Horrible Night For a Curse

Posted on Fri Oct 2nd, 2026 @ 9:49pm by Captain Shran dh'Klar & Commander Samantha Howard & Lieutenant Kate Kono & Chief Petty Officer Aaron Geiger

2,342 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Creatures of the Night
Location: USS Washington

Shran made his way down to the cargo bay to check on the progress of things with Deanna and Aidan. He couldn't shake the odd feeling he had about this planet. The equipment was needed at the science station, but he had a feeling that visiting the secluded town on the other side of the mountains, Vaseria, was going to be worth his while.

He hit his comm badge as he made his way down the corridor.
=^= Lt Kono, report to Transporter Room 2 for an away mission. Minimal gear lieutenant. Consider this a clandestine trip for you. =^=

Kate awoke to a growl over the comm badge. Ben was still asleep beside her; one arm flung over his face. The growl came again, low, and she could not tell whether it was inside the room or only in the channel's static. She got up. She pulled her arms across her flat chest, slender, her bare skin pale in the dark of the cabin, she stood on the cold deck plating where the carpet ended next to the bed and looked for both the comm badge and the source of the sound. Her short black hair stood in tousled spikes against her scalp. She had nothing on, and she felt it now, the ship's air moving over her, the chill of it raising goosebumps along her arms and thighs.

"Computer, lights twenty percent…" The lights came up dim and yellow. Her shadow stretched long across the floor. It was her Siberian Husky, Kodie, standing at the window with his nose nearly touching the transparent aluminum, staring out at the greyish-green planet below. His lips were pulled back from his teeth. He did not move when she said his name.

"Kodie…" Kate whispered again, and this time he turned, blinking at her as if he had forgotten where he was.

=^= Lt Kono, report to Transporter Room 2 for an away mission. Minimal gear lieutenant. Consider this a clandestine trip for you. =^= Shran’s voice crackled from the comm again, insistent.

Kodie padded silently across the floor, took Kate’s discarded uniform gently between his teeth, and brought it to her. She ran a hand over the coarse fur of his head, then detached her badge from the fabric. Kate then rose and moved to the broad observation pane. Her skin prickled in the chilled air as she pressed close to the glass, staring down at the storm-wracked planet below. Lightning flickered deep within the cloud cover like something alive and watching. A cold tremor climbed her vertebrae, tightening the muscles in her neck.

“Yeah, Captain… on my way,” she whispered, her breath fogged the glass as she spoke. Kate scratched Kodie behind the ears, her fingers finding the exact spot that made his hind leg thump against the floorboards. She leaned over Ben’s sleeping form, her lips barely brushing his temple, tasting salt and sleep. The comm badge went with her into the sonic shower, slapped against the fogging glass like a prisoner marking days. Head pressed to the cool wall, she stared through the port at the planet below… a bruised marble swirled in storm, lightning flickering like synapses in some vast, sleeping brain. Through rents in the cloud cover, black forests climbed razor-backed mountains, their peaks lost in perpetual twilight.

After, she worked gel through her short hair until it stood in defiant spikes. At the replicator, her mind already down there, in the damp and the dark. The materializer hummed to life.

Thick cargo pants of waxed canvas, a turtleneck woven with hydrophobic microfibers that felt like cold silk against her skin, a Starfleet Intelligence overshirt, its sleeves long and cuffed tight. Then the jacket, heavy and dark, smelling of new polymer and ozone. She dressed in layers, each piece a barrier against what waited below. The phaser went on her right hip, the tricorder on her left. A PaDD slid into her thigh pocket; a compact ration replicator weighed down the other.

She returned to the replicator. A waterproof ballcap, emblazoned with a faded ‘W’, materialized. She crushed it into her back belt loop. Kodie whined softly as she pulled on her boots, thick-soled and waterproof, lacing them tight over tucked-in trousers. A roll of hydrotape sealed the tops against moisture; she pocketed the remainder. The Ka-Bar knife snapped onto her belt with a sound like breaking bone.

One last pat for the dog, his fur warm and familiar. She bent over Ben again, her shadow falling across his face. “See you soon, hot stuff,” she breathed into the quiet room, the words leaving no trace on his sleep.

**********

Shran entered the cargo bay and spotted Aidan working with the Chief and Kapowski. Shran approached, "Lieutenant, is this equipment ready for transport?"

Aidan looked surprised to see the captain. "Oh, um, aye sir. We'll be ready to send it down in ten minutes or so."

"Good. I want you and your team here to go down with it, assist in its instillation" Shran replied.

"Right. Not a problem captain" Aidan replied confidently. He looked over to Kapowski and the Chief, "Looks like we get to visit the planet."

Aaron checked over his tool belt, ensuring he had all his preferred equipment. Another planet to put boots on, a new sky and new people. "It'll be good to stretch our legs. Have you been to this planet before sir?"

"I don't think anyone has been to this planet Chief" Aidan replied. "Suppose something about it has drawn the captain's attention. Never a good sign when the captain wants to suddenly join an away team."

Shran walked over to speak with Deanna. "Everything alright?"

Deanna looked at the Andorian, "Funny, that was going to be my question to you. You have a look of someone feeling uneasy."

Shran shook his head. "Something odd about this planet. I'm going to accompany you down, then visit that secluded town Vaseria."

"I will accompany you to check it out. The details about it are vague. All I can tell you is that it is a mountain village nestled against the mountains with alpine forest and a large lake. Has a very Eastern Europe feel and supposedly has a castle that was built nearby in the mountains" Deanna replied.

"A castle? You have to be joking" Shran replied quickly.

"Not at all. Suppose we will get a closer look" Deanna said with a smile.

"Bringing Kate along and going to grab Sam as well. Something makes me think we may need her" Shran replied.

"Hope you are wrong" Deanna replied.

**********
Shran made his way to sickbay. It was late, 2330 hours, but somehow, he knew that Sam would be in her office. He entered and saw Sakonna working on a patient, tricorder in hand. He gave a brief acknowledgement and then walked over to Sam's office. As he suspected, there she was sitting at her desk, coffee in hand with a beleaguered look as she appeared to be working on reports.

"Paperwork never ends does it?" he questioned, his voice catching her off guard.

"Well, it seems certain Captains like it completed and up to date" Sam retorted with a smile, setting the cold coffee down and indicating the chair opposite. "What brings you to my office at this hour?"

"Don't blame me about the paperwork. Command is who loves all that paperwork" Shran offered. "As for the late visit to sickbay, we arrived at the Stoker and we'll be going down soon. My conversation with the lead scientist at the science station gave me pause, and I think you may be of use down there, possibly see something us nondoctors might miss."

"Never turn down something interesting, particularly if it's curious enough to intrigue you" Sam smirked as she set down the PaDD. "When do we leave?"

"No time like the present" Shran replied.

****************

Shran entered the transporter room with Sam, Deanna, Aidan, Aaron, Kapowski, Kuzma, and the security trio of Potter, Granger, and Weasley in tow. The Andorian looked around, "It would seem that despite me calling her before I saw any of you, Kate is once again late."

"Should we transport down with the equipment?" Aidan questioned.

"Confirm coordinates and ready the transporter" Shran ordered.

Kate stepped into the transporter room, the low hum of the pads a counterpoint to the ship's deeper vibrations. Three others accompanied her. Ensign Corina from Security stood rigid near the console, her blond hair pulled into a severe knot, one hand resting on the phaser at her hip. Beside her, Lieutenant Vincent Price of the sciences shifted his weight, a stack of PaDDs clutched to his chest like a shield. His spiked black hair seemed too sharp, too deliberate against the pallor of his skin.

Then there was Lucy West. Kate’s newest recruit in Intelligence stood slightly apart, a tall flame of red hair and freckles dusted across pale cheeks. Her eyes were the color of glacial ice, clear and depthless. She wore no weapon Kate could see, only a standard-issue jacket zipped to the throat. There was an unsettling stillness to her, the kind that made you watch her hands rather than her face. Kate had vetted her herself. No hidden talents, no covert training logs, nothing in her file but academic excellence and a quiet posting near the Romulan border. Kate was tired of surprises within her department and she seemed — safe.

“Permission to bring the historian along, Captain?” Kate asked, her gaze shifting toward Vincent Price. He stood with an unnerving stillness, a faint, knowing smile touching his lips as if he were already picturing the gothic spires hidden in the planet’s storms. “He believes the original settlers came from…”

“A rather… singular corner of Earth’s history,” Vincent interjected smoothly, his voice a low, cultured baritone that seemed to coat each word in velvet and shadow. “A place where superstition clung to the stones and the architecture had a certain… theatrical morbidity. It absolutely warrants closer study.”

Kate halted, her gaze lingered on Vincent Price. His lips curved into a smile that was less an expression of mirth and more a quiet, theatrical revelation, as if he were savoring some delicious and dreadful secret known only to him. A shiver, fine and cold as a needle, needled its way up between her shoulder blades. She parted her lips to speak—to break the unsettling stillness he carried with him… but thought better of it. Her head gave a slight, involuntary shake, dismissing the unspoken words.

“What he said,” she whispered, the phrase hushed and thin as she moved to join Mina and Lucy on the transporter pad. She kept her eyes forward, refusing him another glance.

Kate could feel the planet beneath her boots. Not through the deck plating, not through any sensor reading, but the way a mouse feels the shadow of the owl. It was down there, waiting, wrapped in its storms like something in a shroud. She did not want to go. Her stomach dropped toward it anyway, a slow pull she imagined was the planet drawing a long breath before it swallowed them. It was the same feeling as standing on the edge of a pool you knew was too cold, watching the black water and knowing there was no choice except to jump.

Her leg shook. Not from impatience. It shook the way a rabbit's leg shakes in the open field, and she watched the transporter chief's hands move over the console, watched the amber lights cycle and hold, and she hoped. Hoped the chief would turn with that particular frown, that the words too dangerous would come out of someone's mouth, that a relay somewhere would fail, that the ship itself would refuse and they would have to take a shuttlecraft down instead. A shuttlecraft meant delay. Delay meant time. Time meant the planet might finish whatever it was doing and leave them alone.

Shran looked around. They had a lot of people going down. More than the transporter could send at one time. Kate and her gaggle were already on the transporter pad. "Right, Kate, you get to take your gaggle this time. Aidan, Chief, Kapowski, you go down with them. The rest of us will be down right after. Aidan, make sure the equipment transports as well."

"We'll be standing by waiting for orders when you arrive captain" Aidan replied crisply. He looked at the Chief and then Kapowski and they both looked ready.

"Wait..." Shran began, looking at Kate. "What is hiding in your pockets?"

"Just my PaDD," Kate said. "And my standard gear for away missions. Phaser and tricorder, why?"

"And that replicator unit. What exactly do you think you need that for on a clandestine trip?" Shran questioned.

"Standard gear is a phaser and a tricorder lieutenant" Deanna mentioned, her eyes narrowing as she sensed frustration from the captain.

Kate ducked her chin, fishing behind the stiff fabric of her jacket until her fingers closed around the cool, compact shape of the replicator. She unclipped it from its hidden loop with a soft click.

“Sorry, sir,” she said, holding up the device. Its surface was matte grey and still warm from being against her back. “I usually bring my own. Saves me from hauling rations and a canteen all day.” With a series of practiced taps on its interface, she keyed in a command. A low hum filled the air, and a moment later, a perfectly formed ham and cheese sandwich materialized in the unit’s output tray. She offered the replicator over before stepping back onto the transporter pad’s glowing gridwork. “Got a few emergency water packs on me too, just in case.” She stood waiting, the cool weight of the sandwich solid in her hand as she waited reluctantly to be transported to the planet below.

"I hope you aren't taking this or rations with you on all your away missions" Deanna said concerned.

"Let's get people moving" Shran said. He looked back to the transporter chief, "Energize."


TBC

 

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