The transporter beam effect faded. Lieutenant Ada Josephs blinked as she took stock of the scene. Bodies were writhing in pain as the guttural screams of the victims echoed. “Triage!” she shouted as the various medical teams from Perseverance, Cushing, and Franklin D. Roosevelt scattered into action. Her team followed as she approached the first one near her. Violently seizing, his eyes wide in terrified panic. She accepted a hypo-spray loaded with anti-seizure meds, and once her team had him restrained, Ada gently pressed it against the man’s neck. Slowly, his body stopped shaking. His eyes closed, and his breathing slackened.

She ordered, “Vitals and imaging, stat.” Teams from all three ships scattered across the abandoned colony. Josephs walked towards Lieutenant Oswald Mika, who had taken the lead. He was working on his PADD as it updated in real time with the data from each patient. She could read the news on his face. She glanced over his shoulder at the display on the PADD.

Mika shook his head as the vitals from each patient stabilized and then crashed before the medical teams temporarily reversed the crash, where the readings dived again. “They are presenting with every kind of symptom. We need to…” An incoming message interrupted him.

“Director Walker-Halsey to all teams – you won’t be able to save any of them. We’ve made it inside the gathering hall. Preliminary testing isn’t coming back with a fix or a cure. Do what you need to do to help make it comfortable. I’m sorry.”

Josephs stared at the PADD in Mika’s hand as the vitals continued the rollercoaster of crash and relief until the erratic pattern claimed each person in slow succession, the life sign readings going from yellow to red to blank. The air grew still as the teams that had responded in record time slowly stood, staring at the bodies that lay all around them. Ada turned to Mika. “You’re ranking Chief.” Her eyes counted the bodies. There had been two hundred of them. Now there were none of them. “I’ll begin the preliminary autopsy.”

“Something changed. I looked at the original documentation, sparse as it was. It wasn’t supposed to move this fast.” Theodora stood in the middle of the gathering hall, where the dispersion system had been arrayed for activation. “It took less than an hour.”

Mika walked around the expansive device, scanning. He adjusted ‌certain readings as he went. “Could someone have changed it before their arrival? It was a bit of an open secret. These folks didn’t seem like the kind to verify something like this.” Disbelief weighed on his shoulders, his heart torn. Nobody deserved to die in this way.

After a silence, Mika watched the Director of Civilian Science concentrating on the various vials and tubes taken from storage by the colonists. She scanned each piece and leaned as close as her helmet would allow her. “I don’t think anyone would have the knowledge to do such a thing, Doctor Mika. The manner in which the remaining samples were stored could have caused changes in the ingredients. Storing them for that long might have been a contributing factor.” She stepped back. “Their rush to commit themselves to their goal of a delayed annihilation was a gamble. Poor souls.”

Oswald sighed. Hubris and ego seemed to grow in abundance out in the rimward. It was racking up quite a score on the table. “We’ll need to process each of them and notify next of kin.”  Looking at the bodies that had fallen inside the building and the many more outside pushed at his head and heart. The weight of loss, even as a bystander or observer, was heavy.   He muttered, “This is the hardest part of the job.”

Walker-Halsey turned her attention to him. “Nothing is easy in this universe – life remains complex and challenging. I’m not sure I would enjoy a simple life. Challenge makes life worth living, I think. Come, let us bring honor to those who have passed beyond living. It is the least we can do.”