The Last Shuttle (Part II)
Posted on Wed Nov 12th, 2025 @ 4:55am by Ensign Kaelun Merak
1,511 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
Collating Data
Location: USS Portland
Timeline: BACKPOST - Evacuation of Earth
Ensign Kaelun Merak grabbed his uniform jacket and bolted for the door, following the security personnel who were running toward Deck Seven. His mind immediately went to those three patients. The unusual readings. The synchronized vital signs. The way their symptoms had seemed to progress in lockstep.
The corridor outside the medical bay was filling with people—security, medical staff, curious evacuees drawn by the commotion. Kaelun pushed through until he reached the viewport looking into the converted cargo bay that served as overflow medical.
What he saw defied his comprehension.
Two of the patients were standing, but they weren't people anymore. And worse—they were fused with the medical equipment around them.
The woman had merged with a biobed, technology spreading like metallic roots from her body into the diagnostic systems, the display panels, the life support connections. Her left eye had been replaced by something that gleamed with cold red light—mechanical, inhuman, wrong. Cables and tubules erupted from her arms and back, some still connected to the equipment, others writhing like seeking tendrils.
The man had become one with the medical terminal behind him. His right arm had fused with the control interface, technology spreading across the panel and into the ship's systems. His skin had turned a mottled gray-green, circuitry visible beneath the surface, pulsing with an eerie green light.
As Kaelun watched, the two began to tear themselves free from their connections, ripping away from the medical equipment and ship's systems with movements that were both violent and eerily synchronized. Pieces of technology came with them—still embedded in their flesh, still part of them now. The biobed the woman had been fused to sparked and went dark. The medical terminal shattered as the man pulled his arm free, leaving behind fragments of his transformed flesh still integrated with the controls.
A nurse who'd been checking on another patient screamed. The woman-thing's head snapped toward the sound with mechanical precision. The nurse turned to run.
The woman moved with inhuman speed, closing the distance in three strides. Her hand—more machine than flesh now—grabbed the nurse by the back of the neck and slammed her face-first into the bulkhead with sickening force. The nurse's body went limp and crumpled to the deck, blood streaming from her shattered nose and forehead.
"Stay back!" The Vulcan doctor Kaelun had spoken to earlier held up her tricorder like a shield. "Please, we can help you!"
The man-thing turned toward her, his partially mechanical face showing no expression, no recognition. He took a step forward.
Security burst through the door, phasers drawn. "Freeze! Don't move!"
Neither attacker acknowledged them. The woman stepped over the nurse's body, moving toward a medical technician who was backing away with his hands raised. The man continued advancing on the Vulcan doctor.
"I said freeze!" the security team leader shouted. "Set phasers to stun! Fire!"
Orange phaser beams lanced across the medical bay. The first volley hit the woman center mass. She staggered, her movements jerking erratically, systems clearly overloading. A second beam caught her in the head, and she collapsed to the deck, twitching, smoke rising from the cybernetic implants spreading across her skull.
"One down!" a security officer called out.
But the man barely slowed. The phaser beam hit him in the shoulder, and he paused for just a moment—as if processing, learning, adapting—before continuing his advance on the doctor. A second beam hit him square in the chest, and this time it had noticeably less effect. He didn't even pause.
"It's not working!" another officer shouted. "It's like he's adapting!"
The man grabbed the Vulcan doctor by the throat and lifted her off the deck with one hand. She clawed at his arm, gasping, her face turning purple.
"Maximum stun!" the security leader ordered. "All of you, fire!"
Four phasers fired simultaneously. The concentrated energy finally forced the man to drop the doctor, who collapsed gasping to the deck. But he remained standing, turning toward the security team with that same blank, mechanical expression. Another volley hit him, and he staggered but didn't fall.
A security officer moved in, trying to physically restrain him. The man's hand shot out, grabbed the officer by the uniform, and threw him across the room. The officer hit the far bulkhead hard enough to dent the metal and slid to the deck, unconscious or worse.
From the speakers overhead, another alarm sounded. "Security to Deck Six Medical! Emergency! Repeat, emergency on Deck Six!"
The security leader's face went pale. "That's where we moved the third patient."
Through the viewport, Kaelun could see the man in Deck Seven medical advancing on another security officer despite sustained phaser fire. "Sir, we can't stop them!" one of the security officers yelled. "Phasers aren't working!"
Over the comms, Kaelun could hear chaos from Deck Six. Screaming. Weapons fire. Someone shouting orders. Then a sickening crash and more screaming.
The security lead made her decision in seconds. "All personnel, evacuate both medical bays. Emergency bulkhead seal, both locations. Bridge, this is Lieutenant Talris. We need emergency vents on Deck Six and Deck Seven medical sections. "
"Lieutenant," came the voice over the comm, tight with stress. "We still have personnel in those sections—"
"Ma'am, we have no other options!" Her voice cracked. "They're adapting to our weapons. They've already killed crew members. If they breach containment—" She didn't finish the sentence as the Man had managed to break through two security guards holding him and grab the security officer by the throat.
"Authorized. All personnel, evacuate designated sections immediately. Emergency vent in thirty seconds."
Chaos erupted in both medical bays. The surviving medical staff and security personnel ran for the exits, pulling wounded with them when they could. The Vulcan doctor was dragged out by two officers, still gasping for air, bruises already forming on her throat. The nurse with the shattered face was lifted by three people and carried toward safety.
But not everyone made it out.
Through the viewport, Kaelun watched the man in Deck Seven medical drop the security team leader and begin to move toward the exit with increasing urgency. He seemed to sense what was coming. But the emergency bulkheads were already in place, reinforced, sealed tight.
The outer hull doors opened.
Atmosphere roared out of both medical bays in explosive decompression. Equipment, supplies, medical instruments—everything not secured went flying toward the breaches. The man and woman in Deck Seven were torn from their positions, still trying to grab onto something, anything, as they were sucked out into space.
On Deck Six, the same scene played out. The teenage boy—transformed into something with tubules erupting from his neck and hands—was ripped away from the bulkhead he'd been trying to interface with and ejected into the void.
For a brief moment, Kaelun saw silhouettes against the stars—figures, still moving, still reaching, even as the vacuum of space claimed them. Then they were gone, tumbling away into the darkness.
The hull doors sealed. Emergency forcefields snapped into place. Both medical bays were wrecked—equipment destroyed, walls scorched from phaser fire, blood on the decks.
But some personnel hadn't made it out in time. A young medical technician on Deck Seven, frozen in fear, had been too slow. Gone. A security officer on Deck Six who'd been trying to hold the line until everyone else evacuated. Gone. Vented into space along with the attackers.
The security team leader and managed to stagger back to her feet and lean against a nearby bulkhead. Her face ashen, eyes fixed on the debris field slowly spreading outside the ship. "Secure all remaining medical facilities. I want every evacuee scanned for any signs of unusual readings" She said through a strained voice.
Kaelun turned away from the viewport and began to follow the precession of bystanders that were being led away from the area. The corridor seemed to stretch endlessly, sounds muffled and distant. His bunkmates were awake when he entered, talking in frightened whispers, but their words didn't register.
He sat on his bunk, staring at the bulkhead opposite him. His hands were trembling. He clasped them together, pressed them against his knees, but couldn't make them stop.
The woman's face as she'd slammed the nurse into the wall. The mechanical precision. The complete absence of humanity.
The man lifting the doctor by her throat like she weighed nothing.
Three hours. It had taken three hours for people to become... that.
Someone was speaking to him. One of his bunkmates, asking if he was okay. Kaelun couldn't form words to answer. He just shook his head slowly and lay back on the thin mattress, staring at the ceiling.
Kaelun closed his eyes, but all he could see were those faces. Human faces transformed into something else. Something wrong.
He didn't sleep that night. Just lay there, trembling, trying not to think about how many others on Earth may have become the same thing he had just witnessed onboard.
Ensign
Kaelun Merak
Evacuee - USS Portland
RSS Feed