Maya looked around at the crew of the Sovereign and the survivors of a Romulan Republic vessel, all inside this massive cavern that strangely had plenty of oxygen. While she observed, her team was asking questions, conducting investigations into the phenomenon of this planet, as well as to what exactly happened to the Romulan’s ship. But there were a some questions that she could not shake from her mind. How exactly did this planet produce oxygen and where is the commander of the Romulan vessel? She had no idea that an answer to one question will lead to another, but she was about to find out when she approached a Romulan female who looked to be in charge.

“Who is the commander of your vessel and where would he be if I may ask?”

The woman looked directly at Maya before she answered. “That would be Sub-Commander Jadek. He is not here, as he had taken his team of commandos further into the cavern. Much like your team, he was very curious as to how there was oxygen in this cavern.”

Maya’s brows furrowed. “How long ago was this?”

“Now that I think about it, almost six hours. I figured he just ventured too deep for communications to work.” She answered.

Maya brought the pad on her left arm up so she could initiate communication with the Sovereign. “Captain. Do we have an estimate on the repairs to the life support systems?”

“Six more hours, Lieutenant. Why?” Asked Maxwell.

“One of the Romulan Republic officers informed me that the commander of their vessel is Sub-Commander Jadek, and he took his team deeper into the cavern. They haven’t heard from him since and that was six hours ago. Something about this cavern having oxygen does not sit well with me, Captain.” Maya explained.

“I will see if I can encourage Beck and Gomez to work faster.” Said Maxwell.

“I’m going to take my team to search for Jadek’s, hopefully to uncover some answers.”

“Be careful, Lieutenant.”

“We will, sir.” Maya then terminated the link before looking at the woman. “What direction did they go?” She asked and watched the woman point. Maya then activated the link with her team. “I need everyone to converge on my location. We got a job to do.” As soon as everyone came together, including Zina, Maya explained to them of what they will be doing and why.

Zina then chipped up, “The source of the oxygen is coming from that direction of where Jadek and his team went.”

“Then I hope that is where we will find them. Come on.” Maya said as she began to lead them further into the large sub-terrain cavern until the came up to an entrance to a tunnel. Without hesitation, they turned on their suits light torches and continued further in, rifles drawn and ready to defend themselves if they were to encounter anything hostile.

Six Hours Earlier

The six figures continued to walk carefully with their rifles and sidearms drawn. Those with sidearms had their palm torches in the other hand, resting under their sidearm and aimed directly with the emitter. As for those with the rifles, they had built in torches under the barrel, on and illuminating in every direction that they aimed their rifle’s emitter at. One of the sixth figures was the leader of the group, Jadek, who had insisted that they investigate the source of the oxygen.

With each and every careful step further down the declined slope of the tunnel, he felt his gut churn more and worse. A lot of the personnel from the ship did not understand why Jadek insisted on this adventure. Perhaps it was his gut that was throwing up all the flags and alarms. Perhaps it was intuition and instinct from past experiences of the many worlds he had been deployed on. Perhaps he has gotten too old already and was losing his mind. But the last time he checked, he was less than a hundred years old.

Nevertheless, Jadek has learned through past experiences to always trust his gut. Whether his gut is right or wrong, he will not be able to relax until he investigates.

They soon reached the end of the tunnel, which brought them to a new large cavern, perhaps just as large, maybe smaller, compared to the one where the Romulan crew were at. Difference was, there was no glow, nothing that illuminated the cavern like the one above, so they had to continue using their torches to illuminate their paths. But the cavern was filled with pillars, pillars with very large, singular crystal like structure sticking out in a slight angle, perhaps fifteen degrees, the base of the crystal coming out of the base of the pillar and the pointy tip of the crystal pointed at the ceiling, just a foot or two away from the top of the pillar.

While everything was made entirely out of crystal because of the planet, these very large crystals were very distinctive from how they stood out from the surface of the floor, pillars, walls and ceiling. It certainly made a couple of his team members curious, who were scientists in separate fields, but both fields had similar interests in this planet and how oxygen was coming from within the planet.

While the rest of his team started to take interests in the pillars, Jadek approached something far larger that was located directly in the center of the cavern. It was like an explosion of crystal emitting from the cavern floor, several large crystals in the center were deeply connected to the ceiling, while several dozens of crystals jetted out in various places and angles. He simply could not quite make it out but before he could pull out his tricorder to make some scans, he heard a shout behind him.

Jadek immediately turned a full one-eighty on his heels and saw that one of his team members was missing, as their sidearm and hand torch were on the ground, about a foot or two apart from each other. Then there was another, a scream somewhere towards the left from where the first disappeared and he saw the rifle on the floor. He did not know what was going on but he knew one thing, he needed to get eyes on what was going on or he was going to regret very much on how right his gut was.

Before Jadek could shout orders, he heard noise above him, noise that sounded like something was crawling on the ceiling, but it was as if the ceiling was being stabbed by something. But what exactly could puncture into crystalline surfaces? He could not even waste a second of his time to figure out that answer, as he immediately took action and ran for the rifle on the floor. As he did this, he heard another member of his team shouting as they were whisked away into darkness. Then another. The moment Jadek made himself slide across the floor to grab the rifle in his free hand, he heard the last team member of his screaming for help.

Jadek took both rifles and aimed them directly in front of him, both torches illuminating his path and he aimed them right up at the ceiling. That is where he truly began to regret for following his gut.

It was a creature, a creature that he has never seen anything like it before. It was a bipedal from how the structure of its body looked, but it acted as a quadrupedal, with how it crawled. Several other creatures of its kind moved into the light, and they too moved on the ceiling, upside down and looked right at him. At least, so he thought, as their heads had turned towards him and they hissed at him but he could not see any eyes.

Before Jadek could even pull the triggers on the rifles, he felt himself be grabbed and yanked up off the floor. The sudden jolt and force of being picked up, with their arms around his stomach and the way the arms squeezed to pull him up with such force had squeezed all the air out of him and some how made his arms go numb. Because of that, both the rifles had slipped out of his fingers and clad against the crystalline floor.

Next thing he knew, he found himself be placed inside a one of those very large crystals that were sticking out of the pillars, as if they had magically opened up to support them. He was not sure how, but one of his team members had managed to keep their hand torch and it was with them while they were inside the crystal, completely sealed up, and Jadek could see his entire team, all encased inside a large crystal, each to a pillar of their own. Jadek tried to struggle, tried to free himself, but some how the crystal he was in had paralyzed him and slowly, ever so slowly, he watched as the crystal began to close around him.

Jadek tried to shout, he tried to yell at the top of his lungs in hopes that his voice would echo to the chamber above, but as soon as he was fully encased, his voice was muffled…and then he fell unconscious.