[Backpost] A World with a Bluer Star, Part 3

Posted on Thu Mar 20th, 2025 @ 2:40am by Crewman Mateo Gardel
Edited on on Fri Mar 21st, 2025 @ 12:50am

841 words; about a 4 minute read

Act One, Part Three: The Man Who Shouldn't Be

[ON]

The interior of the NX-class pod was thick with stillness. Dust lay undisturbed over the consoles, settling into the fine cracks of old touch interfaces. Overhead panels flickered dimly, their displays ghostly and muted, their once-bright controls faded under layers of grime and neglect. The air carried the stale, metallic tang of a ship that hadn’t breathed in years, as if the walls themselves had gone dormant, waiting.

Mateo stepped forward, his boots scuffing against the deck plating. The artificial glow from the away team’s equipment cut harshly through the shadows, casting jagged silhouettes against the bulkheads. He barely registered the sounds of Atresh scanning the outer hull or Varin muttering under his breath. All of Mateo’s focus was locked onto the figure seated in the pilot’s chair.

The man sat upright, posture stiff yet unnervingly poised. He wasn’t unconscious, wasn’t even slumped in exhaustion. He simply sat there, hands resting lightly on the armrests, body still as stone.

And then he moved.

The shift wasn’t abrupt. There was no startled reaction, no disoriented flinch. Instead, the man’s head turned, slow and fluid, as though responding to something unseen. His eyes, sunken yet unsettlingly sharp, fixed on Mateo with a directness that sent a cold ripple up his spine.

Atresh’s voice cut through the thick air. “Identify yourself.”

The man blinked. Not the instinctive, rapid flicker of someone processing new information, but a measured, deliberate action, as if blinking was a decision, not a reflex. For a long, stretching moment, nothing else happened.

Then, in a voice as smooth as cut glass, he said, “Captain Elias Finch. United Earth Starfleet. Commanding Officer, NX-08 Atlantis.”

The name landed with an almost physical weight.

Mateo barely registered Varin’s sharp inhale, his own mind already racing ahead. The Atlantis. The ship that had vanished over two centuries ago during the Earth-Romulan War. Not stranded. Lost. And yet here sat its captain, speaking his name as though nothing about this moment was extraordinary.

Mateo’s hands moved on instinct, recalibrating his tricorder, the device responding with clinical efficiency. The bio-scan populated, lines of data scrolling in crisp, indisputable clarity.

Human. Male. No abnormalities detected.

His frown deepened. No signs of malnutrition. No muscle atrophy. No radiation damage. No physiological markers of extended isolation. By every measurable standard, this was not a man who had been stranded for six years.

Atresh pressed forward. “Six years? You’ve been here for six years?”

Finch’s head tilted slightly, the motion smooth, practiced—too practiced. The pause before he answered stretched just long enough for Mateo to notice.

“…Yes.”

A single syllable, placed carefully into the space between them. His voice remained perfectly even, unhurried, untouched by strain or exhaustion. It wasn’t weak. It wasn’t hesitant. It simply was.

Mateo’s grip on the tricorder tightened. His scientific mind knew better than to trust gut instinct over raw data, but every fiber of his being recoiled at Finch’s voice, his expression, the way he spoke in perfect, clipped statements with nothing behind them.

Atresh’s antennae angled forward. “Where’s the rest of your crew?”

Another pause. Longer this time.

Finch’s gaze drifted slowly across the interior of the pod, as though considering the question—or as though he expected to find the answer written somewhere on the walls. Finally, with that same unsettling precision, he replied, “They’re gone.”

Varin shifted. Mateo saw it in his peripheral vision—the slight set of his shoulders, the way his hand twitched closer to the phaser at his hip. “Gone?”

Finch turned his head toward him, the movement controlled, methodical. His next word landed like a dropped stone.

“Dead.”

No change in tone. No shift in expression. No emotion, no weight, no lingering echo of loss. Just the word.

The air in the pod felt thinner, despite no change in atmospheric readings.

Mateo had spent years learning to trust data over instinct. Data didn’t lie. But instinct whispered, gnawed at the edges of his thoughts, refusing to be silenced. The scans said Finch was human. The scans said he was fine. But Finch did not feel human.

Atresh, to Mateo’s growing unease, looked almost intrigued. “This is historic,” she murmured, her fascination evident. “An Earth-Romulan War officer, displaced in time…”

Varin, arms now folded stiffly over his chest, didn’t share her enthusiasm. “I don’t like this. Something’s not right.”

Mateo didn’t argue.

Because, for once, he agreed with a pilot.

[OFF - To be continued in Part 4]

Crewman Mateo Gardel
Hematology Technician
USS Ahwatukee

&

Captain Elias Finch
Commanding Officer
NX-08 Atlantis
[NPC - Gardel]

&

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

&

Lieutenant Varin
Shuttle Pilot
USS Ahwatukee
[NPC - Gardel]

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