"Captain's log, stardate 81637, the USS Theatrical is on a routine mission in the outskirts of the delta quadrant, looking for any signs of Borg activity, the Intrepid ship was Retrofitted with an improved Ablative Generator that allowed shields, and energy weapons to fire as well as a few other odds and ends they threw in, self-repairing hull, solar power generators and a couple other things, along with the Retrofits, they replaced all of the phaser arrays with Antiproton beams arrays, the Photon torpedoes exchanged for Tricobalt-enhanced Transphasic warheads, and a few unassigned sections of deck 17 are now fitted with missile launchers loaded with Photon missiles, the shield array was transferred to OMEGA and rebuilt with their own arrays, along with the deflector and impulse engines. Starfleet received a distress call and deployed the Theatrical to patrol the borders for wreckage or the ships, so far, about half the border was searched and none of the patrolling ships found anything, no debris, no traces of weapons fire, not even a warp trail to follow, whatever caused a Sovereign-class ship and it's Defiant escorts to vanish without a trace is beyond me, and why they'd send a science vessel to search for a diplomatic cruiser and her well-armed escorts is beyond me. We've been out here for four months, and we don't even know if there will be any debris, especially this close to the galactic border"
Dostya exited the turbolift as soon as she finished, walking onto the bridge and saying "anything of interest?"
"no, not yet, wait, hold up, I'm detecting a very large concentration of Chroniton and Transphasic particles, at 4-4-2-6, 7 degrees starboard, it's several lightyears away"
"could it be them?"
"possible, but given the amount of particles in the area it's extremely difficult to scan through the cloud for debris"
"Five of Seven, plot a course to that cloud, maximum warp"
"aye captain"
"maybe this will give us a clue as to what happened, I'll be in the mission"
Dostya walked off the bridge and into the Ready Room and sat down, before getting back to reading her book; an old human text called The Iliad, but before she could get anywhere the console in from of her said "captain to the bridge"
"on my way"
Exiting the ready room she stepped forward and said "report"
"sir, the anomaly, it just disappeared"
"what are you talking about?"
"we went to standard range and when we dropped out of warp it disappeared, vanished, as if it never existed"
"anomalies with that kind of a cloud simply don't 'disappear', something happened to it, and I want to know what could do that"
"sir! reading the ships!"
"all of them?"
"ID signatures confirmed, the sovereign and her escorts are there, but heavily damaged and showing no life"
"life support?"
"confirmed, but barely"
"what could have caused a fleet of nine ships, all well armed, to become simple wrecks?"
"unknown, I am detecting large amounts of waste heat energy, whatever came through here was using weapons that generate a lot of heat, and, based on current degradation, it was recent"
"how recent?"
"within two hours"
"so, what would be our next course of action?"
"well, starfleet regulations would dictate that we pursue this vessel, but with only a heat signature, it's hard to say which way it went"
"best guess?"
"back the way it came"
"and since we have no warp trail to follow that's not gonna help us, Yewaidi, anything else on sensors?"
"yes, it might be the vessel we are looking for, but it doesn't read any damage"
"strange, theories?"
"new borg vessel?"
"doubtful, it's been proven that particle beams are more effective than simple lasers"
"well, there is one theory that would rule out this being the attacker"
"and what is that?"
"well, it appears to be drifting, no power detected, and the ship has no atmosphere"
"how far?"
"on full impulse it will take us two minutes to reach it"
"do it, Mirra, Three, I want you to gather a small team together, I want some scientists as well, make sure the security personnel are armed with battle rifles and autocarbines, also, I want the engineers and scientists to have toolkits, tricorders and medical tricorders, I'll meet you down in transporter room two"
"sir!"
"yes sir"
The two officers took one turbolift while Dostya took another. As Dostya waited in the turbolift she started considering a few things; one, how did that anomaly just vanish without a trace? two, what happened to the diplomatic envoy, and three, why is there a lot of waste heat energy around them? She couldn't explain these events, not because she wasn't specialized in science, far from it, but the fact that the lack of evidence
