Stardate Y+11
"Sir, I think there's a ship ahead of us, bearing Three-Five--Five Mark Zero-One-Zero."
"What do you mean you 'think' Lieutenant? Is there a ship or isn't there?" Greene's voice held a hint of annoyance. "This is the third sensor ghost today."
"No, there is definitely a ship there, sir. I'm getting faint power readings. They're fluctuating wildly." Lieutenant Duozo became alarmed. "Large spike in the readings, I think they just had an explosion. Readings are very faint now."
"Helm, plot an intercept and engage." Greene sighed. "Captain to the bridge. I think we're going to have a delay in reaching our station."
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"Does anyone know what the hell that is?" Lyndan's voice rang across the bridge. "Commander?"
"No sir."
"Lieutenant?"
"No sir. It's not in any of our databases."
Lyndan hit a button on his armrest. "Engineering."
"Halleck here, sir."
"Do you know what the hell that thing is?"
Halleck examined a monitor displaying the wreck. "Yeah, scrap."
"I'm not in the mood, George."
"Fine. I've never seen anything like it. I'll have to take a closer look if you want to know more about her."
"Assemble two away teams, equipped for EVA. And focus more on finding out what cut her so neatly in two. When you know that, then you can satisfy your curiosity."
"Aye sir. Halleck out."
Lyndan hit the button twice. "Security."
"Srenk."
"Lieutenant, prepare two away teams for EVA. Meet the Engineers in Transporter Rooms 1 and 2."
"Aye aye sir."
Lyndan hit the button and turned to Greene. "Interested, Commander?"
"Yes sir." Greene's eyes lit up.
"Good." Lyndan smiled. "Take some medical and science personnel over in a shuttle. There may or may not be some untransportable items there."
"Yes sir." Greene headed for the turbolift. "Am I looking for anything in particular?"
"Anything and everything. And try not to get yourself killed."
"I'll do my best sir." Greene replied as the doors closed on her ear to ear grin.
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"Lieutenant Srenk!"
"Ah, Commander, I am glad to see that you have arrived safely. Where may I ask did you leave the shuttle?"
"We docked with an airlock that still functioned. It mated with ours, so either we were really lucky or they are aware of Federation standards."
"Oh, they're familiar with Federation standards. Follow me, please." Srenk turned and lead Greene down the hallway to a door with a guard outside. The guard saluted and opened the door. Greene followed Srenk inside and stopped cold. Bodies, body parts, bodily fluids and things that probably came from the bodies but were no longer identifiable as such covered the room. Which was impressive considering the cargo bay was 100 meters long, 30 wide and 10 high.
"...50 or so bodies, most unrecognizable, though there are a few preliminary identifications. Tentatively, we've identified humans, Klingons, Vulcans, Cardassians, Orions, Andorians and Tellerites. We've recovered half a dozen different varieties of weapons, including Klingon disruptors and Federation phasers, they seem to be the most popular. The cargo containers are labeled in Federation standard, Klingon, Cardassian, Romulan, and a few I don't recognize. Everything else on the ship is in Federation standard. I've got a team breaking into their armory, and the engineers are trying to hack the encryption they have on their computer core. If you want more technical details, I believe the Chief Engineer is in Engineering, I'll have Jenkins escort you there."
"Thank you, perhaps later. What's the blue stuff on the floor? There's an awful lot of it to be blood..."
"It's not. Romulan Ale. The cargo containers diddn't fare to well in the firefight. I estimate there is at least 20,000 liters still here, with only 10 liters bottled. It seems whomever won the battle took the surviving cargo and left."
"An entire cargo hold full of Romulan Ale? And they were killed for it?" Greene was shocked.
"No, they were carrying more then ale. We have also discovered wheat, blood wine, a few dilithium crystals, some broken pottery, 200 grams of utritium, and a few drops of latinum."
"Now there's a cargo worth killing over. Wait, what the hell were they doing with utritium?"
"I don't know, but the brick we found usually is packaged and shipped in counts of 5000. And it was unmarked, and untraceable."
"I think I'll head to engineering now." Greene could feel a headache coming on, and wished she could reach her head.
"Ma'am, if you'll follow me, please?" Jenkins motioned to the door.
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"Lieutenant Commander Halleck, please tell me you have good news." Greene was mentally exhausted from the trip. There were corpses everywhere, some charred beyond recognition, others preserved almost perfectly by vacuum. Jenkins hadn't seemed phased by the carnage, but Greene was glad she hadn't eaten that day.
"Define good. We haven't been able to hack the encryption. It's not sophisticated, but it's big enough to be a headache. On the upside, it appears to be the only thing around here that was encrypted. We've got the terminals up and running, but they don't appear to have anything to useful. No ship specs, no weapons load out, no cargo manifest. But I do have logs of transmissions made for an hour before they died, a duty roster, a menu, and maintenance requests for several hand phasers and one ship mounted disruptor."
"Impressive."
"The best is yet to come, we also have their star charts and a record of where they've been for the last three months. We found that gem in the captain's terminal, isolated from the rest of the ship's computer. I've already sent it over to Astrocartography."
"Good work. What else have you ben able to find out?"
"We're not done with the preliminary inspection of the hardware, but I can give you an approximate idea of her capabilities. Oh, and I can tell you what cut her in two."
"What?"
"A few well placed torpedos that broke her back, combined with a tractor beam and some abrupt maneuvers."
"Ma'am," Jenkins piped up. "They've made it into the armory. It's empty aside from a few photon grenades."
"Thank you." Grenne nodded. "What about this ship's capabilities?"
"Well," Halleck hesitated. "This is more a guess then anything else, but I'd say she'd cruise around Warp 7, maybe 7.5. She's sacrificed arms for speed, which means a border runner, and her size makes her one of the largest I've seen. Her shields are military grade, a little out of date though, so probably picked up from a mothball yard or other surplus supply. All in all, I think she'd be a match for the Hornet. She can't outgun us, but she can take what we can throw at her long enough to get out of range."
"You seem pretty certain for a preliminary guess."
"I've dealt with these kinds of ships before. There's no money to be made fighting, so they put their resources into speed and cargo capacity. The problem with that is when they reach their buyer, who may not want to buy anything. I would hazard that's what happened here."
"Thanks Halleck. Jenkins, do you know how to get to the bridge from here?" She turned to the young security officer politely waiting several steps away.
"Yes ma'am."
"All right. I'll be on the bridge if anyone needs to find me, George. Jenkins, lead the way."
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First Officer's Log
Stardate Y+11
This ship scares the hell out of me. I can smell death even though the ship is open to vacuum. The worst is unexpectedly coming across a corpse. I almost threw up when I can across one Andorian with his guts splayed all over the wall. Jenkins of course doesn't seem phased by any of this at all. He carries himself like this is just another days work, nothing he hasn't seen, or caused, before. I really don't want to dwell on that, he seems like such a nice kid. Anyway, the bridge was surprisingly untouched by violence. No burn marks, scorch marks, blood trails or, thankfully, bodies. There was already a team present when we arrived on the bridge. They weren't having any luck with the computers though, it seems anything useful is locked away behind the encryption.
I'm heading back to the Hornet within the hour, and the away teams will follow shortly after. We can't dally here to long or we'll be unacceptably late arriving on station. Captain Lyndan told the Chief Engineer he has 40 minutes to break the encryption, if he wants to keep going after that, he has to bring the core with him. I hope the shuttle is large enough. Um, let's see, oh, Dr. Clauzwits beamed 20 or so bodies back to autopsy and identify them. As long as I don't have to see them on board, I'm glad they're out of my way here. and Lieutenant Srenk want's to destroy the remaining contraband wi... what the hell? Where did that ship come from? Did it just de-cloak? What's it d...
"TORPEDOES INCOMING! BRACE FOR IMPACT! CAPT-"
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