Savage Beach
Posted on Sun Apr 26th, 2026 @ 9:17am by Captain Shran dh'Klar & Lieutenant JG Kate Kono & Lieutenant JG James Phoenix & Ensign Janelle Barett
1,434 words; about a 7 minute read
Mission:
The Shuttle Incident
Location: Planet
Shran and the other made their way back through the jungle, heading back to the beach where the runabout was located. As they neared the edge of the jungle his antennae began to twitch, and he stopped, looking around to see what it was he was sensing.
"Captain, to our port side, large panther-like creature, 100 meters away" Viviana noted.
Shran looked in the direction, seeing the creature. It looked similar to the one he had previously seen. The tentacles were raised, the barbed pseudopods at the end glowing just like last time. "What you are seeing is an illusion, something akin to a hologram. The actual creature is likely in a flanking position."
Kate’s hands quivered as she swiped perspiration from her forehead, gaze flicking between the impenetrable undergrowth and her tricorder. The scanner displayed nothing but static despite being pointed exactly where the creature should be lurking. Following Shran’s clipped order, she adjusted the settings, digits dancing across the interface as the device’s pitch escalated to a desperate keen. The casing burned against her palm—nearly blistering—when abruptly two crimson signatures materialized on the screen. Her insides hollowed out. Kate’s mouth barely formed the words as she murmured, “Bull, Sixty-Two Two-Seven-Zero,” the practiced coordinate system suddenly her only anchor in this suffocating alien wilderness. Her index finger shuddered against the comm unit’s transmit button, the apparatus’s frigid metallic surface now slippery with moisture. The coordinates—a calculated “bullseye” measured in meters from their Runabout which would direct her companions’ attention to the precise location where oblivion might be stalking them, unseen yet horrifyingly real.
The rainforest had descended into unnatural quiet. No chittering insects. No calling birds. Nothing except the gentle sigh of canopy foliage that seemed to conceal something sinister—a faint chitinous scraping that shifted positions, encircling their group with predatory patience. Kate’s vertebrae prickled with the bone-deep knowledge they were prey.
Her focus darted toward the cloaked hunter as she eased unsteady fingers into the knotted sleeves at her waist, withdrawing her type-two phaser with the softest rustle of uniform fabric. The sidearm’s heft felt pathetically insufficient against the mounting horror. She crossed her limbs, the weapon’s emitter directed into seemingly vacant space while the tricorder’s display bathed her damp skin in ghostly azure illumination. The scanner throbbed with data; something colossal surrounding them—yet the vegetation before her remained treacherously undisturbed. Childhood terrors resurfaced unbidden: the nightmare creature you sense but cannot perceive. Her airway constricted as that ancient, visceral dread slithered through her body like tendrils of arctic water seeping into her very marrow.
Phoenix, who had taken the rear, turned his back towards his colleagues to watch their flank. He pointed his phaser towards the shadows towards wear the panther's real location. "Where are you?" He muttered under his breath.
"Thoughts, ideas, orders" Viviana said nervously.
"Ease yourself closer to me doctor. When you reach me, we will make a tactical retreat to the runabout." Shran considered the situation further, not liking the idea of leaving his junior officers in a dangerous situation in which they were at a disadvantage. "Besides me, who else see's the real creature?"
Kate backed away with Shran and Viviana, her trembling fingers white-knuckled around her phaser. The tall grass parted in sinister waves around them—not from wind, but from something massive and unseen stalking their perimeter. A chill crept up Kate's spine as fleeting shadows shifted between sunbeams, revealing glimpses of an outline that shouldn't exist. Not invisible, but a predator that had evolved to become one with the forest, using every shadow and dappled light to its advantage. Then Kate saw it—a flash of yellowed fangs arranged in a grotesque grin beneath the canopy, each tooth longer than her forearm. In that moment, Kate realized with nauseating clarity that they weren't explorers here. They were prey.
"Yep!" The word caught in Kate's throat as razor-sharp teeth flashed in the murky shadows. She stumbled backward, heart hammering against her ribs. Were the predators close enough to strike? The runabout hung on the rocks of the shore tantalizingly nearby, but the distance suddenly seemed impossible. "Time to start packing, guys..." Her voice cracked, barely audible over the blood rushing in her ears.
Phoenix quietly scanned the group's flank with his eyes. Nothing yet. He did another take. Nothing yet- wait, there. He clocked the Panther. "I do sir" James said quietly.
Kate forced a laugh. "Maybe it just eats mangos!" The words died in her throat as twigs snapped beside them. The clearing lay just behind as they walked backwards, their runabout gleaming under the alien sun. Every muscle tensed as they backed toward the shore, eyes locked on the treeline. The creatures had fallen silent. Too silent. As Kate's heel hit sand, the foliage trembled at the forest's edge, dark shapes hovering just beyond visibility, watching, waiting. The hairs on her neck stood rigid as she realized: they weren't retreating. They were herding. Kate's instincts flared. They'd been herding her toward that dense thicket of thorny shrubs—the perfect ambush point. She pivoted sharply, her boots digging into soft sand as she raised her phaser in one fluid motion. The creature burst from cover—all gleaming fangs and rippling muscle. She thumbed the weapon to cutting mode and fired. The blue-white beam sliced through the air.
The predator's shriek pierced the silence as the phaser beam carved into its flesh. Its mottled skin, perfectly blended among the foliage, stood stark against the pale sand as it lunged. Kate held her ground, driving the devastating beam deeper. Each pulse sent shockwaves through the forest, triggering a chorus of alien screams from unseen watchers. The woods erupted in furious, unified protest—a thousand hidden throats howling a single message: you've awakened something dangerous and old.
Kate had her own message to send. She stepped forward, just beyond the reach of the predator's dying claws, and cranked her phaser to maximum on cutting mode. The blue-white beam sizzled through the air, striking the creature's torso with a wet hiss. Kate's lips pulled back in a feral snarl directed at the treeline as she carved methodically upward. The beam liquefied muscle and vaporized bone, sending gouts of steaming crimson spraying across the sand. Internal organs ruptured and boiled away in clouds of acrid smoke. The creature's limbs spasmed violently, claws raking furrows in the bloody beach as the phaser's energy surged through its nervous system like electric fire, forcing its body to dance a grotesque puppet show of death for any watching eyes.
Kate's jaw clenched as the jeering voices echoed from the woods. Blood pounding in her ears, she thrust her middle finger skyward, stabbing it toward the treeline like a dagger she wished could slice through the dense vegetation and into whatever was hiding there, all the while, mutilating their kind with the other hand.
She staggered backward, thumb jamming the trigger as another volley of cutting-beam seared into the twitching carcass. The stalker's innards hissed and popped, releasing a stench of burning hair and copper. She swept the weapon in savage arcs, carving the corpse into steaming giblets that splattered across the sand like obscene raindrops. Fat liquefied and bones cracked open, marrow boiling from within. When the creature's remaining eye burst in a geyser of yellow fluid, she didn't stop—not until its skull split and its brain matter bubbled into charred, smoking sludge.
The dense pines at the forest's edge swayed and then stilled, signaling that the unseen threat had slunk back into the shadows. Her shoulders relaxed as she lowered the still-warm phaser, its metal casing ticking as it cooled. The tension drained from her face, replaced by the flush of victory.
"Well, that's one way to make new friends in the neighborhood!" Kate called out, her nervous laugh transforming into genuine mirth that rippled across the beach.
Shran stood on the beach with Viviana, Kate's nervous speech echoing from the treeline while Phoenix and Janelle made their way to the beach as well. Viviana had a look of fear washing over her; Shran had his phaser rifle at the ready. Kate had killed the one beast in the jungle, but two more were lying in wait on the beach, between the officers and the runabout. Shran hadn't taken these creatures for pack hunters, but it seemed that was the case, and that meant they had to deal with these two panther beasts, displacer beasts seemed appropriate, and they had to be dealt with now.
TBC
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