[Backpost] A World with a Bluer Star, Part 5
Posted on Sat Mar 22nd, 2025 @ 6:47pm by Crewman Mateo Gardel
Edited on on Sat Mar 22nd, 2025 @ 7:13pm
1,333 words; about a 7 minute read
Mission: To Boldly Go
Act One, Part Five: Distortions
[ON]
The air in the pod had changed.
It wasn’t temperature or humidity—though both felt wrong in a way Mateo couldn’t name. The air pressure was steady, according to his tricorder, but everything felt denser, closer. Like the walls had exhaled around them and decided not to breathe in again.
Finch hadn’t moved.
Mateo tried not to stare, but it was impossible to ignore the man. There was no tension in his posture, no shift in his limbs, not even a change in his breathing pattern. He sat in the pilot’s seat like it was the only place he’d ever belonged—like he’d never left it. Not six hours ago. Not six years ago. Not even six minutes ago.
There was nothing obviously wrong with him. And that was what terrified Mateo most.
“All right,” Atresh said, too brightly, too fast. Her antennae twitched, betraying the edge in her voice. “I’m going to step outside and reverify the Romulan wreckage coordinates. Maybe… I misaligned something in the terrain mapping overlay.”
“You didn’t,” Mateo muttered. He didn’t look up from the tricorder.
“Still. Just to be sure.”
She didn’t wait for permission. The hatch opened with a hiss, and a faint rush of cooler air spilled in before sealing shut behind her.
Silence returned.
Finch remained still.
Mateo adjusted his grip on the device and glanced toward Varin. The pilot had taken up a post near the rear bulkhead, jaw tight, arms crossed. He hadn’t said much since the last round of Finch’s unsettling responses. His eyes hadn’t left the man for more than a few seconds at a time.
Mateo cleared his throat, low and dry. “You okay over there?”
Varin didn’t answer for a long moment. Then, his voice came, flat and taut. “No.”
“Great,” Mateo said under his breath. “Me neither.”
He turned his attention back to Finch.
“You said there was a systems failure,” he began slowly, watching for any change in the man’s affect. “Hull breach. You’re sure?”
Finch blinked. Not fast. Not delayed. Just… blinked.
“I am.”
Mateo narrowed his eyes. “And you were the only one who survived.”
“I was.”
He waited, but Finch didn’t elaborate. No follow-up. No explanation of how he’d survived a catastrophic failure that killed the rest of his crew. No account of scrambling through fire and smoke. No grief. Not even the automatic defensiveness of someone who knew their story didn’t hold up under scrutiny.
Just that same eerie calm.
“And yet,” Mateo said carefully, “the Atlantis has fifty biosignatures aboard. We scanned them. A mix of human and non-human. All alive. Faint, but there.”
Finch’s gaze didn’t waver.
“That’s impossible.”
Mateo held his stare. “Is it?”
“I would know.”
Something in the way Finch said it stopped Mateo cold. Not . Not That can’t be right. But I would know. As if he still could. As if their presence—or absence—wasn’t something measured, but something felt.
He drew a slow breath, tamping down the unease clawing at his ribs. “Then how do you explain the readings?”
“I don’t.”
Varin shifted behind him. “That’s not good enough.”
“I don’t need it to be.”
Mateo turned, catching Varin’s expression—a cocktail of disbelief and a thin, simmering edge. His arms were still crossed, but one foot had shifted forward, his weight redistributed, like he was bracing for something he couldn’t name.
“Hey,” Mateo said gently, intercepting it. “Let’s not do the whole confrontation routine just yet.”
Varin didn’t respond.
Mateo turned back to Finch. “We need to go back to the wreckage. To the Atlantis. Do you know a way in?”
“There is no Atlantis,” Finch said.
Mateo stared. “You were on it.”
“I was.”
“And it doesn’t exist?”
Finch’s face twitched. Just barely. The corner of his mouth moved a millimeter, like the first jerk of a puppet’s string.
“I said what I meant.”
Mateo’s fingers twitched against the edge of the console. He couldn’t hear the engine hum. That was absurd—the pod’s systems were on standby, at minimum. But it wasn’t just quiet. There was a silence so total it hurt.
A flicker of something shifted at the edge of his vision.
He turned—but the wall was the same. The faint scratch on the side panel he’d noticed earlier, the scuff near the hatch seal. Still there. Still real. Still—
He blinked.
The scratch was gone.
Mateo stared.
He reached out and ran his thumb along where it had been. Nothing. Smooth. Untouched.
He pulled his hand back, pulse fluttering now.
“Did either of you—” He looked at Varin, then hesitated. The pilot was still watching Finch like he expected him to leap out of the chair.
“Never mind.”
The silence had weight now. It pressed in from the edges of the pod, bending the air slightly. Finch hadn’t moved, but Mateo swore he looked closer somehow—like the distance between them had shifted.
Outside, a low rumble sounded. Thunder?
No. The planet’s weather systems were calm. He knew that. He knew that.
The hatch hissed again as Atresh stepped back inside, her brows furrowed, antennae rigid.
“There’s no Romulan wreckage.”
Mateo’s mouth went dry. “What?”
“It’s gone,” she said. “I marked the spot. I ran a secondary scan. Nothing. No wreckage. No debris. No energy signature. It’s like it was never there.”
Varin swore under his breath.
“I know what I saw,” Atresh said. Her voice had sharpened. “It was there.”
Mateo stood, slowly, as if the movement might tear something loose. “We all saw it.”
“No,” Finch said quietly.
All three turned.
“You saw what it wanted you to see.”
For the first time, Mateo stepped forward, closing some of the distance. “What what wanted us to see?”
Finch looked up at him.
And he smiled.
Not a wide smile. Not menacing. Just... wrong. Too slow. Too smooth. It reached his mouth before it reached his eyes. His expression never quite aligned.
“The one who opened the door.”
Mateo’s stomach twisted.
Atresh took a step back.
“What door?” Varin asked, his voice quieter now.
Finch’s smile widened—just barely.
“The one between places.”
And with that, the power in the pod flickered.
Just a moment.
A blink.
But when the lights steadied, Finch was standing.
Mateo stumbled back, heart slamming into his ribs. He hadn’t heard movement. Hadn’t seen the shift. Finch had just—been—there. Upright. Closer now.
Atresh gasped.
Varin’s breath hitched. “How—?”
“I already have,” Finch said.
Mateo’s tricorder beeped. Rapidly.
He looked down. The biosign reading was changing. Not dropping. Not fading.
Multiplying.
“There’s something wrong with the scan,” he muttered.
“No,” Finch said, voice low and clear. “There’s something wrong with the space.”
Mateo’s gaze flicked to the hatch.
And there—beyond the pod, through the viewport—he saw it.
A shimmer, low across the valley. Like heat rising off pavement, but in reverse—cool, blue, laced with flickers of violet. And it wasn’t drifting. It was pulsing.
It was breathing.
And within it—far, far off—the outline of the Atlantis flickered back into view.
Alive.
[OFF - To be continued in Part 6]
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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