Feeling very alone aboard a drifting, derelict spaceship, Kellin glanced over his shoulder. He listened for the three members of the away team who were out of his line of sight.  It was unnerving to be standing in the middle of a forest without any of the forest-sounds he had grown up to expect. He could hardly hear any wind between the leaves, no insects, no patter of small animals.

Aside from Hey’xet and Simmons, it was quiet quiet.

Kellin’s voice was thick with the dread of already knowing the answer, when he asked, “Can our combadges pierce the interference?”

Hey’xet loosened their grip on their tricorder ever so slightly. “A combadge is far more robust than a tricorder. They should be fully functional right now and across the next few kilometers. However…”

More tentacles emerged from the folds of Hey’xet’s uniform with a PADD in their grip. With a flick of their rubbery arms, a holographic map of the forest appeared. The fine details on the outer edge of the dome became fuzzed and staticky near the center. “Within two kilometers of the center, the interference becomes far more disruptive. I’ve arranged for my engineering team to fire a series of neutrino pulses at the dome that will cut through the interference just enough for basic communications between each other and with the ship, but the pulses can only be fired for five seconds each minute. We will have to use our words and our time wisely.”

Looking up at the transparent geodesic dome, Kellin rubbed the back of his neck.  Then he grinned guilelessly.

“I’m guessing,” Kellin said, “that’s an example of a message that will be too long to transmit through the interference in the centre of the forest?”

“Perhaps, but I left orders for my engineering team before we– oh.” Hey’xet could not visibly narrow their eyes at Kellin, but they could rotate their golden faceplate on the axis of its narrow eyeslit very slowly. “You are being facetious. But I agree that verbal communication is woefully inefficient.” They punctuated their statement with more flashes of pigment from their tentacles that went, as ever, untranslated.

Only half under his breath, Kellin said, “The captain might say my verbal communication is terribly efficient at being facetious.”  But he smiled through saying that.

With the attention span of a puppy, Kellin’s eyes began to wander.  “Most of the trees are in shambles.  Bark peeling; rot at the roots.  Were they irradiated by the ship’s drift through the Briar Patch?”

“Possibly, though I’m not detecting any particularly dangerous radiation,” Simmons mused. He smacked the top of the tricorder against a nearby trunk in frustration, causing the fragile timber to emit a pained groan. “You’re right, though. Everything is just falling apart, like it’s sick.”

Simmons made towards a slender seed pod that rested lopsided against the base of the weary tree, its dry brown surface already collapsing to dust in the barely noticeable breeze. As he came close, he realised it was deceptively large, big enough to climb inside comfortably, like some sort of organic sleeping bag.

“These look like some sort of seed pod, and assuming a natural decay cycle, that means they must have bloomed relatively recently, or else it’d be mulch.” Simmons ran a finger over the curved opening where the pod had peeled open, tracing the gnarled edge upwards towards the tip of the strange casing. “I’m also assuming they’re not dropped pods, like the barochory seeds of sycamores; they’re much too bulky.”

With a gentle crack, he pulled a handful of the pod’s fragile edge and turned it over in his hand.

“Curioser and curioser…” The young lieutenant lifted the tricorder closer to examine the shard of seed pod, which was already beginning to crumble to dust. “Hopefully, we’ll find fresher examples as we move inward. It could be that whatever is controlling the nutrition has pulled its resources back towards the centre. Did it look healthier further inland?”

Shrugging helplessly, Kellin said, “I dunno.  The treetops looked same-y in each direction.  Except… a few kilometers away, I swear I spotted the top of a skyscraper or a ziggurat, poking above the trees.”

“Not at all ominous,” Simmons muttered as he slipped his goggles over his eyes and made his way towards the thickening forest, holding the seed pod fragments aloft to his face. “You know what lives in Ziggurats that sit in the centre of dying forests right?”

Simmons allowed a mischievous grin to stretch across his face, the soft glow of his goggles illuminating the dark pockets of his cheeks with an inhuman light that stretched his face into a long shard of skin.

“Angry tree gods…”