The Pulse Between the Deckplates

Author’s Note

A short story on the USS San Clemente, written for the 'Another Tale of Deck 13' Competition.

Ensign’s Log.

Every ship has its ghost stories. Throughout history, in every culture, explorers have become the most superstitious of people. Ours started last night….

It was third watch, power was cycling in Cargo Bay two, the lights were dimmed apart from a single portable lamp flickering like an ancient camp fire. Someone brought with them replicated cocoa. It kept reheating itself in the flask and smelt faintly of coolant. It was the perfect conditions for fear.

There were four of us in there, Crewman Beck, Rixx, Ens Liora and myself. Beck started it, as usual. “you’ve all heard about deck 7,” he said. “About Jefferies 7-B?”

None of us had, or at least we pretended we hadn’t.

According to Beck, during the refit, an engineer named Ensign Veyra got assigned there alone. It was routine diagnostics, nothing unusual at all. While there, she heard a whisper over the comm, it was someone saying her name. She put it down to interference until it whispered again, right beside her ear.

Rixx joked that maybe Lt Brunak had fallen asleep in the conduits somewhere, but no one laughed.

Beck carried on, the hatch had sealed behind her but the system indicated it was open. She turned and saw…. something in the conduit. Not humanoid, or machine. Just a shimmer in the darkness. It had two pale lights where eyes should have been, blinking in time with the pulse of the warp core.

Liora leaned into the group so far that she almost singed her uniform on the lamp. Beck said that but the time a recovery team had found Veyra, she was alive but completely coated in frost with her tricorder still running. It had recorded an audio spike.

He picked up his PADD from beside him and tapped a button, beginning the playback. It was mainly static but with a slow rhythm, like breathing through metal. Then a voice, distorted but there said “still here.”

The flask, still warming its contents, hissed as he said it and spat out a half melted marshmallow. We all jumped a mile.

I told them it was possibly a feedback loop of some kind. Rixx agreed with me…. loudly.

As he did the ships intercom chimed, “Power fluctuations detected on Deck Seven, Jefferies tube 7-B.”

We all froze. The lamp flickered slightly, dimmed and the went out. In the darkness surrounding us we heard the same static hiss. From a speaker embedded in the wall came a voice, “still here.”

The lamp came back to life, but it had moved. It was on a different crate, perfectly centered. Like someone had placed it there intentionally.

We filed a maintenance report, but found nothing.

Apparently, tonight, during Gamma shift, the environmental sensors on Deck 7 registered a localised temperature drop, right beside 7-B. When the ship is quiet enough, you can almost hear the pulse of the warp core through there, like breathing through metal.

End Log

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The Pulse Between the Deckplates

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