Magic Part II

Posted on 18 Jul 2026 @ 2:13am by Captain Sabrina Corbin & Lieutenant Commander Claire Dunross MD

732 words; about a 4 minute read

OOC: This is way overdue. I just realized I never posted it. Oops. It doesn't really change anything discussed since it was written in Late June :/

Corbin did not look away from the viewer immediately. The pale creatures moved between the old warships with a grace that felt almost deliberate, as though they had wandered into the wrong sky and found it curious rather than hostile. For a moment, the Klingon and Romulan vessels seemed as arrested by them as the Arawyn was.

“Then we treat them as living contacts until proven otherwise,” Corbin said. “No weapons unless they threaten the ship or the population below. Doctor, keep reading them. I want to know if they react to us, to the distortion, or to each other.”

Claire’s hands moved steadily across the science console. “I can try,” she said. “Though at the moment they appear to be obeying rules I have not been introduced to.”

Another tone sounded from Ops.

It cut through the bridge more sharply than the last.

Jung leaned closer to his display, then looked back over his shoulder. “Captain, I’m losing resolution on the away team’s comm signatures.”

Corbin turned at once. “Clarify.”

“Interference is increasing inside the Sherman Oaks boundary. I still have partial traces on most of the team, but...” Jung stopped, adjusted the scan, and his expression tightened. “I’ve lost the location of Lieutenant Collingway and Commander Remington.”

The bridge seemed to contract around the words.

Corbin’s face did not change, but the stillness in her posture sharpened. “Lost as in obscured, or lost as in no longer present?”

“Unable to confirm,” Jung replied. “Their signals were there after transport. Then the distortion spiked through the local grid and both traces dropped out. I am not reading transporter scatter, but I cannot place them.”

Claire glanced up from Science, the biological readings forgotten for half a breath. “Could the anomaly be masking them?”

“It is masking half the neighborhood,” Jung said. “But these two dropped differently. Cleaner. Almost like something stepped between them and us.”

Corbin did not like that answer. It had too many implications and not enough facts.

“Hail the away team,” she ordered.

Jung opened the channel. “Arawyn to away team. Confirm status.”

Static answered first.

Then a brief thread of sound, thin and distorted, more like a voice remembered by a machine than one carried through a comm signal. It broke apart before any words could form.

Jung tried again, fingers moving quickly. “Arawyn to Commander Batenburg. Respond.”

Nothing.

Only static, then the soft, empty hiss of an open channel failing to find its other end.

Corbin’s jaw tightened. “Boost through the probe relay. Narrow beam. Use the coordinates we sent them down on.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Claire turned back to her console, pulling the biological and distortion readings into the same overlay. “Captain, the timing is not random. The signal loss coincided with the nearest of those creatures passing through the upper distortion layer.” Her brow furrowed. “Not caused by it, necessarily. But the field shifted when it moved.”

Corbin looked from Claire to the viewer, where one of the enormous pale creatures curled in a slow arc above the frozen California evening.

“And our missing officers?”

Claire shook her head once, not in denial, but frustration. “I cannot tell whether they moved, were hidden, or were caught in another layer of the phenomenon. But I do not think this is simply bad reception.”

Jung looked back again. “No response from the away team, Captain.”

Corbin let the silence settle for one measured second. Panic would not retrieve anyone. Neither would anger.

“Keep trying,” she said. “Every frequency, every relay, every ugly workaround you can think of. I want Batenburg back in my ear.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Corbin turned slightly toward Claire. “Doctor, find me a pattern. If those creatures are changing the field, I need to know whether they are opening doors, closing them, or merely swimming through someone else’s mess.”

Claire’s mouth pressed into a thin line as she returned to the science console. “Understood.”

On the viewer, the old warships remained silent, the strange furred creatures drifted between them, and somewhere below that impossible sky, two members of the away team had slipped beyond the Arawyn’s reach.

Corbin kept her voice low, controlled, and utterly clear.

“No one else disappears.”

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