The Alpha and Beta shifts were long asleep, leaving the TGC Nexus bridge bathed in the low, blue hues of the Night Watch.
Ensign Jax, an Ops officer who had consumed far too much cold raktajino to stay awake, leaned back in his station console, watching the sub-space telemetry drift by.
Everything was whisper-quiet. The warp core hummed a steady tune, and the life-support telemetry across all primary cargo bays read like a medical ward on sedatives. Eleven species of Lukari apex predators were sound asleep, thoroughly defeated by their own bellies.
Then, a high-pitched console chime shattered the silence.
Jax blinked, rubbing his eyes. An amber warning light was flashing over Cargo Bay 4.
"That's odd..." Jax muttered, pulling up the environmental sensors. "Computer, display life-sign telemetry for Enclosure Twelve."
The sensor grid blinked, recalculated, and then spat out a number that made Jax freeze.
Initial manifest: 80 Lukarian Spine Raptors.
Current sensors: 412 life-signs.
Status: Exponential Growth in Progress.
"What the..." Jax gasped, his fingers flying across his console. The biosensors were spiking off the charts. The combination of hyper-replicated protein and concentrated vitamins hadn't put the raptors to sleep—it had catalyzed a hyper-accelerated metabolic reaction with the species' unique crimson blood. Their hormones had gone nuclear, triggering a short-gestation, rapid-maturity mating frenzy.
Before Jax could hit the internal comms, the telemetry on Cargo Bay 4 turned bright red.
—
Down in the bay, the paddock was a chaotic sea of glowing neon-magenta spines, screeching maws, and flashing claws. Over four hundred hyper-stimulated, adrenaline-fueled raptors were swarming the interior of the enclosure.
Their collective weight slammed against the level-ten force field grids.
BZZZZT!
Overhead, an automated security stun-turret tracked the movement, firing a wide-beam stun blast into the mass. But the raptors didn't collapse. Instead, three fully grown alpha raptors used the raised feeding altar as a launching pad, leaping twelve feet into the air. With lightning-fast precision, their three-inch razor-sharp talons shredded the turret's sensor housing, shorting out the circuitry in a shower of sparks.
Another pack lunged at the force field emitter node mounted near the floor, slashing through the reinforced conduit housing until their sickle-claws struck raw power lines.
BOOM!
The primary containment field flickered, sputtered, and collapsed.
The heavy blast doors didn't stand a chance. Driven by pure, hyper-stimulated predatory instinct, hundreds of raptors flooded into the corridor like a wave of teal-and-purple scythes.
"BRIDGE TO ALL DECKS! RED ALERT! WE HAVE A CONTAINMENT BREACH IN CARGO BAY FOUR!"
Klaxons blared across the Nexus, flashing crimson light into every corridor and waking the crew from their sleep.
—
Captain Anzyl Praxas practically tumbled out of his quarters, pulling his uniform jacket on over his pajamas, his nouliths already floating at his sides. He sprinted onto the bridge just as First Officer Niel and Security Chief Gaimmack arrived from the turbolift.
"Report!" Anzyl shouted over the blaring sirens.
"It's species twelve, Captain!" Jax yelled, his hands flying over the Ops console. "The Lukarian Spine Raptors! They've... they've multiplied! Their metabolic rate surged from overfeeding, triggering an instant gestation cycle! There aren't eighty of them anymore, sir—sensors show over four hundred roaming Deck 8!"
"Four hundred?!" Niel choked, pulling out his phaser rifle. "I told you I should've slept with one eye open!"
Flashes of white at the bridge teleporter pads, and R'Nelle sprinted onto the bridge, her feline ears pinned flat against her head in sheer panic, flanked by Zorkuk.
"Captain!" R'Nelle hissed, pulling up the biological manifest on the main viewscreen. "You have to order Security to set phasers to kill!"
Anzyl turned to her in shock. "Kill?! R'Nelle, we spent weeks setting up an Ark to save these animals!"
"If those four hundred raptors reach Old Kentar, they will decimate the entire herbivore population in less than six months!" Zorkuk interjected urgently, adjusting his air regulator. "The ecosystem will collapse before it even begins! Their Effective Population Size was supposed to be 50 to 80 individuals to maintain balance! Having four hundred raptors on the planet is a ecological apocalypse!"
"He's right, Captain," R'Nelle added, her claws retracting in distress. "We have to cull the excess population back down to the target manifest! We only need eighty genetic individuals. The rest... are an invasive hazard to their own homeworld! Each one we brought on board were tagged. If they have a tag, stun them. If they don't…" She stared at Gaimmack and the Captain.
He didn't like it but he understood. He nodded solemnly to Gaimmack for the confirmation.
—
Down on Deck 8, the scene was pure sci-fi survival horror.
Lower-deck crew members were sprinting down the corridors as packs of three-foot, neon-glowing raptors leaped off bulkheads, snorting, screeching, and slashing at doors. Security teams were firing phasers, their stun beams barely slowing down the hyper-metabolic reptiles.
—
"Gaimmack!" Anzyl barked over the chaos of the bridge. "Seal off Deck 8 with level-five blast doors! Isolate the maintenance shafts!"
"Working on it, sir!" Gaimmack yelled, slamming his hands onto the security console. "But Captain... they're using the Jefferies tubes! They're in the vents!"
Anzyl grabbed his combadge, his jaw set. "Security teams, this is the Captain. Maintain your ground, protect the sleeper bays, and lock down vital systems. Xenobiology has cleared lethal force for all unregistered raptor offspring. Keep the eighty tagged specimens alive in stasis if you can... but hunt down the rest!"
He looked up at Niel, a mix of sheer disbelief and adrenaline in his eyes.
"Well, Number One, you were right..." Anzyl muttered, activating his nouliths. "And it looks like the apex predators just voted themselves off the Ark."