Captain Day Renora stood rigid in the center of the bridge, her hands locked behind her back, eyes fixed on the main viewscreen where Nerathis IV loomed like a bruise beneath the Vallejo.

“Report,” she said, voice cold and tight.

Lieutenant Asha Kellan didn’t look up from the ops console she manned in Loran’s absence. “Internal diagnostics all over the ship are losing sync. Deck four’s life support just reset to default parameters… twice. EPS routing shows recursive patterns, like everything attempts to reboot.”

“Structural integrity?” Day asked.

“Stable,” Kellan said, “for now.”

Across the bridge, an alarm chimed… soft, but insistent.

“Now what?” Day asked, turning to the source.

“Decks nine and ten, Cetacean Ops,” Rax answered grimly from tactical. “Water temperature just dropped twelve degrees in under a minute. Salinity regulation is fluctuating… filtration pumps are cycling out of phase.”

Kellan frowned, her frustration evident as she rubbed her forehead. “That shouldn’t even be possible, those systems are fully independent and isolated from the primary EPS grid routing.”

Over the comm, Vex’s voice cut in from down in engineering, sharp and stressed.

“Captain, whatever’s happening… It’s not mechanical. Not electric. I’ve reinitialized every core control relay from the warp nacelles to the environmental scrubbers. Nothing’s wrong, but everything’s wrong.”

“Explain,” Day said, stepping to one of the rear stations.

“I can’t,” Vex shot back. “Every diagnostic says we’re clean. Every sensor sweep reads clear, but I’ve got relays rerouting themselves in ways they shouldn’t even be able to.”

The bridge lights, already dim, dropped to complete black, then flared up too bright, causing the bridge crew to shield their eyes before they dimmed back down to their previous level.

“Illumination surged to two hundred percent,” Kellan snapped. “We’re lucky no one was blinded.”

“Captain,” Vex came back on the line, “I’ve traced six EPS spikes in thirty seconds. They’re cascading between systems. Every time I isolate one, the fault shifts… like the ship’s playing with me.”

“Vex,” Day said. “Communication with the surface is our number one priority. Get me a line to the away teams.”

A soft chime sounded.

The turbolift doors hissed open.

Jorath, pale and trembling but upright, stepped onto the bridge, Counselor Marin steadying him on one side.

Day turned, and the bridge fell silent.

_____________________________________

The interior of the shuttle Ponderosa hummed gently with power at standby, consoles glowing pale blue in the dim light. Ensign Renn Tanara leaned over the forward console; her elbow propped against the edge of a bulkhead as her fingers danced across the interface.

No comms. No visuals. No response.

“Come on, Commander…” she whispered, biting her lip. “Say something.”

Outside the shuttle, the winds howled across the cracked landscape of Nerathis IV, stirring clouds of red dust that scraped across the forward viewport.

The dig site was out there. So was Commander Mehta and the rest of her team. Renn couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was out there too.

Renn exhaled slowly, forcing herself to stay focused.

Mehta’s last orders were clear. Stay with the shuttle, monitor the dig site, keep in comms with Vallejo, and be ready to extract the moment they find the research team… or if everything goes to hell.

She had an uncomfortable feeling it would be the latter.

She tapped a few controls on the console again, boosting power to the shuttle’s short-range array.

“Shuttlecraft Ponderosa to Vallejo. Priority one transmission. Surface team is out of contact. Scan-lock attempts are unsuccessful. Repeat, priority one…”

Static.

No carrier wave, no encryption handshake. Just silence.

She slammed the console with the side of her hand in frustration and let out a sharp groan. No pressure. Just me, a haunted planet, and an atmosphere blanket thick enough to fry a ship’s comms.

Then…

A motion alert pinged.

Renn’s head snapped towards the aft sensors as she grabbed a hand phaser.

Four lifesigns, approaching fast. She tapped a few controls to scan deeper.

Humanoid… Human, Orion, and Andorian.

Transporter tags recognized. Amir, Bjornsen, Torel… Loran.

Renn practically tripped over herself racing to the hatch controls. The shuttle door hissed open to a blast of warm, mineral-laced air.

Shadows shifted through the swirling dust… staggering… limping.

“Loran!” She shouted.

“Inside!” he barked hoarsely as his team stumbled to the craft. “Seal the hatch!”

She grabbed a medkit and helped pull Bjornsen through the door, Torel following right behind him. The moment they were inside, Renn slammed the controls, the door hissing closed behind them.

The change was immediate… as if the air itself had stopped screaming.

Loran collapsed onto the bench near the rear bulkhead, sweat streaked down his uniform. Amir was already grabbing water packs from the supply locker. Bjornsen rocked slightly as he drank from the bladder handed to him, eyes distant.

“What the hell happened?” Renn asked, staring at them in disbelief.

“It’s not interference,” Loran said between gasps. “There’s something here. It got into our minds. Pressed down on us light a weight… then once we crashed down it just… left.”

“Left?” Renn echoed.

Loran sat up, forcing clarity into his voice. “Whatever it is, we have to get Commander Mehta’s team back and get off this planet. Now.”

Renn nodded sharply, moving back to the forward console with determination. “Then let’s find a way to punch through.”

_____________________________________

Something had changed.

Vama Dar froze mid-gesture, her fingers hovering just above the surface of an engraved morphing glyph. She didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe.

It wasn’t cold, but it felt like her body was being wrapped in shadow.

“Stop,” she whispered. “Everyone, stop.”

Commander Arjun Mehta, a few meters away, turned towards her, hand resting on the grip of his phaser. “What is it, Lieutenant?”

Dar didn’t answer at first. She slowly lowered her hand and sat back on her heels, eyes sweeping across the chamber.

The air had shifted. The mist that had been slowly drifting in now moved with purpose. Coiling inward.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “But something is with us, don’t you feel it?”

Valis looked up from her tricorder, expression unreadable. “I am detecting a localized spike in psionic flux. The intensity is increasing. Lieutenant Dar’s postulation may be correct.”

Dar pressed her palm lightly to the cold stone floor, then withdrew it, frowning as if the touch had been too intimate.

“It’s not just the air,” she said. “There’s something in the stone around us… It’s resonating. Subtly. Like it’s echoing something back.”

Valis adjusted her tricorder, scanning a seam in the chamber wall. “Confirming anomalous readings within the surrounding geology. Crystalline composition includes trace elements of thoronite and some form of psychoreactive silicate. These minerals would dampen or reflect psionic emissions.”

Mehta crouched beside them, eyes narrowing. “Maybe the structure wasn’t just built here. Maybe it was built because of the elements here.”

Dar nodded, distracted, her fingers trailing along the faintly pulsating glyphs. “The inscriptions aren’t ceremonial. They’re functional… arrays… pathways. Something was meant to flow through them… or be kept from doing so.”

Valis’s tone remained even. “A closed psionic system. Designed to isolate a signal. Or suppress a presence.”

Mehta stood slowly, his voice low. “This dig site wasn’t just uncovering history. It was prying open a lock.”

A sound rolled through the chamber… faint, wet, wrong. Not the wind. It slithered just beneath hearing, like something just beneath the skin. Something shifted across the rock walls.

Ensign Ryan spun towards the chamber entrance, phaser raised.

The mist wasn’t drifting anymore. It was flowing. Deliberate and directed.

Valis’s tricorder gave a warning chirp, then shut down. “Power loss. Localized EMP possibly…”

Dr. Pells’ stubby-fingered hand trembled as she clutched her now powerless medical tricorder. “It’s getting colder.”

Dar stepped back from the glyph-engraved structure, her eyes locked on the entrance. Her voice barely audible.

“It’s not outside anymore.”

Then… a pressure behind her eyes… on her chest. Suffocating. A presence.

The air grew impossible still. Dar’s breath caught in her throat, her chest tightening as the presence pressed in, a weight of pure malice. Her hand trembled as she reached for her phaser, but it was already too late.

Then, from the mist around her, penetrating within her skull, blinding pain… a scream… Lieutenant Jorath’s scream… rippled through the silence. Distorted… broken… full of raw agony.

Darkness took her, as the sound of Jorath’s torment twisted into a hollow, mocking laughter.