Dark Signal

A routine supply contract takes the Dutchman to a small independent colony that has stopped responding to scheduled check ins. The organization that hired them wants to know why and is paying well enough that the crew doesn't ask too many questions before they go. When they arrive the colony is intact, the buildings are standing, the equipment is running, and most of the colonists are alive. That is where the good news ends.

The people they find are not right. Not visibly hurt, not obviously sick, but changed in a way that is difficult to pin down at first and impossible to ignore once you see it. They are cooperative and calm and answer questions without hesitation but nothing they say adds up and none of them can explain what happened or when it started. A few of them don't seem to remember that anything happened at all.

The crew starts digging and what they find suggests something passed through the colony not long before they arrived, something that left a mark on the people it touched without leaving much trace of itself behind. The scans are inconclusive, the colonists are not getting better, and the feeling that whatever came through has not gone far keeps growing the longer they stay.

Getting the colonists help means figuring out what they are dealing with first. Staying long enough to do that means accepting that they are doing it in close proximity to something none of them have encountered before and that has already demonstrated what it can do to people who were not prepared for it.