Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Posted on Sat Jul 19th, 2025 @ 4:37am by Commander Gil’an Tyris

941 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Prologue
Location: Astrometrics Lab
Timeline: Three years ago, 0246 hours

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The Astrometrics Lab aboard the USS Guinevere was designed for contemplation as much as computation—its circular architecture evoking ancient observatories, reimagined in transparent alloys and soft starship lighting. The room was dark except for the cool, ambient glow of the stellar holograph that filled the domed chamber like a suspended galaxy. A faint thrum from the ship’s warp core filtered in through the deck plating, felt more than heard.

Above and around floated a sprawling 3D projection of the Hopi Expanse’s trinary system. Teyra, the orange K-class star, burned with gentle steadiness. The volatile M-dwarf Voral flickered like a candle about to go out. Ilex, a pallid white subdwarf, pulsed rhythmically as it shed its final vestiges of heat and light, casting faint ion jets like dying breath into the void. Together, the three danced a slow, hypnotic waltz through the cosmos, drawing behind them complex trails of gravitational shear, electromagnetic wakes, and scattered matter fields.

Commander Dr. Gil Tyris stood motionless at the central interface. His short, neatly-combed blonde hair caught the blue glow from the console below, while the trinary light refracted across the sharp planes of his face. Despite his youthful appearance, the decades behind his clear blue eyes lent him a stillness that seemed at odds with the ship’s constant movement.

His hands were poised above the transparent console, fingers splayed as he manipulated layered fields of sensor data. Holographic strings of equations and telemetry danced in the air in Trill, Federation Standard, and even ancient Bak’u scientific glyphs.

“Computer,” he said softly, voice laced with cultivated calm, “isolate quantum wake interference at barycenter junctions three, five, and nine. Begin recursive harmonic modeling based on residual phase decay.”

A tremor passed through the display, and three glowing nodes lit up within the space between the stars. One of them—Node Five—flared faintly red.

“There you are,” Tyris whispered. “Too deliberate. Too clean.”

A delicate thread of red light appeared—graceful, arcing between Teyra and Ilex, dipping into the gravitational well like a blade dancing on the edge of a storm. Warp field decay traces, impossibly recent. Their signature was fine and threadbare, like spider silk drifting in a hurricane, barely distinguishable from the background radiation—but Gil Tyris saw the pattern.

He always saw the pattern.

The lab doors parted with a quiet sigh, and Lieutenant Commander Nick Kopanski entered. A solidly built man with a perpetually weary expression, Kopanski bore the patient weight of someone accustomed to managing crises in the middle of the ship’s third shift. His collar was slightly askew, and the mug of lukewarm coffee in his hand was half-forgotten, fingers curled absently around the handle.

“Told Ops you were working late again,” Kopanski offered. “Didn’t expect to find you mid-seance with the stars.”

Gil didn’t glance away. “This star system is whispering. I’m just listening.”

Kopanski approached the console and squinted up at the projection. “That doesn’t look like a whisper. That looks like a drive signature.”

“It is.” Gil’s tone was clipped but not unfriendly. “Warp seven point four, sustained. The field harmonics are compressed in a way that suggests some form of advanced gravimetric damping. Federation field geometry, but something… off. Slight asymmetry in the theta band.”

Kopanski blinked. “You’re saying someone flew through that corridor?”

“I’m saying someone threaded it. Through gravimetric shearing that would rupture most warp field coils. And they did it recently—less than thirty-six hours ago.”

He pulled up a secondary projection. The fourth planet—Aelora—resolved into a deep cerulean sphere, wrapped in dense cloud layers laced with electromagnetic discharge. Storm bands danced like ribbons across the surface, and lightning strobed from orbit to ocean. Sensor overlays revealed a narrow column of atmospheric disturbance.

“Trace isotopes—verterium cortenide and dilithium ions. Atmospheric dispersal indicates a high-speed flyby in the upper mesosphere. Possibly orbital insertion, but no thermal reentry spike.”

Kopanski frowned. “Which means they didn’t land.”

“Not on the surface,” Gil corrected. “They may have deployed something. Or someone.”

Silence stretched between them as the implications settled in.

“You said the field harmonics look Federation-adjacent,” Kopanski said slowly. “Could this be a ghost ship? Something lost during the Century Storm? Some experimental drive we shelved?”

Gil’s blue eyes turned icy. “There’s too much precision. Someone wanted to be seen… just not clearly. This isn’t an accident or a lost ship. It’s a message. Or a test.”

Kopanski stepped back, suddenly alert. “Should I wake the Commodore?”

Gil hesitated. “No. Not yet. He knows I’m analyzing anomalies in the Expanse. I’ll report once I have firmer data. I’ve already requisitioned a Class-Four probe—sensor suite tuned to track residual chronotons and exotic particle decay.”

Kopanski gave him a half-smile. “You science types and your midnight ghost hunts.”

“I prefer to think of it as… listening to the ripple patterns in the pool after the stone has vanished.”

The Gamma Shift officer started toward the door, then paused.

“You think it’s local? Someone living in this system?”

“No,” Gil said, slowly. “Whoever they are, they’re passing through. But they know the Hopi Expanse better than we do.”

As the doors closed behind Kopanski, Gil remained still. Only the soft pulse of the trinary system and the faint glimmer of the red warp trail kept him company. The silence was heavy, full of secrets waiting to be unfolded.

From the shadows near the display, a diagnostic chirped quietly: the probe was ready for launch.

And the stars waited for the next question.

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