“… ontrol to Fed… essel, do you read?”

“Argelius Orbital Control, this is Captain Clark Terrell of the U.S.S. Reliant. We read you.”

The dark-eyed humanoid woman on the screen gave a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank the… trying to reach you for hours!”

“Is your situation urgent?”

“Not… ad as we feared, Captain. But multiple ships ha… damaged by some sort of gravime… ic and electromagnetic discharges in proximit… the planet. Multip… ges coming and going unpredictably. They’re coming less often n… eem to be growing weaker, but several ships req… assistance.”

“We stand ready to assist, Argelius Control. Where are we needed most?”

The Argelian looked down, evidently checking her displays. “That would be the Ballou, a passenger transport. We… ceived their distress signal, but the interference keeps us from getting a precise fix. But with Starfleet sensors…”

“Please transmit their last known course and position, Control. We’ll get right on it.”

Kyle efficiently caught the transmitted data and passed it over to the science station. Chekov directed sensors to the indicated area and soon got a hit. “Got it, sir. It’s adrift, power almost gone.” He worked the controls to refine the dynoscanner readings. “Three… no, probably four life signs, one weak.”

“Then we’ve got no time to lose,” Terrell said. “Stoney, time to play Coast Guard.”

“It was the weirdest thing I ever saw,” Michael Ashrafi told Terrell as he sat on the edge of his bed in sickbay. Beside him, Nurse Matsuda was applying a salve to Zirani Kayros’s radiation burns, as she had already done to Ashrafi. Doctor Wilder was in surgery tending to the Ballou’s pilot, while Doctor Valentine was treating the Vulcan youth, Vekal, for his more severe burns and hearing loss.

“There were these really bright flashes of light—just pinpoints, just for a split second, but blinding, like lightning. Unpredictable, like… like distant fireworks.” He rubbed a hand through his shaggy black hair. “Except not so distant. The pilot tried to stop short and ease around it, but he didn’t quite make it. We brushed the edge of the—the storm, or whatever, and the pinpoints started to pop up inside the cabin. They didn’t burn through the hull, mind you—they just appeared right there in midair.”

“The way the pilot’s wound looked,” Kayros said with a squeamish expression, “it was like something had burned a hole in him from the inside.”

“Probably what happened to the engines too,” Ashrafi said. He peered at Terrell. “Starfleet’s probably seen weirder things than this, right? You know what this was?”

Terrell patted his shoulder. “We’re working on it, son. But for now, at least the phenomenon seems to have subsided. Hopefully it won’t repeat.”