The door to Lab 2 parted with a soft hiss.

Tolk entered first, carrying a diagnostic padd under one arm and a thermal stim drink in the other. “Tell me again why we’re always the ones who get the weird space dust,” he said, heading for the secondary console.

Sayani didn’t look up from the stellar mapping display. “Because we don’t complain about the weird space dust.”

Tolk snorted. “Debatable.”

The lab was cool and brightly lit, its main display already alive with parsed telemetry from the science deck—layered projections of the surrounding nebula, current density fluctuations, and the beginnings of gravimetric curve modeling. Commander Siobhan’s voice still lingered in Tolk’s mind: “This isn’t just a backdrop. It’s part of the mystery.”

Sayani tapped a control and brought up the spectrographic data. “All right. Per the Commander’s orders: isolate the nebula’s composition. Full elemental breakdown. Look for missing markers—especially carbon, oxygen, nitrogen. Standard stellar yields aren’t matching expected values.”

“On it,” Tolk said, dropping into a stool and setting the padd down. “Running spectral analysis suite four. Recalibrating the sweep parameters to account for multiphasic interference.”

“Good. And I’m starting a search for gravitational irregularities—anything that might suggest a second stellar remnant once occupied the region. If it’s gone, I want to know where it went.”

The hum of the lab deepened as the scanners engaged—long-range readings threading in from the ship’s external arrays. Lines of data began to pour across the main wall display, slowly building into a picture none of them fully understood yet.

Sayani glanced sideways. “You ever study anything like this in your rotation?”

Tolk shook his head. “Nope. But I’ve watched enough horror holos to know that when stars disappear without a trace, it usually means we should turn around.”

Sayani smirked. “Too late for that.”

They worked in silence for a moment—comfortable, focused.

“Let’s tag any anomalies but hold off on interpretation,” Sayani said finally. “Commander Siobhan made it clear—facts first, theories second.”

Tolk nodded. “Copy that. Just the data. For now.”

NEs Sayani and Tolk
Physical Sciences Division
U.S.S. Ogawa