“Well, it looks…normal,” Lieutenant Daniels said.

His comment was accompanied by a quiet murmur of agreement from the rest of the bridge crew, though neither Weston nor Roberts commented.

“Wait…” Roberts frowned. “Pan back on Drone Three. Was that a city?”

The screen changed as an operator followed the order, panning the image back and tilting to the optics of Drone Three so they could zoom in on the site of interest.

“Certainly looks like one,” Weston said after a moment. “Bring the drone back around. Put it in a stationary orbit over the city.”

“Aye, Captain.”

The drone swung around, the stabilized optics staying focused on their target as it came back and slowed to a stop over the city.

“Zoom in,” Weston whispered, watching as the city doubled in size several times. After a moment, they were looking at an area that the computer listed as about the size of eight city blocks, but Weston only counted three massive buildings within that area.

Someone whistled, but nobody else paid attention.

“Well, something’s alive down there,” Roberts replied, noting the movement of traffic on the streets.

Weston nodded. “Yeah. Anything on radio?”

“Negative,” Ensign Waters replied. “Nothing from the tachyon lab, either.”

“Zoom in again. Let’s get a picture of these people,” Weston ordered, leaning forward as he looked at the image.

An actual alien world. An actual alien city. It was utterly incredible and awe-inspiring.

And nightmarish.

The scene flickered again, zooming in close enough to read a paper over someone’s shoulder, and the crew of the Odyssey got their first look at the inhabitants of the city below.

“Sweet mother of God. What the hell are those things?” Roberts asked in utter shock as he stared at the viewer.

Weston shook his head. “I don’t have the slightest clue. But maybe our guest could enlighten us. Commander, I’ll be in the med-lab. Have the drones finish mapping the surface, and continue to investigate.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Milla Chans blanched white with shock and fear as she watched the screen. Weston, Palin, and Rame, who was worried about a possible relapse in her shocked state, took note of her reactions as they entered the isolation room.

On the screen, there was a swarm. No other word could quite describe it, and even that seemed to fall short.

The creatures were black with mottled brown and red across their carapaces. They moved through the remains of the once proud city, slowly dismantling the buildings piece by piece. They looked like arachnids in some ways, like other Terran insects in others, except that they were much larger.

In fact, they were hundreds of times larger than insects. The carnivore drone’s scale meter on the head’s-up display (HUD) indicated that the creatures averaged five feet in height, their long spindly legs extending beyond that.

They roamed through the city’s streets like ants, carrying the dismantled building materials down into tunnels below. There was no sign of anything living, other than the arachnid creatures, and no sign that anything had been living there, other than the city itself.