The Huygens Incident (Pt. 1 of 3)
Posted on Thursday February 7th, 2019 @ 17:26 hours by Mayterial Droz
Mission:
Short Treks
Location: Naylaa's personal quarters, Deck 2, U.S.S. Huygens
Timeline: Stardate: 72830.6
1587 words - 3.2 OF Standard Post Measure
It took a moment for Naylaa to gather her senses and realise why she had woken up in the middle of the night. There was a dim purple hue that spread across the room from outside. Her window had been looking over the nebula they had been studying over the past few days. It had been an inert black mass before now. The beautiful dance of lights outside her window stood in stark contrast with this memory. The black cloud seemed to have come alive with powerful energy currents. A purple light travelled through the nebula, reminiscent of lightning, hopping from cloud to cloud in particularly bad thunderstorms back home.
The USS Huygens, a Nova-class vessel, shuddered for a moment as manoeuvring thrusters were activated. Naylaa saw the cloud slowly pivot away from her window. She smiled as she pulled herself out of bed. She really wanted to see the telemetry come in from the probe they had launched earlier today. She immediately started looking around the floor to find her uniform. It was difficult to see in the unlit room, but with help of a bright flash coming from the edge of the nebula outside she spotted the teal trim of her collar draped over a nearby chair. She started to shuffle over to the other side of the room. Just as she was about to reach out for the clothes, a huge jolt to the ship made her lose her footing. She stumbled, lost her balance, but was able to keep from falling over.
She picked up the uniform and started to get dressed. She headed for the door where she always took her boots off, uniform jacket in hand. Suddenly the room lit up with the same purple burst of energy she had seen outside of her window. This time it came from the corridor, the light bursting in through the seams of her door. Naylaa stumbled backwards, another jolt to the ship sent her flying off her feet and backward. With a dull thud, her head hit the slate grey, standard issue, Starfleet coffee table in the middle of her small room.
It took Naylaa a moment and a few deep breaths to recover from being swept off her feet. She felt her heart beat loudly in her chest, in her throat, and in her head. Another sharp breath through her nose. Letting it slowly escape through her mouth. There was a very sharp pain on the back of her head. She reached her hand into her auburn hairs and examined if there were any open wounds. It was immediately clear when she reached the point of impact. A jolt of pain shot through her skull and the pounding of her heart became louder. The blood had caked her auburn hairs together, it was already dried up. The wince and grimace renewed the pain and spread it to the rest of her head.
"How long have I been out?" Naylaa wondered out loud before sitting up slowly.
"Computer, lights. Slowly." There was an expectation of the familiar positive beep followed by the slow and comfortable build-up of light in her room. Instead, there was only silence and darkness.
"Computer, status report." Again, nothing. It was starting to worry the Orion scientist and she scrambled to her feet as rapidly as her pounding headache would allow her. A moment of hesitation before she started walking in the direction of the door. It didn’t part automatically to her approach. She stepped further towards it and pressed the button next to the door. Again there was no response. Her heart started to race again, the pounding spreading through her entire body as adrenaline was starting to surge. She removed the panel on the side to reveal the manual release. She pulled the small lever and heard that comforting hiss. The door didn’t open. She put a hand on it and pushed it to the side, creating an opening big enough for herself to squeeze through.
The absence of any light is hard to imagine. Even in space, out here on the frontier, there was the light of stars coming through as pinpricks of light, representing a hope of new worlds and new civilisations. This corridor had none of that. Every display, every light strip, every indicator light had turned black and the resulting darkness was suffocating. Slowly inching forward on her socks Naylaa tried to look up and down the corridor.
"Hello?" There was only silence in response. She put her hand on the wall to her right. She wanted to find out what was going on and decided that the best place to find answers was on the bridge.
Using the bulkheads to guide her she tentatively started her way down the corridor in the direction of the turbolift. Her hand sliding down the metallic walls told her that they weren’t as smooth as they appeared in the light. The metal under her hand transitioned into a glass panel, normally it would display status or directions. She felt a crack in the pane and pulled her hand back before placing it back on the wall lower to entirely avoid the cracked glass against the wall. If the pane was cracked it would mean there was probably glass on the ground. She couldn’t see the other side. She swallowed a lump in her throat and slid one foot forward over the ground. Her concerns were immediately confirmed, the sharp sound of glass shards echoed around the pitch black. She scolded herself for not putting on her shoes. Another slide forward, she felt something sharp dig into the side of her foot, it seemed to break the fabric of her sock but not the flesh of her foot. The air she sucked in made a hiss between her clenched teeth as she slid her other foot forward, hoping the change in pressure didn’t result in the glass breaking her skin. Another step, the shard scratching the top layer. Slowly but surely she made her way past the field of glass.
There were two crew quarters between Naylaa’s hut and the turbo lift. She continued her way down the hallway, steadily closing the remaining distance. Feeling more confident now she picked up the pace. One door passed her fingertips, but as she expected the second one her arm disappeared into a void. At the same time her left foot connected with something obstructing her path, sending her hurtling to the floor for the second time that night. She felt a body underneath her that cushioned her fall. Through the open door, the starlight outside the window lazily drifted by, shedding a small shimmer of light into the room. Pushing herself up off the ground she sat up on her knees and the shape of a person became visible in front of her.
"Are you okay?" She put her hands on the body and shook it, she felt no movement. A shiver crawled up her spine as she moved her hands to try and find a pulse in the person’s neck. She couldn’t remember who it was that stayed in the quarters right next to the turbo lift. Tears started to form in her eyes as her shaking hands found the neck. She tried to steady herself to feel a pulse, silently sobbing, she held her breath. There was nothing but a cold, lifeless body under her fingers. Tears were rolling down her face as desperation was starting to set in as the situation was looking more and more dire. Wiping an arm across her face she dried the tears and took in a few deep breaths. The faint smell of burnt hair entered her nostrils and sent her into a coughing fit. She quickly scrambled to her feet, she needed to get to the bridge fast, she stepped over the body and continued her path to the turbo lift shaft.
She decided to crawl one deck up through the Jefferies tubes rather than taking the risk on a turbo lift ride under these circumstances. Coming up to the top deck Naylaa expected to have to push a panel aside to get onto the bridge. She pushed herself out of the tube and stood upright on the bridge. She was not prepared for the scene in front of her, causing her to stagger backwards and lean against the wall behind her. On the far side of the room there was once a huge viewscreen that allowed people on the bridge to look what was going outside. There was a huge gaping hole. A forcefield flickered in the place of the viewscreen. Black scorch marks across the floor carved a path in the direction of the command pit. Whomever had been on duty that night had not survived. Charred remains sat in the centre seat. Naylaa her breathing was shallow, a panicked set of gasps. She looked around and saw bodies thrown about the bridge. Scorch marks across their faces and the rest of their bodies. All of the displays on the bridge were wrecked, the same as in the corridor on the deck she came from.
The ship was still slowly rotating from when the thrusters had fired when she woke up. The gaping hole where the viewscreen had been started to give a good view of the black nebula, it was now as inert as she remembered it being when she retired to her quarters this evening.
[To Be Continued]