Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft - Dark Things HATE This One Weird Trick
Carter Schimpff
(( Corridor Near Engineering, Deck 4 – USS Karnack ))
They’d settled on a plan with the grim pragmatism of field medicine: stop the big bleeding first, accept some loss everywhere else, keep the ‘patient’ alive long enough to reach help. Roy had even found an emergency cache – tools, kits, palm-lights, and chemlights – handing them out with the quiet awareness that at this point ‘sickly green illumination’ would probably be named ‘Color of the Year’ for Callis I.
As they set to work, the light outside thinned from gold to bruised violet, and Roy found himself tracking the dimming like a countdown timer he hadn’t consented to start.
He was crouched over a fallen panel when the corridor’s background noise changed – subtle at first, then unmistakable: scrabbling where there should have been none, claws on composite, a sound too deliberate to be broken machinery. Then came the howl – long, alien, vibrating through the ship’s bones – answered from the far end in a chorus that made the air feel suddenly smaller.
Storm folded over with a sharp, involuntary motion, hands to her head as if the sound had reached inside and turned a knife. Roy was at her side in three strides, one hand bracing her, the other hovering uselessly before settling at the base of her neck, and when his eyes snapped up, there was nothing left to debate. Whatever cold advantage they’d had in caves and waterfalls didn’t exist in a dead corridor of sun-warmed metal. If they were going to survive the next ten seconds, they were going to do it the old-fashioned way: run.
Jovenan: Run! Get to the Jefferies tubes, they probably can’t get in!
Storm: Grab the torch. If they do get in, burn them!
The command snapped through the wreckage around them, sharp and unambiguous. Roy moved before the echo of Storm’s voice had time to settle.
He grabbed the torch roughly with his left hand. His right closed around Storm’s arm – not delicately, or apologetically, but with the steady authority of a physician who had already made a decision for his patient. He could almost hear the future reprimand:
I didn’t need help. I am not fragile.
Storm would rather dislocate a shoulder than be seen favoring it during a crisis.
He knew that. Respected it. And ignored it.
She was injured, time was limited. The calculus ended there. If she chose to object later, that meant there would be a later.
Behind them, a Dark Thing screamed – a sound that didn’t belong in any sane ecosystem. It vibrated in his ribs like a tuning fork struck too hard.
Bancroft: ::rapidly:: Got it, yep, let’s move!
He half-guided, half-shoved Storm forward. It wasn’t elegant, it certainly wasn’t heroic. It was the kind of maneuver that would look deeply unimpressive in a recruitment holo. He missed Silveira entirely – the wince, the blinking, the subtle neurological red flag politely attempting to introduce itself in his periphery.
The open Jefferies tube hatch loomed ahead, Jovenan and Silveira already inside.
They reached the threshold and Roy spun to cover their rear, heart punching against his sternum. There was movement – a predator closing.
He ducked inside, tossing the acetylene torch ahead of him. With both hands, he grabbed the hatch, metal squealing against metal as he dragged it down.
Jovenan: Close it, lock it! We can’t help anyone by running headlong towards the predators!
The tube swallowed them in darkness the instant the hatch sealed. The absence of light was immediate, absolute, and depressingly familiar. The air smelled faintly of insulation and old coolant, metallic and stale.
Sorry, Jovenan. Darkness, questionable odors, and chemlights. Again.
His fingers found the manual locking mechanism by touch. He twisted it hard, felt the internal teeth catch and hold.
A heartbeat later, the hatch threatened to detonate with a violent clang.
The tube shuddered along its length, and Roy felt the vibration travel through the soles of his boots and into his spine. The second impact came almost immediately, deliberate and focused, as though whatever waited outside had already decided this barrier was more an insult than an impediment.
Then–
A flare of green.
Someone cracked a chemlight, and the interior of the tube resolved into harsh relief.
Another howl slid through the hull – less distant now, more personal. The sound made his jaw ache; he realized he’d been grinding his teeth hard enough to hurt.
Storm: Should we climb up the tube or should we wait them out here?
He turned his head slightly toward the hatch as it shuddered under another impact. The pattern was changing. Not random flailing. Testing angles. Testing leverage.
He hated the sound. Hated it.
Hated the way it reduced them.
Not officers, or scientists, or explorers.
Just prey.
I am very tired of being hunted.
Bancroft: ::terse:: Wait. ::a beat:: I’m not recommending we throw ourselves at them with a torch and a prayer. But every time we run, we teach them something. We scatter. We exhaust ourselves. We let them dictate the terrain, the tempo. ::face hardening:: It’s time for us to be the ones who dictate.
Jovenan: Could we try to lure them in somewhere and lock them in? The doors and bulkheads would surely stop them or at least slow them down.
The idea hung in the narrow space between them, plausible and desperate in equal measure.
Storm shifted slightly, steadying herself against the ribbed interior of the tube. Her voice was calm, deliberate, and carried the unmistakable tone he now recognized as I’m hiding something.
Storm: I don’t see that ending any other way but badly. They’re faster than us, stronger than us, and we’re stuck in a Jefferies tube with no idea where is safe and/or secure.
Silveira blinked hard – once, twice – as though clearing grit from his vision. Roy’s eyes tracked it automatically this time. The blink rate. The unfocused pause before he spoke. Subtle, but there.
Noted.
The Commander pointed upward.
Silveira: Why don’t we go up?
The suggestion was reasonable.
It was also gasoline on something already burning in Roy’s chest.
His first instinct rose hot and sharp:
Run? No. Not again. I refuse.
The thought startled him with its intensity. It wasn’t strategy. It wasn’t logic. It was defiance.
He pressed it down.
Silveira not only outranked him, he had years on him – in service and in scars. And the man was not wrong to consider vertical advantage.
Roy forced his tone into something steadier.
Bancroft: If we’re going to get off of Callis I, we need to finish what we came to do. The other teams may be dealing with the same problem. They’re counting on us to hold our piece of the board, just as we’re counting on them to hold theirs.
Another screech tore through the corridor, but this one carried differently – to Roy it didn’t sound like retreat, just repositioning.
He didn’t notice Storm shift until her weight settled lightly against his shoulder. His injured shoulder.
A clean flare of pain shot down his arm, but never reached his face. Callis I had taught him how to compartmentalize discomfort like no trial he’d yet met; this was simply another entry in the ledger.
He expected her to pull away once she realized it was he she was leaning on – to reclaim her balance with that disciplined pride – but she didn’t.
Roy kept his gaze forward, his mouth closed. His only concession was to widen his stance slightly so that her balance could borrow from his. The warmth of her against him was startling in the musty air – real and steady. After nearly two weeks of running and refusing to hope for anything beyond the next hour, the contact felt dangerously grounding.
Storm: I think they’re moving off.
Silveira: Let’s hope so…
Bancroft: ::grimly:: I’d love to be wrong, but from what Commander Jovenan and I observed, they don’t retreat. They reassess.
Jovenan: Response
Storm: It’s not going to be safe to be out again until it’s daylight. How do you want to handle this, Commanders?
Silveira: We can’t face it just like this… We have to find a way to attack… ::Vitor shook his head:: To secure ourselves and do our job… Maybe even trap them or hurt them so they know we aren’t easy prey…
Yes!
Roy’s jaw tightened – not in anger, but in resolution. This idea didn’t feel reckless – it felt overdue.
He gave a single, decisive nod.
Bancroft: We don’t have to overpower them. We just have to make the cost of chasing us higher than the benefit. ::low:: We’re Starfleet. We endure. We solve problems. Especially the ones with teeth.
Jovenan: Response
Avoiding his gaze, Alex lowered her head.
Storm: We should probably wait a little longer in here, just to be sure that they’re gone.
Silveira closed his eyes and reached for Jovenan’s hand, fingers tightening around hers. Roy watched it through the corner of his eye. He knew the two of them were in a relationship, had seen them make brief gestures like this before – but something about this one felt… slightly off.
Silveira: Not too long I admit I am feeling a little cramped here.
Cramped?
The Commander had navigated caves, hull breaches, and god knew what else without so much as a visible flicker. Claustrophobia had never been on the list.
Roy shifted slightly, easing some of the pressure in the narrow tube, trying to give Silveira the illusion of space without making it obvious.
Bancroft: Commander Silveira’s right – this is our window to think. And they will come back, unless we give them a reason not to.
Storm/Jovenan: Response
Commander Silveira leveled his gaze at Alex and Roy, his hand slipping away from Jovenan’s.
Silveira: We need to find a way to keep them out… All of them… Water, cold anything we can use… The fire supressors… Something…
The phrase ‘fire suppressors’ lodged.
Roy’s gaze shifted slightly, unfocused – not distracted, but recalibrating. Not the automated ship fire suppression system, but the small handheld suppressors. Designed for catastrophic failure scenarios. No power grid required. No complex circuitry.
Just pressure.
Just compressed gas, waiting for release.
Bancroft: ::deep in thought:: Compressed gas… released rapidly…
Storm/Jovenan: Response
His mind flashed back to a lesson he had learned the hard way at the Medical Academy.
He could almost feel the bite of it again – the regulator of a high-pressure oxygen cylinder icing over in his grip as the fitting failed. The sudden violent hiss. The plume of expanding gas. The instant bloom of white frost along the valve housing before the cold seared into his skin.
Not liquid oxygen.
Just pressure released too fast.
The temperature drop had been immediate. Brutal. Enough to leave him with a blistered palm and a very memorable lecture about the Joule-Thomson effect.
Roy’s eyes flicked toward the mental image of a CO2 fire suppressor.
Liquid gas under pressure. Rapid expansion. Dry ice particulates. Oxygen displacement.
Now that… that would put a freeze on any Dark Thing’s malevolent plans.
Silveira: We hate the cold and water…. If we combine or improvise something like that we can use it.
Roy’s brow tightened.
We?
That was new.
Photophobia earlier. The blinking. The sudden discomfort in confined space. Now identification language.
It wasn’t enough for a diagnosis, but it was more than enough for concern.
He filed it away with deliberate care.
Not here. Not now. But watch it.
He refocused, snapping his attention to Jovenan and Storm.
Bancroft: We’re near Main Engineering. Jefferies tubes are spiderwebbed with support nodes – there has to be a damage control locker close. ::eyes sharpening:: One that has handheld fire suppressors inside it.
Storm/Jovenan/Silveira: Response
Bancroft: Exactly. They’re simple – liquefied CO2 under pressure, nothing fancy, which is exactly why it works when nothing else does. The stream comes out cold enough to bite.
Storm/Jovenan/Silveira: Response
He nodded grimly.
Bancroft: Agreed. Let’s introduce those things to consequences.
Storm/Jovenan/Silveira: Response
TAG/TBC!
===
Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft
Medical Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240205RB1