Lifeforce: A Star Trek Discovery Horror Story

The Ship of the Damned

Landry felt the slight tingle of the transporter effect fall away even though the environment suit, and the bridge of the Yamanaka took shape and definition and finally reality around her. Her breath hissed inside her helmet as she took in her surroundings.

The bridge was dim, but not dark, and the consoles alight with readouts and functioning systems. There was no one to read them. There was no one anywhere on the bridge. Landry holstered her laser and scanned the atmosphere with her tricorder. It would feed the results to her suit's display. In her peripheral vision, she caught the shimmer of Warrener and King—two of Wilco's security deputies—transport onto the bridge beside her. They were big bruisers, but not much good in a tactical situation, Landry could tell. Warrener held a phase-pistol levelled at his hip where it was impossible to aim or bring to bear quickly.

"Holster up," she told him. "There's no one here."

"Jesus, that's a relief," King breathed. At least he was honest.

Landry's suit pinged and the display readout inside her visor. ENVIRONMENT: CLEAR. "Scan's done. We're good," she said, latching the tricorder to the suit's belt, then deactivating the helmet. It retracted into itself and then into the collar of her suit. She took a breath. The air tasted like every other starship she'd ever been on: recirculated, sterile, and slightly metallic.

"Not a chance," Warrener griped. "Not after what happened to those people from the research lab. I don't want to look like that."

"Whatever did that, it's not a pathogen," Landry said as she rounded the bridge consoles.

"Where is everyone?" King asked as his helmet deactivated. He had a wide, expressive face that was utterly without guile.

"I hope that's a rhetorical question, and not something you actually expect me to answer," Landry said as she looked over the bridge consoles.

"I just...you know...I mean..."

"Can it," Landry said brusquely as she settled behind the Ops console and scrolled through the ship's readouts.

"We're sitting ducks here," Warrener snapped.

"There's no one here to be a threat," Landry said, reviewing the readouts. "The crew's gone. This is a ghost ship." She felt her hackles rise.

"What about those...bat-things?" King asked.

"In stasis, I think," Landry did another internal scan of this ship, but the results were the same. "At least something is in stasis on Deck Four. Looks like that's the only living thing on the ship." She stepped away from the Ops console. "Let's avoid that for now. According to this, main transporters are offline. Either of you have any experience with transporter systems?" She looked back and forth between the two.

"I ran transporters on a merchant ship for three years," Warrener said. "I could take a look at them. I mean, I can't do repairs..."

"They don't appear to be damaged, just offline. See if you can get them up. If we need to get out of here in a hurry, I don't want to have to cram into a lifeboat."

"You want me to go there alone?" Warrener blanched. Landry fought back a sigh.

"King go with him. I'm going to try and get into the ship's logs. Contact me if you find anything."

They left unenthusiastically, and Landry sat down at the comms station. She keyed the internal communication system. "Hey, stay in touch with me," she broadcast.

"Yes, ma'am," King replied obediently. Landry nodded in satisfaction and went back to the system.

The system was security locked, so Landry tried a series of master codes. Starfleet Security had a couple dozen such codes, so the process took a few minutes, but eventually the console gave her a command tree of ship's logs.

"All right," she muttered. "Where do we begin?"