The Lost Civilization - Part III

Posted on Sun Sep 13th, 2026 @ 4:41am by Commodore Samantha York & 1st Lieutenant Kara Melo & Major Cameron Bourne & Lieutenant Aenar Torek & 1st Lieutenant Maria Zamorano & 1st Lieutenant Mazal Falk

1,265 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Lost Horizons

[PREVIOUSLY]

And then everything went quiet. Not just audibly quiet, but telepathically quiet. Sam immediately stopped and took a step backward, but it was too late. The shimmering light grew, surrounded her. Engulfed her. And then, everything went dark.

[CONTINUED]

Maria, she was curious as well, something though caught her attention for a mere split second. Looking away to check what it was, she looked back to check on Sam, her stomach dropped, the commodore wasn't there anymore.

"What the...?" Her voice echoed in the area where they, well now, Maria was standing. "Commodore? Where are you?"

Kara walked quietly up to Maria. "You lost the commodore?" She looked around and only saw the buildings ahead where the rest of the team had gone and the trees and vines around them. And an outcropping of rock. Nothing out of the ordinary and nothing that looked like the commodore.

Maria's face warmed up feeling rather embarrassed about the situation.

"I only looked away for a moment, and then I looked back and-and she wasn't there anymore. And you said you can't feel her? Oh, Mazal's not going to like this one bit."

Kara carefully marked the spot where Sam last stood. "Let's tell the others, then we'll start a search. She can't have gone far." But since Kara couldn't feel her telepathically, she wasn't so sure.

Kara and Maria hurried to join the rest of the away team. "Cam," she said quietly. "We have a situation."

Can turned to Kara, picking up on her troubles and emotions. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Stepping up to the side of Kara, Maria swallowed hard.

"Sir, well... um.." she balled up her fists for a moment to give herself some courage.

"I was with the Commodore and, well... I lost her.." she looked him directly in the eyes, there was a slight bit of fear in them, but also she was ready for whatever he was going to say.

Cam’s eyes widened for a moment, “you……lost her?” He asked, giving her a quizzical expression, “lieutenant, you don’t just ‘lose’ your commanding officer. What happened?”

"I was her shadow and I looked away just for a second, as I heard a sound. When I turned back to where she had stood, she-was-gone. "

She looked over to where Kara stood, " I couldn't find her I looked and so did Lieutenant Melo. And she marked where I last saw the Commodore. " Maria's face was turning red.

"I can't sense her," Kara said, looking at Cam. "She's not close."

“No energy signatures?” Cam asked, thinking she might have been beamed away.

Kara pulled out her tricorder and scanned the area. "None. She has to be here somewhere. Doesn't she?"

'Not necessarily,' Aenar said as he approached the group. 'The sound indicates air displacement, which means she's not been cloaked either. It could be a novel form of transporter technology which disintegrates the body super-quickly before rematerialising it elsewhere, but that is some advanced tech - even our best models take a good thirty seconds to go through the whole process.'

Flipping open his scientific tricorder like an old-style detective flipping open their notebook, Aenar scanned the vicinity. 'It's a fairly non-descript place, no seeming significance at all. Strange that she would have triggered something here and not in a more obviously important building.' He paced the perimeter as he went.

'Well,' he said, utterly fascinated, side-tracked from the fact that it was his Commanding Officer that had been abducted. 'There seems to be a higher concentration of muons and taus in this vicinity. Centered right ...' he moved to where Kara and Maria had marked York's last position, ' ... here.'

'Do you know what that means?'

"No," Kara admitted. "What does it mean?"

'Someone or something may have harnessed the power of a particle collider or cosmic rays themselves to disappear the Commodore,' Aenar replied with a twinkle in his eye. 'Not something I've seen before, I'll admit, but I suppose it is theoretically possible that it could replicate the effects of a transporter. Whether through time or space or realities, I can't tell yet. We'll need to gather more data quickly before the muons and taus collapse into electrons!'

"I'll leave that to you, lieutenant," Kara said, shaking her head. "I've never even heard of a muon." Did this make the chief science officer the team lead? She wasn't sure. But she could look around and see if there were signs of someone who might have taken the commodore.

'Any data you can collect will help - the muons are a clue, but maybe only one part,' Aenar said gently as he returned to the tricorder, setting it up for a wide sweep, capturing the area in its scans. 'Huh, it's almost like a fountain - the particles are moving upwards in the same fashion as water pumped through a fountain system.' He frowned. 'Perhaps there's a sub level to this building at least. Anyone seen an entrance?'

"No, but I'll check the area and see if I can find something," Kara said. She put a small spike in the ground to mark the place the commodore was standing when she disappeared, then, with her tricorder in one hand and her phaser in the other, she began to search the area.

She also scanned telepathically for the commodore, hoping it was a plant or mineral that kept her from finding the other woman. But there was nothing. And then, after a few steps, she could no longer sense the rest of the away team.

She turned around to find out what happened to them. But a moment later, everything around her went blank and she disappeared.

Letting out a cry, Aenar watched as Kara disappeared in a cone of light that seemed to emerge from the dirt she was standing on. His tricorder forgotten in the shock, he re-gathered his wits to pull it up and begin scanning around the exact area that Kara disappeared.

'Curious,' he breathed, crouching and moving cautiously to the spot the Marine had been standing in. He was unsure of the radius of the field that had captured her, but he was increasingly convinced there was a threshold to be crossed where they would be transported away.

He looked about, casting around for a large pebble or two. Picking them up deftly, the Bajoran scientist tossed them at the center of the circle, disappointing himself when they were not zapped up in a cone of light. 'Must be some sort of biological trigger,' he said loudly.

"What the heck?" Maria exclaimed, when Kara disappeared. A determined expression showed, and she stepped forward to where both the Commodore and Kara had been standing.

"A biological signature?"

Mazal, on the other hand, turned to look at Cameron, then towards Aenar. "I'd like to go after them. Isn't there any way we can track them?"

'Of course - there'll be an equivalent burst of energy where this transporter system deposited our comrades,' Aenar replied. 'If we can amplify our tricorder ranges, we can do it ourselves without having to wait for the Caly to return.'


A Post by
Commodore Samantha York
Commander
USS Calypso

1st Lieutenant Maria Zamorano
Platoon Leader
USS Calypso

1st Lieutenant Kara Melo
Platoon Leader
USS Calypso
 
Major Cameron Bourne
Marine CO
USS Calypso
 
Lieutenant Aenar Torek
Chief Science Officer
USS Calypso

1st Lieutenant Mazal Falk
Marine XO
USS Calypso

 

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