Dragons of the Eastern Desert

Posted on Mon Mar 30th, 2026 @ 12:11pm by Petty Officer 1st Class Ayol & Lieutenant Commander Yy & Ensign Jara'kani & Lieutenant Tranklim & Lieutenant JG Grek Mobel

1,259 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: UnderMind [4]
Location: USS Darling - 785km East of Shitau
Timeline: 1145 - MD04

“Commander Yy, I am detecting something unusual at the edge of sensor range. Request permission to reroute to navigation point alpha.” Lieutenant Tranklim, the Saurian head of life sciences asked the Counsellor as he set the indicator on their shared map.

"Permission granted. Helm, let's take a look." Yy said, relieved that something of interest had finally appeared. Something had been troubling her for much of the morning. Perhaps not troubling exactly, but there was... a presence. Something not there yesterday, but barely there at all. A consciousness she could not identify or place, tuning in and out like a radio signal at the boundaries of perception. She tried to focus elsewhere. It didn't help that the eastern desert had proved to be almost entirely empty, other than a few swarms of balls.

"Aye ma'am, moving towards point Alpha." Lieutenant Mobel said as he adjusted their heading and increased speed.

Yy could see the dust being kicked up in the distance. Something down there was moving. "What are we looking at, Lieutenant?" She asked Tranklim.

"Something's moving under the sand at great speed. And where it's moving, I'm seeing something that doesn't seem right. It's like an enormous... mouth." Tranklim explained as the sight itself became visible through the runabout's windows. Whatever it was, the moving disturbance that threw up the sand was heading directly towards it.

"By the goddess." Yy said, her hand going involuntarily to her center. "What is it going towards?" It was a great maw in the desert, like something out of a nightmare. Like seeing someone about to stop in a hole, she felt an urge to warn the approaching dust-mystery.

"I believe it's some sort of lifeform. Or at least, it was. It's dead, except... there's something moving inside it. Look!" Tranklim pointed out the window as it happened, from within the central 'throat' a lizard the size of a scoutship emerged, carrying a long trail of dun-coloured viscera in its jaws. It dug its claws into the dead flesh of the pit-creature itself, and climbed easily up out of it, the long 'teeth' within the pit that seemed designed to trap escaping prey broke easily against the great lizard's tough hide.

As it reached the rim of the pit, the lizard had dragged the innards with him, it seemed as though there was an even greater body to the great maw that was being pulled out behind it. The lizard seemed to have noticed that something was coming towards it. Soon, its attention turned towards the shuttle, it knew they were there. "Scans suggest reptillian lifeform, obviously desert-acclimated. Probably no threat to us up here. I think it knows it's not alone, ma'am."

Yy felt something strange, a second kind of strange to the one she'd felt since returning to the planet that morning. As she watched the carcass being dragged out of its home, she was reminded of the old human saying and said it aloud, "Red in tooth and claw."

Yy looked for the team member with the least to do in that moment as they sat there watching. "Jara'kani, please take secondary science. I'd like as detailed a scan as we can get of that carcass, repurpose the unused material science sensors." She asked the Jemhadar.

Yes, ma'am." Jara moved over to the secondary science station at once.

"Tranklim, please switch on the active camouflage projectors. I don't want our presence interfering with what would happen naturally." Yy instructed.

"At once, ma'am." Tranklim activated the holoprojector, and it began to show an image that rendered them invisible, that of the sky behind them from the perspective of anything moving below. Nothing that would violate the Treaty of Algeron, of course.

The great lizard below, with its mouth full of dragged innards seemed perplexed by the great cloud of sand rumbling towards it. If it was worried, it wasn't worried enough to let go of what it had in its mouth. It turned its head to the side with curiousity as the cloud finally reached it, apparently unaware of what was about to happen.

Whatever the creature under the sand was, it burst forth at the same speed it travelled under the sand, grabbing the lizard that emerged from the maw in its jaws, leaping all the way over the toothed hole in the sand, and landing again on the other side, taking the lizard with it. The lizard, though it was now food itself, did not release what it held in its jaws, and the insides of the pit seemed to be ripped even further out, until it was finally released, and left dragged along the sand, fully removed from its former home under the surface. The lizard seemed to finally release it, and the massive distended body lay not far from where it had previously been hidden.

"Remarkable. It must be some sort of ambush predator. The creature in the pit, I mean. Three entirely new species, by the stars." Tranklim said, his curiousity overflowing. "Did the sensors pick anything up, Ensign?" He asked Jara'kani, somewhat disappointed they hadn't had a chance to target their sensors at the creature that seemed to swim through the sand and had predated upon the lizard.

"Nothing that indicates that they think we are a threat." Jara'kani replied. "Which I believe is a good sign."

Yy couldn't be sure, but she believed she sensed something below. Not the same subtle something that had been bothering her all day, but something more familiar. "Mr Tranklim, please focus the main sensor array on the remains. I'd like to know if there's anything inside them."

"Mr Ayol, what do you think?" Tranklim asked the Vorta at the Ops station, always keen to give a yeoman a chance for field experience.

"Analysing." Ayol said, his swift administrative fingers quickly brought the scanners alive and began the process. For more than a minute he watched intently as the sensors swept over the carcass. "Commander - I don't believe it. Life signs, from within. There are beings alive in there."

"Then this just became an extraction rescue. I want the rear cabin converted for medical use, deploy the EMH." Yy commanded. "Can we beam them out?"

"Maybe, if we get closer." Ayol suggested. His understanding of most technologies was far beyond his station. A Vorta learned and memorised such things instinctively.

"Mr Mobel, please take us in." Yy instructed the navigator, who complied.

With the shuttle in range, they begin the delicate process of beaming out each life sign, one at a time. They found a number of small lizards, two dozen of the spherical creatures they'd just been calling the balls, and three Vulcans, two alive, one dead. All were in various states of digestion. The deceased Vulcan had an imperfect beaming, his condition was not hale enough to survive the traumatic extraction. He was placed inside a replicated cryocasket the approximate size and shape of a photon torpedo.

Most of the balls seemed healthy enough to release back into the wild, but a few were taken in intensive care. Most fascinating of all though was the properties of the muscosal coating of those recovered. Further samples were taken of the deceased creature from the pit, the secretions of which had a remarkable preservative quality, even if it was in service of what Tranklim predicted was a centuries-long digestion process that maintained the vitality of its victims.

"Get us back to Shitau. These men might yet live." Yy instructed once both were stablised in the rear compartment-turned-medbay.

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