Chief Counselor's Personal Log #38 - Enus V, Part 2

Posted on 30 Apr 2025 @ 1:08pm by Lieutenant JG Delainey Carlisle

580 words; about a 3 minute read

I’m making myself sit down and record this. Not just because protocol suggests it—though that’s reason enough—but because I need to. I can still feel the adrenaline burning off inside me, like static clinging to every nerve ending. I haven’t felt this raw since my ER rotations back in medical school, and even then, I at least had the illusion of preparation. Nothing about today felt predictable. Nothing felt safe.

Our arrival at Enus V was as enigmatic as the orders that sent us there. No response to hails. No obvious signs of damage or distress. Just... silence. It took longer than expected to confirm there were even lifesigns in or around Enus Station. And when we did, we found only six. Four inside. Two outside. And the two outside? They were being chased—hunted, really—by something massive. Something wrong.

I’ll never forget the viewscreen—how the two small lifeform indicators moved frantically, and how that thing followed. The image was sterile, just dots and overlays and metrics, but I felt the horror in my gut. The creature caught up with one of them. The indicator blinked. Then vanished. It was like watching a star wink out. One moment full of movement, of desperate resistance... and then, nothing. Gone. It was like watching someone die in slow motion and being completely powerless to stop it.

We still don’t know what that thing was. We still don’t know why it was there or how it got into the station’s perimeter. But I was called to the transporter room when we beamed the surviving scientist aboard. An Andorian—unconscious, soaked, bleeding—dragged through with what seemed like an ocean of water and...

Gods help me, it came with our nearly dead Andorian scientist.

A tentacle. If that word even does it justice. Covered in teeth. Somehow still alive, still fighting, still hungry. Everything after that blurred into chaos. I remember shouting. Slipping on a slick of seawater and blood. Hyposprays flying between hands—any drug we thought might stun, paralyze, weaken. And through it all, Hovar Kov—either courageous or out of his mind—threw himself into the fray.

He didn’t hesitate. While the rest of us tried to contain the creature or care for the Andorian, he physically tore the thing from her. And then it turned on him. Bit into his leg. And he—he bit it back. I couldn’t believe it even as I saw it. I think that’s when the neurotoxin entered his system. It hit fast. Too fast. He went down as we kept jabbing the creature with hypos, trying anything to slow it down before it killed someone else.

Even then, even half out of his mind and bleeding, he was yelling scripture like a prophet with one foot in the grave and the other kicking down the gates of hell. He was the one who dragged it to the transporter pad. He transported and scattered it into space himself.

Now he’s in sickbay, fighting for his life. And I can’t stop replaying it—his voice, his madness, the way he refused to let that thing win.

I’ve spent the hours since going over it all, torn between relief and rage. If—when—he survives this, I honestly don’t know if I’m going to hug him... or yell at him until I need a medical team.

Maybe both.

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