It was hot, painfully hot. And windy, like fine little razor blades against the skin. It was unlike any day before as Vespara Prime wobbled on its axis and continued its fall towards the sun. It was only going to get worse too. Seven days, that was all they had, or eleven if Commander Lee could whip up those climate satellites. After that, it would be so hot that no one would walk freely on the surface, and eventually the mounting solar radiation would strip the atmosphere from the planet itself, making it completely unlivable without an EV suit.

Dr. Hall and Lieutenant Balan had not come to commiserate with the colonists about their plight though. Not yet, at least. They knew that if they revealed their presence right away, the people of Vespara Prime would be skeptical, if not outright resistant, to the rescue they dearly needed. Although most of its colonists originally come from Federation worlds, they were a people that had renounced technology by choice, and Starfleet was the antithesis of that. It was for this reason that the unassuming pair had donned local garb and beamed onto to the grounds of the Vesparan Academy of Agrarian Studies in search of Itziki Imbalta, the Bolian professor who’d used the planets sole subspace transceiver to send the original distress call a day prior.

“This looks like his office,” Lieutenant Balan observed as she stepped onto the stoop of a small brick building just off the main quad of the campus.

“How do you figure?” Dr. Hall asked.

“Those who came here did so to embrace a simple, sustainable life,” Lieutenant Balan noted. “I wouldn’t expect such people to be prone to violence, so what do you make of this?”

The counselor came up alongside her, and immediately she saw what the cultural affairs analyst meant. The door to the building had been plied open with blunt force. 

“Eyes up!” Dr. Hall’s phaser was out and she was advancing through the door into the room before Lieutenant Balan could even blink.

Quickly, the Lieutenant followed her through, but she didn’t draw her own weapon. It all seemed a bit of an overreaction, but Lieutenant Balan also knew better than to judge Lisa Hall, a woman who’d survived the worst that the Lost Fleet and Frontier Day had thrown at her.

Inside, the room was dark, and it was in shambles. Every table had been overturned, and every drawer had been ripped open. There were papers and trinkets littering the floor, and on the far side of the room, they saw a message scrawled across the wall in blood red paint: HERETIC OF THE MACHINE.

“That’s unfortunate,” Dr. Hall frowned as she walked over to the wall and touched the paint. It was still wet. Still fresh. This had happened recently, and it threw a major wrench in their plan.

“That’s the understatement of the morning,” sighed Lieutenant Balan. “I’m not sure the professor is going to be much help to us.” They’d hoped to use Itziki Imbalta, a man they’d assumed to be of some repute in the community given his position, to amplify their message. But it didn’t look like that was going to be the case. It looked like this might be even harder than they expected.

“Check this out,” Dr. Hall said, gesturing to the ground. Between a set of crushed boxes and a pile of papers, there was a tricorder – or more accurately, the remnants of a tricorder. It had been smashed, broken into a dozen little pieces.

Before Lieutenant Balan could reply, they heard footsteps.

Dr. Hall swung around, leveling her phaser with the door as a young man, probably not a day past twenty, stepped through the threshold.

“I… I…” the kid fumbled with his words. He didn’t recognize either of them, nor the item that the woman with dark hair held in her hand. The way she held it, it looked like it was probably a weapon, but it was unlike anything he’d ever seen, very mechanical and very otherworldly. “Are you… are you from… from Starfleet?”

Lieutenant Balan could see the fear on the kid’s face. She knew that look all too well. He was terrified, and very much not a threat. “Yes, yes we are,” she said with a gentle smile as she reached out and set her hand on Dr. Hall’s phaser, pushing the muzzle towards the floor. It wouldn’t be needed here. This was clearly not whomever it was that tossed the professor’s office. “I’m Emilia, and this is Lisa.”

“I’m Malik,” the kid replied as he relaxed a bit. There was something disarming about the woman who called herself Emilia. Her demeanor made him feel safe, at least as much as anyone could after learning that his world was in danger.

“It’s nice to meet you Malik,” Lieutenant Balan offered with a soft tone, as if talking to a baby deer that might be easily spooked. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you know we were Starfleet?”

“Because Professor Imbalta said you would come,” Malik replied genuinely. He’d never met anyone from Starfleet before, but he trusted the professor.

“Ah, the professor,” nodded Dr. Hall as she reholstered her phaser within the holster concealed under her loose flowing blouse. “Is he okay?”

“He’s hiding because of all this.”

“What happened here?”

“The councilors, they’ll deny they did it, but when they found out what he did, some of them – I’m sure it was them – some of them came down here and did this,” Malik explained disheartenedly as he looked at what was left of his mentor’s office. “It’s not our way, I promise you. We are a peaceful people… a good people… a kind people.”

“I believe you,” Lieutenant Balan assured him.

“Our world,” Malik continued nervously. “Is it really falling apart?”

“Yes,” Dr. Hall nodded gravely. “And there’s not a lot of time.”

“Are you here to help us?”

“We want to, yes,” Dr. Hall explained. “But we need the professor’s assistance. You see, your people don’t know us, and they have no reason to trust us. We’d hoped the professor, someone the others recognize and trust, would be able to help them understand. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that will be the case.” Not if the way the room had been ransacked was any indication.

“There’s still a chance,” Malik replied with youthful optimism. “The councilors are not unified in their perspective. I was down at the assembly hall just an hour ago. As angry as many were at the professor for using the communicator thingy, there were others equally distraught over how he was treated as a result.”

“Do you know where the professor is?”

Malik nodded.

“Can you take us to him?”

Again, Malik nodded, and off they went.