The transporter effect faded and left cold air and damp earth in its wake. Kincaid stepped forward as the shimmer collapsed, boots sinking half a centimetre into Pala Ridge’s soil. The wind off the ridge carried the smell of wet leaves and turned earth: a sharp, honest scent that clashed oddly with the knowledge that something alien had tried to infect the environment.

The landing party had materialised in the lee of a low storage building, one of the co-op warehouses on the edge of the settlement. Modular walls, a roof patched with local timber and scavenged plating, and a row of battered farm skimmers parked in an untidy line. Beyond, down the slope, the colony spread itself: weather mast rising like a scar on the horizon, the main habitation dome glinting dully and scattered outbuildings hunched against the wind.

“There we have it, folks,” he said quietly, shouldering his rifle. “Welcome to Pala Ridge.”

Behind him, the hazard team fanned out with practised precision. They all wore body armour over their Starfleet uniforms. The team leader, Lieutenant Gallagher, had a compact build and the neat economy of motion of a professional who did not waste anything, least of all time.

“Hazard team bravo, green across the board,” she said softly into her communicator. “Subspace interference is elevated but manageable.”

The accompanying security detachment were less elaborately equipped, but no less steady. A handful of officers in gold, phasers at the ready, eyes scanning. One of them, a young ensign looked faintly sick. Kincaid filed it for later.

He tapped the control on his wrist. “Victory, this is ground one,” he said. “We’re down and the local terrain matches your scans.”

Hardy’s voice came back at once, clear and measured through the communicator. “Very good, ground one,” he said. “We’re seeing clusters of life-signs in three main locations: your current area around the warehouse belt, the main habitation dome, and the mast control station on the ridge. There are also six discrete reliquary concentrations, three of which are inconveniently close to populated structures.”

“Can you tell which of the life-signs are Pilgrims and which are our farmers?” Kincaid asked.

“I can tell you which ones are correlated with unusual concentrations of subspace harmonic feedback and which ones do not,” Jevlak cut in dryly from the science station. “The former will be Pilgrims or heavily enthralled locals. I am tagging them now.”

On his visor overlay, icons flickered into existence: red for high resonance, blue for low. The mast control building on the ridge showed three red blips and a scatter of blues. The main dome was mostly blue with a worrying cluster of amber near the centre.

“Well now,” Kincaid said quietly. “That’s very helpful, lieutenant. Thank you kindly.”

“You are welcome,” Jevlak said. “Do not stand under any glowing structures if you can help it.”

He lifted his rifle slightly. “Team,” he said to his assault force. “The plan has not changed. Hazard team bravo, you’re with me. We take the mast station first and shut down all the equipment. Lieutenant Havel, you have the security detachment. You’ll move on the habitation dome, nice and slow. Your job is to separate the good folk from anyone humming hymns to black boxes.”

Havel, a solid woman, nodded once. “Aye, sir,” she said. “We’ll go in through the service conduits like we discussed. Keep it quiet.”

“Quiet is good,” Kincaid said. He checked his rifle’s setting, more out of habit than doubt, and gestured to Gallagher. “On me,” he said. “We head for the mast. Victory, ground one. If you would be so kind as to watch our heads, captain.”

“I have nothing better to do,” Hardy replied. “I’ll keep you updated if anyone attempts a decapitation.”

The route to the mast ran along the edge of the fields and then up a broad, muddy track that had been churned by tractor tyres and boots. The weather mast itself rose from the ridge like an accusation, its cleaned metal still bearing the scars where the reliquary growth had been blasted away from the Victory in orbit. Around its base, a low ring of prefab structures huddled: the control room and power conversion sheds.

Kincaid moved at the front of the column. The wind had picked up. A flock of native birds, startled by their passage, lifted from a hedgerow in a clatter of wings.

“Ground one, be advised,” Jevlak’s voice murmured. “Three high-resonance signatures in the mast control building. Two are pacing. One is stationary near the main console. There are also at least six low-resonance life-signs in the immediate area. They may be colonists.”

“Armed?” Kincaid asked.

“Difficult to say,” she replied.

Hardy cut in. “Assume any Pilgrim is armed in some fashion,” he said. “If they’ve nothing obvious in their hands, they’ll still have an overdeveloped sense of righteousness.”

“Noted, captain,” Kincaid said. “I’ll watch out for dangerous prayers.”

They reached the crest of the ridge. From here, the mast dominated the sky. Its panels ticked faintly in the wind. Lights glowed along its length with a subdued, intermittent pulse. The control building at its base had one main entrance and two smaller service doors. The main door stood ajar.

Gallagher dropped to one knee and sent a tiny drone skimming along the ground, its camera feeding directly into her eyepiece.

“The front entrance is being watched,” she said quietly. “Two Pilgrims, weapons visible. They’ve repurposed plasma cutters. They’re talking to each other. I’m routing their audio.”

A faint, distorted murmur filled Kincaid’s ear. “…Pattern will be displeased,” one voice said, breathless.

“The pattern knows loss,” the other replied. “It will make a lesson of them.”

“That’s one sermon I can skip,” Kincaid murmured. He drew a breath. “We’re not going to walk through the front door and give them a target. We’ll take the side entrances. Gallagher, two of your people on that east service door. I’ll go with the west group. On my mark, we breach both. Stun first. We’re here to shut them down and capture, not kill.”

They split as planned. Kincaid took the west side with three hazard officers. The service door here was closed, its panel darkened.

Gallagher’s voice came softly. “Charges set,” she said. “On your word.”

Kincaid pressed his hand briefly to the cool metal, feeling for vibrations. There were none. The cultists were not paying attention to their flanks. Confidence or distraction, but either way, he would take it.

“Mark,” he said.

The charges blew in unison, controlled and tight, turning the service doors into inward-flying fragments without much noise. Kincaid stepped through the smoke.

The control room beyond was a cramped space of consoles and screens, dominated by the big mast status display and a bank of equipment. Black cubes studded the walls and ceiling, filaments running into the control panels, humming faintly.

The three Pilgrims whirled as the doors went, plasma cutters swinging up. They wore the usual mix of grey robe and repurposed work gear, reliquaries bright at their throats.

Kincaid fired once, wide-beam, set just hard enough to stun them. The nearest Pilgrim went down as if his strings had been cut. Gallagher’s people took the second. The third managed a half-uttered curse before a precise shot from the east team dropped her onto the deck.

“Three down,” Gallagher reported. “All showing strong subspace echo. These are proper devotees.”

Kincaid stepped forward and kicked the nearest plasma cutter away, pushing it under a console with his boot. “Get binders on them,” he said. “Lock their reliquaries. Lieutenant Jevlak, I’m looking at an inordinate amount of black glass attached to the control panels. Suggestions?”

Jevlak’s tone was brisk. “Those are secondary coupling nodes,” she said. “Avoid touching them directly. Place the emitters we gave you at roughly even intervals round the room and then throw that big red switch marked mast isolation that the design specifications say should be on the right-most console.”

Kincaid looked at the labelled switch on the console, its protective cover still sealed with a plastic band. He nodded to one of the hazard officers, who began placing the portable emitters, squat devices that hummed with a faint frequency. When they were lit, a subtle change came over the room. The reliquaries’ glow dimmed a fraction and the hum in the walls receded.

He reached up, broke the seal, and threw the isolation lever.

Outside, the mast’s lights flickered, then settled into a dull, steady glow. The faint pulsing that had underlain its systems ceased.

Hardy’s voice followed, satisfaction restrained. “Excellent work,” he said. “One throat less for the pattern to sing with. How are your guests?”

“Sleeping peacefully,” Kincaid said. “We’ll package them for transport once we’ve swept the perimeter.”

The main habitation dome had seen better days even before the Pilgrims had come. Havel led her security detachment through a maintenance crawlspace and into a narrow corridor that ran behind the communal hall. The air inside the dome was warmer, thick with the smells of cooked food and too many people in one place. Some voices carried: a dull murmur of argument and prayer.

She held up a hand, gesturing her team to a halt, and peered through the narrow inspection window.

The hall beyond was crowded. Colonists sat on benches and makeshift chairs, some clutching mugs, others holding their heads. At the far end, near the old co-op noticeboard, a cluster of greys stood out: Pilgrims, six of them, talking with urgent intensity. Their reliquaries glowed brightly. One of them had climbed onto a crate and was speaking to the room.

“…the pattern has felt the cut,” he was saying. “It knows where the dissonance lies. You have a choice. Bind yourselves closer, become its fingers and its eyes, and it will shield you from these Starfleet defilers. Or stand apart, and be broken when the song changes.”

A few heads nodded. Others turned away. Havel watched a woman in work overalls fold her arms, jaw set, eyes angry.

She tapped her wrist.

“Ground two to ground one,” she murmured. “We have six obvious Pilgrims in the main dome, plus half a dozen colonists who are listening with mixed levels of enthusiasm. So I’d prefer not to start a firefight in the co-op hall.”

Kincaid’s reply came after a brief pause. “Well now, Lieutenant,” he said. “I share that preference. Let’s see if we can give our zealots something else to think about.”

On the Victory, Hardy brought up the internal feeds Jevlak had managed to piggyback through the colony’s battered systems. A schematic of the dome’s interior glowed with tagged life-signs in amber and red.

“I can give you a distraction,” he said into the open channel. “The pattern has lost its mast and its satellites so we reckon it will be listening very closely to anything that looks like an attempt to reassert control. If we trip the right alarms in the agricultural subgrid, the Pilgrims may feel compelled to investigate.”

“Yes, as the captain says,” Jevlak added. “I believe that I can make the power flicker across a variety of systems and it should be visible to you.”

“Please do,” Kincaid said. “Ground two, stand by. Hopefully your Pilgrims will take the bait.”

Havel watched the hall, counting breaths. The Pilgrim on the crate paused mid-tirade as the lights dimmed. They flickered twice, then steadied. Somewhere off to the side, a pump whined and stopped. The colonists shifted uneasily.

“The pattern is under attack,” the preacher snapped. “They are trying to cut you off from its grace. You must…”

A woman in the crowd, small, wiry, with a familiar set to her shoulders, stood up.

“No,” she said flatly. “You lot of fucking freaks are on borrowed town. Bugger off.”

He glared at her.

“Aram Kindek,” he said, with the air of someone exhausted by the name. “You still think your co-operative is a match for what has been offered.”

“I think we got along fine growing our own food and paying our own debts before some box on a chain started telling us to following some fucking pattern,” she said.

There was a murmur of agreement that had not been there before.

One of the other Pilgrims leaned over and muttered in the preacher’s ear. He frowned, looked towards the door.

“The subgrid is unstable,” he said. “The Pattern whispers of interference in the hydro controls. We must see to it. Brother, you stay and hold them.”

Two of the greys peeled off, heading for the side exit that led towards the environmental systems. Havel smiled grimly.

“Now,” she whispered.

She slapped the wall control. The corridor door snapped open. Her team poured into the hall, phasers up.

“Starfleet security!” she shouted. “Everyone stay calm. Hands where we can see them. If you’re wearing a reliquary and thinking of doing anything heroic, I would strongly advise a different life choice.”

The preacher spun, dragging something from his belt. A small reliquary, larger than the pendants, crackling with stored charge. His hand twitched in a motion.

Havel shot him centre mass before he could finish the gesture. Her phaser was set low, but the combination of energy discharge and the cube’s feedback tore him from the crate and flung him back into the wall. He slid down, insensate.

For a moment, the hall froze. Colonists stared. A man in a grey tunic half rose, then thought better of it when two phasers swung his way.

“Everyone take a breath,” Havel said, more calmly now. “If you’re a colonist, you sit down, you keep your hands visible, and you wait. If you’re a Pilgrim, put whatever you have in your hands – or around your neck – on the floor very, very slowly and back away from it.”

Kindek gave her a short, sharp nod. “About time,” she said.

At the mast station, Kincaid supervised the securing of the three captured Pilgrims. Gallagher’s people had fitted them with restraints and slapped blanking clamps over their reliquaries: small, ugly pieces of equipment that Jevlak insisted on, brute-forcing a localised counter-field.

“They’re peaceful enough now,” Gallagher said. “When they wake up, they may not bless us.”

“Well now,” Kincaid replied. “They’lll have to take a number. There may be a queue.”

He glanced at the reliquaries embedded in the control consoles.

“And these?” he asked.

Jevlak answered at once over the comm.

“Now that the mast is isolated and the emitters are up, you can remove them,” she said. “Use the insulated cutters we gave you.

Gallagher nodded to two of her team, who began unplugging the devices with the same care one might use on an unexploded shell.

Kincaid tapped his wrist. “Victory, ground one,” he said. “Mast station secured. Pilgrims neutralised. Local nodes in hand. How does the rest of the board look?”

“The habitation dome is under control,” Hardy said. “Lieutenant Havel reports three Pilgrims stunned, four in custody, and a room full of very annoyed farmers. Two of the more devoted have attempted to flee in the direction of the hydroponics. I have tagged them for you.”

“Well,” Kincaid said. “We cannot have that.”

He looked at Gallagher. “Pack up the choir,” he said. “I’m going to take a stroll.”

The two fleeing Pilgrims ran with a peculiar, jerky gait, as if their own bodies did not quite match the rhythm in their heads. They were heading towards one of the smaller outbuildings on the settlement’s western edge, a low, windowless structure that had once housed an auxiliary water treatment plant.

Hardy watched their progress from the bridge.

“Jevlak,” he said. “That building.”

“Secondary infrastructure, captain” she said. “It was originally for grey water processing but I am reading a strong reliquary presence. If they reach it, they may be able to do some harm.”

“Or at least make a mess,” Hardy said. “Ground one, they’re heading for a collection of reliquaries. I can put you on the roof of the building or at the door. I wouldn’t recommend transporting inside, unless you’re feeling particularly reckless, commander.”

“I’ve had my quota of recklessness for the week,” Kincaid replied. “Put us on the roof please, captain.”

The transporter effect took him mid-step. An instant later he stood on rough, corrugated metal, the building’s roof flexing very slightly under his weight. The wind was stronger up here.

Gallagher and two of her people materialised beside him, rifles ready. “Ladder on the far side,” she said, checking her tricorder . “Two targets inside, plus a cluster of reliquaries. The cubes are already active.”

Kincaid moved to the roof hatch, its hinges rusted but intact. He could hear voices below, raised, urgent.

“The pattern will not be silenced!” one Pilgrim was saying. “We can wake it here. We can…”

He signalled. One of the Hazard officers slapped a charge on the hatch and they stepped back. The explosion was small and precise, blowing the hinges without sending shrapnel down into the room.

Kincaid dropped through the smoke.

The interior of the building was cramped and hot. Banks of old filtration equipment lined the walls, interspersed now with reliquary growths: cubes clustered like fungus, filaments running into pipes and control panels. The two Pilgrims had their hands on a central node, larger than the others, their faces upturned, eyes glazed.

Kincaid did not bother with warnings. He fired a wide-beam stun down the centre of the room. Both figures convulsed and fell, the energy field momentarily bending round the cubes.

The central reliquary flared. For a heartbeat, the room was full of a sound that was not sound: a pressure in the sinuses, a taste like metal on the tongue. The smaller cubes chimed in sympathy.

“Emitters,” Kincaid snapped.

Gallagher’s people were already moving, slapping portable units onto the walls. The field rolled out, rough and imperfect but effective. The glow from the cubes dimmed and dropped to a sullen shimmer.

Kincaid lowered his rifle, feeling the adrenaline settle. “That was Pala Ridge’s second close shave.”

He looked down at the unconscious Pilgrims. “Bind them,” he said. “We’ll transport the whole lot up to the Victory.”

It took most of the next two hours to finish the work.

Security officers moved through the colony under Havel’s supervision, checking homes and workshops, collecting reliquaries from willing hands and prying them away from the reluctant with as much gentleness as the circumstances allowed. Kindek walked with them, pointing out places where the pattern had entrenched itself in infrastructure.

The mast remained dark, its insult to the sky neatly contained. The satellites above, robbed of power and purpose, drifted under tow. In orbit, the Pilgrim freighters sat in the Victory’s tractor beams.

At the end of it, Kincaid stood once more at the edge of the settlement, the cool air sharp on his face. He tapped his wrist.

“Victory, ground one,” he said. “Pala Ridge is as safe as we can make it for now. The colonists are grumpy, but free to be grumpy on their own terms.”

Hardy’s reply was quieter than before. “Very good, Mr Kincaid,” he said. “Bring your people home. We’ll have words with our guests in the brig and then see about our next steps.”

Kincaid glanced back at the colony. Kindek stood near the co-op hall, talking to Havel. Her expression was tired and fierce. The mast loomed above them, not yet forgiven.

He signalled to Gallagher and the others. The transporter beam took them, carrying them back up into the waiting light of the Victory, leaving Pala Ridge with its scars and its second chance.