Bugging out [✱31]

Posted on Mon Aug 24th, 2026 @ 7:12am by Grandmaster M'Hum & Lieutenant Commander N'Tgni Creon & Senior Aerospace Specialist Mindo 'Riot' & Cadet Senior Grade Bellis & Polyphron & Crewman Thomas Callaghan

1,577 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: UnderMind [4]
Location: Underground Bunker - Dreizhen III
Timeline: After ✱29 & ✱30

It was several hours since they'd been left in silence following the Undermind's consumption of Captain Palamas. All were still haunted by the gaunt, desiccated carcass that had been made of the swaggering demigod, and the brutal method by which the foul creature known only as 'Undermind' had taken his life. It had been long enough for them to start to feel there was a chance to be productive, but also long enough for even more doubts and fears to emerge.

"Commander!" Bellis announced excitedly in the silence. "I have something."

“What is it? Are you in?” Creon asked, standing up and looking away from the aged access panel she’d been able to clear the bug-resin off for the first time in at least an hour.

"It is strange, I should not have got through their firewalls. But something changed elsewhere. It was almost like someone has helped me." Bellis said. "It is only a small amount of access, but I have been able to download schematics and perform a diagnostic. Not many of the systems are functioning, and it looks like many parts of this facility are locked."

“Let’s see.” Creon said, moving around to look over the Cadet’s shoulder.

Callaghan looked over to them with a smile. That was the first good news since they'd arrived. Mindo also seemed cheered by it.

As if to puncture the excitement of the breakthrough, suddenly the awful noise of rusted heavy machinery signalled that the door was opening once more; their hosts had returned. It was one of the Order bug-fanatics who had not been introduced, escorted by two of the warrior bugs.

"Commander Creon will accompany me. You have witnessed what will happen if she refuses." The Vulcan said, phaser in hand, but not pointed at any of them.

Bellis had hidden the tricorder, but she did not want to stand there. She knew what they would do to Commander Creon. She wanted to fight. But she was afraid.

Creon took a deep inhale. She knew she had to keep calm for the others, but she felt anything but. “Everyone take it easy. Don’t get yourselves hurt on my account. I can handle this.”

Callaghan knew if he wasn't wounded he would have tried something. Anything. He was almost seeing red at the thought of them doing to Creon what they'd done to Palamas, but pain brought him back to reality.

Mindo didn't even entertain the idea of fighting. She just stayed as still as possible, secretly glad it wasn't her they were taking.

“I’ll come willingly. There’s no need to hurt anyone.” Creon said, and left with them. They walked for a time in silence.

The bugs and the Vulcan that escorted Creon to where they had taken Palamas did not need to give instructions, she knew that even a hint of disobedience meant a scythe through the thigh, or somewhere more vital.

They had walked a long way. She couldn't remember how long it had been between when they'd taken Palamas and when he arrived, but surely they must be there by now. How big could this facility be? She didn't turn to it, but she could hear another bug approach from behind.

It didn't make a difference. Shortly, she'd probably end up like Palamas. There was no way out of it. She might be able to take down the Vulcan, but the bugs had her outmatched. Even one of them could probably kill or disable her with most of its limbs missing. Maybe bleeding to death was better than having her brain sucked out? She didn't think these were the decisions she'd have to make as Strat Ops director.

The two bugs didn't react to the third one approaching. Even as the newcomer bug opened its jaws and bit into the head of the one on the left, pulling away savagely and taking the upper half of its head with it. As the other bug began to react the newcomer bug stuck a bladed arm into its eye, before biting it again in the same fashion but from the front, taking it apart easily.

Creon moved back as far as she could. She knew these things were savage, but she hadn’t seen them cannibalise each other yet.

"Stop! In the name of the Undermind, stop!" The Vulcan ordered, panic creeping into his honed logical facade. He pointed his phaser at the bug.

The bug charged at the Vulcan, carving his hand off at the wrist and slashing across his throat.

Creon looked at the severed hand, and the bleeding Vulcan. She could grab the phaser. But the bug was between her and the weapon.

The bug turned and looked at Creon, but did not approach. It began to scratch something into the ground. It was three lines that met in the middle. A runic shape. The outline of DS13. The bug looked at Creon again, and from within, its eyes glowed for a moment. It stayed where it was.

Creon hadn’t seen that before either. Then it clicked. “Polyphron?” She asked.

The bug, under Polyphron's control, nodded.

“Can you get us out of here?” Creon asked, grabbing the phaser from the severed Vulcan’s hand. He was still dying on the floor, but she felt no compunction to assist him. Perhaps if he wasn’t leading her to have her head cracked open like a cantaloupe so some horrible alien tumour could eat her brain, she’d have felt guiltier about it. All it took was a brief thought of Palamas to even make the sight of this nameless Vulcan choking on his own blood seem like justice.

The bug seemed to shake its head. It reached out a blade-arm carefully, tapping Creon's combadge. Once it was hit, and began to warble and quietly squawk in its shrieking bug voice.

After a repeating the same noise for a while, the combadge seemed able to translate. "Plan." It seemed to suggest the bug was saying at Polyphron's instruction.

"I want to hear what you have to say, but they're expecting me in the brain-sucking room. I don't think we have time for you to try the speak-and-say method." She let out a deep sigh. "I know what we have to do. And we have to do it quickly. So I guess for now, we forget what I said earlier about my neck." She looked at the phaser. "I'm going to have to kill that thing once you leave it, right?"

The bug nodded at Polyphron's behest.

“Fine. Wait a second though.” Creon reached down to the Vulcan, who had finally died, and took the container of water from his belt. “You’re taking a shower before you come aboard. I’m not getting some bug disease.”

The bug nodded, and then began to squirm strangely, its eyes flashed, and the strength seemed to go out of it. From its mouth, something long and electric blue emerged, covered in viscera. It was Polyphron, in her natural form. She coiled herself up and leapt from the bug's jaws as it waivered, landing on Creon's shoulder.

Before the bug could regain its senses, Creon bisected it with a high energy phaser blast. Once she had secured the weapon in her boot, she extended her arm for the Tok’ra to crawl down it. She poured some of the water over Polyphron, and once she was sure the symbiote was clean, took a swig of it herself. It had been a while since she’d had a drink. She looked at the symbiote, and as far as she can tell it wasn’t getting any cleaner. “Alright. Let’s get this over with. Do it whichever way is quickest.” She told Polyphron.

Polyphron rubbed and rotated herself against Creon's uniform, in an attempt to at least make a show of cleaning herself. She knew that any boost her naquadah-enriched blood would grant to Creon's immune system would take care of any possible infections, but without a host or the long-smashed suit she'd been provided, there was no way to communicate that.

After a moment she climbed up to the Commander's neck, and without hesitation, used her mandibles to quickly shred an opening and force her way through to the spinal cord. Before long, following nerve impulses by instinct, blind and fully aware of the harm she was doing, she found her way to the brain stem, and began the latching process, connecting herself to Creon's mind.

She winced briefly, but was surprised how quickly the pain was gone, and how efficiently Polyphron managed to bore through her neck and wrap around her brainstem. As her eyes flash, she felt the overwhelming sensation of centuries of memory flooding over her. A lifetime of wonders, horrors and sights the likes of which she had never seen. She understood Polyphron then, implicitly. They did not need to exchange words, she knew the Tok’ra’s mind mind like her own. She had always been suspicious of the symbiote, and she felt an understanding of that sympathy that Polyphron had felt, something she had known in almost every humanoid culture she encountered that knew of her nature.

Quickly though, she returned to reality. She knew she did not have time to dwell on the marvels of the blending. She knew Polyphron’s plan. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t have anything better.

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