Lt Stotz was found unconscious in the turbolift. I determined he was in a coma, seemingly telepathically induced, but physically, there is nothing wrong with him, no toxins, no foreign objects and no infections. His brain wave scans showed high activity, and the pain indicators were all pegged at the top, with the pain seeming to be coming through a telepathic link. All that I could be done for him aboard ship had been done and we needed to get him to Vulcan to solve his medical condition.

I informed the captain and Called Reban to monitor him.

When we reached Vulcan, scans showed groups of the Vulcan population were scattered around the planet, clustered in what appeared to be a lockdown. There were pockets of Vulcans on the dayside that were clustered inside the buildings, keeping docile and still, not expending energy, but not "locked in". On the nightside, there were bands of roving citizens, seemingly searching for something and appeared to be focused on breaching the lockdowns. There was briefly an automated planetwide distress signal, but it quickly went silent. There were no surface vehicles moving about, and while there were space capable ships present, none of them were operational. Reban detected waves of telepathic distress from the planet.

The computer gave an intruder alert and four Vulcans materialised and tried to take over the bridge. They were subdued and brought to sick bay where I discovered they were infected with the Blastoneuron parasite. The parasite was difficult to detect on tricorder scans and makes its victim resistant to being stunned by phasor fire, but is associated with a buzzing noise. The parasites can fly, and injects a stinger which introduces tendrils into a victim that overwhelm their central nervous system, causing intense pain causing the subjects to perform acts that they would not normally do. Records stated they were susceptible to UV light, which I used to cure the Vulcans I had in sick bay. Corvus then built satellites to bathe the planet in UV light to cure everyone. I determined the mass infection had caused a psychic feedback which had badly affected Stotz. With Vulcan decontaminated he should recover but it would take time.

The captain ordered the Hathaway to Deveva where first outbreak of these parasites occurred. In 2267, the planet was the site of a mass insanity event that affected over a million of the planet's inhabitants and the USS Enterprise of the time cured the infection by seeding the planet's orbit with 210 UV satellites.

I beamed down to the planet with Vokaya, Reban and Corvus where we met the governor Hans Van De Graff in his office. He had old records which showed a spacecraft was missing after the original infection. A citizen called Peter Kirk, nephew of the original Enterprise's captain, was on the planet during the original infection and still on the planet though over 100 years old now. We spoke with Peter and obtained from him a recording of the parasites high pitched whistles. He also gave us the location of the archaeological dig in some caves where the infection was first seen.

The whistling noises were put through the universal translator. They were not translatable as a language but there were 2 bands not audible to humans at 30hz and 45khz, like what humans call whale song. Corvus adapted a tricorder to detect the noises then we went to investigate the dig site which we found in a cave. The archaeologists had dug deeper in one area, and there was desiccated organic material at the bottom. It did not register as either live or dead but had biological markers so I took a sample.

The Vulcans reported having found a crash site of the missing ship on Vulcan. The crash had occurred about a year ago but the site had only just been found and there were no records on sensor logs of the crash having occurred. The Hathaway returned to Vulcan to investigate. The ship was intact, and had to have arrived under some control. Vokaya was sent to look as he was unlikely to be susceptible. The ship was a small patrol craft. On board was the remains of something that had recently died which had a similar biological makeup to the Blastroneuron parasite. Likely it had been killed by the UV satellites.

Navigation records recovered proved it came on a direct course from Deneva but had travelled slower than it was capable of, and it had deliberately avoided the sensor nets but crashed in the process.

We followed the infection backwards to Ingraham B, now home to the Ingraham B Transit Station. It served as the source of the infection of the Blastoneuron parasites to Deneva in 2265, and served as the evacuation fallback from Deneva during the Borg invasion of 2381. There were archaeological records of a mass insanity on Ingraham B from an archaeological site.

I studied their noises with Corvus and determined we might be able to interfere with them by inverting the noise and playing it back. We went to the archaeological site, and tricorder scans detected an Aplta radiation footprint at 15.373mhz which may be usable to detect the infection.

The known path of infection was: Vulcan, Deneva, Ingraham B, Theta Cygni XII, Levinius V, Beta Portolan, unknown source. We followed the trail back to Theta Cygni XII where there were records of a distress signal. All life had been destroyed by chemical and biological means, and we found a record suggesting they were trying to use an enzyme to defeat the parasites. I did some research and found the enzyme would kill the parasite but also the host.

We then travelled to Levinius V where we were given coordinates of another archaeological site which was about 350 years old. Records from the site said they found something they called a micro brain 30ft across.

From there we travelled to Beta Portolan which was a vacant planet. The population was wiped out 800 years ago but there was a dig currently in progress. Radiation traces pointed to an infection 800 years ago and they had found a fossilised humanoid which had been identified as a Norsican. Plotting the positions of all the planets that had been infected showed Norsica would be on the line before Beta Portolan.

The Hathaway went to the Norsican system. Norsica had no significant Aplta radiation but some areas of the asteroid belt had radiation which might be masking the readings. The Hathaway's sensors were calibrated to pierce the radiation. Nothing was detected in the asteroid belt but a moon in orbit of one of the gas giants gave a positive signal for Aplta radiation. When we entered orbit Reban started receiving psychic emanations of hunger, bitter and hostile. There were no life forms detected on the moon but Reban got "come closer" telepathically. Vokaya went down to the moons surface and was attacked by parasites, though they were ineffective against him. Reban read that the entity had 'been here since the beginning'. It was on Norsica many hundreds of years ago but foung the Norsicans were too disparate and ununified to be dominated. The entity did not care about other species, and wanted to feed to satisfy itself not because it needed to.

We set up a net of probes to monitor and warn people away, and a probe rigged to destroy the entity if the net was breached.