candles and fireplace—while electricity sparks from the broken mirror, which sure enough, appears to have some kind of machine behind it.

[ID: The remains of a large mirror in a gilded frame, now completely shattered, with most of the glass gone and complex machinery visible underneath.]

As Trelane starts yelling about how Kirk’s ruined everything, DeSalle says the subspace interference is clearing, and Kirk tells him to try contacting the ship. Trelane says that they’d better go back to the ship and prepare for their fates because they’ve earned his wrath and they’re “all dead men, you especially, captain.” Then he disappears.

Well, that’s a bit odd, but never mind that right now—let’s get out of here. Again. Hopefully it’ll stick this time. They’re all beamed up, and everyone heads to the bridge, where Kirk tells Sulu to GTFO. Then he takes a moment to look over a PADD someone’s handed him, because a captain’s life is never free of paperwork, even while fleeing from godlike beings throwing a temper tantrum.

Uhura asks if she should make a full report on all this to Spacefleet Command (goddammit, Gene, could you just pick a name for Starfleet and stick with it) but Kirk says not yet. He wants to wait until they’re out of range before sending out any kind of signal that could potentially be picked up by Trelane. Spock asks if they even know what Trelane’s range is, and Kirk admits they don’t, but he’s going to make an educated guess that it’s about where they first came into this solar system. Are they in a solar system? I thought they just found this one planet out in the middle of nowhere.

Yeoman Ross, still in the dress Trelane magicked her into, takes the PADD from Kirk and asks if she can go change. He smiles and says, “Yes, I think you might.” He doesn’t say, “Sorry I had to yell some nineteenth century views about women at you to provoke a creepy dude into dueling with me,” but there doesn’t seem to be any residual awkwardness between them, so I guess she’s fine with it.

They’re about to go into warp, when suddenly there’s a planet in front of them—so suddenly, Sulu only just barely avoids crashing into it. Sure enough, it’s that damn Gothos again. All their instruments show they’re on course, but as soon as Sulu tries to leave, it shows up in front of them again. And again, with them barely avoiding a crash each time. Even after pulling away from it the last time, Sulu says they’re still accelerating...or maybe the planet is still accelerating towards them (what, do you not have a speedometer on the helm anywhere?). It seems that Trelane isn’t about to let them escape that easily.

Kirk’s had enough of this shit. He tells Sulu to decelerate into orbit, and orders the transporter room prepared—he’s going to go down and talk to Trelane until he lets the Enterprise go. If they haven’t heard from him in an hour, he tells Spock, they’re to leave as quickly as they can. Which, I mean, they can’t leave at all right now, so who knows whether that order will be any use. McCoy, predictably, objects to this plan, and Kirk, predictably, ignores him.

So Kirk leaves the bridge, but before he can even make it to the transporter, he suddenly finds himself in a dark courtroom where Trelane sits high above him, judge’s wig and everything. He tells Kirk, “The prisoner may approach the bench. Any demonstrations shall weigh against you with the court, and this time my instrumentality is unbreakable.” Then the shadow of a noose appears behind Kirk. Well. That got dark.

Trelane then reads out a list of charges: “The high crime of treason against a superior authority, conspiracy and the attempt to foment insurrection.” Kinda surprised he didn’t add “and being a big mean jerkface” on there. He asks Kirk how he pleads, and Kirk says he’s not here to plead anything; he’s here to get his ship back. Trelane only bangs his gavel angrily at this, so Kirk tells him to take all his anger out on him, since he was the one who lead the others and destroyed the machine. He’ll admit to the charges, fine, anything, if Trelane will just let the Enterprise go.

When Trelane still doesn’t seem swayed by this, Kirk marches right up to the bench and tells him that they’re living beings, not Trelane’s playthings. At that point Trelane really flips out and yells that this trial is over, Kirk is guilty on all counts, and “in accordance with your own laws” he’s going to hang from the neck until dead. Which is obviously anachronistic nonsense. You only get the death penalty for going to Talos 4 these days.

After the break, Spock gives a captain’s log saying the hour is almost up and there’s still no word from Kirk, so as per his instructions they’ll have to leave soon. Wait, the hour is almost up? Like five minutes have passed since he went down there. Was there like fifty-five minutes of Trelane shouting that we skipped? I mean, not that I would complain about skipping that.

Down in the courtroom, Trelane throws off his wig and robe and cheerfully says that wow, he experienced actual rage—which he didn’t even think was possible! This whole experiment has been a success! Oh, are you still angry, Kirk? What’s that about?

If Kirk had any hope that this sudden shift in mood might prompt Trelane to call off the hanging, no such luck—he’s fully intending to carry it out, and asks Kirk if he has any last requests.

[ID: Kirk standing in a dark room with his hands on a wooden railing in front of him, glancing back at the shadow of a noose on the wall behind him.]

“Uh...I commend my soul to any god that can find it.”

Trelane wants Kirk to get on with it and put his head in the noose, to which Kirk is naturally like, “I’m not putting my head through that thing get out of here.” But Trelane informs him that he has no choice, and the noose starts moving over to him of its own accord, while Trelane laments that this is all so easy it’s tiresome.

Before things can segue into a Punch and Judy sketch, Kirk says that that’s Trelane’s trouble: he doesn’t think and he misses opportunities, like the experience of being angry right now, which he could never have accomplished without Kirk because he’s a bumbling, inept fool. Wow, don’t hold back, Kirk. Tell us how you really feel.

Kirk says that Trelane could just hang him, if he wants to be boring like that, but there’s no sport in it. There’s an opportunity here for a new experience: “the terror of murder, the suspense, the fun.” This intrigues Trelane, and he asks what alternative Kirk has in mind. “A personal conflict between us,” Kirk says. “Not like the duel before, but the real thing. The stakes? A human life, mine.”

This gets Trelane really pumped, and he starts waving a sword around excitedly. Kirk tells him that that’s the idea, but it’s still not enough sport to just kill him with a sword. So Trelane thinks for a moment and then decides on “a hunt, a royal hunt, predator against predator.” Kirk will go hide in the forest outside, and Trelane will hunt him down. Lovely.

Now he’s talking, Kirk says—but if Trelane is going to make it worth Kirk’s while, he’ll have to up the stakes. If Trelane agrees to free the Enterprise, Kirk will give him a contest he’ll remember. Trelane huffs about how Kirk just can’t shut up about that dang ship of his, but he agrees. Then he magics Kirk outside and tells him to go hide.

Kirk wants to notify the Enterprise before the game starts, and Trelane’s disembodied voice tells him, “At your convenience.” So Kirk pulls out his communicator, but only gets static. He tries anyway, telling them to get the ship out of there while he buys them some time, but he’s barely even finished speaking when Trelane appears and starts attacking him with the sword. Man, that’s not convenient at all.

The two of them tussle a bit, and then Kirk runs off into the woods. He gets some headway, but stops to try to contact the ship again, and Trelane catches up to him. So off Kirk runs, with Trelane running after him and telling him he’s got to try harder because this is too easy.

Kirk runs through a clearing, and a moment later Trelane runs through it after him. As he stops to look for Kirk, Kirk suddenly comes in swinging on a nearby branch and kicks Trelane hard in the chest, causing him to go flying and drop his sword. Kirk grabs the sword and swings it at Trelane—but Trelane vanishes, leaving the sword to pass harmlessly through thin air. Then he reappears, crowing, “Touche, Captain, touche! You scored first! But after all, I never played this game before!”

It’s not looking like Kirk has much of a chance if Trelane’s gonna cheat like that, but he’s not giving up yet. He throws the sword away, only for Trelane to magic it back into his hand and start attacking Kirk with it. They circle around a nearby tree, Kirk fending off the sword with a branch, but eventually the branch breaks against the sword and Kirk has to run.

He makes it back to the house and tries to get in through the front door, but it won’t open, so in desperation all he can do is try to call the ship again. Trelane comes running up and Kirk turns to try to escape, but iron fences appear first on one side, then the next, leaving him cornered. He reminds Trelane that he promised to let the Enterprise go, but Trelane says that no, this game is so fun he’s gotta bring everyone else back to come play it too. Four hundred people to chase through the woods one by one. How many of them would die before he finally got bored?

Trelane orders Kirk to kneel, but Kirk tells him he still hasn’t won, and refuses to back down despite Trelane’s repeated demands. After all, he’s got nothing to lose now, and anyway he’s far too tired and pissed off now to be afraid. So he grabs Trelane’s sword and breaks it over his knee--geez, cheap sword—throws it away, and then smacks Trelane across the face a couple of times for good measure. Trelane rages that Kirk cheated and didn’t play the game right, and Trelane’s gonna show him—when suddenly a female voice firmly calls his name.

Two spots of glowy green mist have appeared above the ground nearby. Trelane runs over to them and protests that they said he could have this planet for his very own. Another voice, this one male, tells him that all this has gone far enough. “But you always stop me when I’m having fun!” Trelane whines, but the orbs tell him that he’s been disobedient and cruel and it’s time to come in now.

Trelane says that he doesn’t wanna come in, and he’s not gonna, cause he’s a general and he doesn’t have to listen to them. Dad Orb tells him that’s enough. Trelane insists he hasn’t done anything wrong and besides, he hasn’t studied finishing his predators yet. But this isn’t hardly studying anything, the orbs tell him; if he can’t take proper care of his pets he can’t have them at all. Anyway, he can’t go around treating them this way because “they’re beings, they have spirit, they’re superior.” He’ll understand when he grows up. Trelane pouts that he never gets to have any fun, and Dad Orb tells him to cut that out or he’ll have his planet-making privileges revoked.

“But I was winning,” Trelane protests, “I would’ve won, I would’ve...” He repeats it petulantly over and over as he slowly fades away.

The orbs then address Kirk, who has been watching all this with a sort of “you know what, this might as well happen” expression. They apologize and say it’s their fault for indulging their child too much, and they would have stopped this all much earlier if they’d realized how vulnerable the humans were. They’ll maintain the life-supporting conditions on the planet while he gets back to the ship, and then with another apology, they vanish.

Kirk stands there for a moment looking extremely tired before trying to call the ship. This time Spock finally answers, and Kirk tells him they’re free to go so beam him up already and let’s leave this dumb planet behind.

This does leave open the question of what that whole business with the machine was about. For all the focus there was on it, and Trelane’s angry reaction to Kirk destroying it, he doesn’t really show any reduction in his abilities after it’s taken out, and Trelane’s parents didn’t seem to be using any such thing when they showed up. So what did Trelane need it for, really? How many of his powers came from the machine as opposed to being inherent to his kind, whatever that is? Whatever the answer, we’re never gonna find out.

Some time later, the Enterprise is finally approaching Colony Beta Six, and as Kirk sits on the bridge Spock comes up to him and says he’s wondering how they’re going to classify Trelane for the record. “Pure mentality? Force of intellect? Embodied energy? Super being?” Are those preexisting classifications? If so, I’m really curious what the exact definition of “super being” is.

Kirk suggests ‘God of War’ which, as Spock points out, is not very helpful. “Then a small boy,” Kirk says, “and a very naughty one at that.” Spock notes that that’s going to make for a strange entry (though really, it should hardly stand out among all their other entries), and Kirk says that, well, he was a strange small boy. But then, he figures, he was probably just doing his equivalent of typical small boy pranks just like Spock might have done as a kid—dipping little girls’ curls in inkwells and all that. Although given the attitude Trelane had towards his ‘pets,’ he seems more like the kind of kid that would pull wings off flies or fry ants.

Spock looks half scandalized and half confused, understandably so since dipping little girls’ curls in inkwells as a prank was anachronistic enough in the 1960s, let alone in the 2300s. Or the 2700s. Whatever century we’re in. Kirk apologizes and says that he should have known better, and Spock gives him an “uh, yeah” eyebrow, and the episode ends.

As you might well have noticed, this plot of this episode bears a striking resemblance to that of Charlie X: the crew are at the mercy of a young person with incredible powers and no real understanding of life outside their own, who they ultimately only escape from because a guardian with even greater powers comes to collect them. In both cases the protagonists, for all their ingenuity and bravery, wind up unable to really do anything except stall for time. Trelane’s fading cry of “I would’ve won, I would’ve...” even echoes Charlie’s last cry of wanting to “stay...stay...stay...”

The difference, of course, is all in the tone; Charlie X is more or less a horror story, while The Squire of Gothos is much more comedic. Trelane presumably had the capability to do things just as horrific as Charlie did, but even at his most threatening his antics are obnoxious rather than terrifying, and no one takes him seriously, even when literally being held at swordpoint by him. The idea of a race of beings so powerful that even their children could treat us as little more than interesting toys could very easily be played as a full-on cosmic horror story, but by invoking highly recognizable human behaviors so closely—Trelane whining that he never gets to do anything fun, and being sternly told to stop playing and come inside, etc—it becomes funny and whimsical rather than threatening. It’s an interesting example, I think, of how much just changing the tone can alter a story.

Trek Trope Tally: We’ve got another case of Godlike Beings, with Trelane and his mysterious parents. Next time, Kirk’s gonna make like Steve Irwin and wrestle a giant reptile in Arena.

#star trek #star trek TOS #star trek season one #1.17 The Squire of Gothos

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ecotone99 · 5 years ago

Text

[NF] Storms over Fallujah

SAND: It seems to roll and writhe like a living thing. The storm is powered by forces too huge to understand. It fills the entire northern horizon. If a giant, a truly giant Giant, had come and built a living sandcastle wall, it would look like this storm.

The air around him is nearly dead. It hangs like a thick curtain. Sounds seem deadened and the air tastes like ozone. It is the calm before the storm. Suddenly, he realizes how close this damn thing is. It moves with deceptive speed and will be on them in a moment. He dashes inside, just in time.

Now, the sound is deafening. The wind is a living thing and the teeth of the sand grind down everything they touch. There is no escape. Even inside the Marine house which is apparently air tight enough to seal in the air conditioning the dust invades. It pours in a steady stream through every micro crack in the structure. Within minutes every room in the house, with only a few exceptions, is choked with an impenetrable haze of dust. All lights dim behind a veil of earth hanging in the air.

The wind strains at every edge it can find and roars around and through everything. All the dust of the world pours into your eyes, your nose, your mouth, your whole life. The storm doesn’t seem angry, it just seems inevitable. It seems permanent. No photograph, no recording, no description can encompass the total sensory experience of this storm.

For hours it drags on. A new violent, stinging, normal that is too massive to complain about. Life begins to feel like it will always be like this, and has always been like this.

Sudden silence.

It is gone. It feels as though the entire world will be gone when he opens the door. Everything scoured away by the silica teeth of the storm.

But for better or worse, Iraq is still there, waiting for him.

SNOW: When he was a boy, the Captain hunted in the mountains. One night his uncle said it was too cold to snow. He thought at the time that it was a ridiculous thing to say. As he grew older and paid attention he saw the truth. There is a sweet spot on the thermometer that is perfect for snow.

This morning is frigid. He always rises early but tonight his sleep has been fitful and nearly worthless. He has slipped from his sleeping bag and now, in his warming layers, he stands on the roof. He peers out through the camouflage net that has been stretched across the roof to make an enemy sniper’s job more difficult.

The clouds hang heavy and thick blocking the stars. There is very little light in the city. It relies exclusively on diesel generators spread out around the neighborhoods. With Saddam gone, there is no power coming from the central distribution point. He used to placate the restive Sunni residents of Al Anbar province with extra electricity or fuel. Now the interim government in Baghdad sees no reason to part with the precious power from the nearby Tharthar Dam. It’s the Americans job to fix this.

As he gazes over the city he can see the urban glow of Camp Fallujah like a huge temporary city that dwarfs its ancient neighbor. The Americans definitely generate enough power for themselves. What a different experience those people who live on the sprawling FOB(Forward Operating Base) have of this war.

The sun, an enemy to be feared in the summer, begins to bring its welcome light and warmth to this winter’s day. Albeit behind a cover of clouds. Camp Fallujah’s glow fades as the light and warmth spread.

Suddenly, silently the snow begins. I slides from the sky in a solid heavy blanket as if the entire cloud cover decided to come to earth as a solid. The flakes are fat and moist and stick to the first thing they touch and the world is white and clean. Nearly four years of war are erased in minutes. The harsh cracks in concrete are gone in an instant. Craters fill and are obscured. Piles of rubble and debris become indistinct. Fallujah is a bride ready for her wedding. She is young and pure once again.

The snow begins to taper off until only a few flakes drift in the sky like the slowest ducklings following their mothers. Silent and cold the world holds its breath. The light continues to grow and the beauty of the morning is breathtaking.

The Captain watches the city sleep. He wonders at the dreams it has. Does this city remember peace? Was the life before this latest invasion good? Is life in any city as good as it wishes it could be?

Fallujah is ancient, as ancient as Babylon. It is the “City of Mosques” and in ancient times held Jewish schools of high repute. It has seen great battles and historic events. It is torn and broken but it has always been. Its name is not even Arabic. It derives from an ancient word for division because it took the river Euphrates and divided it into canals. It has been the site of division and strife many times. Now it sleeps under a virgin blanket of snow.

He isn’t sure how long he stands there. Thoughts and feelings overwhelm his usually keen sense of time. A sunbeam lances between the clouds, breaking the spell. The clouds are breaking up. The day is fully here. He stands a moment longer; just enough to see the broken pavement begin to reappear in the streets.

That’s it. The Fallujah he has come to know is returning. He hears a far off explosion. A burst of automatic fire follows a few seconds later. He shakes off the cobwebs of the morning and goes down to the radio room to see what this day will bring.

RAIN: The howl of turbo-charged diesel engines fills his ears. His vision is split in two by wearing the monocular night vision goggles over his left eye. The HMMWV races through the night as they follow the SEAL team vehicle as it careens through the narrow city streets. The vehicle in front of them is perfectly clear, although picked out only in shades of green. The Iraqi vehicles behind them are doing remarkably well keeping up at this breakneck pace. They have no night vision capability and are simple following a chemical light stick zip tied to the back of the Captain’s vehicle.

The Iraqis have placed complete trust in the Captain. The Captain does not trust the SEALs.

The SEAL team showed up at the Castle just as the sun was setting. They had called over the radio to the MiTT. The Captain barely had time to get the gate opened for them before they barrelled through and drew up in an open area to the south of the buildings. A person of unmarked rank exited one of the four vehicles and introduced himself as Mark. The rest of the SEALs seemed to instantly fall asleep in and on their HMMWVs. They looked like a collection highly tactical dwarves with their massive beards and collection of gear strapped to them.

“Major, we’d like to brief you on something; if we can go somewhere private.” Mark addressed himself to the new Major who had come out to greet the team.

The new Major was much enamored with his guests and began to swagger a bit and pulled at his chin as if he keenly felt the absence of his own beard. “Sure, Mark. Welcome to the Castle. Come on in.”

What came next could generously be called a brief. It was certainly brief. The SEALs had information that am HVT (high value target) was holed up in the Jolan. They were going to capture him just after midnight. The wanted Iraqi soldiers with them. Well not with them, behind them, way behind them. Could the Major provide these soldiers and also some Marines to sort of keep them out of the way. No need to brief the Iraqis on specifics. The word would leak out.

Naturally the Major agreed and naturally the Captain volunteered.

The Captain had asked for the destination and had been given a ten digit number that allowed him to find a specific house on the map. He had asked for the name of the HVT and had been shown a photograph with a man’s name under it. The Captain kept at the questioning until he had drawn out the essential pieces of the mission.

So here they were racing through the streets of Fallujah in the middle of the night. The Captain navigates on his own just out of habit. As the six vehicle patrol (4 SEAL 1 Marine and 1 Iraqi) whizzes past the building that the Captain had marked on his map he reaches for his handset. He pauses. He puts the handset back down.

The convoy stops. The captain watches in his NVG’ as infrared laser beams sweep in every direction like an invisible laser light show. He steps from the vehicle. “Crash, tell the IA (Iraqi Army) to sit tight.” he walks toward the first SEAL vehicle to find Mark. He sees two small crowds of men. One on each side of two door gate. The gate is in one of the ubiquitous high concrete walls that surrounded every house in the city. There is a loud bang and one side of the gate opens inward and both crowds of men swarms inside. The Captain walks through after them.

What happens inside is a great deal of yelling. Tactical lights from rifles begin to come on inside the rooms. The residents of the house, most of whom were sleeping on the roof, are herded into two different rooms. Men in one and women in the other. There is a great deal of crying and yelling going on. The SEAL’s terp (interpreter) is trying to make sense of things.

The Captain grabs the oldest looking man and pats him down. He cuts the zip ties on the man’s hands and leads him into the room with the women. With a male member of their family there to preserve their honor and dignity the women quiet. With one of their own supervising the women the men calm down. The Captain finds Mark and another SEAL looking at a map . “Man, I think you got the wrong house.” the Captain says.

“Yeah, fuck.” Mark shakes his head.

“Hey, the IA vehicle is right next to it. Do you want me to have them secure it before the whole neighborhood wakes up and your dude gets away?” the Captain offers.

“Yeah, fuck.” Mark nods his head.

The Captain calls Crash on the radio and describes the target house and tells him to get the IA to enter and keep everyone there.

With Mark right behind him the Captain makes his way quickly to the house indicated in the brief. When they arrive, there is a large group of people sitting in the living room of the house. Men on one side and women on the other with the Iraqi soldiers standing rather casually in the middle.

Crash steps up to the Captain, “They want to know who you are looking for.”

The Captain tells him the name. A few minutes of conversation ensue and one of the older women gets up and begins to beat one of the young men with her shoe. She yells at him and hits him until one of the other women pulls her back. The Iraqi soldiers stand looking sheepish, as if they had been the ones scolded. Crash barks rapid fire Arabic and the IA grab the young man and begin leading him outside. Mark stops them, holds up the paper with the picture on it, comparing the faces. He zip ties the young man’s hands together.

As the Captain steps into the street the sky opens up. The rain pelts down intensely, growing from a sprinkle to a shower in a heartbeat. Almost immediately the roads are fast streams of water and anyone outside is soaked. Mark stands just outside the gate of the right house watching his SEALs pile back into their vehicles. All of them wet.

“Good thing we are all amphibious.” the Captain says, attempting to bring some levity to the situation.

Mark looks at him. Water streams off his helmet and down his face. He looks a little stunned and the Captain wonders what his report of this night’s raid will sound like. He can only imagine that certain details will be omitted or even modified in the official intel report.

“Yeah, fuck.” Mark says sagely. “We’re heading back to Camp Fallujah from here.” Mark turns and walks quickly to his vehicle and moments later the four vehicles are gone, as quickly as they appeared.

“Crash, tell the IA they did a great job and they helped catch a dangerous arhabi (terrorist). Oh and what was happening with that lady?” the Captain is very curious.

Crash smiles and blinks in the pouring rain. “That was her son and she was pissed at him for hanging out with the takfiri (muslim who declares other muslims apostates, fallen from Islam) and bringing shame to their house.” Crash lets out a laugh. “Did you see her, sir? She hit him with her shoe. With her shoe, sir!” he laughs again and walks away. In many countries hitting someone with your shoe or shoeing them is the worst insult and Crash think it is the funniest.

The Captain chuckles and climbs into his vehicle. Doc is his driver tonight he looks at the Captain. “Head home now, sir?”

“Yeah, fuck.” The Captain says. The rain falls steadily and washes dirt and filth off the city and into the Euphrates. The sparse grasses will be standing tall and green tomorrow. Engorged with the bounty that falls from the heaven. The air will be crisp and clear all morning and most of the day. The water tanks on the rooftops will have another inch or two of water in them them and people will smile a little more.

On Camp Fallujah there will be one more prisoner. The well travelled dirt roads will be muddy ruts. People will slog across parking lots and along trails strewn with precious gravel in the vain attempt to control the mud. Everyone will complain about the huge amounts of mud that will be tracked into civilian contract chow halls, MWR (morale welfare and recreation) internet cafes and air conditioned mobile living quarters called cans.

Very different deployments for those people, the Captain muses. “Yeah, fuck.” His words go unheard over the roar of Stacy’s Mom carrying them home.

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markmceachran · 7 years ago

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Lumbering Beast

“Suppose I told you where I took those women. Let’s say I told you back at Jim’s bar, and then if I had decided to leave you to those Dragon boys, what then? Would you–” Angel paused again to scoop up another portion of beans.

“I wouldn’t have told them anything,” Hope replied. “I would have kept my mouth shut.”

“Would you?” Angel said with a mouthful of beans. He sat up on the couch for a more intimidating posture. He was about to unload what he thought was a bag of Truth on Hope. He thought he was wise. “Because those other women I hauled out of Tynon’s camp — they didn’t think too highly of you. They didn’t — trust — you.” He paused again to swallow and then reclined back into the couch. “So why don’t you just go on thinking that I took them wherever Tynon asked me to take them, and that wherever that was paid me in water, and I, in turn, paid Tynon. How about you just make that assumption and then when I leave you behind next time, those women won’t have to worry about you. How about that, huh?”

Cindy and Hope sat quietly for a few minutes, eating their modicum of foodstuffs from Angel’s pantry. Embarrassed self-loathing filled the air between them followed by a small amount of appreciation toward the prick on the couch.

Thuddering walls began echoing through the hanger as the edge of the storm eclipsed the airport. Sand scratched against the outside walls, sounding like a million clawed animals trying to get in. They would relent for awhile, before regaining their interest in getting inside. Overtop of the army of curious critters was an occasional thunder clap. Rain would once accompany lightening strikes and thunder, but Earth didn’t bother raining anymore. With all the sand in the air it was just as easy for her to throw down some thunder without it.

Rare, Big storms like this one where the winds can reach 170 miles per hour picked up and threw all the things they could throw over the years. Anything demolished in more recent storms had already been compromised by fatigue. Angel’s hanger had a few puncture wounds in the roof from debris strikes. Sand came streaming through like water, except that instead of spreading out on the floor it made a pile like an hourglass. Beneath some of the heavier leaks Angel had placed buckets.

With daylight dimmed by the storm and sunset approaching, Angel flipped on the power to his hanger. Overhead LED lights lit up the pantry, the seating area and his precious helicopter, which had the brightest lights upon it.

Angel didn’t know enough about circuits and light to build a laser like Jim, but he knew enough to hook up a few salvaged solar panels to a battery. He even had a small panel stuck to his helicopter to keep the batteries juiced up while he was flying. It was redundant to the power produced by the running engines, but redundancy had kept his bird in the air.

The storm grew louder and thunder claps more frequent as the main front came down across the city. The small streams of sand incursions became sputtering falls of sand that sprayed around the in a far less orderly fashion.

Angel dragged one of the sand-filled buckets toward a darkened corner of the hanger. “Here’s your toilet for the night.” He grabbed a spade from a hook on the wall and flung it into the bucket.

He was trying really hard not to like Hope and Cindy, and it was sort of working. He didn’t have a solution when he was hauling them away from Tynon’s camp. Those two men were certain to be their assassins, and he might have been powerless to stop them. Angel was, after all, a pilot, not well trained in any hand-to-hand combat. His anger should have been directed at Tynon for setting up such a horrible situation.

In hauling all the other women there were no escorts. Angel simply vanished with them and came back with water as payment — no questions asked. Why couldn’t Tynon just have killed them at the camp? he wondered. Why put on the facade? Angel didn’t know that Tynon’s rule was initially tenuous and some of the men were still more loyal to Gannon. Tynon had to show mercy to win them over. It all played right into his hands, really. The helicopter man and Gannon’s wench killed their Dragon escorts. Tynon wins. He could now rally everyone around a common enemy, albeit a small one. It was enough to solidify his rule among the men.

Without knowing Tynon’s motives, or that things had worked out perfectly for him, Angel could only place his anger on Hope. He’d wished he never met her or Cindy. He could have gone about his business trading exotic goods between remote outposts. Now he had Dragon to worry about, and it seemed that they were spreading.

They had reached Jim’s outpost and, as far as Angel knew, had destroyed it with Jim inside. It’s another strike against Hope and Cindy. They were bad for business, just like he said. Why Jim took them in, took pity on them was a mystery to Angel. He had always known Jim to be kind to travelers that pass through the city. Most were traders just running their routes, but some came through looking for a more fertile place to live. None existed, of course. The world was sand. Wisely, Jim never shared the secret of his jungle garden up on the 35th floor. It would have been overrun with parasites in less than a year.

Why did he show me? Angel wondered. And why these women. A fix for the world, he said. Could his laser thing have really fixed the world? We may never find out, because he’s probably dead.

While he was thinking he pulled a cushion from a compartment in the back of his helicopter and laid it out across the back seats of his bird. “This storm is going to go all night,” he said, “we’ll be safe in here until morning. Get some sleep.” He flipped a switch on the wall that shut down the lights over his helicopter and dimmed the rest.

Cindy made herself comfortable on the couch while Hope pulled the two chairs together so she could put her feet up. Angel slept in the helicopter.

* * *

Sands piled high on the floor as the hours passed. The three of them had all managed to fall into a deep sleep with the strangely comforting sands pounding away the roof. Angel was dreaming.

He was back in the helicopter hauling Hope and Cindy and their Dragon escorts away. Knowing full well that the Dragon were intent on killing them he decided to set down in the open desert. In his dream Hope wasn’t able to slit any throats, her binds held. Angel’s heart pounded in his chest in anticipation of what was about to unfold. The Dragon grabbed Cindy first. They took her behind the helicopter, out of Hope’s view, and wasted little time. There were no last words, no pleas for mercy. Just as she got behind the tail they simply stabbed her in the throat. Her blood gushed out onto the blade and the hand holding it. In the last throws of her life her body tried to walk forward, away from the men. They let her walk. One — two — three steps, she made before she collapsed. The sand stained red with her blood, and a little wet with her tears.

They came back for Hope and Angel found himself outside of the cockpit, watching them. Mercy was saved for Cindy, Hope was not getting a quick death. One of the men restrained her while the other stabbed her repeatedly in the belly. Slice after slice pierced through her abdominal wall, compromising her vital organs. They managed to puncture her intestines, spleen, liver and one kidney. It was fatal and slow. And he didn’t stop. He kept stabbing her belly, almost punching her with the knife. She screamed, and as she did Angel found himself taking her place in a way that can only happen in a dream. He looked down at his belly, at the bloody mess oozing out. He could smell his own innards and feel the heat from it.

He looked around had saw someone by the cockpit wearing his helmet and flight suit, staring and doing nothing to help.

Bang, bang, bang!

A pounding on the hanger jolted Angel awake from his horror. Everyone was in a groggy, half-still-asleep state but the pounding was so loud, louder than the storm, that it got them all up. Hope was the quickest to regain her sense and she had already one blade out and was scanning the edges of the hanger waiting for the pounding to reveal its source.

Bang, bang, bang!

Some grumbling sounds followed the banging, but nothing of words could be discerned. There was a door, sized for humans, on two sides of the building. The banging was coming from the one toward the pantry. The three gathered near it.

Angel’s abode did not come equipped with any salvaged cameras, but he did have a movable panel above each door. He gestured to Hope to stay near the door, and to Cindy to back far away as he climbed up the wall to take a peek. The sand was still whipped up by the storm and it poured into the gap as Angel popped open the panel. He pulled his goggles on and stuck his head out to see a large, pile of a man carrying bags and dragging a sled of some sort. Angel couldn’t help but smile as he jumped down from his vantage point. He knew it was Jim Doorsman.

* * *

“I brought groceries,” he said, “but the grocery store was mobbed.”

Jim shared his story about the incursion into the bar and his narrow escape at the train platform, and the fact that he had a train, which none of the others knew.

“You mean I’ve been trapesing through desert sand block after block, and you could have just picked me up in your train?” Angel said with amused aggravation.

Jim laughed his big belly laugh. “You know the value of secrecy, man. If I don’t tell you about my train, no one will ever get that truth out of you.”

With Jim’s return the mood in the hanger had lightened. Everyone had made it through the day alive.

“Tomorrow is another story,” Jim said. “These guys could have just taken the bar, but it sounds like they were keenly interested in capturing you three. There’s some sort of vendetta at play here and these jerks aren’t going to give it up.”

Secrets were shared again. Jim didn’t know, and hadn’t asked about how Angel, Hope and Cindy knew each other — not the details anyway. Once he was told a somber, pensive look took over his face. “So you’ve made an enemy of this man, Tynon. He might be better suited to let you keep evading him so he can continue to rally his troops, holding you up as his commies, or whatever. This is bad business, like you said, Angel. The question for us is, what are we going to do about it?”

Angel, Cindy and Hope all had quizzicle looks on their faces. To them, the Dragon was their problem and Jim could just relocated and get away from it all. This man, though, was willing and eager to help them, rather than abandon them. It was not normal in the afterworld for a near stranger, even one that they’ve known for years, to put himself at risk like this. Everyone fends for themselves. Jim’s strange notion of banding together was totally foreign.

“So far was we know they don’t have any vehicles,” Jim said, “so it’s unlikely we have to worry about them sneaking up on us in the middle of the night during this monster storm. Why don’t we all get some shut-eye?”

With a bemused look, Angel pulled a cot and blanket out from a storage locker and laid it out for Jim. After setting it up he looked over at Hope’s two chaired sleeping arrangement and went back into the locker for a second cot and a couple more blankets. Having Jim around seemed to make Angel less of an ass.

Before bed Jim pulled the tarp off of his sled, revealing his semi-trusty laser. “Can I plug this in, Angel?” He wanted it fully charged in case something or someone needed a hole in them. “I’ll sleep better.”

Wind and sand battered the hanger for the rest of the night, the desert’s lullaby. Even with Jim’s laser at the ready, the rest of the night brought only uneasy sleep to the group. Angel would have happily gone back into his nightmare if it meant that he’d gotten a good night’s sleep.

* * *

The weather, if it was indeed weather without precipitation, had improved by morning. The gusting, dangerous winds were replaced with lighter breezes of heat and particulates. Large weather systems churn up a lot of sand, resulting in the finer bits rising to the surface. For days after big storms the slightest gust can make the air thick with dust. It’s a problem for breathing, seeing with the naked eye, and it’s a big problem for Angel’s helicopter. Even the large booms that extend out from each side can’t stay clear enough to fly more than a few miles. For at least two days Angel was essentially grounded.

As the sun peeked above the horizon Angel’s tin box of a hanger started to turn into a toaster. Everyone woke up from the heat. Jim set about hooking up his laser’s water collector to one of Angel’s 50 gallon drums. He propped it up so it shot out of one of the holes in the roof, making it rain in his own way. Hope and Cindy we up a bit before the Sun, having bladder alarm clocks that gave them a little privacy in using their bucket of sand. Angel’s morning routine consisted of a walk around the outside of the building to look for damage and survey the horizon for danger. While he was out there he dusted off his air conditioners. They wouldn’t run for more than an hour before needed to be dusted off again, but that was a small price to pay for the relative comfort.

They convened over a breakfast of canned meat and freeze-dried seaweed, and plenty of water. Cindy sat next to Jim on the couch while Angel and Hope each occupied one of the chairs. They ate quietly, each gathering their thoughts about the pressing problem of certain death at the hands of The Dragon. The sounds of mashing teeth and metal spoons scooping at metal cans made for a feastful chorus on afterworld foods.

“We can run,” Hope said. “We can go south, or further west.”

“To the mountains?” Angel said. “I’ve been as far as the Rockies. There’s nothing out there. There aren’t even cities. The outposts are hanging on by a thread, if they’ve even survived up to this point. And south — forget about sleeping. The nights don’t cool down at all. Sometimes it’s even hotter at night.”

“The places we would want to go are the places where The Dragon will likely end up. If they’re truly expanding there’s nowhere to really hide.” Jim said. He was ready to fight them. In his mind he had resolved his conflicted feelings around killing them. For him, it was now a matter of two mutually exclusive entities trying to occupy the same space. “It’s the poly-exclusion principle. They and we cannot exist in the same place at the same time. Our best option is to push them out, or destroy them.”

Angel was shocked by what was coming out of Jim’s mouth. In all the time the men had known each other, Angel had always seen him as a pacifist of sorts. He was more interested in his science than what was going on in the world around him.

“What if we can negotiate a truce?” Cindy suggested, finally finding her feet in the conversation. “We have services, like medicine and treatment, and transportation, and smarts. We can offer our help when they need things.”

Both Angel and Hope shook their heads at Cindy’s idea. “They aren’t interested in civilization,” Hope said. “If anything, these services will only make them want to kill us more. Tynon wants to tear the world down, not build it back up.”

“Then what we’ve got here is a war of ideals.” Jim said. “We, well I want to do my part to restore the world. And I think if we work together we’ve got a shot at doing just that. With your help we can build a bigger version of my laser and really start to bring things back from the brink.”

“And then what, Jim?” Angel said.

“And then — then we shower them with kindness, and water. And maybe we convert enough of them, or inform those that might join them that there’s another way out. That we don’t have to wipe the slate clean in order to start again. Maybe we can win enough people over that The Dragon become the fringed mad-men that they were before.”

“And maybe when you tell enough people you can make water from your sky-laser they’ll sack your building and burn us all at the stake.” Angel replied. He wasn’t hopeful like Jim and Cindy. His worldview was pessimistic, and that’s what had kept him alive to this point.

“If they sack me, so be it. At least I’m trying, dammit.” Jim said.

Cindy scooted closer to Jim and put her arm around him. He was upset and disappointed that Angel and Hope didn’t share his optimism. It made sense, though, from their perspective. They didn’t know the world before things started falling apart. They didn’t grow up with lush, green forests, snow-capped mountains, and bountiful rivers full of fish. To them the world has always been harsh, and in decline. And nothing that any government, private enterprise, or grass-roots effort ever attempted had done anything to stop the downfall. It was always, has always, and will always be going to shit. To them, Jim’s little plan was nothing more than a fantasy, and a dangerous one at that.

“Whatever.” Jim stopped arguing. “At least can one of you help me put my train back together then? I had to leave a car behind half-way between here and the city.”

It was something to do. With a horde of barbarians after you, having something to do when you’ve got nothing to do and nowhere else to go is a good thing. All four of them followed Jim to the airport train terminal. They brought some provisions and Jim’s laser, just in case they ran into trouble.

The batteries were fully charged by the time they got to it, not that they needed them. Even early sunrise light was enough to power the train at a modest speed. Jim kicked on the air conditioner and even the old announcement system. It called out stations as they approached in a garbled voice eerily reminiscent of the poor old elevator at back at the bar. Click-clack — click-clack — click-clack — click-clack. “Nextt-t-tt-ttt stop-pp-ppp Pulaskeeeeeeeeeeeee. Doors open on the the the the left at Pulaskeeeeeeeeeeeee.” It was cute at first, but by the time it got to Western, a mere two stops away, everyone was full up on its cuteness.

“It’s up around Halsted,” Jim said.

Angel and Hope stared up at the train route map above the one of the doors. Halsted was just one stop outside of the city center, just close enough to be concerned, but not quite close enough to be worried. If The Dragon had followed the tracks they could have made it close to Halsted by that hour.

Hope sense the worry from Cindy as they exchanged glances and all at once everyone glared just a little bit at Jim. He had been a bit cavalier in his decision making and it may have put the group at risk.

Angel let out a big sigh and grabbed the laser. “Does this thing have a button on it? Just point and shoot, right?” He asked Jim.

“There’s a switch on the side. Wire it up to one of the batteries on the floor, that’ll pull power from the panels and you can shoot all day.” Jim replied.

Angel wired it to the battery closest to the rear of the train car, which was the front since the train was going backwards. He was ready to slice down anything and everything on the tracks ahead as he opened the door at the rear and leaned out with his light-cannon.

As they approached Halsted Angel’s concern escalated to worry. There was no train. “JiiiiiiiIIIIiiiiiiim? There’s no train at Halsted, Jim.”

* * *

Jacko woke up to cool, dry air and the humming noise of an air conditioner that accompanied it. He had slept through the storm, all night. The Sun was now shining down on his slumbering metal box, which itself was waking up. All systems on the train were disabled overnight when Jim took the batteries out. It left Jacko stuck high on the tracks all night with no power.

Now that the Sun was up the train was coming to life. Air conditioning, doors, lights, and motors all kicked on, giving a sort of heartbeat of the train. Jacko wondered if he might be able to drive the train. There was a cockpit that he walked through as he entered from the tail end when the trains were connected. He had seen a bunch of controls, switches and knobs and such.

Climbing back in, he started fiddling with all the buttons, cranks and things until the train finally moved. It moved backwards at first, away from the city. He let it run for a little bit, but then thought better. I’ll go pick everyone up, and we’ll go meet our enemy wherever they went to hide. Strength in numbers.

He took the lever that made the train go in reverse and pushed it to the middle, letting the train come to a stop on its own, and then forward. He was off, he was driving a train. Jacko had never driven anything before in his life, and this felt awkward. It was unsettling, like the first time eating meat that came from a human. His stomach churned with butterflies, his palms were sweating profusely, but he was still driving the trian.

Jacko fantasized about the looks on hit team’s faces when he drove up in the silver box. Briefly, he wondered if he would gain their admiration for his achievement. Then his focus took the place of the groggy fantasy and he put thoughts of his mission into his mind. Pick everyone up, load up with supplies, head back to wherever the old Bob went and find the pilot and the women and kill them.

What do I do about the helicopter? What if they fly away? We will keep hunting, Jacko. We’ll hunt them wherever they go. If this metal box can get us there, then we’ll get there quickly. If we have to walk, then we have to walk. We go until we kill them, or we die.

The post Lumbering Beast appeared first on Mark McEachran.

http://j.mp/2zvU9df November 09, 2017 at 08:30AM

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