[Backpost] A World with a Bluer Star, Part 2

Posted on Tue Mar 18th, 2025 @ 2:40pm by Crewman Mateo Gardel
Edited on on Thu Mar 20th, 2025 @ 2:38am

846 words; about a 4 minute read

Act One, Part Two: The Descent

[ON]

:: Shuttlecraft Penobscot ::

The shuttle cut through the thin atmosphere with barely a tremor, its heat shielding glowing briefly as it skimmed the upper layers of the stratosphere. The planet below stretched out in all directions, vast and barren, its cracked surface bathed in eerie hues beneath the blue-white star. From orbit, it had looked almost lifeless—a world long abandoned, left to the silence of time. But as the shuttle descended, Mateo could see more details: jagged ridges, unnatural fault lines splitting the ground like wounds.

It didn’t look like a planet that should have a breathable atmosphere. And yet, here they were.

Mateo sat in one of the passenger seats behind the pilot and co-pilot, his harness strapped snug against his chest. He wasn’t looking at the controls or the data streaming through the displays—he was staring out the viewport, watching as the color of the sky shifted in an unsettling gradient from the vacuum of space to an atmosphere too thin to properly diffuse light. The star, a massive, pale blue giant, cast everything in a glow that wasn’t natural to his eyes. Shadows felt sharper. The contrast between light and dark was too extreme, as though the planet itself had been rendered in two dimensions.

Blue-white star. Too close. Too bright.

Something about it gnawed at the edge of his thoughts, an unease he couldn’t quite name.

Atresh was seated near the forward console, scrolling through planetary data on her PADD. “Gravity’s slightly lower than standard,” she noted. “Point-nine G. Atmosphere’s thin but stable—oxygen-nitrogen mix, close to Earth norm. No immediate hazards detected.”

“Except for the gaping holes in the planet’s crust,” someone muttered.

Mateo glanced back at the sensor readout on the main display. The shuttlepod—the NX-class relic—was barely half a kilometer from a second wreckage: a Romulan vessel, much larger, its jagged hull barely visible from this altitude. It had torn into the ground as if something had wrenched it open mid-flight.

“The NX-class pod looks… intact,” said Lieutenant Varin, the pilot. “For something that supposedly crash-landed centuries ago, it’s holding together better than I’d expect.”

That wasn’t the weird part.

Mateo tapped through the biological scan results on his own PADD. “One human lifesign,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “No movement. No distress signals.”

Silence settled in the shuttle for a beat.

“No distress signals,” Atresh echoed.

For a survivor stranded on an uncharted world? That wasn’t just odd. That was wrong.

The landing thrusters engaged with a soft whine, sending up a thin cloud of blue-gray dust as the shuttle touched down. The landscape stretched out beyond the viewport in fractured ridges, the planet’s crust upheaved by some long-past cataclysm. Even from here, Mateo could see the shimmering distortion in the distance—the wormhole, a gravitational scar in space, its presence warping light ever so slightly.

:: The Planet's Surface, Nearest the Crash Site ::

The airlock hissed open, a rush of stale, metallic-smelling air flooding the compartment. The suit he wore under his field gear filtered most of the contaminants, but he still caught something in the air that didn’t belong. Not sulfur. Not ozone. Something stranger.

The team disembarked, boots crunching over fractured rock as they made their way toward the NX-class pod. Its hull gleamed dully in the unnatural light, the old-style Starfleet insignia still visible beneath the accumulated dust of six years—or two hundred, depending on how time had played out here.

Mateo adjusted his field scanner, his fingers moving methodically over the interface. The human lifesign was inside.

No movement.

No sound.

He glanced toward the Romulan wreck in the distance, its hull bent and crumpled like something had peeled it apart from the outside. The urge to look over his shoulder crept in, but he forced his focus forward.

One thing at a time.

The away team moved with precision. Atresh scanned the pod’s surface for radiation leaks, while Varin pried open the manual release panel.

Mateo’s fingers hovered over his PADD, his brain already cataloging possibilities, probabilities, anomalies.

If the survivor had been here for six years, they should be malnourished. Weak. Disoriented. Desperate.

But no distress call.

No movement.

Just… waiting.

:: NX-class Shuttlepod ::

The hatch hissed as it unsealed, and Mateo stepped forward, field kit in hand, bracing for—

His thoughts stilled.

Inside the cramped pod, a man sat in the pilot’s seat, motionless.

His skin was pale, waxy. His uniform, old Starfleet issue, hung loosely on his frame. His eyes were open.

And then, as if responding to the shift in air pressure—

He turned his head.

[OFF - To be continued in Part 3]

Crewman Mateo Gardel
Hematology Technician
USS Ahwatukee

&

Lieutentant Atresh
Chief Science Officer
USS Ahwatukee
[NPC - Gardel]

&

Lieutenant Varin
Shuttle Pilot
USS Ahwatukee
[NPC - Gardel]

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