From: Shawn _ (alamo_nate_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Oct 12 2007 - 11:55:49 PDT
=Changeling=
(cont’d from “Suspicions”)
LOCATION: GATEWAY Station
SCENE: Promenade
STARDATE: [2.7]1012.1155
Auran Rylar, a smalltime Bajoran merchant, was dead. And nobody knew it.
How could they know? Auran Rylar could still be seen walking the Promenade, stopping in for a drink at his favorite bar, enjoying a recreational walk through the Arboretum. If one cared to look, there were enough security recordings of Auran, alive and well and walking around the station, to convince even the most stubborn of skeptics.
But Auran Rylar was dead. And the man everyone saw was not Auran Rylar.
The changeling smiled as he walked, wearing the shape of Auran Rylar the way a solid might wear a coat. He did not smile because he was happy- changelings generally do not experience emotions in the same way that solids do, and while they are certainly capable of happiness, there was little to be found while trapped on a space-station filled with solids- but because Auran Rylar was known for being a friendly chap, and it wouldn’t do if the late Rylar’s friends began to notice a sudden change in their “friend’s” behavior.
The changeling had been Auran Rylar for several days now. It was mostly a matter of convenience- having taken Rylar’s place, the changeling had also inherited the Bajoran’s quarters, which gave him a place to return to his natural, liquid form when the need arose. That was where it was headed now.
The first thing the changeling had done after escaping sickbay had been to assume a new identity. It had located Auran Rylar, alone, in a lonely corner of the Arboretum, and killed him. It killed him quickly and without emotion- to most changelings, killing a solid is much like swatting a fly- and buried his body in the soft soil of one the Arboretum’s many plant-life displays. The changeling knew enough about Federation technology to know that specially treated microbes in the soil would decompose the body quickly, and that no one would notice that Auran Rylar had been replaced.
Since replacing Rylar, the changeling returned to it’s original mission- spying on GATEWAY station. There was no reason for the changeling to leave. Nobody would expect that a smalltime Bajoran merchant, with no access to the command-levels of the station, would be replaced by a changeling spy.
That was the flaw in the solids’ logic- that the changeling would attempt to gather technological, classified information. That was a waste of time. The Dominion already knew far more about Federation technology than the solids could imagine. No, what the Dominion wanted now was simply information about the everyday comings and goings on GATEWAY station. And the changeling could hear far more of that in his current guise rather than, say, in the form of an Ensign.
In between his trips to Promenade bars, shops, and restaurants to gather intelligence, the changeling amused itself by carrying on Auran Rylar’s ridiculous associations with his “friends” aboard the station. His friends were a greedy, deceitful lot, and expected much the same from Rylar, and the changeling had to admit that it enjoyed playing scoundrel with the rest of the group. Of course, the changeling had no use for money or goods, but again, appearances had to be maintained.
The changeling occasionally toyed with the idea of killing some of Rylar’s friends, but that would never do. It was enough that the station’s personelle knew there was a changeling loose aboard the station. If people began to turn up dead, it would only make them intensify their search. And the changeling had no intention of being captured again.
It was a young changeling, relatively. It did not yet have full mastery of it’s shape-changing abilities. While the elder changelings could transform themselves into smoke, fire, light, and any number of other abstractions, this changeling was limited to physical shapes and forms. It was quite good at mimicking humanoids, and that was why it was chosen for this mission.
But as much as it enjoyed serving the Dominion, it longed to return home. The changeling wanted nothing more than to return to the Great Link, to once again join itself with it’s brothers and sisters. The Great Link was an experience unlike anything else in the galaxy, a birthright of the changelings, and as many of them saw it, proof of their right to rule.
But the time to return had not yet come. And until then, the changeling would fulfill its duty. It was incapable of even considering an alternative.
NRPG: One of my classes was cancelled, so I thought I’d whip up a quick post. And I didn’t want everyone to forget there’s still a changeling loose aboard the station.
Shawn
a.k.a.
Jake Crichton, Ensign
Assistant Chief of Engineering
GATEWAY Station, GS-2
---------------------------------
Moody friends. Drama queens. Your life? Nope! - their life, your story.
Play Sims Stories at Yahoo! Games.
From HyperNews_at_youth.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Feb 17 2008 - 03:10:18 PST