The Second Gateway

Posted on Mon Feb 23rd, 2026 @ 3:18am by Captain Rhenora Kaylen & Lieutenant JG Rowan Hale & Lieutenant JG Olivia Voight

1,398 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Beholder
Location: Vadia IX
Timeline: Current

A burst of static tore through the telemetry feed.

“Signal degradation at forty-three per cent,” Rowan said evenly, fingers flying across the console as he attempted to isolate the away team’s biosigns through the interference.

Olivia’s life signs flickered into partial view. Elevated heart rate. Muscular trauma to the left shoulder.

“Olivia is alive. Non-fatal energy impact.”

Behind him, Batel’s cortical trace spiked sharply, drawing Rowan’s gaze.

The harmonic band she had identified earlier had surged in perfect synchronisation with the weapons discharge.

“It reacted,” Batel said quietly.

Rowan moved to reroute the telemetry through the containment interface, bypassing standard comm pathways.

"What do we do?" The Captain grunted as she picked herself up off the floor from where the explosion had deposited her. She was injured and unarmed and running out of options. "We need to get out of here, regroup and try again"

“Energy signature from the discharge matches the external modulation layer,” he said, his voice still measured. “This is not incidental crossfire.”

He tapped his badge.

“Captain, if you can hear me, the hostile energy pattern is harmonically linked to the well. You are not engaging a separate force.”

A beat.

“You are engaging something integrated into the containment structure.”

Batel’s breathing steadied, but her fingers tightened against the biobed.

“It isn’t merely responding to you,” he added quietly. “It is responding to observation.”

Rhenora got half the transmission, the rest garbled by static. She tucked Olivia behind the well and kept her weapon raised, guarding against any further attack. “If it’s linked to the well — how the hell do we stop it?” she shouted through the static, looking for something — anything — that she could use as a barrier.

“Hang in there,” she encouraged Olivia, knowing how frightening the situation would be to the young but yet old Doctor. The Captain paused and risked a glance at her tricorder, checking the harmonics. If she remodulated her phaser and fired at the well… would it react? There was no time like the present to find out. It was obvious they weren’t getting transported out, and the path between the well and the open gateways screamed vulnerability.

She thumbed her phaser, adjusted the harmonic variance, and fired.

Olivia groaned as she worked on repositioning herself to help the Captain. She reached for her own phaser and aimed it towards another spot of the well. “Going after two spots should help,” Olivia said.

The harmonic readouts spiked again, climbing in sharp increments. Rowan didn’t look alarmed, instead remaining focused.

“Captain, dual modulation is increasing lattice amplitude,” he said evenly. “You are not dispersing the energy. You are driving it.”

Rowan wasn’t sure if comms were functioning, or even if the Captain was receiving his transmission. Behind him, Batel’s cortical trace flared in synchronisation.

“It’s absorbing the input,” she said.

Rowan’s fingers moved quickly across the console, isolating the interference pattern.

“The structure is compensating by phase alignment,” he continued. “If it is integrated, harmonic assault will be interpreted as reinforcement.”

A beat.

“You are feeding the system.”

Static crackled across the comm. Rowan adjusted the containment model, running a rapid inversion simulation.

“Attempt phase inversion,” he said. “Modulate your phasers so they are out of alignment with the dominant harmonic band.” He continued, his voice steady, “If it is adaptive, it will resist reinforcement. It may not compensate for cancellation.”

“It will either dampen,” Batel murmured.

“Or it will declare its core frequency,” Rowan finished.

Back on the planet, Rhenora’s phaser whined with effort from the continued output. Seeing no positive result, she stopped the beam, listening to what she could of the staticky transmission from Rowan. Something about inverting… another energy blast, this time so close it grazed her face as she ducked. Inversion, inversion… the words echoed through her mind as she tucked in with Olivia. “Try this one for size,” she muttered, wiping the blood from her cheek with her sleeve. She remodulated her weapon again and delivered a point-blank beam into the well. This time it glowed an angry orange.

Rowan’s eyes tracked the harmonic display as the energy spike shifted.

“There,” he said quietly.

The energy output dropped sharply… then surged again, but on a narrower frequency.

“It’s constricting,” Rowan observed. “Frequency spread has reduced by twenty per cent.”

Batel leaned forward, her cortical pattern stabilising into a sharper rhythm.

“It doesn’t like cancellation,” she murmured.

“No,” Rowan agreed. “It prefers reinforcement.”

His fingers adjusted the model again.

“Captain, maintain inversion. Tighten your modulation gradually and force it onto a single frequency. If it declares its core frequency, we can target the node.”

Olivia adjusted the settings on her own phaser. Once she had made the adjustments, Olivia quickly looked at her tricorder to make sure that it was still getting readings and hopefully transmitting them back up to the ship. "Captain, what if one of us fired a constant beam and the other intermittent?"

Another idea popped into Olivia's head. It was one that she remember from when she was younger and her brothers had her practicing every so often as a back up plan. Reaching into her pants pocket, Olivia pulled out her fighting pike that was made to look like a medical scanner. Once she had it in her hand, Olivia activated it and then rechecked her phaser. "Just had another thought that might help us out a little more Captain, provided it works," Olivia said.

Olivia positioned her phaser at one angle towards towards the second gateway. After positioning the phaser, she found a small rock to help prop it up and the set timer on it to go off intermittely. It was a setting that one of her brothers had figured out years ago and showed her how to make use of it in an emergency setting.

Slowly moving away from her propped up phaser, Olivia held her fighting pike in both hands as she moved. "Time for a new tactic to get the needed information." She groaned a little due to the injury at her shoulder. Olivia opened up the medkit she had brought with her, pulling out one of the low dose pain meds and injected it into her shoulder to help ease the pain for a short period of time. She needed to stay alert for what she was about to do, but also needed a bit of relief at the same time.

Olivia moved again swiftly as she spotted movement in another area. She stood slightly, fighting pike in motion deflecting some of energy beams coming at them once more back towards the well. A couple of the beams Olivia missed and they ended up hitting her in the thigh. Even though she missed deflecting a couple of the beams that hit her leg, Olivia kept fighting off the other beams. "Captain, how are the readings now?"

"Sickbay, is this working at all?" Rhenora shouted through the chaos. They seemed to have activated an old defence system, energy beams lancing from various directions. They couldn't sustain this much longer. If it worked though, she would see it through to the end. Flicking het phaser to emergency power overload and kept firing. Whatever was going down, would happen soon.

An energy beam hit the Captain in the back, pitching her foreward over the well, she struggled to maintain not falling in herself and lost grip on the still discharging phaser. It fell, energy lancing in all directions, the hungry Vezda eager beneath what appeared to be a shield. An explosion blossomed deep within the well.

The explosion registered as a sharp bloom across the harmonic display.

“Energy surge confirmed,” Rowan said quietly, not moving from his console. “The external modulation layer has destabilised.”

Behind him, Batel’s cortical trace flared sharply, then constricted into a narrower band.

“It’s different,” she murmured.

Rowan studied the shifting waveform.

“Yes,” he agreed. “The resonance pattern has changed.”

A beat.

“It is no longer behaving defensively.”

Olivia continued to deflect what bolts of energy that she could away from her position. It was getting to be a bit more challenging now. The explosion threw her off balance and sent Olivia backwards into a section of the rock where she had previously set up her phaser to fire at intervals.

TBC

 

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