It Always Watches: A Star Trek Discovery Horror Story

VIII: Waking Nightmare

He was so close, so close, so close, but still the answers danced maddeningly just beyond his reach. And in those answers lie perfect contentment, fulfillment, the completion of all things. Beside it, the mycelial network, warp travel, splitting the atom were all minor and unimportant. This work was the bidding of God...

But he didn't believe in God, any god. Stamets shook his head as if to clear it of the unfamiliar thoughts that had been crowded into it more and more recently. Stress, he thought. Stress and combat...it's getting to you.

"We're still behind," Tillinghast groused from the opposite end of the room, where he was recalibrating a sensor array. "We should have finished by now! We should have freed it by now."

Freed it? Stamets wondered.

"Don't pay any attention to Crawford, Paul. You're doing excellent work. Your calculations have turned up our timetable by a tenfold." McMichaels said sweetly from his elbow. "I think we can complete this today with additional sharp minds committed to the task."

Stamets felt a fleck of irritation trouble his mood. Ever since she'd been kidnapped/rescued/whatever by Captain Lorca, Specialist Michael Burnham had seemingly come to a level of outsized importance in relation to his work on the spore drive. Before Burnham, he'd been able to pursue his scientific breakthrough in relative peace. After Burnham, he was exploring dead ships and being chased by gigantic tardigardes. This timing wasn't coincidental, he was certain.

"Well, if you're talking about Specialist Burnham, I don't think that going to happen," he answered tartly. "I just spoke to her. She's...well, I think she's suffering emotionally from dealing with the last few days. She seems, well, paranoid quite frankly."

McMichaels cocked her head. "Oh? How so?" she asked, her enormous blue eyes widening with beatific concern.

"I...well, you know, she didn't make sense. She's a bit of a drama queen, to tell you the truth."

"Still," McMichaels said, "she could be invaluable to our efforts."

"No!" Tillinghast stormed over to them, his slight frame bent at the waist as if his head and shoulders were outrunning the rest of his body. "We discussed this! We cannot allow her—"

"Crawford, we need the help. We're so close, but if the Klingons find this ship, they'll destroy us without a second thought and he'll be trapped..."

"Don't say that!"

What the hell is wrong with these people? The furious clarity of the thought caused Stamets to sway on his feel a little as the incongruity of the past few hours suddenly seemed to scroll through his mind.

Why was he here? Why hadn't they hailed Discovery for a pick-up? Why was he so willingly assisting a research project that...that...

"This doesn't make any sense," he said, as much to himself as to McMichaels. "These calculations don't seem to be mapping any intraspace network. They're too heavily tachyon-loaded. If anything, they seem to be..."

He was interrupted by a commotion behind him, and he saw the faces of McMichaels and Tillinghast register alarm.

He spun and saw Specialist Burnham charging at him. She had a slight limp, and she was holding a phaser. "Commander, we have to go!" she gasped. "Now!"

She raised the phaser and fired.

********

Burnham watched as Tillinghast recoiled at the phaser hit, his flesh seeming to slide away from his skeleton as if it was a separate entity. He cried out an eerie, inhuman wail.