Hello dear readers. I have another little piece for your enjoyment that the Muse insisted on writing over the last few weeks. Don't worry, I'm still working on my other pieces as this one is practically done.

A few notes for this story, this is inspired by my other work, 'Galaxy Wars: Fight for the Federation', but a pure 'Star Trek' piece that takes place in the Prime-Universe of the Original Series and not the Kelvinverse with interpretations of characters primarily from Victorious with occasional ones from Dan Schneider's other works. In addition, some parts are inspired and borrowed from Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc.'s Star Fleet Universe.

A Haunting of the Mind
By OneHorseShay
Disclaimer: Don't Own, Don't Sue. For God's sake, don't sue. Respective properties owned by Paramount/Viacom and license holder Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc.
Rating: T Language, Violence
Summary: On a cold, dark abandoned station left by an ancient alien species, terrors and old ghosts from the past await the crew of the USS Tori. Takes place in the Prime-Universe 'Fusion Fic'.

Chapter 1

Captain's Log, Captain Fredrick Benson Commanding, Stardate: 4211.4 (December 29, 2267): The Tori is on her way towards an abandon space station that is believed to have belonged to the Old Kings, an interstellar power that decades before Humans and Vulcans made first contact, used to occupy much of Klingon space and western half of the Federation. We're to pick up a survey team left there two weeks ago that was to study the facility in the hopes of gleaning any information about the mysterious civilization as we know only bits and pieces through scant historical records from the Klingons and little contact they had with Vulcans before they left to parts unknown.

The Bureau of Propulsion would much rather have the team stay longer, but the system's star has gone nova, throwing out most of its outer shell of gases to leave a white dwarf and destabilizing the rest of the system that is turning into planetary nebula, so we've been ordered to pick the survey team up for their safety.

I can't help but be more than curious about visiting the system in observing the initial formation of a planetary nebula and finding out any information about the Old Kings. So little is known about them, but what we do know has fueled much speculation of alien visitation on Earth before official first contact with the Vulcans over the last few decades due to finding out their apparent resemblance to reported alien contacts during the Twentieth-century known as the 'Greys'.

However, the scientific curiosity I have must be tempered with the potential complication of a simple pickup and observation of a stellar phenomenon. The star system is fairly close to the newly institutionalized 'Neutral Zone' with the Klingon Empire after the Four Day War that goes without mentioning ended with the intervention of the Organians, raising the possibility of Klingon interference if they've become aware of the station's existence. I don't believe it can be overstated about how much the Klingons desire to learn about their old 'masters' since they were used as a subject race by them before their disappearance.

On a livelier note, I've been informed that a member of the survey team is the sister of my chief of security, Lieutenant Katrina Vega. I briefly met her years ago a few times, particularly during my sister-in-law's graduation from high school. I'm glad that one of my crew will have a happy reunion.

Bridge
USS Tori (NCC-1725)
Constitution-Class (Bonhomme Richard-Subclass)
In route to the 'Old King' Station
Sector 2007

Captain Fredrick 'Freddie' Benson sat in his command chair at the center of the bridge as he watched the growing sight of the various shades of blue and white atmospheric streams gas giant with a thin shell of red stellar gases that spherically spread out from the center of the system filling the view screen as the starship approached at low impulse speed. The gas giant was drawing the gases passing them towards it in a spectacular whirled wind of various color gases that mixed to start turning part of the atmosphere purple.

He idly commented to his chief science officer, Commander Robert 'Robbie' Shapiro to his right at the science station, "It's a beautiful sight, isn't it Shapiro?"

The curly haired young man had his eyes glued to the various monitor screens displaying the streaming data they were receiving about the system, apparently too enthralled to answer his captain.

Benson smiled and shook his head, understanding the fascination since he had graduated from UW at Seattle with a science degree and rose to command through the science branch (straddling and partially cross trained into electronic engineering several times so far in his moderately short career) instead of the usual command track.

Lieutenant Catarina 'Cat' Valentine, a lovely redhead Caitian, giggled from her communication station behind Captain Benson at her open secret boyfriend enthralled at his station.

Benson glanced over his right shoulder and shared a smile to the always bubbling young lady that kept levity to the sometime tense moments on a starship.

Lieutenant (J.G.) Rex Powers called out from the Helm station, "Hey Robbie, the Captain asked you something."

Robbie tore his eyes away and looked over his shoulder, "What?"

The Captain softly sighed, showing far more patience with his helm officer than perhaps he professionally should extend, but he was a capable officer that was still adjusting to being 'real'. He smiled towards Robbie and asked, "I was saying, 'It's a beautiful sight, isn't it?'"

The curly haired science officer nodded his head and answered, "Yes, really beautiful. It's amazing being this up close to the initial formation of a planetary nebula."

"It definitely is…" He turned his head to look to his navigator's back, Lt. Commander André Harris. "…but is it going to cause us any navigation problems?"

Harris shook his head and answered, understanding that Benson was speaking to him, "Not really. Just diffused gases and gravitational eddies with the star's collapse and shifting of planetary orbits. We should be able to park right into orbit with the station without a hitch."

"Good, but what about the station? How would it fair in orbit since the collapse?"

Trina sitting two stations down from Robbie's science station looked up and turned in her seat in the direction of the center of the bridge, clearly concerned with the answer.

André shrugged a shoulder and answered, "The planet is massive enough with its own generated magnetic field to protect it from the brunt of the collapse without ripping away the atmosphere and tossing the station away."

Benson caught from the corner of his eye Trina's concerned expression, giving her a sympathetic smile then remarked, "Well, let's say hello and make sure everything is okay…" He slightly swiveled his seat to his right. He politely ordered Cat, "Lieutenant, signal the station of our arrival and we'll beam them over at their convenience."

"'kay, 'kay," she politely answered with her fingers already dancing across the console before he even finished the order.

Benson suppressed another sigh at hearing another questionable lack of professional demeanor. However, he understood that it wasn't meant as any form of disrespect towards him. She was just a friendly person, something quite ironic since she was a felineoid and cats on Earth weren't exactly the friendliest of creatures from his personal experience. It was probably the reason he was more of a dog person.

The bridge waited in relative silence other than the standard background hum, beeps and communications from other parts of the ship of the routine operations throughout the vessel.

Cat frowned as she adjusted her ear piece in her left ear, typed on her control panel and the end of her prehensile tail with a black fuzzy end lazily waved back and forth over the top of the backrest of her seat.

Trina was watching the petite communications officer with growing concern as she noticed the frustration on her face.

The redhead finally commented with a slight pout, "I'm not receiving any response."

Benson slightly turned in his seat to look over his right shoulder and asked, "Is it due to interference? With the gravitational settling, it could interfere with subspace."

The Caitian shook her head, slightly pouting as she answered, "No sir. This close to the station, I could easily compensate for any interference, but I'm just not receiving any acknowledgement."

Benson slightly frowned, shifting his weight to his left and resting his elbow on the armrest of the command seat. He mumbled to himself, "They could be busy trying to get as much research time as they could before we arrived and someone's not manning the communication station."

Trina spoke up in a restrained tone of her potential worry, "Tori probably has her head in the computers just like Robbie, so…"

The rest of the bridge crew turned curious gazes to the security chief at the mention of the name.

She passed over them a quick glance and clarified, "My sister is named Victoria; we call her Tori."

Benson smiled and shook his head, appreciating the humor. "Right… hopefully is just as mundane as being busy. I doubt someone is just sitting at a portable comm." He looked to the Helm/Navigation stations and ordered, "As soon as we're close enough, take us into a standard orbit."

Harris plotted out the orbit trajectory and Rex adjusted the ship's velocity to slide right into a standard orbit around the gas giant of similar size to Jupiter. At the approach they had made to the planet and the position of the orbiting station, they were on the opposite side of the planet and would take a few minutes to round it to catch up.

Over those few minutes, Robbie turned the short range sensors towards the planet and Trina kept her attention on Robbie, trying to pick up any body language about what he was monitoring.

Benson called out to Robbie to break the tension, "Anything interesting Commander?"

"It's just a standard Class-A gas giant that wasn't massive enough to start nuclear fusion during its formation, but due to its mass, it is drawing a bit of the stellar gases to it. All the colliding of gases is causing the upper atmosphere to ionize… wait, I'm picking up the station, what the…"

He got up from his seat and hunched over to look into the sensor hood. He rolled the control knob on the side to adjust the resolution of the sensor readings.

Benson called out in concern, "Robbie?"

"The station's orbit is decaying, being drawn into the outer atmosphere."

"On screen."

Robbie reached over and hit a switch, causing the view screen to magnify a portion of the image of the outer edge of the planet to show the grey station. It was a fairly straightforward and modular design with a central hub hexagon with three large cylinder spokes about two hundred meters long sticking out at equilateral distances from each other with a square module attached to the central hub between each of them. There was an outer ring that was beyond the square modules of the central hub and attached the cylinder spokes to each other then past that, two large rectangular modules attached to each side of the cylinders.

The station was rotating and pushing away the surrounding stellar gases and the planet's atmosphere in a near perfect circle and half cylinder under it, making a visible indentation in the streams of gases.

Benson got up from his seat and walked over to rest his hands on the guardrail separating the inner and outer ring of the bridge to stand behind Robbie. "Why is there a void of gases around the station?"

"It's generating an anti-gravitational field, similar to the space-time distortion fields we use for sublight travel and taking off and landing on planets, but much more powerful."

The captain glanced over to the view screen and commented, "But you said the orbit is decaying."

"It is. The stellar gases are pushing it towards the planet as they're being drawn to it. I guess they found the station keeping controls and are trying to compensate, but it isn't enough."

Trina got up from her station and walked next to Robbie then demanded, "Then why aren't they responding to our hails? Why haven't they abandoned the station in their shuttlecraft?"

Robbie licked his lips and fumbled for a moment before answering, "They might be a little busy trying to keep the station from falling into the planet."

Benson cut them off before any argument could start, knowing Trina's combative nature—which made her a great security chief, "We can debate later. The priority is to get them out then we can ask them why when they're safely onboard." He turned to the Helm/Navigation stations and called out to Rex, "Keep us out of the gases, but get us into transporter range."

He walked to his command seat and pressed a white button on the right armrest. "Transporter room, standby to beam out survey team. Commander Shapiro will be feeding you biosigns in a few moments."

The science officer disagreed, "I wouldn't recommend the transporters. The ionization of the gases around the station may cause too much interference, even at close range. It's like going through an ion storm."

He turned his head to look at the pair at the science station and sighed, rubbing his chin in the process, "Scrambled molecules…" He briefly recalled the classified captain's log from Captain James T. Kirk about him and a number of his senior staff beaming through an ion storm with quite interesting results, arriving in a parallel universe that could best described as 'evil' counterparts. He dropped his hand and ordered, "Find them anyway to make sure they're okay."

Robbie nodded his head and turned back to the sensor hood, switching the ship's scanners to bioreadings.

As he performed his sensor sweep, Benson looked back to the forward stations and ordered, "Lieutenant Powers, contact hanger deck to prep a shuttle then report down there outfitted for landing party duty. We're going to go get them."

Rex nodded his head and pressed a few control studs, speaking down to the hanger deck.

The captain looked over his left shoulder and ordered, "Valentine, keep trying to hail them—"

"Ah, oh…" Robbie interrupted with a deep dreadful voice.

Benson walked around the guardrail and asked, "What do you mean 'ah, oh'?"

Trina didn't wait for an answer and pushed Robbie aside to look into the sensor hood. She adjusted the rolling knob as she studied the hidden display.

The science officer grabbed the top of his chair for balance, looking a little peeved that she would shove him aside then looked to his captain. "I'm only reading one life sign."

The gold command shirt wearing young man drew a sharp breath and retorted, "It's a five person survey team."

"I only saw one before Trina pushed me aside…" He glanced down to the red mini-dress uniformed security officer hogging his instrument console then looked back to Benson. "…and it's Klingon."

Benson's jaw squared, hearing that his concerns turned out to come true and sharply turned to look at Valentine. "Valentine, sound general quarters—"

Trina practically spun as she turned away from the sensor hood and shouted, "Wait captain!"

The security officer's shout startled Cat, causing her to pause from sounding the alert, and Benson knotted his brow and turned a curious look to Trina.

The Centauran woman cleared her throat, seeing that she was on the spot with most of the bridge crew looking at her for basically countermanding the captain's order. She was used to the spotlight as she had a minor acting career before joining the service, but felt a shiver of nervousness with the attention.

"Lieutenant?" Benson pressed, wanting an explanation but not being rude or short with her.

"The life sign is female, so… it's probably my sister."

If the regular background sounds of the various pieces of equipment weren't functioning, one could have heard a pin drop with the crew remaining silent.

He raised a surprised eyebrow and asked, "Your sister?"

She remained silent again, turning a glare to the rest of the crew looking at her. They seemed to have the good sense to turn their attention back to their stations.

Benson observed the change then looked to her with a sympathetic gaze. He walked up the step and took her aside a few paces back to the secondary weapons/defense station to speak to her away from the ears of the rest of the bridge crew. "Trina?"

She sighed and quickly answered, "My sister isn't Centauran, she's Klingon and obviously adopted."

The handsome young starship captain blinked, shocked by the revelation. He had met Tori a few times when he was a teenager during visits to Los Angeles when he went with his late wife to visit her sister, an attractive young woman. He hadn't given it a second thought she wasn't a Centauran, but then again there isn't any obvious physical differences between Humans/Centaurans and Klingons.

However, he was still stunned by the revelation and uttered, "She's a Klingon?"

Trina glanced away for a moment then looked back to him and answered in a hushed voice, "Yes… dad was in the service—it's a long story that I don't have time to tell you because she's on a station diving into a gas giant to be crushed like a tin can."

Benson sighed and studied her eyes for several moments then remarked, "Yes… an Old King station on the raggedy edge of the Federation just one sector away from Klingon space with the only member of a five member survey team registering on our life sensors on the station happens to be Klingon…"

"My sister isn't a traitor," she practically growled at him with a sharp gaze that would have been disrespectful to a superior officer.

He calmly answered, not taking it as disrespectful, but defending her sister, "I didn't say she was, but if it was anyone other than your sister, that wouldn't set off warning bells with you with these circumstances? You wouldn't be a little suspicious being chief of security… or having to sit in that center seat?"

The older Vega sister clenched her jaw and one of the few times in her life she bit her tongue, knowing that she couldn't refute his point. It was damn suspicious under the circumstances and something her sister had faced through her entire career as tensions with the Klingons grew every year.

His expression softened that turned into a sympathetic expression then glanced over his right shoulder but keeping an eye on Trina, "Powers, is that shuttle ready?"

"Yes sir."

He kept his eyes on Trina as he continued, "Carry out my previous order. Valentine, contact sickbay and the barracks for Doctor West and four Marines to report to the hanger deck. We're on a rescue and recovery mission."

"Yes sir," the redhead answered and turned to her board to carry out his orders.

Trina gave him a thankful smile then stated, "I'd like to accompany the landing party."

Benson paused for a moment then called out, "Make that three marines Valentine. We'll need the seat for Lieutenant Vega."

"Yes sir."

He turned and headed for the turbolift in the back left corner of the bridge with the security officer following him. He called out, "Shapiro, you have the conn."

Author's Note: I hope this has teased you enough to stick around for a spooky little story for the Halloween season. Also, yes, I did make Tori a Klingon, but this is TOS, so they don't have forehead ridges and are really indistinguishable from Humans. However, I'm not going with the 'Star Trek: Enterprise' explanation because that's just racist to me an explanation.

Drew Roy as Rex Powers