Episode 2×3 “Darkness”
By Sam Webb
Airdate: February 9, 2024
Cmdr. Ter’Rec (Tellarite M, Chief Engineer) had an extra spring in his step as he finished his morning coffee. He had just traded audio messages with Dr. Nassa Coleridge back on Kirlosia, the latest in a budding long-distance relationship after the Ariantu crisis there a month earlier. His usual cloud of cynicism and grumpiness was gone, noticed by the crew as he made his way from the mess hall to the turbolift.
He emerged onto the bridge to join Alpha Shift as the USS Lexington (NCC-1709, Constitution class, Scientific and Survey Operations) entered orbit of Trax Epsilon I, responding to a distress signal sent by a Vulcan Expeditionary Group research team on the surface, which had stopped transmitting one Earth day earlier. Cmdr. Sabin Trall (unjoined Trill M, Chief Science Officer) immediately noticed that the H-class planet in no way resembled its entry in the library computer from past surveys by unmanned probes. The atmosphere was now composed of a thick silicate gas absorbing all but 0.04% of light; dropping the surface temperature to subzero; making the air poisonous to humanoid life, and interfering with sensors. Ter’Rec was able to locate the Vulcans’ outpost by comparing sensor telemetry to the library computer records, despite the outpost not showing up on sensors.
Capt. Mary Birdsong (human F, Commanding Officer) assembled an away team of Sabin, Dr. Grelox (Denobulan M, Chief Medical Officer) and Ensign Samson Gao (human M, Security Officer) in Transporter Room 1, with Ter’Rec managing the transporter controls, not trusting anyone else to beam them through the sensor interference.
The away team donned EV suits and packed pattern enhancers, and Ter’Rec successfully beamed them within a few meters of the outpost site. Nevertheless, the away team could not see the prefab buildings as the light from their helmets and wrist mounts extended barely a meter. Sabin found that his tricorder’s range was not much better. Stumbling ahead and barely able to keep in visual contact with one another, the away team essentially tripped across the outpost perimeter as the floodlights on the prefab buildings were dark. Indeed, the consoles were unpowered and life support was not functioning inside the buildings. The entire compound had been drained of power. Large slashes in the sides of the buildings made it easy for the away team to get inside, despite the lack of power to the doors, and there they found the bodies of two of the Vulcan scientists. Grelox’s exam showed the Vulcans had died of hypoxia, which was consistent with the EV suits’ condition, ripped open near key power supplies and drained of power, just like the outpost buildings.
In an effort to restore power to the outpost, the away team set up the pattern enhancers and had the Lexington beam down mobile generators, which Grelox and Gao attempted to install and connect to the outpost’s EPS grid. This proved more difficult than expected, and Grelox and Gao spent a long time fumbling and failing to connect the power, while Sabin dragged the two Vulcan bodies into the landing zone between the pattern enhancers and had them beamed up to the Lexington for further study in sickbay. Finally, Birdsong cited her engineering extension course and took a hands-on approach, jury-rigging a connection between the mobile generators and the EPS grid and restoring power to the outpost.
With power restored, the away team could reactivate life support and play back the Vulcans’ logs. These documented that several days after the Vulcans landed, unidentified objects crashed on the planet, the nearest about 1000 km away. All but two of the Vulcans left in a desert buggy to investigate the crash site. They soon lost contact with the outpost and a silicate-heavy storm rapidly spread out from the crash site and overtook the outpost. Once the storm had blanketed the planet and transformed the atmosphere into the light-absorbing silica composition it now had, the Vulcans at the outpost sent a distress signal to Starfleet, which the Lexington had answered. The final log entry indicated an attack by an unknown species, with sounds of phaser fire and a struggle abruptly cut off.
The away team beamed back up to the Lexington to regroup and decide on next steps. Sabin and Ter’Rec would remain aboard ship to try and figure out what was happening to the atmosphere and how to penetrate the geomagnetic interference. Birdsong would lead Grelox, Gao, and Ensign Bagheera (Caitian M, Security Officer) on an away mission to the crash site to investigate the strange object and rescue any of the six Vulcans who traveled there if they were still alive. Knowing the aliens were hostile, the away team brought along phaser rifles as well as another set of pattern enhancers.
The away team materialized at the edge of a large crater left by the impact of a large vessel, its outline barely visible in the darkness, roughly the size of an Oberth-class starship. Tricorder scans showed its silicate-based hull was fizzing and evaporating the form the atmosphere around them. With foreboding and dread, the away team began their descent into the crater, hiking the thousand meters or so to the wreck.
On the Lexington in orbit, Sabin theorized that some sort of terraforming was taking place, and the science crews configured the ship’s modular laboratory for terraforming research and experiments. Sabin and Ter’Rec, using the laboratory facilities, determined that the atmosphere was dominated by a rare silicate gas never recorded occurring naturally, lending credence to the terraforming theory.
Entering the crashed ship, taking care to stay close together and in visual contact, the away team found the labyrinthine interior of the alien vessel highly unsettling and disorienting. Grelox noted it was more akin to diagrams from a medical textbook than a starship schematic. Scattered around the ship, after a painstaking search, the away team succeeded in locating the bodies of the six Vulcan scientists, their bodies and EV suits similarly damaged as those at the outpost.
Sabin and Ter’Rec progressed in their lab work, identifying a link between the silicates in the atmosphere and the geomagnetic anomalies. The silicate was causing fluctuations in the planet’s magnetic field, and also absorbing the visible light spectrum at the quantum level and affecting sensors, communications, and transporters the same way (along with any other technologies relying on subspace).
The away team gathered the bodies of the Vulcans near their entry point to the alien ship, less of an airlock than a hole broken in the side of the hull by the crash. Taking the away team by surprise, the Vulcans abruptly re-animated, with one of them reaching out of the darkness to ambush Birdsong, shattering her EV suit faceplate, knocking her unconscious, and forcing a mind-meld. She experienced telepathic contact with an overwhelming, confused hive mind, and attempted to communicate her need to breathe before blacking out. Bagheera fired his phaser rifle and vaporized the Vulcan zombie attached to Birdsong, but five more emerged from the darkness to attack the away team.
Sabin and Ter’Rec finally succeeded in mapping the shifting magnetic poles of the planet and electrostatic energy in the atmosphere to a degree that the Lexington’s systems could operate normally. They relayed this information to the bridge, where the relief crew could reestablish comms with the away team.
Hearing the away team’s distress, Ter’Rec beamed them up to the ship. Grelox rushed Birdsong to sickbay treat her injuries and revive her. Birdsong shared what she had learned through the mind meld: the hive mind was the collective consciousness of a species calling itself Krilian, and the pods were their colonization method, launched at sublight speeds generations ago toward this uninhabited planet to terraform it for their needs so a new colony could take hold. The Krilians feed off electromagnetic energy sources, so their hatchlings were drawn to the Vulcans’ generators and EV suits as a food source. The Krilians had never encountered humanoids before and did not realize the Vulcans were life forms. When the Vulcans died, the Krilians realized their mistake, and wanted to learn more about humanoids. Possessing the Vulcans’ bodies and attempting touch telepathy was the only way they could think of to attempt this.
Sabin and Ter’Rec set about analyzing the EM fields around the planet below as part of the terraforming process, and used them to decipher the Krilians’ telepathic communication with one another. They modified the Lexington’s deflector dish to emit EM patterns and routed the universal translator into it, allowing direct communication between the crew and the Krilian hive mind. They were able to exchange information with this new civilization and leave behind means for the Krilians to remain in subspace communication with the Federation’s relay network, which has only recently been extended to this area of space.
The bodies of the remaining survey team members were recovered without incident for return to Vulcan. Birdsong sent a recommendation that a second contact mission be sent once the Krilian colony has been better established to avoid further conflict once the Federation begins expanding in this sector.
Geoff: Ter’Rec, Birdsong, Bagheera
Fred: Sabin, Grelox, Gao
Modular laboratory focus: Terraforming
Crew support used: 4 + 2 Threat
Lexington damage: n/a
Casualties: 1 wounded
Shuttlecraft destroyed: 0
On the next Star Trek Adventures…
2×4 “Biological Clock”
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