We have detec­ted a dis­tress call that appears to have eman­ated from a Vul­can Exped­i­tion­ary Group trans­mit­ter on the world below us, des­ig­nated BC-01c. We are assum­ing the trans­mit­ter is asso­ci­ated with the lost VES Sonak, as no oth­er Vul­can ves­sels are known to have entered the Black Cluster. We lost the sig­nal itself one day ago, but are now in orbit around its ori­gin. The dis­tress call sug­ges­ted imme­di­ate assist­ance was required as atmo­spher­ic con­di­tions proved too haz­ard­ous for the exped­i­tion to con­tin­ue, it also com­mu­nic­ated that one of their team had already been lost.

Ensign Lock’s risk assess­ment of the plan­et sur­face was very thor­ough, find­ing that the plan­et is almost entirely dark, its mag­net­ic field is anom­al­ous, and its atmo­sphere is a silic­ate mod­ule. We cat­egor­ised it as Class Y. A Demon world. Although this is unusu­al for a world so close to its par­ent star.

I am send­ing the shuttle Mor­gana to the sur­face under the com­mand of Lt Astan with Lt Cmdr Valik, Ensign Kheled and Doc­tor Vale. Ensign Lock will remain behind and try to increase our sensor capa­city, since our probe stopped trans­mit­ting about 50km down.

Cap­tain Mas­uda, Com­mand­ing Officer, Lyo­n­esse NCC-2278.

Captain’s Log, Supplementary

The shuttle was attacked as it came in to land on the sur­face, the crew were able to make a land­ing and Lt Cmdr Valik made tem­por­ary repairs to the engine. Lt Astan eval­u­ated that the mis­sion was able to pro­ceed and the remains of the base camp left by the Sonak were explored. Unfor­tu­nately our worst fears were con­firmed when Dr Vale found two of the exped­i­tion dead.

This officer notes the bravery and cour­age of these men in dis­char­ging their duty in the face of attack by an unknown ali­en spe­cies. Let the record acknow­ledge their sacrifice.

The away party brought back the two for buri­al. Data shows that their mis­sion was act­ive and col­lect­ing data for about two weeks before they star­ted hav­ing prob­lems. There were objects which fell to the sur­face and a team was sent to invest­ig­ate. The base lost con­tact when a storm came in and found their atmo­sphere was replaced by the storm itself. The last entry says they were under attack and tried to aban­don their pos­i­tion pay­ing the ulti­mate price. This means that BC-01C was a Class H world and is now read­ing as Class Y. What could have caused such a drastic change in so short a peri­od of time?

An eval­u­ation of the sur­vey mis­sion data sug­ges­ted that there may have been microbe life forms on the plan­et when the Sonak mis­sion was here, and they had some the­or­ies about an old civil­isa­tion hav­ing dwelt on the world at some point. Unfor­tu­nately no inform­a­tion was logged about where the Sonak was going next.

We have sent a probe down to the impact site, under modi­fic­a­tions to shield its energy sup­ply. The away team believe that this may have drawn the creature which attacked them. This probe made it through and scans of the impact site showed a crater which still con­tains the object which caused it. The object is round and smooth sur­faced, we also believe we have found the bod­ies of the rest of the sur­vey mis­sion. It may be the inter­fer­ence, but there does seem to be some move­ment in the vicinity.

I can’t help but feel con­flic­ted in light of this. The safety of the crew must be para­mount, but we have a duty to return these people to their fam­il­ies after so many years of not know­ing. It seems an away team should be sent to the impact site, but with so little inform­a­tion it is dif­fi­cult to know if we might not find ourselves in a sim­il­ar situ­ation to that of the crew of the Sonak. Giv­en the exist­ing evid­ence, we might also find ourselves in a First Con­tact situation.