It Always Watches: A Star Trek Discovery Horror Story

IV: A Great Big Empty

They walked again through dimly-lit, eerily quiet corridors. Burnham felt her hackles rising. This ship didn't have the feel of any starship she'd ever been on before. All ships—any ship—had a sense of life to them. It was equally as true for the cramped, broken-in Shenzhou as it was for the sterile, immaculate Discovery. Ships were, in essence, bottled communities in space, and they carried within their bulkheads the sounds of countless conversations, the scents of bodies and uniforms, pheromones and fragrances.

This ship was more than empty. It was still.

After showing Lyssa and Colwyn to their quarters, McMichaels led Burnham and Stamets to the mess hall.

"We're really very excited," she said. "The project has the potential to change what Starfleet defines as possible and impossible."

"That seems...very impressive," Burnham said, fumbling for words that conveyed the truth of what she felt without the blatant incredulity. It was a needle a childhood spent on Vulcan had taught her to thread.

"Oh, it is," McMichaels said brightly. "Imagine being able to conduct planetary scans from a completely different system. Or detect a cloaked Klingon fleet? Or locate a damaged shuttlecraft in another quadrant. That is what we're working on."

"That's astounding," Stamets said. "But also...what the word? Oh yes, completely insane."

If McMichaels's enthusiastic façade was penetrated, she didn't show it. "It's a lot to wrap your mind around, I grant you. Essentially, what we're doing is located a sort of...I guess you could say a latticework that underpins the universe. If we can identify and understand that substructure, we can conceivably locate anything anywhere."

Stamets eyes suddenly went wide and he met McMichaels's brilliant, blue gaze with his own. "That's amazing," he gasped. "I'm doing the same thing on Discovery. Well, not exactly the same thing, but...have you ever heard of the mycelial network theory?"

"Of course," the woman chirped. "The mycelial network theory was a huge influence on our work. It was the theory that got the scientific community to start changing how it looked at subspace." She paused and cocked her head like a tropical bird. "Are you working on..."

"More than working on it," Stamets said in a shushed, excited tone. "I've cracked it."

Burnham cocked an eyebrow.

"I mean...well, the Discovery crew, and I...well, we've...we've figured out how to do it. We can travel along the network."

McMichaels gasped, holding a hand over her mouth, and her eyes somehow widened even further. "That's astonishing!"

"I mean, it's not perfected yet, but what we've been able to do so far...well, like you it's changing the reality of space travel."

"My god...that's amazing. I'd love to hear, well, everything you could tell me," McMichaels smiled brilliantly and took a step closer to Stamets.

That's going to be an exercise in futility, Doctor, Burnham thought, and then was surprised by her own cattiness. "So, how far to the mess?" she asked.

McMichaels looked at her as if she'd just appeared out of thin air. "Oh, it's right down the hall. Just there, see?" She pointed to a wide set of doors, the she turned back to Stamets. "So, Paul—may I call you Paul?—Paul, would you be interested in looking over some of our basic theories? I think your insight would be..."

It didn't let up until they'd ordered food from the replicator and sat down. There were a smattering of people in the mess hall—maybe a dozen or so in a room intended to accommodate at least a hundred—but in the massive empty that was the Pretorious it felt positively crowded.

"Isn't it amazing?" Stamets ponered over a forkful of his Andorian seafood salad. "The work they're doing here? It's like a...a cousin to what I'm doing with the spore drive."

"The implications certainly are revolutionary," Burnham admitted. "But you haven't seen anything yet. We don't know how far along in their research they are or whether they even have anything to show for their work."

"That's why I'm going to give them an assist while we're here," Stamets said.

"What?" Burnham asked, startled. "It won't take the shuttle that long to reboot its systems.

Stamets leaned forward. "Who cares? We can hail Discovery from here and wait for them. It's less risky than going back out there anyway."

"Commander, we have a mission. Lyssa and Colwyn—"

Stamets cut her off. "I'll decide our mission, Specialist Burnham," he said defensively. "I am the ranking officer here."

Burnham was silent as she mentally removed the barb from her skin. (This is what you've earned with your actions...)

"Look," Stamets continued, slightly contrite. "I know what it takes to make that jump from theory to reality. The difficulty of that. And quite honestly, any chance I have to do real science—the kind of science before Lorca drafted me—" he spat the captain's name like a seed he'd just worked free from between his teeth—"Well, I'm going to take it."

Burnham digested this. Of course she'd known that Stamets was unhappy with having his work impressed into the service of Captain Lorca's prosecution of the war—he didn't hide it-but until now she hadn't considered the depths of his discontent. "Commander," she said quietly, "I don't think we should stay here longer than we have to. There's something wrong with this ship. "

"What are you talking about?"

"Nothing about our docking was normal. No security team to greet us? In wartime? That's an unconscionable violation of security protocols. And where is the crew? All anyone ever says is that they have a skeleton crew—as a matter of fact everyone says that. That very phrase."

Stamets blinked and shrugged. "So they're not fully staffed...and it's completely understandable that scientists and researchers wouldn't the sharpest about security. Do you see me palling around with Landry very often?"

Burnham looked around the near-empty mess hall. "There's something about this I don't like."

"Well, what you like doesn't factor into things, Burnham," Stamets said brusquely. "You don't have to assist me, but we're staying." He put down his fork and wiped his mouth. "That's all there is to it."