The Klingon ‘king’ and his pirate flotilla had vanished some hours earlier, breaking formation with a regal flourish. They had fought a swift, brilliant and savage battle with the Pilgrims, who were comically ill-matched to the Klingon’s ability. But Ayres could not put aside the king’s warning of the Pilgrim’s numbers, particularly when the Klingon had proven so capable a commander. For him to be concerned, Ayres was certain he should be also.

The convoy crept along at impulse speed, its formation stretched thin behind the Farragut. Several of the freighters had no warp capability at all, relying on a network of resupply stations scattered across the trading lane. The dread felt by many of the shipmasters and their crews made much more sense if you were relying on slow engines, always prey to the Pilgrim’s predator.

In the Farragut’s science lab, a black cube sat inside a containment cradle. It was not large – scarcely half a metre on each side – yet it seemed to draw the air around it tight, as if space itself contracted in its presence. Every light that touched it dulled; reflections disappeared. Looking at it too long was like staring into deep water: there was a sense of depth, but no hint of where the bottom might lie.

Parr stood behind the barrier, watching it. She had ordered the lab cleared save for herself and Jevlak, the science officer. The box had made everyone uneasy.

“Ancient,” Jevlak said quietly as she reviewed the readings. “The internal composition does not correspond to any Federation records. Its structure is crystalline, but there are biological traces threaded through the matrix. Old traces. Fossilised, almost.”

Parr frowned. “Organic technology?”

“Not in the way we understand it,” Jevlak replied. “It is not alive, as far as I can tell.”

The Cardassian adjusted the sensors. Streams of data cascaded down the consoles around them. “Every scan returns a different result. It changes configuration between readings. Not totally, it retains consistent attributes but appears to rewrite itself subtly each time. Whatever controls it, I believe that it responds to being probed.”

“So it knows its being watched?” Parr repeated. “That’s unsettling.”

She stepped closer to the barrier. The cube’s surface was utterly still, yet her eyes insisted there was motion somewhere beneath the black surface. Faint threads, slow as breath, weaving and unweaving. “What does it do?”

“That,” Jevlak said, “depends on where it is.”

Parr raised an eyebrow.

“It interacts with its surroundings,” the science officer continued. “When we brought it aboard, its energy profile was dormant, with minimal background radiation. But as soon as it entered the ship, it began drawing trace current from the environmental systems. It uses whatever’s near it – metals, circuits, even ambient heat – to amplify itself. To build,” She hesitated. “Presence.”

“Presence,” Parr echoed, tasting the word like a sour fruit.

Jevlak nodded once. “I’ve seen interference patterns in the local power conduits. Systems near it fluctuate. Lights, sensors, comm panels. The cube does not just affect technology. It appears to interact and manipulate it.”

Parr folded her arms. “You think it’s intelligent?”

“I think it is predatory.”

The words hung in the air. The lab lights dimmed imperceptibly, and for a moment Parr thought she heard something, a soft mechanical chime. A vibration that came from inside her own body.

Jevlak did not notice. She was staring at her console. “Look at this,” she whispered. “The cube’s creating micro-resonance in the magnetic field. Deliberate oscillations. It is communicating with the ship’s materials. And not the computer – the distinction is important.”

“Can you isolate the connection?”

“I cannot isolate any one form of communication. It is localised, but it is interacting with everything. Without the containment field I fear it would have significant influence on physical materials.”

Parr moved to the edge of the barrier and tapped a control. The transparent screen flickered, casting a brief shimmer of light across the cube’s surface. For an instant, the reflection formed her face. Not her own expression, but something colder, older, and smiling. She stepped back sharply.

“Did you see that?” she said.

Jevlak looked up. “See what?”

The reflection was gone. The cube sat inert, innocent as stone.

Parr rubbed her temple. “Never mind.”

The science officer frowned at her PADD. “I ran a low-frequency pulse earlier. The cube mirrored it perfectly. It is learning our processes. And there’s something else.”

“What?”

“It is emitting a secondary field that is subtle but clearly neurological. The readings are inconsistent, but they spike when people are near it.”

Parr felt the back of her neck prickle. “You’re saying it’s in our heads?”

“In a manner of speaking. Within close proximity. Think of it as if it were a sound, except that instead of hearing it in an audible sense, you can pick it up as a telepathic transmission.”

They stood in silence. The cube seemed to hum. Not audibly, but in the blood, in the skull, in the delicate web of consciousness.

“It feels wrong,” Parr said finally.

“Agreed.” Jevlak’s voice was flat, professional, but her eyes betrayed unease. “There is a harmonic distortion. I would hypothesise that aa weaker mind could mistake the experience as a form of audible whispering.”

“Has anyone reported anything unusual?”

“Two technicians complained of nausea while checking the containment fields. One said she heard a voice. The other did not, but started crying and could not explain why.”

Parr stared through the glass. “It’s not just a relic, is it? Is it a weapon?”

Jevlak hesitated. “I do not know. Its original purpose could have been built as a component of a larger design, where the manner in which it behaves could interact appropriately. Perhaps without this wider design, the impact has this effect? But this is pure conjecture.”

The cube pulsed once. The lab lights dimmed again. Somewhere nearby, a power relay hummed too loudly.

Jevlak’s console flashed red. “The containment field just fluctuated.”

“Increase the power to the field.”

“Yes, commander. The cube is drawing energy from the ship’s systems even through the containment field.”

Parr felt her stomach twist. “Shut down everything non-essential in this section and isolate the lab from the ship’s primary systems.”

The Cardassian’s fingers flew across the console. Circuits hummed, lights guttered, and the reliquary’s subtle glow faded until it was once more a lump of perfect darkness.

Silence.

“It is now dormant,” Jevlak said quietly.

“For how long?”

“I do not know.”

Parr turned away from the containment field. “Post a guard outside. No one goes near it without authorisation. And inform the captain we need to keep the lab isolated from the ship’s main systems. I don’t want it ‘whispering’ through the hull.”

She left without another glance, though she could feel its attention following her. Not through sight or sound, but through that same cold prickle at the base of the mind.

Executive Officer’s Quarters

Later, in her quarters, Parr stood at the viewport watching the faint glow of the convoy drifting through the dark. She worried that somewhere out there, among the freighters, could be more of the menacing black boxes. How many had the Pilgrims left scattered across the stars, each one quietly learning the machinery and the minds of whoever came too close?

Behind her, the ship’s lights flickered once, just for a heartbeat. The faintest whisper – a low, static-laden murmur – brushed her ear like breath. She turned, but the room was empty.

In the silence that followed, she realised that the hum she had thought was the engine’s had a new rhythm now. Almost like a heartbeat, and not the ship’s.

Down in the sealed lab, the reliquary glowed faintly again, feeding on the containment field, its surface alive with unseen patterns. The sensors noted the fluctuation in power required to maintain the containment field and logged it dutifully.

The cube pulsed, patient and certain, as if waiting.

Sleep, when it came to Parr, was brief and unsatisfying. She woke with the taste of iron in her mouth and the distinct sense that she had been speaking aloud to someone. The chronometer at her bedside declared that she had been in bed for just over three hours. The hum of the Farragut’s impulse engines was steady, reassuring. Yet beneath it, or behind it, she thought she heard something else: a faint, syncopated rhythm.

She told herself it was fatigue. Or imagination. Or both. Studying the black box had made her imagine things. A creative form of anxiety, she was sure.

Her uniform jacket hung nearby. She reached for it mechanically, dressing as though pulled by routine more than choice.

When she entered the corridor, she was certain the lights were slightly dimmer than usual. The ship felt muffled. Not silent, but subdued, as though sound itself was reluctant to travel too far. The hum of the conduits seemed to pulse in time with her heartbeat.

By the time she reached the science lab, she already knew what she would find.

Science Lab

The door sighed open to reveal the cube sitting in its containment cradle, unchanged.

Jevlak was there, pale under the blue glow of the consoles. “It is active. Low-level energy patterns. It began an hour ago.” She gestured to the console. “Nothing dangerous but it has once more managed to push through the containment field in a minor sense, meeting great resistance, to interact with the materials surrounding the lab.”

Parr stepped to the field. The cube seemed darker than before. Not black, exactly, but an absence of black. An inversion of colour, the eye refusing to focus. As she watched, a faint shimmer ran across its surface, like the ripple of oil on water.

“I thought we isolated this lab from the main systems and increased the containment field?”

“We did,” Jevlak said. “It is somehow using the containment field itself as a conduit. Part of its efforts appear to be to weaken the field, and then use that energy to increase its efforts to communicate through the field. The computer cannot determine how it is doing so.”

“Can you shut it down?”

“I have been trying to recalibrate the containment field to a configuration that does not interact with the box,” Jevlak said. “But the box is quick to adapt.”

Parr leaned closer to the field. “It’s learning.”

There was a fleeting moment where she felt a weight settle behind her eyes. The air seemed to thicken. For a second she thought she heard something: a whisper, perfectly shaped to her name.

She blinked hard and turned away.

“Commander?” Jevlak asked.

“Nothing,” Parr said quickly. “Just tired.”

But she was not tired. Not anymore.

She left the lab a few minutes later, though the sound – that impossible whisper – followed her into the corridor. It came not from any direction, but from within, like the memory of someone speaking close to her ear.

By the time she reached the turbolift, she could almost persuade herself it was not real.

Almost.

Main Bridge

Back on the bridge, the viewscreen showed the convoy stretched behind them. A drifting line of ships crawling through the endless dark. The sight should have been comforting, a sign of purpose and direction. Instead, Parr felt a flicker of irritation. How slow they were. How inefficient.

She caught herself thinking it, and frowned. That was not like her. She prided herself on patience and a grounded sense of humour.

But when she closed her eyes, she saw the cube again. A perfect, flawless geometry, and the thought returned, unbidden, cold and logical. That the strong should not wait for the weak.

Her eyes opened. She was seated now, not standing; her hand rested on the arm of the captain’s chair without remembering how it got there.

“Commander?” Aloran’s voice broke the moment. “Are you all right?”

Parr blinked again. “Fine, Aloran, thanks. Just thinking.”

Aloran hesitated. “You were about to give a helm order.”

“Was I?”

“Yes, commander. To alter course away from the convoy.”

A silence. The faint hum of the bridge systems.

Parr exhaled slowly, forcing a smile she did not feel. “I misspoke.”

Aloran nodded, uncertain, and returned to examining the console near his chair.

Parr sat. Her heart beat faster than it should have. She felt watched. Not by the crew, but by something else. Something patient.