Iskander al-Kwaritzmi, Personal Log, supplemental: we have landed in the shuttlebay of the USS Franscini. The ship seems to be inert, but in one piece.

From the front viewing window of the Mesa, the shuttlebay of the USS Franscini looked empty and desolate. The only light was coming from the two shuttles, creating harsh shadows that made everything feel claustrophobic.

“That’s not good” said Commander Siouinon. “Everyone close their EV suit.”

The away team members nodded and complied. They had, of course, been dressed in the EV suit from the very beginning, but hadn’t raised the helmet. Now, at a touch on the wrist-mounted commands, the suit whirred and sealed.

Iskander descended from the shuttle and turned on his shoulder-lights. The shuttlebay of the Franscini was in all similar to the one of the Redding — maybe a bit larger, but it was difficult to tell in this obscurity. There were a couple of other shuttles parked, and a good number of large crates (some of Starfleet design, some not) of indeterminate origin.

“Computer: lights” called someone; nothing happened.

A stray light from the shuttles shone a moment the large red Starfleet Delta that was mounted above the shuttlebay door, and to the writing below it — USS Franscini. It looked pristine.

There was no sign of life, nor sign of damage.

He looked at the other shuttle, the Sierra, where the other half of the away team, lead by Commander Vistia Xe, was descending.

“Situation” ordered the Deltan commander in her usual placate but decisive tone of voice. She was holding her phaser and not a tricorder, like the other Security team-members.

Iskander took his tricorder and quickly evaluated the situation. To his dismay, the tricorder didn’t seem to be working properly. Once barely compensated for that, he couldn’t detect damage to the structure, nor to the EPS network. Everything except the force field was powered-down.

“Report” requested Commander Xe.

“Heavy interference in the scanner functionalities” said Commander Siouinon. “It comes from both the ion storm and from the deflector dish — from within the ship, its strong field has the effect of an EM distortion field. I expect that communication will be difficult for our badges.”

“No sign of damage of any sort to the ship” announced Iskander.

“There is minimal life support: temperature is being maintained, but oxygen levels are not being replenished. It should be stale but fine to breathe” said Sirti-nei-Plex. “There’s still artificial gravity, though.”

“There’s lifesigns, but not in this section of the ship, and nowhere close the number that we’d expect” reported Friedrichsen.

“Be more specific” said Commander Xe.

“Crew compartment of a Parliament-class ship is 450. According to out records, it had 447 on board last week. Now I’m picking up… at most 80 lifesigns all over the ship, although I can’t know where.”

“Where’s everyone else, then?” wondered Siouinon. “Bodies?”

Friedrichsen seemed to hesitate looking at his tricorder.

“Unclear, Commander.”

For a couple of minutes, the leaders of the away team — Vistia Xe, Siouinon, Commander Zekan — consulted amongst themselves while the rest of the crew searched the shuttlebay.

Iskander and Diran found a computer panel and tried to access it. It was completely dead.

“Can we reactivate it?” asked Diran.

They opened it and tried to get a line with the computer, to no avail.

“My guess is that the line to the main computer core has been cut” reasoned Iskander. “No orders can be given from here, and no inter-ship communication can be established.”

Lieutenant Friedrichsen, who had overheard, looked at the two engineers with a clouded expression.

“Was this made on purpose or on accident?”

“If it was an accident, I can’t understand why they wouldn’t have repaired it” answered Iskander. “The computer core is still operational, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to run the deflector dish.”

The senior crew called — it was time to know what to do.

__________________________________________________________________________

The away team was split in two.

The pilots would secure the shuttles. Iskander’s half — grumpy Commander Siouinon, Lieutenant Friedrichsen, Sirti-nei-Plex, Diran Koli and himself — would head for Main Engineering. The rest would head for the Bridge.

“We are going to lose communications quickly” reminded them Commander Vistia Xe at the door of the shuttlebay. “If it is possible, we are to reactivate intercom and ship-wide computer systems; alternatively we are to rein in the deflector dish’ perturbation. Should the mission prove to be a critical failure, the meeting point is here in the shuttlebay. Understood?”

Everyone nodded.

“May our discipline serve us well” said Commander Vistia Xe, and she opened the door of the shuttlebay.

The corridors of the Parliament-class starship were eerie: desert, dead, dark except for the lights of the EV suits.

Everyone had kept their helmets on even with the knowledge that both oxygen and temperature levels were stable. That made Iskander nervous: while he was reasonably used to wearing one, in this environment it constrained his capacity to look around: each movement of a light, each reflection on a wall, each sudden movement alerted him, and he had to really shift his weight and his torso to get a good view and reassure himself that it had been nothing.

The corridors, except for their unnatural quiet, seemed normal, yet every now and then the squad would come across a misplaced object on the floor: an abandoned work kit, a spilled crate lying on its side, a stray phaser, a forgotten tricorder, a wall section that had opened for repairs and never closed. Whatever had happened, it had possibly left the crew of the Franscini running and scrambling.

Iskander studied his squad mates.

Ensign Diran Koli had slowly lost their usual mirth and optimism. A relative new arrival on the Redding from the Academy, they hadn’t yet seen much away team activity, and no direct confrontation with an enemy. They had become taciturn, but their youthful face remained relatively expressionless: only the eyes wondered from side to side, restlessly.

Lieutenant JG Sirti-nei-Plex looked nervous. In part because his face was moist — had set his EV suit to the high-humidity setting (Arcadians being amphibious, they often needed to be in water or in a very damp environment) — but in part because he tended to pout and to bite his lower lip when stressed. He brandished his tricorder as if it was a phaser.

Lieutenant Friedrichsen seemed the most at ease. He was the vanguard of the team, shining his phaser rifle lamp in each corridor and door that they came across, communicating with the team with gestures of the hand and sweeps of the arms. Iskander couldn’t see him through his helmet, but he imagined him focused, attentive, perfectly in his element.

Commander Therese Siouinon was looking at her tricorder the whole time and harrumphing with some frustration. One could tell that this was a puzzle to her — where was the crew, why was the ship without power, who had caused all of this — and for now all she could do was collecting readings on a crippled tricorder. Every now and then she moved a hand up as if to rearrange her hair — a gesture she was known for doing — and in doing so hit the helmet she kept forgetting she was wearing.

“Any idea of where the lifesigns are?” asked Friedrichsen.

Iskander looked at his own tricorder. He had himself too tried to run a scan for lifesigns, but the interference made it look like the signals kept jumping position.

“Could be in the next corridor, could be on the other side of the ship” answered Siouinon, terse. “Keep your eyes peeled.”

Iskander looked on the side and, just as Commander Siouinon was saying that, saw something.

“Commander” he called, and pointed.

A wall panel had been removed on their right, as they had seen already a couple until now, but its insides had been torn, cables broken, isolinear chip removed.

There were droplets of blood on the floor.

Therese Siouinon signed to Friedrichsen to take guard, and pointed Iskander and Diran to look at the panel. She knelt next to a spill of blood and pointed her tricorder at it.

Iskander and Diran studied quickly the interior of the broken panel. It wasn’t in any way special — an ODN local manifold allocated to the inertial system — and whomever had done this hadn’t had a plan, but had rather removed parts and components without proper equipment nor apparent purpose.

Diran pointed at some metallic edges that had been broken.

“This has been done by hand. Someone has torn these by hand” they said. “They have hurt themselves and bled all over the place.”

Iskander picked up a gravofluidic container — a roundish object — and looked at its edge. It had been cracked open, yet there was no fluid. And on the edge there were, oddly, a series of irregular forceful markings.

“These are… teeth marks” he whispered, loud enough for the communication system of the EV suit to pick up.

“Teeth marks?” repeated Sirti-nei-Plex. “Someone has bitten a gravofluidic unit?”

Siouinon raised, walked there, and grabbed the egg-shaped container, studying it intently. Iskander was about to remark this forceful — and a bit rude — action but he looked at her and saw, on her face, fear.

“Tellarite teeth” she assessed. “Like the blood.”

“Do Tellarites usually try to eat machinery or is this very, very, very unusual?” asked Friedrichsen.

“Yes” answered Siouinon. Iskander’s brain knew that she had automatically answered like this because Freidrichsen had asked a question with a A-or-not-A form. She shook herself with urgency. “Let’s move quickly. We are not aborting the mission — we are to get to Main Engineering. Quickly. It’s not very far.”

The squad resumed its advance, now all with phasers raised and tricorders stowed away (except Sirti). They turned a corner and saw three figures, maybe fifty meters away on this new corridor.

The three figures were next to an open panel, just like the one that the squad had just examined. Sparks flowed from the panel, probably from a recent cut, and their bright light, almost hurtful to eyes adapted to the darkness, made it difficult to focus on the figures.

Siouinon signaled to stop.

One of the figures turned their head in the direction of the squad, and then turned their whole body in their direction. Despite the figure being quite slim, their movements were too slow, as if they were moving through gelatine; their body language was uncoordinated, clumsy, hostile.

“Commander” said Diran Koli, the empath of the squad. “They — I’m feeling –”

The second and the third figure had now slowly — excruciatingly slowly — turned, as if to face the away team.

One of them had a red light mounted on their head, where an eye would normally be. For a moment this scene imprinted itself in Iskander’s mind almost violently: three dark figures standing in a shower of sparks, a red laser light inset in one of the heads.

BORG, he thought.

“Run” ordered in a whisper Siouinon.

They ran in the direction of Main Engineering.