As the Arrow-class runabout left the hangar bay, it would make an immediate course change up and over the saucer before it made one more sharp turn, where it now headed straight for the planet. Or more precisely, the city ruins that was blanketed by the raging storm.

Inside the runabout, Grak manned the co-pilot seat while Tagg operated the controls. Grak had not had the chance to get to know the Ferengi who was the Chief Pilot of the Sovereign, but he had heard plenty that the young lad was very good at his job. While Grak provided all his faith and trust into the Ferengi pilot, a piece of him was worried that this was going to go bad. Grak could feel it in his gut. This storm, it just did not seem natural.

Grak and his team had done all they could to reinforce the runabout’s structural integrity field, as well as install a secondary field, in case of an emergency. Not only that, Tagg assisted with modifying the ablative armor to have a polarization field, one that Grak could manipulate to try and resist the lightning strikes. Although, Grak’s primary concern was the runabout’s shields. They chose to make these modifications to this runabout and not to the Danube or any of the shuttles, was because the simulations indicated that an Arrow-class was more likely to succeed than the others. They were about to find out if the simulations were accurate.

Grak watched as the viewport glowed with the sullen ochre of the planet as they descended into the atmosphere. Then the view grew darker when the massive, raging sandstorm emerged from the bottom of the viewport, until it was all they could see.

“Here we go, sir.” Said Tagg.

Grak entered commands, where he activated the runabouts entire sensor array to gather as much data as possible. He not only wanted a full feed of what the storm is doing, but he also wanted to catalog it, to see if his gut was on point. “Sensors have picked up the wind shear velocity of the storm. We are looking at gusts of seven hundred kilometers an hour.”

Tagg grunted. “I thought the ships sensors said that the storm was getting worse. That’s not even mach speeds.”

“Nevertheless,” Grak continued. “It will cause a slight drain on our shields, with the wind pummeling it with sand. Not to mention,” As they entered the storm, the runabout began to rock slightly as the inertia dampers attempt to compensate. And then there was the sudden flash of lightning right across their bow, that curved and struck their craft. “The shields will have to endure that, as well.”

“I am able to maintain our course,” said Tagg. “We should arrive at the temple’s entrance in a few-” He was interrupted when the craft suddenly rocked way more violently than before. Then both their consoles began to flash red warning lights at them. “Shields down to sixty percent! How?!”

Grak pulled up two separate logs. Sensors and shields. “This doesn’t make any sense! The first strike was in the gigajoule range of energy. But the second strike was over five thousand terajoules!” Grak quickly went to work in re-routing power to the shield generators. “I am taking power away from all non-essentials!” Soon, majority of the stations around them went dark, the lights went out, only to be replaced by the red glow of the emergency lights.

“That’s not all!” Tagg grunted, as Grak could see the Ferengi was frantically hitting the same few buttons, over and over again. “The wind speed! It’s like it got way worse!”

Grak checked and his eyes nearly popped out of his skull. “Detecting wind velocities reaching up to four thousand kilometers per hour!”

Grak saw the look of shock on Tagg’s face when the Ferengi looked at him. “What?! How is that possible?!” But he saw Tagg return to his controls and Grak could see that Tagg had taken some of the re-routed power and placed it into the engines. “Dammit! I can’t descend any further! It’s like the storm is trying to keep me from the temple!”

Before Grak could say anything, the craft rocked, way more violently than before. They were struck again by lightning but this one was far more powerful than the last. Grak looked at his instruments as they flickered and he saw the log. “That’s impossible! That lightning strike was powerful enough to take out our shields completely!”

“Activating the polarized field!” Said Tagg. “I’m still not descending!”

Grak used the sensor readings to determine what kind of charge the last few lightning strikes were, and he reversed the polarity of the polarized field around their light ablative armor and prayed. Grak looked up from his instruments at the viewport, just in time to see another lightning bolt head right for them and when it struck the craft, it was still violent but less so from before. Still, it was not as if it didn’t do any damage.

“Primary power regulators and couplings are fried!” Grak shouted over the loud hissing of gasses that had begun to spew over their heads from a ruptured pipe. “Switching to backups! Lieutenant Tagg, we cannot continue this endeavor! We must return to the ship!”

“But we have to save them!” Tagg replied.

“We can’t save them if we are destroyed, Lieutenant!” Grak told him. “Now get us out of here!”

“I’m trying!” Tagg answered. “I wanted to use the wind speeds to propel us, but every time I turn the craft so that we ride the wind; I just end up facing against it!”

His gut was spot on. This storm was definitely not natural. “Find a way out of this, Lieutenant! I trust you!” Grak hoped the young Ferengi had an ace up his sleeve but was afraid to do it because he was here. Perhaps the little push will get them to take the necessary risk.

“Hang on!” Tagg said, which had confirmed Grak’s suspicions. He saw that Tagg was about to engage the emergency boost to the engines, thus, the Tellarite gripped the edges of his arm rest very tightly. When Tagg pressed it, the inertia dampers did not compensate right away, and thus they were pulled back into their seats. The view of the storm felt like it was going to be the last thing they’d see, until it was replaced with the view of the upper most atmosphere of the planet, and then soon, the stars.

An hour would pass, both Tagg and Grak had returned to the Sovereign and begun their debriefing with the senior staff. During that time, Grak’s team studied the damage that the runabout had taken, while Bazial’s team went over the sensor logs. But it was pretty clear.

“You believe the storm was targeting you?” Maxwell asked.

Grak nodded his head. “Absolutely, Captain. At first, when we entered the storm, it seemed like we were going to complete our mission and rescue the away team.”

“But then,” Tagg took over. “It was like someone grabbed the knob and increased the intensity ten fold.”

Grak pressed some buttons and the screen on the wall at the end of the briefing room came to life, where there was a graph that showed the wind speeds and lightning strikes intensity from when they entered the storm to when they left. “None of it makes any sense, for a natural weather phenomenon. Thus, it must be artificial. Something down there, has taken the sandstorms on this planet and magnified it a hundred times. And when we tried to go in to get our people, it was like it was increased a thousand times.”

Bates slapped the palms of his hands down onto the table, where it did exactly what he wanted. He now had everyone’s attention, especially Grak’s. “There might be a way to end this storm once and for all.” Said Bates and once he was certain he had their undivided attention, he continued. “I been doing some research. There is a theory of possibly ending a storm by introducing hyper-density cryo-aerosols directly into the storm cell. We have specialized coolant on board in our cargo bays. I can get a team to modify several photon torpedoes, set them to proximity charges and have them detonated at various points of the super cell.” Bates pressed some buttons and the screen changed to the sandstorm on the surface, with multiple red dots, which seemed to indicate where Bates would fire those torpedoes.

Grak thought it over for a moment before he pushed himself out of his chair. “Captain. It is worth a shot to make this attempt. With our failure, we might as well try anything.”

Maxwell looked to Graves, who stared back before he made a nod. “We have to try,” said Graves.

Grak saw Maxwell turn his head and look straight at him. “You two have a go. Make the necessary modifications.” Said Maxwell.

Grak wasted no time and neither did Bates, as the Tellarite found himself in a chase after the man who’s long, quick strides made it difficult for him to keep up.

Mizu swung her torchlight around the corner into yet another room full of bones. They never got the chance to mourn the loss of their friend. Every chamber they came across, was filled with bones. Bones of the civilization that had once lived in this large city. They even went down a floor and it was all the same and the further they went down, the more chambers they found that were filled with bones. One of them actually had some sort of cloth or paper with symbols on it.

Elidia said that it was some form of language and that it would take time for her to decipher it. They used that time to take a break and figure out where to go to next.

“I believe there is only one more floor left beneath us.” Said Riov. “But the tricorder is having difficulties mapping out the temple. I think there is something beneath us that is causing some sort of interference but it’s not directly beneath us, more like…further away.”

“Natural or artificial?” Mizu asked as she stepped up to Riov’s side and took a look at his tricorder.

“Possibly artificial, much like those obelisks you and K’Roll told me about.” Riov told her as he cycled through different scanners. “But it is hard to say.”

“Monster.” Mizu heard Elidia and turned on her heel to look behind her. “What’s wrong?” Mizu asked as she looked at the blue woman.

“The being that came from space,” Elidia began. “This, Vezda that Commander Riov told me about. It enslaved these people.” Elidia then looked toward the bones before she started to rub her eyes with the back of her hands. “He forced them to mine for something…. They were mined to extinction.”

“You would think that they would of fought back.” Said K’Roll.

“No.” Riov responded. Mizu turned to look at the commander. “The Vezda has no issues displaying their power. If there was even the slightest hint of an uprising, it would demonstrate its power in the most inhumane way possible.”

Mizu had noticed Riov had that data padd open for quite a while. When she had inquired earlier, it had all the information that Starfleet had on the Vezda. Was it really true that they were so cruel and vile? And she thought the Borg were a nightmare. These Vezda’s…they take the cake.

Mizu was about to say something to Riov, when she noticed his eyes went so wide that they looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets. At first she was curious but then she realized what had shocked him so. It was just right there, right in front of both her and Riov. It was difficult to see but there was a shimmer, some strange bend of the light. Where once there was four individuals in this one chamber, there was now five.

“Mizu!” She heard Riov’s voice and suddenly she felt something hit her in the chest that knocked her back. She was startled so much by it that it had knocked her right off of her feet and she landed on her rear end on the floor. When she looked, she suddenly realized that Riov was the one who shoved her out of the way, so that he could take her place directly in front of the invisible entity.

She could barely see what was going on. The shimmer was barely there, so if there was movement, she could hardly tell at all. But obviously Riov could. Because the second after he had taken her place, his arms were raised up to block some sort of attack, to protect his face and chest from it. And then she saw it. Something stuck into Riov’s right arm until it had completely pierced through and it was never more clear to Mizu. Some strange, sharp weapon stuck out from where it entered and where it exited on Riov’s arm. It did not matter if the thing was invisible, she could clearly see that it was there.

“RIOV!!” Mizu heard Elidia’s screams drown out Riov’s cries of pain. All she could do was sit there and watch in horror as some invisible creature attacked them.