Tentacles of Janis V
A lot of the red shirts down in engineering were doing lines of dilithium crystal dust, but not me. Not because it was a clear violation of Starfleet Regulations, but because it just didn’t have much affect on my half-Vulcan metabolism. Now, before you freak out, I’m not that half-Vulcan. I’m not Mr. Vulcan Starfleet Success Story. I’m not besties with the Captain, the son of an ambassador, or savior of the Romulan people. That “Vulcan” is half human. Ick. I’m half octopus.
It turns out that Vulcans have mated with a lot of species across the galaxy. They seem like a pretty logical and platonic bunch. But every seven years they become so wildly horny they will mate with tricorder if you leave one in their path.
In my case, it wasn’t lust, or even love that resulted in my birth. I was the outcome of a genetic experiment designed to create an underwater species of Vulcans. It wasn’t enough that Vulcans were smarter and stronger and lived longer than other bipeds, or even that they had a secret inner eyelid. No, they had to make themselves breath underwater as well.
The plan was for me to be the first of an underwater Vulcan exploration team. We would do the exploring, in the vast oceans of watery planets and humans, if needed, would kill anything that got in our way. That’s the nature of the Vulcan-human partnership. That was their plan, but not my plan. My plan was to serve on a Federation starship. And they had to accommodate me (Starfleet Regulations).
Even though they legally had to let me pursue a career in space, they didn’t have to look at me. So, they stuck me down in engineering with all the other misfits. But that didn’t stop me from giving it my best. I was the one who figured out a safe(ish) way to cold-mix matter and antimatter in direct contact to keep the Enterprise from crashing into planet Psi 2000 and allow the ship to fly backwards in time. I was super psyched about the time travel possibilities this opened up, but Starfleet was way to risk-averse to do anything with it, even when Kirk fell to his death in the Veridian system and could’ve been easily caught and saved if we had just travelled an hour back in time.
After a few months working with the other gearheads in engineering, I was starting to feel at home. Humans can be pretty cruel with jokes about physical differences, and occasionally the ship’s doctor would come down to complain to me about First Officer Spock or about Vulcans in general. He would call me “Fishbot,” or “Roboctopus.” But even the humans appreciated how efficiently I could work with my additional four limbs. Mr. Scott assigned jobs to me that required the most dexterity. Then, the morning of stardate 1807.3, the call came.
“Mr. Elford. Report to the transporter room. You’re in the landing party. Scott out.”
I rolled to my side. “Computer, what time is it?”
“Time is relative.”
“Never mind,” I said. I had only been in bed for a couple of hours, and due to my cold water metabolism (or my low grade depression) I was used to getting 14 hours of sleep a night. But the adrenaline rush woke me up. I was going to be in a landing party! An adventure! This was big. And, contrary to common sense, the highest ranking officers on the ship always went down together on landing parties, regardless of the danger. I slipped into my cleanest red shirt, played the mission briefing, and quickly slithered over to the transporter room.
I joined the Captain, First Officer Spock, the ship’s doctor and a human woman in a red miniskirt on the transporter platform. I was feeling very important to be included, though just as the transporter beams activated, I thought I detected Mr. Spock rolling his eyes at me. At the very least he raised an eyebrow.
Once we beamed down to the surface of Janis V, Mr. Spock explained our mission, even though we had all been briefed beforehand.
“A gravitational anomaly has been observed,” said Mr. Spock, as if we didn’t already know. “Gravitrons are emanating from this planet in a highly unusual pattern. This is Lt. Femina.” He gestured at the human with his tricorder. “She is a gravity specialist. And this is Mr. Elford.” (At least he knew my name.)
Captain Kirk took over the narration. “Mr. Elford and Lt. Femina will check out the source of the anomaly. Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy will come with me to meet our hosts.”
“Our hosts?” I asked.
“This planets in this system are owned by the Pergium Mining Company,” said the Captain. “They have allowed us to come here to check out the phenomenon. It may be affecting the planet’s orbit.”
Dr. McCoy turned to Lt. Femina. “Are you going to be OK, with that thing?” He nodded toward me. “It has more arms than a frisky calamari.”
McCoy walked away smugly with the other higher-ups and Lt. Femina and I started toward the source of the anomaly, a water-filled crater 800 meters to the South.
“Sorry about Dr. McCoy,” said Femina. “He can be a bit…”
“Of a racist asshole?” I asked, not knowing if she was a suck-up who would report me.
“I was going to say a curmudgeon,” Femina laughed, “But yes.”
We ambulated in silence across the generic landscape of grey dirt, large rocks and scattered dead sage grass under the gradient of a featureless orange sky until we approached the crater’s edge. It was nearly a kilometer across, filled with murky water, smelling of sulfur. Lt. Femina looked at her tricorder. “This is the source of the anomaly.”
I looked at her.
“So…” she started.
“So?” I asked.
“So, we don’t have any water vehicles on the enterprise, and the no one else on the crew is trained for deep water diving.”
“Oh, right,” I said picking up the obvious. “OK, then, I’ll just dive down in there and see what’s going on.”
“It’ll be deep, nearly 800 meters. You can use this.”
She handed me a light, which I used my skin suckers to stick to my forehead.
“I’ll just slip out of clothes; they would only get in the way,” I said. She didn’t look away, so I just removed my uniform in front of her, said, “See ya,” and slid into the water.
The first thing that struck me was that the water was filled with iron ore. It tasted like the coffee on the Enterprise when the food synthesizer had the mineral content out of wack. The second thing that struck me was a rock, on the top of my head. Then another, and another. I have a fairy spongey consistency, so the rock assault didn’t really hurt, but it did get my attention. I turned to see my assailant.
As soon as I saw her, the enormous, semi-translucent cephalopod scooped me up in her tentacles and swiftly pulled me down, hundreds of meters into the depths. There, on a rocky ledge, she pointed out the gravity wave emitter, the machine emitting signals that had brought Enterprise to Janis V. She and the other creatures were using their 4-meter long tentacles in some sort of sign language, frantically waving at me. Their attempts at communication were pointless, so I initiated a mind-meld with the one nearest to me, who’s name turned out be Barbara.
Barbara told me the awful truth, and I knew I had to quickly rejoin the humans on the surface to share what I had learned. But first, as is customary with the giant semi-translucent cephalopods in that part of the underwater caverns that honeycombed the planet, I was invited to dinner, where I ate a delightful meal of “skuttlefish,” which I only learned after dinner, was the meat of humans who had mysteriously fallen into the water and drowned. I may have neglected to relay that part of my experience to Lt. Femina when I got back to the surface.
“You’re back,” said Lt. Femina. Humans had a strange habit of stating the obvious.
“Yes. There is an intelligent underwater species that is responsible for creating the gravity anomaly. It is a distress signal.”
“What danger are they in?” Asked the Lieutenant.
“It’s the human minors. Apparently they have been draining the water under the planet’s surface. The denizens of the underground sea have tried communicating with the humans but, as tasty as they are, the humans have not been responsive to their efforts.”
“As tasty…?”
“Their habitat is being destroyed.”
“We’d better go tell the Captain and the others,” said Lt. Femina, and we headed off to find the rest of the landing party.
As we started our trek, Femina flipped open her communicator. “Captaiin Kirk?” She adjusted the tiny knobs on the device. “Captain?” And turned to me. “There’s some sort of interference. We can try again when we get closer.”
Admittedly, I hadn’t been part of Starfleet for long, but in my studies it seemed like every time there was “interference” with communication, it wasn’t the result of natural phenomena. I could tell from Femina’s human expression that she was thinking the same thing. We walked in silence until we got to the structure.
It was a modest, windowless sandstone building — a classic pergium mineshaft entrance. Femina tried to call the Captain again, with no success. She hailed the Enterprise. Mr. Scott, in temporary command of the ship, answered.
“Enterprise.”
“Mr. Scott. Lt. Femina here. Mr. Elford and I have lost contact with the rest of the landing crew. Have you heard from the Captain?”
“Negative to that, Lassie. There seems to be some interference from the planet’s surface. We can’t get a bead on them to beam them up… wait — a signal is getting through. We have them! They are near you.”
As he spoke, Kirk, Spock and McCoy were walking out of the sandstone structure, holding glasses of an un identified beverage. The were accompanied by a 40 year old male human (you can tell their age by countng the rings under their eyes) wearing a white tunic. All but Spock were smiling.
“Captain!” said Femina. “We couldn’t reach you!”
“Yes, there was a… misunderstanding by our hosts and we were detained,” said the Captain cheerfully.
“Yes, I apologize for that, Captain,” said the new human. “I trust our hospitality was to your liking, under the circumstances.”
“It most certainly was,” chimed in the doctor.
Mr. Spock filled us in. “An ancient computer mean to protect the inhabitants of this planet perceived an underwater species as a threat and was programmed to automatically seclude all humanoids. We disabled the computer through logic.”
“And a bit of booze!” added Dr. McCoy, with a big grin.
“Indeed,” said Spock.
The Captain gave Lt. Femina a more serious look. “Report?”
“Mr. Elford made contact with a deep water species under the surface of the planet. They sent the distress signal. Apparently the miners are depleting-”
“Pay no attention to what the Squiddies told you,” said the new human. “They just don’t like sharing.”
“Sharing what, may I ask?” which I did.
“This!” Said the Doctor. “It’s delicious!”
“The miners have discovered that the underground oceans taste great,” said the Captain.
“Yes,” said the other human. “We’re bottling it and are going to sell the stuff galaxy-wide. Here, try some!” He poured us each a glass from his belt flask.
Femina smelled and took a sip. “Mmmmm….”
“No thanks,” I said waving off the drink.
“Yes,” said the Captain, “Vulcans don’t seem to like the stuff.”
“Apparently that goes for octo-Vulcans as well,” added McCoy needlessly.
“But the underwater species,” I said. “Their habitat is being destroyed.”
“We’ll let the human and the Squiddles work that out,” said the Captain. He flipped open his communicator. “Kirk to Enterprise.”
“Enterprise,” said Mr. Scott.
“Five to beam up.”
“Aye, Captain.”
The Captain and the new human exchanged pleasantries and we beamed back unto the ship. In the transporter room, Mr. Scott came on the com. “Captain, we’re picking up a new gravitron signal from the planet.”
“Different from before?” asked the Captain.
“Aye, Captain. The pattern is different and it’s being directed to the next planet over, Janis VI.”
“We’ll be right up,” said the Captain.
“Janis VI,” said Mr. Spock. “Another mining planet.” Mr. Spock looked at the signal pattern on a display on the transporter consul. “Fascinating. It appears to be a warning aimed at an unknown species beneath the surface of the Janis VI.”
“Can you make it out?” Asked Kirk.
“Not without further analysis,” said Spock. “But it is some type of warning meant to be received… by the rocks of that planet.” He looked up at the Captain.
“The rocks?” asked Kirk.
“OK, you two work this out,” said the doctor. “I’m going to get some shut-eye,” and he left. Femina also wandered off.
“I believe the signal is warning the silicon of that planet about the human minors. As I said, further analysis is needed.”
“Well, it’s probably a glitch,” said the Captain. “Only life forms can receive signals, not rocks. Let’s head up to the bridge. Scotty’s going to want to taste this drink.”
As I walked back to my private quarters, I felt a pang of sorrow. I wondered if leaving the alien cephalopods at the mercy of humans violated the Prime Directive. But there was no time to dwell on it. Conflicts between the Federation and the Klingon Empire had escalated, and we were soon off to a neutral planet that had been occupied by Klingons.
For a little while after that adventure, I tried to make friends with Lt. Femina. I found her to be compassionate for a human. But she was already dating the Captain and didn’t seem interested in a frisky calamari like me.
