/||\        -----------------------------------------
       / || \            Starfleet Command, Second Fleet
      /  ||  \             U.S.S. Coronado,  NCC-63100
   .-/   ||   \-.     Fleet Captain Brian Aldur, Commanding
   ./    ||    \.   -----------------------------------------
   .-_-. || .-_-.              Simulation Teaser
   .-_  \||/  _-.

 _______________________________________________________________________________
/ Simulation Teaser                                                             |
/ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ

 PO (Science) Jennifer Wildman was nervous.  Not that that was anything
 unusual.  Wildman, known as "Mouse" to one and all aboard Coro, right up
 to the Captain, was always nervous.

 She was just especially nervous right now.

 Continuing to tap at her tricorder, she again turned to regard the cavernous
 space in which she found herself, and shivered.  At least 40 meters long, 15
 meters wide, and 20 meters high, the enormous chamber was nearly filled from
 floor to ceiling, wall to wall, with the spiderweb-like filaments of the
 sessile net.  Her tricorder was only able to pierce a few meters into the
 room -- beyond that, the readings became staticky and unreliable.

 Interspersed here and there throughout the web were human figures, all lying
 face up, all of them stretched out, supported by the net.  The sessile
 material pierced into their skins both holding them still and presumably
 keeping them unconscious and in some sort of suspended animation.  Fourteen
 of them were within range of Mouse's tricorder, and computer records from
 early 'fleet history had confirmed that at least ten of them were crew from
 the U.S.S. Horizon.  Three meters inside the net and eight meters up, for
 instance, Lieutenant Brace Harriman, the ship's Chief Security Officer, slept
 endlessly through the years.  The tricorder estimated his age as between 33
 and 35.  His Starfleet record, more than 200 years old, gave it as 31.

 Mouse shivered again, and repressed an urge to sprint from the cavern.  The
 sessile net had stopped time for Brace Harriman -- if he stayed in this room,
 he could expect to live... out of morbid curiosity, Mouse did the
 calculations on the tricorder and then gasped.  2600 more years.  At least.
 As much as Mouse might enjoy living forever, this was NOT the way she would
 have chosen to do it.

 Computer records gave the crew size of the Horizon as approximately 212
 persons.  They could have fit easily in this room standing on the floor.
 Suspended in the web, ten times as many could have fit.  As it was, the
 closest any figure was to any other was more than a meter.

 And, according to the ant/cats, every one of them was infected by the
 parasite.  They insisted that the infection had spread from this room to
 the rest of the colony.

 Another technician, also tapping a tricorder and not necessarily watching
 where he was going, bumped Mouse on his way by her and she almost screamed.
 Bad enough to be in a room surrounded by the near-dead... but that infection
 had spread from here to the rest of the ant/cat colony.  15% of the colony
 appeared to be infected -- at least 3500 infected ant/cats in here somewhere
 that might attack at any second!

 And somewhere in this room, hidden from the tricorders, the mother creature.
 How were they supposed to find it in this mess without just sweeping the
 room from end to end with phasers?

 Mouse shivered again and fingered the grip of the phaser she was wearing at
 her belt.  Sweeping the room with phasers was starting to sound pretty good
 to her... only... had she done it, could she later forgive herself for
 murdering 211 innocents?

\_______________________________________________________________________________
\ End Simulation Teaser                                                         |
 ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ

----------
Ross Glenn aka Jester
Fleet Captain Brian Aldur, U.S.S. Coronado, NCC-63100
http://www.ussrenegade.com/coro2400/