Welcome Aboard (Part 1)
Posted on Wed Apr 15th, 2026 @ 8:19pm by I-402 & Commander Katrina Chance & Lieutenant Commander Andrew Star & Lieutenant Commander Lahki Bakshi Dr & Lieutenant Akira Kogami & Captain Jacob Rye & Ensign Toran Vos
1,720 words; about a 9 minute read
Mission:
Ghost Starship
Location: USS Hindenburg
The darkened cargo hold of the USS Hindenburg was suddenly illuminated by the glow of Starfleet transporter beams. However, the glow was only brief, as the beams deposited the away team from the USS Missouri within the cavernous environment before subsiding as the away team fully materialized.
The away team was dressed in full EV suits, whose lights provided the only illumination inside the darkened hold, with the notable exception of I-402, who materialized only in the Starfleet uniform which she wore. I-402 stood for a moment as the others on the away team looked around their environs as she processed the atmospheric levels and whether it was safe for the others to remove their helmets.
"Atmospheric conditions are stable in this area." I-402 reported. "However, I am detecting a slow atmospheric leak elsewhere on the vessel. Without finding its source, I cannot determine how long this leak has been going on for. My recommendation is to keep your helmets on until we can locate and patch the leak."
Rye’s helmet light cut a narrow beam through the darkness as the transporter glow faded around them.
The cargo bay was vast — far larger than the Missouri’s holds — its towering bulkheads disappearing into shadow above them. Crates and cargo frames sat frozen where they had last been secured decades earlier, thin drifts of dust floating in the beams of their suit lamps as the team moved.
The place had the stillness of a tomb.
Rye slowly turned in place, scanning the upper gantries and access corridors running along the cargo hold walls. His suit sensors ticked quietly in his ear, reporting temperature and radiation levels as they stabilized after transport.
“Understood,” he said, his voice steady over the team comm channel. “Helmets stay sealed.”
He stepped forward a pace, boots echoing faintly against the metal deck.
“Let’s keep this tight. Unknown vessel, unknown conditions. Standard sweep formation.”
His gaze moved across the darkened hold again — across the silent cargo containers, the shadowed catwalks, the cold hull plating that hadn’t seen light in years.
Galaxy-class ships weren’t small.
And if something was still moving on board, there were a lot of places for it to hide.
“Commander,” he added over the comm, glancing toward Chance, “recommend we secure this deck before moving deeper into the ship.”
For a moment he listened to the quiet of the derelict.
No hum of life support.
No crew activity.
Just the faint hiss of their suit systems and the endless stillness of a ship that had been lost for decades.
But something about the silence didn’t sit right.
Toran was more than happy to keep his helmet on. It didn't just protect them from the atmosphere, it would also be a barrier for any pathogens in the air...and until they knew what happened to the crew, he didn't want to rule anything out. Phaser in one hand and tricorder in the other, he turned in a slow circle, scoping out the gloom that surrounded them. He took a moment to settle, letting out a soft, slow breath as he carefully let his mental barriers lower just a little, opening his empathic and telepathic powers up to the shadows.
Andrew hated EV suits, they restricted movement. He looked around the cargo bay, he was in simple awe. All those years working on cargo ships, a lot of galaxy ships always came to inspect said cargo ships... Now he could finally walk aboard one.
Katrina had been quiet for the moment. She was not only watching and listening to her surroundings, but to the officers who had beamed over with her. Like her, some seemed inclined to take no chances. She nodded her helmeted head at Wry's recommendation, though in the darkness the gesture was difficult to catch unless one paid attention to the movement of her EV suit's headlight.
"Everything looks fine, but that doesn't mean anything," Katrina said. "Secure the bay first. Nobody wanders off without a partner. And let's see if we can find some way to at least turn the lights on in here."
As Katrina was giving out orders, I-402 was looking around. There was something nearby that felt extremely familiar to her. Something that was speaking directly to the portion of her underlying base code that wasn't Iona...
"There's something... Familiar nearby." I-402 observed. "I've not detected something like this since..."
Rye’s helmet turned toward I-402 as her words drifted across the team channel.
Familiar.
He let that word sit for a moment.
His lamp swept slowly across the cargo hold again, the beam sliding over stacked containers and silent loader frames that had not moved in decades. Dust drifted lazily in the light of their suit lamps, disturbed for the first time in years.
“Since?” he said quietly. “What kind of familiar?”
He began moving forward at a measured pace, boots sounding softly against the deck plating. One hand lifted in a small gesture to the rest of the team.
“Slow sweep,” Rye added. “Pairs. Stay within sightlines.”
The beams of the away team’s helmet lamps began to spread through the cavernous hold, probing the darkness between cargo stacks and up toward the shadowed gantries overhead.
Rye advanced along the first row of containers, his light tracing old Starfleet cargo markings and long-faded inspection stencils.
A ship this large should have been humming with background systems — environmental control, power relays, computer cores quietly working somewhere deep in the hull.
Instead there was only silence.
Not the peaceful kind.
The kind that felt… interrupted.
“I-402,” he said again after a moment, voice calm but intent, “whatever you’re sensing — try to narrow it down.”
His beam paused on a maintenance hatch half-hidden behind a cargo frame before moving on.
“Give us a direction.”
The sweep continued slowly into the dark.
Instead of answering Captain Rye, I-402 went in the direction she felt the familiarity. She soon found herself at a series of battered-looking crates that didn't look like they matched anything else in the hold. Looking around, she knew for sure that this was what was calling out to her.
"Over here!" I-402 called out.
"Well... that's definitely not Federation," Akira remarked as the away team converged on I-402's location. "Reckon it has something to do with the Hindenburg's disappearance?"
"It is certainly a possibility," Katrina acknowledged. She stepped closer to the crates, her EV suit's headlight shining across them. They were dark, pitted and scarred, as if they had been designed to take a lot of punishment.
Trying to gleam more information she held her tricorder in her right hand, slowly sweeping it across the collection of containers. The device trilled, then bleeped sadly. Readings inconclusive.
"Interesting," Katrina remarked. "Whatever alloy these containers are made of, the tricorder can't penetrate." Kat's gaze swept over the containers, then over the officers who had since crowded around them. Then her attention shifted to I-402. "Is this the source of your... feeling?"
"Yes, it is." I-402 responded placing a hand on one of the crates. "The source code for what became I-400 must have also been made by whoever made these crates and their contents. That is the only explanation that I can think of..."
"If we can push on to Engineering we might be able to get some power on," Toran offered with a slight frown, his gaze fixed on the surrounding gloom that enveloped them rather than the crates. He wasn't eager to mess around with something they didn't understand. "Then we might be able to get some answers."
While Andrew agreed with Toran, he wasn't sure if he could get the engines on. He dealt with the majority of second-hand FTL engines, and wasn't a certified Starfleet engineer, but was grateful for Capt Cooke's influence in getting him as her Chief Engineer. "I could get emergency power, but it would take some time to get full power; the Hindenburg has been rusting for a time now." Andrew quipped, agreeing with Toran
"Until then, do you suppose we should put up some kind of containment field until we can identify what was- or still is- inside of these things?" Akira proposed. "As it stands, we have no way of knowing whether or not whatever was in these crates is responsible for the Hindenburg rusting out in the middle of nowhere in the first place."
"Any kind of containment field would require a restoration of power." I-402 surmised. "Unless any of you has invented a portable containment field generator and would like to share with the group?"
"If I can find a medical unit or something, my override codes might work," Lahki interjected. As the CMO, she'd mostly kept to the back, letting the others shine. She was fine with combat, of course, but she preferred to save lives, not take them.
"Perhaps finding sickbay wouldn't be a bad idea as well." I-402 agreed.
She nodded. "I'll go this way," she said, extracting her phaser from her waist belt.
I-402 forced open the doors leading out of the cargo bay, allowing the away team to step into the darkened corridor beyond before following behind them. Arriving in the corridor, the away team was greeted by their first sign of whatever might have happened: The torn remnant of a hand-painted banner hung by only one end, with the torn end lying on the floor. Whatever the banner used to say in full had been torn away, and what remained simply read:
-n Index Day!
"How peculiar..." I-402 noted. "Whatever happened seemed to have occurred on a holiday called 'Index Day.' However, there doesn't seem to be any sort of holiday that exists by that name."
"Most Galaxy ships were sent on a 7-year very very deep space exploration with families, it wasn't unheard of for Captains to create holidays to keep morale up... Even after the Battle of Wolf 359, when they removed families, all those ships in very very deep space kept their family crews... No nearby Starbase with commercial transports." Andrew stated. Though the meaning of 'Index' made him what holiday they were celebrating.
To be continued...
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