Alone in the Dark - A Halloween Post

Posted on Thu Oct 31st, 2024 @ 1:31pm by Lieutenant Kaelen Voss

2,868 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Interlude 1 Gamma Quadrant
Location: USS Firebird

[ON]

Lieutenant Kaelen Voss stood alone on the bridge of the USS Firebird, his breath shallow, heart pounding. The emergency lights flickered erratically, casting long, shifting shadows that made the room seem alive. The hum of the ship’s engines—the heartbeat of any starship—was gone, leaving only an unsettling silence. What power remained was minimal—just enough to keep the life support systems on a trickle.

He adjusted his uniform, brushing off the dust that had settled across the console. The bridge was empty, abandoned. No officers at their posts. No crew at the helm. It was as if they had vanished mid-shift, leaving everything behind—half-filled coffee cups, a data pad abandoned on the captain’s chair. But the worst part was the eerie stillness, an absence so profound it gnawed at his nerves.

Kaelen rubbed his forehead. “What the hell happened here?”

“Voss to engineering,” Kaelen called into his commbadge. Static. He tried again. “Voss to medical. Anyone?” The only reply was the unsettling hiss of dead air.

He checked the chronometer on the console—it showed the correct date and time, but something felt… wrong. The Firebird should have been buzzing with the sounds of crew going about their tasks and the steady hum of engines keeping them on course. Instead, the ship drifted through deep space like a hollow shell. Derelict. Silent.

Kaelen started with the basics, bringing up what little was accessible on the damaged control interface. The ship’s logs were fragmented, large portions of data corrupted or outright missing. All he could confirm was that USS Firebird had been en route from DS18 to its next mission stop, and everything had been routine. Until it wasn’t.

“Computer,” Voss said, his voice echoing eerily in the empty bridge. “Pull up the crew manifest.”

The computer’s voice—usually calm and efficient—was sluggish, as if strained.

“Unable to comply. Partial crew data inaccessible.”

Kaelen ran a hand down his face, frustration gnawing at him. “Give me anything you’ve got.”

The manifest flickered onto the cracked screen, showing only his name:

“Lieutenant Kaelen Voss. Present.”

Nothing else. No listing of the rest of the crew. No indication that they had ever been there at all.

Armed with only a hand light, Voss left the bridge and made his way through the darkened corridors of the Firebird. The familiar layout of the ship, which had once felt comforting, now felt claustrophobic—like the walls were pressing in on him, narrowing with every step.

As he walked, the metal panels groaned underfoot, strange echoes reverberating down the corridor like distant footsteps. His flashlight beam cut through the thick, artificial gloom, revealing emergency bulkheads sealed tight in some sections and flickering wall panels in others.

He tried the crew quarters first. Empty. Every room meticulously clean, as if recently prepared for new arrivals—but no sign of personal belongings or anyone who had ever lived there. Beds made. Lockers shut. Nothing.
No sign of a struggle. No blood. Just… absence.

As Kaelen turned a corner toward the mess hall, he heard it.

A sound—faint but distinct—a low, rhythmic tapping. It echoed down the corridor, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He stopped in his tracks, holding his breath, trying to isolate the direction. The sound drifted just ahead, where the mess hall doors stood slightly ajar.

Heart racing, Voss approached slowly, flashlight raised. The doors hissed open reluctantly, grinding against their hinges.

The mess hall was empty—tables and chairs perfectly arranged; trays of food still set out as if the crew had just stepped away. But the food was untouched and cold, the drinks stale.

The rhythmic tapping continued—coming from the far wall.

Slowly, Kaelen approached, feeling every muscle in his body tighten with unease. He shone the flashlight beam along the wall—and froze.

One of the metal ventilation grates was vibrating rhythmically, as if something inside was tapping from the other side.

Kaelen clenched his jaw. “Hello?” His voice came out hoarse, barely more than a whisper. He crouched down, shining the flashlight directly into the slats.

For a brief moment, he could have sworn something was looking back at him.

Then the tapping stopped. Silence.

He stepped back, heart hammering. Was someone still on the ship? Or was something else playing tricks on him?

Voss knew he wouldn’t find any real answers in the mess hall. He needed to get to engineering. If there were any clues to what had happened—or a chance to restore full power—they would be there.

He descended to deck nine, the engineering hub, which was bathed in dim red emergency lights. The ship's core systems were offline, but the warp core still glowed faintly. It was a soft, pulsing blue deep within its glass chamber.

Kaelen approached the main console and tried to bring up the system diagnostics. The screens flickered erratically, glitching in and out of focus.

"Come on, come on..." Voss muttered, his fingers flying across the controls.

A fragment of a log file appeared:

"Disturbance detected—systems compromised—crew reporting.........—reactor containment unstable—initiating emergency lockdown—"

Then the screen went dark.

Voss swore under his breath, slamming the side of the console in frustration. Something terrible had happened here—something the system logs hadn’t fully recorded. And now he was trapped in the middle of it.

As he worked, a cold shiver ran down his spine. The air grew noticeably colder, and the hairs on his arms stood on end. Then, without warning—the lights flickered again. Just for an instant.

When they stabilized, Kaelen realized something was different. The tools he had placed beside the console were now scattered across the floor, as if someone had thrown them. But he was alone.

Right?

His heart pounded as he scanned the room, the beam of his flashlight dancing across the consoles and equipment. No one.

But something felt off. As if the very air in the room was shifting, closing in on him.

"Okay," Voss whispered to himself, trying to maintain control. "Focus. Get the power back online."

He returned to the console and began re-routing auxiliary power through the emergency systems. The ship groaned around him; the walls almost seemed to pulse.

And that’s when he noticed it.

The floor panels—some of them had been disturbed. Shifted slightly, as if something had crawled beneath them.

Kaelen knelt, inspecting the seams between the panels. A faint, greasy residue stained the edges. It smelled foul, like burnt plastic and rot.

Something unnatural had passed through here.

Voss stood, feeling the weight of the ship’s emptiness pressing down on him. A faint whisper drifted through the engineering deck. It wasn’t in any language he recognized—just fragmented syllables carried on the stale air.

He turned sharply, trying to locate the source, but the sound seemed to come from everywhere all at once, as if the walls themselves were murmuring.

“Who’s there?” Voss demanded, his voice echoing uselessly through the empty chamber.

The whispering ceased instantly.

Then, far down the corridor, he heard a distant clatter, like something metal falling to the floor.

Kaelen couldn’t ignore it. He grabbed a plasma torch from the tool rack, slinging it over his shoulder as a makeshift weapon, and made his way toward the sound. The deeper he ventured, the colder it became—a creeping, unnatural chill that gnawed at his bones.

He descended another level, into the maintenance tubes—a maze of tight passageways that twisted beneath the ship’s main decks. The walls seemed to close in the farther he went, the air growing thin and stale.

The lights flickered again, casting jagged shadows that made his skin crawl.

That’s when he saw it.

A figure.

Just at the edge of his vision—a fleeting silhouette, disappearing around the next corner.

Voss’s breath hitched. He knew he was supposed to be alone.

“Hey!” he shouted, chasing after the figure, his boots thudding against the metal floor.

He turned the corner—and found nothing. Just an empty tube stretching into darkness.

Kaelen there, heart pounding, feeling a surge of frustration—and fear. What the hell was going on?

Then the whispering returned, louder this time—more urgent. It slithered through the air, wrapping around his mind like tendrils of ice.

The shadows along the walls seemed to move on their own, writhing like serpents made of darkness. They pulsed in and out of existence with each flicker of the emergency lights. Kaelen gripped the plasma torch tighter, his palms slick with sweat. The rational part of his mind told him it was just a trick of the failing lights, just shadows playing tricks on his exhausted mind.

But deep down, he knew that wasn’t true.

He turned slowly, flashlight sweeping the tube. The ship felt alive—or worse, possessed by something unseen.

Then, the whispering grew louder. It wasn’t coming from outside—it was inside his head.

“Kaelen…”

The voice slithered through his thoughts, rasping like dry leaves dragged across a metal floor. His breath hitched. He knew that voice.

It was his own.

"Come find us," the whispered voice repeated.

Kaelen staggered backward, bumping into a bulkhead, his pulse hammering in his ears. The walls seemed to pulse with every heartbeat, the ship breathing in sync with his fear. He had to get out of the maintenance tunnels—now.

Voss turned sharply, retreating back toward the main deck as fast as his legs would carry him. The maintenance shafts felt endless, twisting deeper into darkness, each corner he turned looking the same as the last. His ribs burned with every breath, and the cold seemed to bite deeper into his skin the farther he ran.

Somewhere in the distance, the faint clatter of metal echoed again closer this time. Kaelen tried to tell himself it was just loose equipment shifting in the ship's gravity, but the rhythmic cadence of the noise suggested something deliberate.

As he turned a final corner, the emergency lights failed entirely, plunging him into pitch black.

"Dammit!" Voss hissed, fumbling with the plasma torch. He flicked the switch on the torch, and a soft blue flame sputtered to life, illuminating only a narrow slice of the corridor ahead. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

The cold air in the corridor seemed heavier now thick and oppressive. It felt like he was walking through a fog made of shadows. Each breath was shallow, each exhale visible in the frigid air.

He pressed forward, fighting the overwhelming urge to panic. He needed to get back to the control room, back to some semblance of safety—if there was any left.

Kaelen finally reached the hatch leading out of the maintenance tunnels. He slammed his fist into the release mechanism, and the hatch hissed open with a reluctant groan. He stumbled through the opening, back into the corridor on Deck Nine, his flashlight beam flickering weakly.

He leaned against the bulkhead, panting, forcing his heart to slow. Then something caught his eye—a streak of something dark along the wall.

He shone the flashlight on it, and his stomach dropped.
It was a handprint. A smeared, blackened handprint, as if someone had dragged their fingers along the wall. It wasn’t grease. It looked more like… ash.

Voss knelt beside it, running a gloved hand over the mark.

The surface was cold to the touch. As he stared at the print, the realization hit him like a fist to the gut.

He wasn’t alone.

Something—or someone—was still on board.

Voss hurried back toward main engineering. The corridor seemed longer than before, the shadows deeper. He fought the growing sense of dread gnawing at the edges of his mind.

When he finally reached main engineering, he secured the door behind him, locking it with a hiss of pressurized air. The room was cold, and the few consoles still flickered with faint, unstable power.

Kaelen moved to the main console and tried to re-establish a connection with the ship’s computer. The screen stuttered, lines of corrupted code running across the display like static.

The interface was barely functional, but it was all he had.

"Computer," Kaelen said through clenched teeth, "give me a location scan. Are there any life signs on board?"

The computer responded after a sluggish delay:
“Scanning… life signs detected: One.”

Kaelen exhaled sharply, relieved for half a second—until the computer continued.

“Life signs: Human.”

“Location: Deck Nine… Main Engineering.”

Kaelen froze. His blood turned to ice. The only life sign aboard the ship was him.

But the computer wasn’t done.

“Correction: Two life signs detected.”

Kaelen’s pulse pounded in his ears. “Identify.”

The computer stuttered again, glitching as it processed the request.

“Second life sign: Origin unknown… Proximity: Immediate.”

The lights flickered again—and something shifted behind him.

Kaelen spun around, plasma torch raised, its blue flame casting jagged shadows across the room. For a moment, he saw nothing but the flickering consoles and empty chairs.

Then, in the far corner, something moved.

A shape—tall, gaunt, and inhumanly thin—emerged from the shadows. Its form seemed incomplete, half-flesh, half-shadow, as if it didn’t belong entirely to this plane of existence.

Its face was featureless, just a smooth expanse where eyes and a mouth should have been. But somehow, Kaelen felt it staring at him—staring into him.

It moved forward with a slow, deliberate glide, as if the air itself carried it. The room grew impossibly cold, and the shadows twisted and writhed at the edges of Kaelen’s vision.

His grip on the plasma torch tightened, and his instincts screamed at him to run. But there was nowhere to go.

“Who… what are you?” Kaelen whispered, his voice barely audible over the pounding of his heart.

The creature didn’t respond. It simply tilted its head, the movement unnervingly slow, as if it was trying to understand him.

Then it spoke—not aloud, but inside his mind.

"You were always alone, Kaelen."

The words slithered through his thoughts, each syllable heavy with malice. "We were waiting for you."

Voss staggered back, his mind reeling from the intrusion. He had to act—now.

With a snarl, he swung the plasma torch at the creature. The blue flame passed through it like mist, dispersing the shape for a moment before it reformed, closer this time.

The room tilted, reality warping around him. The consoles flickered, the walls seemed to pulse in and out of existence, and Kaelen’s sense of time fragmented into jagged pieces.

He had one option left.

Kaelen bolted toward the console and began initiating a full system reboot, hoping—praying—that restarting the ship’s power might drive the thing away. His fingers flew across the controls, the interface glitching and stuttering under his touch.

The creature advanced, its movements jerky and wrong, as if it existed between frames of reality. The whispering returned, louder now, filling his mind with fragmented words and half-formed thoughts.

"We are always here, Kaelen. Waiting. Watching."

The reboot sequence engaged with a deafening hum. The ship groaned as power surged back through its systems.

Lights flickered, consoles flared to life.

The creature shrieked—a soundless wail that reverberated inside Kaelen’s skull. It flickered violently, its form disintegrating as the ship's systems surged.

And then, just like that—it was gone.

Kaelen collapsed against the console, gasping for breath. The lights stabilized, and the hum of the Firebird’s engines returned, weak but steady. The temperature in the room began to rise, the oppressive cold lifting at last.

He checked the console. No anomalies. No life signs. Just… him.

Kaelen leaned back, wiping the sweat from his brow. Whatever that thing was—it was gone. For now.

Kaelen blinked, his head resting on his folded arms, his breathing slow and steady. He was back in his quarters, the familiar hum of the Firebird’s engines and systems pulsing gently around him. Hey sat up, groggy, disoriented, feeling the lingering chill from his dream.

He rubbed his eyes, glancing around the room, expecting to see shadowed figures lurking in the corners, faint whispers echoing in his mind. But the room was warm, well-lit, ordinary. Just as it always had been.

“Computer,” he muttered, his voice hoarse, “confirm my location.”

“Lieutenant Kaelen Voss is located in Quarters, Deck Three.”

He took a long breath, exhaling slowly. It was just a dream. Just a dream.

Kaelen leaned back, letting his heartbeat settle. But as he reached for a glass of water on his bedside table, his hand froze.

There, on his hand, was a faint, greasy residue. A dark smear that looked suspiciously like… ash.

A shiver crawled down his spine. He clenched his jaw, staring into the shadows as they seemed to shift ever so slightly, just beyond the edge of his vision.

Was it a dream?

[OFF]

Lieutenant Kaelen Voss
Damage Control Specialist
USS Firebird NCC-88298

 

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