Command of the Dead Part I
Posted on Wed Oct 14th, 2026 @ 6:12am by Commodore Tyler Malbrooke & Lieutenant Junior Grade Galen Trellis & Major Edmund Merrick
Edited on on Wed Oct 14th, 2026 @ 7:20am
2,318 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
Episode 18 - The Edge of Darkness
Location: Command Information Center - Camp Nostromo
Timeline: MD004 1100 hrs
Galen had never served at an installation this size, but Dorian had. And the thing that crawled under his skin wasn't the bodies — it was the quiet.
A camp of twelve thousand didn't go silent. It wasn't built for it. Even at 0300, even on stand-down, there was always something — a generator cycling, a duty watch making rounds, someone in the galley who couldn't sleep burning whatever passed for coffee. Marine installations ran on noise the way starships ran on plasma. The sound was structural. It meant things were functioning the way they were supposed to.
This place had been functioning right up until it wasn't. Galen kept his eyes moving and his breathing even and didn't speak unless he had to.
Each step that Edmund took, disturbed the dust that had settled upon the area. Silence, no deafening sound that would be there if the marines were alive, laughing, yelling. Even the sound of weapons training was not there. Life in general, existing no more.
It was surreal as they walked through the camp, Edmund paused kneeling down by a marine who had fallen next to a crate
"Lets get the dog tags." Edmund quietly said, looking up towards Galen.
He looked over toward a nearby doorway, where he saw another body, halfway inside the building. Edmund's heart sinking.
"Yeah," Lieutenant Trellis said quietly.
He crouched beside the nearest body without being asked, his fingers working the chain with a practiced efficiency that surprised him. He'd never done this before — not in this life. But his hands knew how.
He passed the tags to Edmund and didn't comment.
He looked down the corridor. More shapes in the dim. More stillness. The anger came up before he could stop it — not Dorian's anger, his own, raw and without context to soften it. Twelve thousand Marines and not one of them had been given a chance to answer whatever this was.
"No weapons discharge," he said, mostly to himself, scanning the walls, the deck, the doorframes. "No defensive positions. No sign anyone tried to fall back or consolidate." He looked at Edmund.
"Whatever this was, it wasn't a battle. Someone made sure of that." He glanced at the shape in the doorway, half in and half out, going somewhere he never arrived. "CIC is ahead. The logs will tell us who."
Accepting the tags Edmund tucked them away and walked quietly alongside Galen.
They entered in the building where the CIC was located, just not hearing the sound of life gave Edmund the chills. As the two men approached the main room, the heart of the command center itself, the screens were still active.
As they stepped inside further, Edmund caught sight of two bodies slumped in their chairs in front of the console.
On closer inspection, one of them, Edmund could identify from his pips as the colonel in charge. General Seamus O'Rourke's XO, Colonel Arion Mercer, an older man, still looking in his prime.
The other a Bajoran male, Major Taban. Edmund had remembered the name from the manifest.
He glanced over towards Galen then back to where the two men were.
"Lets move them from the chairs. "Edmund's voice husky, feeling it best for them to be placed upon the floor.
"Agreed."
Galen moved to the Colonel first. He and Edmund worked him down from the chair carefully, laying him on the deck with as much dignity as the space allowed. Taban they moved next, setting him alongside Mercer, hands folded.
Galen stood over them both for a moment. At their posts, right up until the end.
He turned back to the console before the weight of it settled any further. The system was still active, session still open — no authentication, no lockout. Whoever had last touched it hadn't come back to close it.
"Still live," The Helmsman said as he slid to the console and beginning to work through the logs. "Let's see what happened here."
The early entries read like any medical log from any base. Routine sick call, routine complaints. Galen almost scrolled past them.
CMO Lieutenant T’eseri filed the first notation — three Marines presenting with similar symptoms within the same watch period. Fatigue, disorientation, mild respiratory distress. Her tone was measured, the kind of careful clinical language that meant she'd noticed the pattern but wasn't ready to name it yet. Monitoring.
She reassessed the next day, but the number of sick had doubled overnight.
Lieutenant Trellis pulled up the subsequent entries and read them in order. Twelve cases. Then forty. LT T’eseri requesting additional medical staff, establishing overflow capacity in the gymnasium, running bloodwork and various tests on an illness that she could not explain. The cases of sick Marines were coming in faster than she could keep up with.
Then the duty logs changed.
Corporal Yates — found unresponsive, Corridor Seven. No prior reported symptoms.
Sergeant Miralda — collapsed during PT. Medical responding.
Lieutenant Okafor — unresponsive at operations console, Deck Three.
They weren't making it to sick bay anymore. They were just stopping — mid-stride, mid-watch, mid-sentence. Lieutenant Trellis cross-referenced the internal sensor logs and the timestamps lined up exactly. No clustering. No pattern of spread. Marines going down across every section of the camp simultaneously, faster than any response team could reach them.
The Doctors' last log entry ended abruptly. . .mid-paragraph.
He stared at the incomplete sentence for a moment, then sat back.
"The CMO documented it from the start," he said, his voice flat. "Caught the first cases early, started working it. Then it just—" He gestured at the screen. "Accelerated. They went from sick bay to falling where they stood faster than her team could begin to understand what they were dealing with."
Edmund gave a solemn nod towards Galen, then reached over to see if there was any logs from the Colonel himself.
"Let's see what Colonel Mercer had to say as to the status about what happened." Edmund feeling the need to hear it.
He glanced back to where he and Galen had put Mercer and Taben, before he turned back to the screen.
"All right Colonel Arion Mercer, lets see what you have to say." Edmund settling down in the chair, Mercer had been in.
"Computer play logs." Edmund giving the command.
"Camp Nostromo, Command Log, stardate 2399791.8 Colonel Arion Mercer reporting." The log began with the Colonel sitting behind his desk. He looked well kempt and in good spirits. We received word today that General O'Rourke will be brought here aboard the USS Pioneer. The men here are getting this piece of space rock ready for his arrival and inspection. The bad news for us is the General is a stickler for just about everything, the good news he will most likely be brewing over the Fleeters aboard the Pioneer rather than come after us. All is well here the camp practically runs itself. The only thing to report is two members of the RECON team, Second Lieutenant Torres, and Private Stefanowski have come down with an illness. Doctor T’eseri says its nothing she can't handle." The log ended Arion was an older man but one that brimmed with vigor. His face was kind and gentle but weather worn.
Lieutenant Trellis leaned forward slightly as the log played, watching Mercer's face on the screen. The man looked exactly like what he was — a senior Marine officer who had his house in order and knew it. Comfortable in his skin, comfortable in his command.
"He wasn't worried," The Helmsman said quietly when the log ended. "Two sick Marines and a doctor he trusted. That's a Tuesday." He glanced at Edmund. "No reason in the world to think it was anything else."
He pulled up the subsequent entries and scanned them. Duty reports, inspection preparation, supply manifests, a note about the parade ground needing attention before the General's arrival. The illness didn't appear again — not because it had resolved, Galen suspected, but because Mercer hadn't considered it worth documenting. T'eseri had it in hand.
The logs ran long. Lieutenant Galen scrolled past the middle entries without reading them in detail, watching the timestamps, looking for the point where the tone changed.
He found it near the end.
"Skipping ahead," he said, pulling up the second to last entry. "Whatever changed, it changed fast."
Edmund reached out to jump back to the first log they had watched. He needed to follow the trail. How long had it taken for people to start coming down ill?
He glanced over to where the two men lay, silent in their eternal slumber, then turned back to the screen.
Torres and Stefanowski. Both part of the RECON team.
"Colonel, where did the team go?" Edmund spoke to the man upon the screen.
This wasn't something that needed to be rushed through. Care and consideration were necessary to find out what had happened. Back when Edmund was in Security, he had learned to look for all the clues, following the path wherever it led.
Edmund continued to watch the logs.
When the next log begins Colonel Mercer is seated behind his desk. He looks tired but composed. The lights in his office are slightly dimmed.
"Camp Nostromo log stardate 2399800.3 (three days after the previous log entry.) This is Colonel Arion Mercer, Commanding Officer.
I'm making this log entry as something unusual is happening.
Over the past forty-eight hours, we've had seven Marines report to Medical with what initially appeared to be a respiratory infection. Fever. Severe fatigue. Persistent coughing. Difficulty breathing.
At first, Doctor T’eseri believed we were dealing with a particularly aggressive strain of pneumonia. We've isolated the affected personnel and begun treatment..." There was a pause in the recording and it seems that Mercer was momentarily distracted by something. A moment later the Mercer spoke again.
"...Then the number increased. We're now at twenty-three cases." He paused, and looked down at a report on his desk. "The Doctor has requested additional medical personnel and laboratory equipment. I've authorized both. For the moment, there is no reason for anyone to panic. But I've ordered Medical to maintain strict isolation procedures until we know exactly what we're dealing with. The affected Marines are receiving the best care we can provide." He looked directly into the camera. Directly into whoever viewed the log. "They're Marines. We're going to get them through this." The screen went black as the log ended.
Lieutenant Trellis watched the screen go dark and didn't say anything for a moment.
Twenty-three cases and Mercer was still steady. Still methodical. Isolation procedures, additional resources, measured language — the kind of commanding officer who'd seen enough bad days to know that panic was the first casualty you couldn't afford. They're Marines. We're going to get them through this.
"He meant every word of that." Lieutenant Trellis said aloud. "And there wasn't a thing he could have done differently."
Edmund was quiet for a moment, looking at the now dark screen. he was imagining himself in this sort of position. He wasn't certain if he would have had that sort of response like Mercer.
They're Marines. We're going to get them through this.
Mercer had certainly believed that when he said it. Edmund glanced over towards where the Colonel now lay upon the floor.
"Yes, he did." Edmund quietly replied.
His eyes returned to the screen, waiting for the next log, starting to feel something in the pit of his stomach.
The recording begins abruptly. Mercer is standing rather than sitting. There is a noticeable strain in his expression. His uniform seems a little disheveled, as if he has been unable to put on a fresh one for some time. The log does not open with a stardate, however, the computer has stamped this log exactly 24 hours from the previous one.
"I was wrong. We were all so wrong. The illness is not responding to conventional treatment. We've identified forty-one cases. Doctor T’eseri has been working continuously for nearly thirty hours. She's convinced that the illness is attacking the respiratory system, but every treatment we've tried has produced inconsistent results.
Some Marines stabilize. Others don't..." Mercer took a breath. "We lost Lieutenant Torres this morning. Private Stefanowski followed three hours later. There are now six Marines in critical condition."
Arion paused in his speech and sipped a hot beverage from his desk. He seemed to rub his neck briefly as if there were muscle pains present. "I've ordered the installation placed under medical quarantine. No personnel are permitted to leave without Medical authorization. Doctor T’eseri believes she can develop a treatment if we can determine what is causing the infection. She's running every test our laboratory can support. I've never seen her or anyone work this hard. She well get a medal for this one, that is for sure."
His voice softened as he stopped pacing and stood behind his chair. Both hand rested on the back of the chair and he leaned forward. "She keeps telling me we're going to find an answer. I believe her. I have to."
A claxon can be heard in the background. "That's Medical calling. I'm going down there." He ran from the room. The log recorded the empty room as the klaxon sounded for a second or two and then it showed the seal of the Marine Corps.
A Joint Post By
Commodore Tyler Malbrooke
Commanding Officer, USS Pioneer
Lieutenant Junior Grade Galen Trelis
Chief Flight Control Officer, USS Pioneer
Major Edmund Merrick
Company Commanding Officer, The Cure
USS Pioneer
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