Initial Survey – It Didn’t Make Sense – Star Trek Fanfiction (Red Directive #14)
It felt like a mistake.
Commander T’Varen and I scanned our surroundings.
No movement.
No sound beyond the faint hum of station power cycling somewhere deep within the structure.
I stepped further into the station anyway.
“Environmental systems are stable,” Commander T’Varen reported from just behind my right shoulder, walking up next to me with her PADD in hand. Her voice carried evenly, but there was a precision to it—sharper than usual. “Oxygen levels within acceptable parameters. No immediate hazards detected.”
“Only immediate?” I muttered.
A beat.
“The skepticism of humans is not a favorable quality,” she replied.
I shrugged and gave her an awkward smile.
With her usual Vulcan blank expression, she turned and started to walk down the corridor toward Ops.
Our boots echoed too loudly against the deck as we moved deeper into the corridor. The sound didn’t disperse the way it should have. It lingered—bouncing back at us like the station was listening.
It made me wonder just how long it was going to take the colonists to get completely settled.
EOS Prospera was a far stretch from Deep Space Nine at the moment.
Ahead of us, a set of doors marked COMMAND OPERATIONS stood partially open.
No security lock.
No damage.
Just… open.
We both slowed as we approached.
“Commander.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“That anomaly we tracked—before it disappeared.”
“—Did not behave in accordance with any known spatial distortion,” she finished.
“And now we’re here,” I said, gesturing subtly to the silent corridor around us. “Right on schedule.”
“Correlation does not imply causation,” she said.
Another step.
“But it often invites investigation.”
Now we were back in agreement.
The doors to Ops slid open the rest of the way as we approached—responding to proximity, not command.
The room beyond was dark.
Not unpowered.
Just… waiting.
Consoles lined the perimeter in a circular configuration, their displays dim but active—low-level diagnostics flickering across the screens. The central command platform sat empty, its main interface idling as if expecting someone who never arrived.
I stepped inside first.
The air felt colder.
“Primary systems are in standby mode,” Commander T’Varen observed, moving toward one of the side consoles. Her fingers hovered over the controls before finally engaging them. “Minimal automated processes have been maintained. No evidence of catastrophic failure.”
“Or evacuation,” I added.
“Correct.”
Which meant—
“They didn’t leave.”
The words settled heavily between us.
Commander T’Varen began working the controls. “I am attempting to restore command-level access. Communications remain offline.”
“Drim’s working the relays,” I said, more to remind myself than her. “He’ll patch us through once he gets them back online.”
“Assuming the relays are the only issue,” she replied.
I didn’t answer that.
The main display flickered as she routed power through the system.
Paused.
Then surged.
Every console in the room came online at once—too fast, too clean. No staggered startup. No lag.
Just… instant synchronization.
Commander T’Varen’s hands stilled over the controls. “That was not a standard system initialization.”
“No,” I said, watching the display stabilize. “It wasn’t.”
A low vibration passed through the console beneath my hand.
Subtle.
Wrong.
“Captain,” Commander T’Varen said, her voice tightening just slightly. “There is a response delay in the system.”
“How long?”
“Three seconds.”
I frowned. “That’s—”
A sharp chirp cut through the room.
Both of us turned.
One of the auxiliary panels lit up—isolated from the rest of the system.
Incoming signal.
Not from the station.
Or the Cairo.
“Commander?”
“I am not routing that channel,” she said immediately.
The panel flickered again.
Then—
“Relay access established. You should have long-range comms now.”
Drim’s voice booming over the comms made us both jump slightly. Glad to see Vulcans can be human sometimes.
Text started scrolling cleanly across the display.
Normal.
Exactly what we were waiting for.
And somehow—
That made it worse.
I stepped toward the panel slowly.
“Drim, this is Captain Kelly. Confirm relay integrity and signal origin.”
A pause.
Too long.
Then—
“Relays are online. Signal path is clear. You’re good to transmit to Starfleet Command.”
Commander T’Varen looked at me.
“The response latency was… elevated,” she said quietly.
“Yeah,” I replied. “And he didn’t confirm origin.”
She moved to the central console, already pulling up the routing data.
“Relay network is active,” she said. “Signal path extends through the Bajoran Wormhole and secondary relay stations on both sides.”
“So it should work.”
“Yes.”
A beat.
“But it should not be immediate.”
I nodded once.
“Let’s try it.”
Commander T’Varen adjusted the controls.
“Routing transmission through EOS Prospera’s long-range array… compensating for subspace distortion…”
“Channel open.”
I straightened slightly.
“Starfleet Command, this is Captain Kelly of the USS Cairo. We have arrived at EOS Prospera. Initial survey underway. Stand by for full report.”
Commander T’Varen confirmed the send.
“Transmission sent.”
We waited.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Nothing.
“That delay is within expected parameters,” she said.
“Yeah.”
Then—
The console chirped.
Incoming signal.
Commander T’Varen’s eyes flicked to the readout.
“Response received.”
I frowned slightly.
“Already?”
She didn’t answer right away.
Instead—
“Captain… signal origin is… unclear.”
I stepped closer.
“Unclear how?”
“The transmission is routed through the relay network,” she said. “However… I cannot confirm that it originated from Starfleet Command.”
A chill settled in.
The channel was open.
Something was answering.
I didn’t touch the console.
“Put it on screen,” I said.
The display flickered to life.
No Starfleet insignia.
No transmission header.
Just a signal.
Repeating.
“Commander?” I said.
Her eyes moved quickly across the readouts. “This is not a standard communication format.”
“Can you isolate it?”
“I am attempting to.”
The signal shifted.
Not stabilizing.
Adapting.
Patterns forming—then breaking apart again.
Like it was trying to hold shape.
“Captain…” she said quietly.
“What?”
“It is using our relay frequencies.”
I frowned. “That’s not possible.”
“It is not standard,” she replied. “But it is occurring.”
The signal pulsed again.
Then—
The main display changed.
Not fully.
Just a section of it.
As if something had taken partial control.
Her eyes remained fixed on the screen.
Then—
A single line appeared.
Not transmitted.
Constructed.
YOU ARE NOT WHERE YOU SHOULD BE
I felt the air in the room shift.
Not physically.
Just—
Awareness.
Commander T’Varen didn’t move.
“It is not responding to us,” she said.
“It’s reacting,” I replied.
We both looked at each other, unsure of what we were witnessing. “Let’s call the senior staff to Ops.”
Commander T’Varen nodded in agreement, wide-eyed.
I tapped the console.
“Computer, notify all senior staff—report to Ops immediately.”
A brief pause.
“Priority one.”
No answer.
I raised an eyebrow.
Comms were just working…
“Acknowledged… notifying senior staff.”
The sudden loud response of the computer caught us both off guard again.
It seemed we were in for more than we bargained for. So far, this Federation refit wasn’t showing the best results.
Where was that signal coming from? Who wrote that message? And why?
I was starting to agree with whoever sent that message. Maybe we shouldn’t be here.
I scanned Ops and located the conference room. “Commander, keep trying to find the origin of the signal. I’m going to make sure everything is operational in the briefing room.”
“Yes, Captain.”
I walked around the consoles and stepped up onto the raised platform, the shift in elevation subtle—but enough to feel like I’d crossed into a different part of the station. Ops stretched out below us, quiet… waiting.
The lights started out dim as I stepped onto the platform, then shifted almost to full brightness as I continued toward the briefing room. I looked around curiously. Before I could even get my hand to the door panel, the briefing room door hissed open incredibly slowly.
Did the Federation refit the entire station with proximity sensors on everything?
Not all the way out here in the Gamma Quadrant.
Even for a Federation-refit frontier colony, with the alien architecture mixed in, having this many proximity sensors felt out of place.
Maybe it wasn’t Federation tech at all, and this was some other part of the systems already in place.
That seemed like a logical explanation.
I stepped into the briefing room, and more lights turned on immediately in a soft glow.
It felt like the station knew exactly where the perfect setting was for the lighting in each room.
Starting to get more comfortable with the idea that EOS Prospera had some high-tech unknown alien technology with extremely sensitive sensors, I continued to the front of the briefing room and tapped on the small panel on the table to activate it.
No weird transmissions.
No weird signals.
I let out a sigh of relief and pulled up the schematics of EOS Prospera to send to the viewscreen behind me.
I heard the viewscreen beep and turned around to start studying them before everyone arrived.
As soon as I was fully turned around, I immediately froze.
No schematics.
Just a single line of text.
YOU ARE NOT WHERE YOU SHOULD BE
I blinked in disbelief. Then it was gone.
This was no coincidence.
We were definitely way in over our heads.
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