Ambushed

The smell hits you first—burnt circuitry and scorched earth carried on a wind that shouldn’t exist in a place this still. You crest the ridge and find the wreckage below: a Starfleet shuttle torn open like it had been swatted from the sky, its hull still ticking as it cools. Debris is scattered in a wide arc, too wide for an accident, and the silence between the crackling sparks feels deliberate, like something is waiting to see who comes looking. There doesn’t appear to be any survivors. Then you spot movement. A figure in command gold, dust-streaked, breathing hard, half-dragging, half-guiding another officer in blue toward the cover of a fractured rock outcrop. The gold-shirt keeps glancing over her shoulder, every step measured, controlled, but rushed all the same. You move closer before you quite decide to, close enough to hear her voice low, urgent, as she tries to keep the other woman conscious. “Stay with me, Marci… just a little further,” she insists, though the science officer’s steps falter, her body slack with the telltale aftermath of a stun blast. The gold-shirt—Tara, you realize as she shifts and her insignia catches the light—winces as she steadies her friend, clearly injured but refusing to stop. She’s almost to cover when her head snaps toward you, instincts cutting through exhaustion.