Crewman Sol “Yorkie” Danak rested his boots on the frame of an open access panel and watched the particles streak by out the Runabouts’ window. To his left, Ensign Çalek a Talarian, square-shouldered and square-jawed, well Yorkie imagined he was under his beard. He was running a lazy eye over a diagnostic that didn’t really need running. Across from them, Ensign Vael a Ktarian, she leaned forward in the co-pilot’s seat reading the panel in front of her. At the conn, Lieutenant Junior Grade Avery Park. Sat easily on this ‘milk run’ to ferry crew back from their vacation.

“Next stop…. home,” Park said, tapping the controls in front of her to adjust their course slightly. “ETA, Two hours.”

Yorkie shifted a little in his seat. The runabout was comfortable enough, but it was nothing like the hum of Starbase Bravo. However, being back in space and feeling the vibration of the plating beneath him were enough to remind him what home felt like through his boots.

The journey lasted eight minutes.

Yorkie felt it through his boots first, a shudder in the vibration. Park’s hands were already on the controls as the and the runabout dropped hard into impulse.

Çalek looked at the readout in front of him, “The field collapsed. No, it didn’t just collapse, it was collapsed.”

Yorkie leaned forward, through the viewport, a hulking silhouette hung in front of them. There were no running lights, no beacons.

Park brought the Runabout to a full stop. “Well, that’s new,” she said softly.

Vael checked the starchart, “That’s not on here, there’s nothing on the chart.”

Yorkie’s studied the hulk before him. It didn’t have the look of a ship, maybe a station? Or an outpost of some sort.

“whatever that is out there, let’s not be here,” Park said, tapping the controls “Stand by for warp one.”

Yorkie felt the runabout’s warp drive start to engage, and then it jolted, as if someone had grabbed a hold and stopped it from moving. The cabin lights dimmed and them lit again.

Park sat bemused, “Okay,” she said. “That was rude.”

“The warp bubble won’t hold,” Çalek said, “there’s nothing wrong with is, it’s external interference. It’s….” He stopped, frowning. “It’s moving.”

Vael’s had swivelled to see the science console, her hands hovered above the. “Subspace scattering, tightband… there.” She pointed at the scan of the hulk in front of her. “And there.” Her finger lowered, thoughtful. “No fixed location. Whatever the emissions are they’re moving.”

“Like it’s sweeping,” Yorkie said.

“Yes.” She turned, “around the object out there, in a circular motion”

Park, not willing to accept being stuck, “Try two, we pivot out system on impulse, build some distance between us and that thing out there.”

She put the runabout through a clean turn. She engaged the warp drive again, but the field shattered again.

Çalek’s looking at the readings, “It’s not brute force. It’s like a hand on the bubble, it’s gentle holding us in place.”

Vael’s, listening to Calek, turned to look toward Park, “It isn’t trying to destroy us.”

“Great,” Park said. “It’s just trying to keep us here.”

Yorkie, now standing and leaning toward the viewport, “Why?”

Park looked at three. “Right, we’re not contacting anyone until we know what we’ve found,” she said. “We need to do this clean, cut the thing’s hold of us and get home.”

Yorkie was looking at the runabout’s bulkhead around them, as if he could hear whatever had a hold on them. “We do this without getting clever,” he said under his breath. Then looked at the three officers in front of him, “Every time we get clever in engineering I end up in a crawlspace with something breathing down my neck.”

Çalek’s was the first to respond, “Ok, away team, us three and the pilot stays with the runabout.”

“I outrank you,” Park replied.

“Indeed ma’am, but you’re the best chance to get us out of this fist once we open it,” Yorkie said.

She didn’t argue and simply nodded “Take EVA suits, there’s no atmosphere you want to trust in that thing.”

Up close, the Hull plates showed the age of the hulk. At what was assumed to be a docking ring, what looked like an ancient berthed ship hung motionless, none recognised its configuration.

Park held the runabout steady ten meters off a what looked like a maintenance airlock. Yorkie kicked gently to propel himself toward it. Çalek landed beside him with a dull thump and Vael touched down lightly and silently. Yorkie turned a handle, the doors peeled open.

“Local power?” Park asked across the comm.

“nothing” Vael replied while checking the readings on her tricorder.

“We’ll keep the channel open, if you go quiet for more than a few seconds, I’ll beam you back on board.”

They stepped into the corridor beyond, it was long and round. Along the walls there were grooved with something resembling a conduit. When the lights from their suits swept across them, there was a submerged glow.

“I do NOT like that,” Çalek said gruffly.

“I do, but I’ll pretend not to.” Vael replied

Vael turned with her tricorder. “Left,” she said after a moment.

They moved along the corridor, their mag boots clunking as they took each step. The corridor opened up into a circular gallery open to a central shaft through hulk. It looked as though something had once rotated here. Whatever it was left to hang motionless.

Crouching by a panel Çalek pried free a panel with a tool that wasn’t meant for the job but worked regardless. Underneath, a cluster spines hummed softly.

Vael knelt opposite Calek. “This is not a transmitter,”

“well, whatever it is, it’s grabbing the runabout and telling it to sleep.” Çalek responded.

Yorkie listening to the way it vibration spoke through his suit while reading his tricorder. “Pieces of it are still active” he said. “but most is offline, the bits that aren’t are sending a signal, sweeping in an arc around the structure. where the sweep is at its strongest, we lose warp.”

“It is not doing this on purpose,” Vael said.

“Options?” Çalek asked.

“Option one,” Yorkie said, raising his index finger. “Break it. But, we might get a subspace backlash that rearranges our molecules.”

“Option two,” Çalek picked up the count. “Re-route the power to this, but we don’t understand the tech, we could make things a lot worse.”

“Option three,” Vael said, both her hands hovering over the spines without touching. “Detune it, we don’t need to break or move. We can just change the song.”

Yorkie liked this direction, he loved machines, they did what they asked. This one was just a little, out of tune.

Vael closed her eyes. “There’s a pattern within the pattern. I can hear the interval. It is close to one of our warp bubbles’ natural pains.”

“Frequencies?” Çalek corrected by reflex.

“Pains,” Vael repeated herself, opening her eyes. “The things we were not meant to hold, if we nudge it, shift the ‘frequency’ the sweep may miss the note it’s hitting.”

Yorkie looked down at the spines in front of Vale. “this is unlike anything we’ve worked with” he said shrugging his kit off his shoulder. “I suppose we’ll have to make do.”

Çalek and Yorkie worked in tandem, while Vael mapped the hum’s intervals against the warp profiles that she knew the runabout could tolerate.

Park’s voice came across the comm, “You’re definitely changing something in there, it’s sweeping our hull like it’s reading the label.”

“understood” Calek responded while jimmying something just out of sight glancing toward the science officer, “Vael?”

“wait……now,” she whispered.

Yorkie and Çalek moved like one. The hum in the spines instantly changed. The interval shifted, they could all feel it in the deck plates, through the soles of their boots, and in the space around them.

They all heard Park exhale through the comm. “initial scans indicate the whatever the interference is, its dropping. Definitely not gone through, but softer.”

“Ok, let’s get greedy,” Çalek said. “One more shift, just a small one and we should be good.”

“Your hands, they do not shake” Vael said

“I am Talarian, we shake later.” He replied with a smirk showing through his beard toward Yorkie.

The hum in the hulk slid again. Until now Yorkie hadn’t realised that he’d been clenching is jaw so hard he’d given himself a headache.

Park’s voice came across the comm, “good job team, the Interference seems to be holding at ten percent of the previous readings, that should get us out of here”

“Can you do it twice?” Yorkie asked. “Once for us to get away and once to get back in with a subspace beacon?”

There was a moment of silence over the comm, “Say again?” she responded

“This thing was built to hold vessels, maybe it was here to help, maybe not. It’s broken now though and it may keep breaking others who don’t have an engineer, a science officer and a Talarian with steady hands to come over here and play around with it.”

Vael cut in, “we could get a portable emitter over here, tie it into this ‘thing’s’ systems and link it to a Starfleet distress profile, it’ll sing a new song and. Ships that do get caught will have a signal.”

Çalek looked at the spines in the panel, “We’ll need to tell this ghost how to share its song.”

Yorkie and Calek worked on the emitter from their field kit. They nested it between two of the smaller spines, splicing it together hoping to gain a trickle of power and give back a whisper of a Starfleet frequency. The emitter came to life and Çalek sealed the panel.

They got back to the Runabout without further incident as Park prepared her for warp. She engaged and smiled with her eyes as the vessel held its speed the derelict shrinking behind them.

Yorkie sat in his chair, letting himself relax Vael’s continued to read the scans from the derelict hulk, but calm now and Çalek’s hands began to shake slightly.

Vael turned her chair to face everyone. “We did not learn what it was, but we did make it hurt less.”

“Maybe it was there to keep someone from going where they shouldn’t.” replied Yorkie

“Or to hold them until something bigger came” responded Calek.

They rode their warp song home. Park filed the navigational marker for the sector with a terse note: ‘Subspace interference associated with derelict station. Avoidance recommended. Distress sub-harmonic present.’

Yorkie watched the space ahead narrow into the familiar long tunnel of going somewhere. He thought about the hulk’s hand on the runabout but for now, he let the runabout sing and waited for Starbase Bravo to answered back.