—- USS USS Del Rey Oaks —

The Starfleet officers moved in unison. Protected by the hard environment of space by skin hugging environmental suits and helmets they held at the ready phaser rifles as the swept through the USS Del Rey Oaks, a California-class ship that had clearly been destroyed.

Lieutenant Junior Grade William Hume lead the team, with the more senior officers on either the USS Luna or the starbase he had a complement of the junior officers on the Hazard Team. Their first destination was engineering where they made a discovery, the warp core was missing.

”Looks like they ejected it,” Aasus Breasi from engineering said, examining it. He was not usually on the Hazard Team but they had brought engineering support to try to get the ship back online. With a missing warp core it was likely to be towed to a nearby ship yards and rebuilt. He looked at where the warp core once was, and while an expert in warp field technology he had no idea what would have caused them to do it. A core breach would have explained some of the external damage to the ship however, but they’d still have been able to move away from the explosion at sub-light speeds.

”Can you get a computer on?” Hume asked, “Find out more about what happened?”

Breasi shook his head, “Maybe with a few hours we might get computers working but the damage in here is pretty extensive. Aside from the missing core someone kicked this ship while it was down.”

Hume nodded, “Well hopefully they figure out more over on the station.”

—- Starbase 713 —-

Dressed in similar EV suits the main Hazard Team moved slowly towards engineering. In constant contact with the Luna they were being directed to one of the pockets of air and life signs that the Luna-class ship had detected. Since the power to the automated doors were out the team had to manually pull them apart from one and another, shinning their lights into the darkness. A hastily erected force shield kept in the environment, and protected it from the rest of the station. Modulating the shield with tricorders the team was able to step through it and into the engineering area of the station.

”Class M life support,” Lieutenant Sesi Oari reported, the security officer reported reading a tricorder.

Hazard Team lead Lieutenant Rebecca Avila removed her helmet with a hiss, and took a deep breath, “Okay environment here is good. Helmets off.”

The Hazard Team took off their helmets and looked around, slinging the phaser rifles behind their backs held on by straps. They saw movement and as one rifles were trained on a scared engineering officer who stammered out “Don’t shoot.”

Lieutenant Rebecca Avila lowered her rifle, and the rest of the Hazard Team followed suit. Slinging it over her back she tapped her commbadge, “Hazard Team reporting from the station, we’ve found a group of survivors. Send over engineering support.”

When he materialized Lieutenant Commander Young nodded at Avila and headed deeper into engineering, asking the engineering officer who they’d found, “What seems to be the trouble.”

”They feed on power,” the man said, “So we cut all power to the station. Or most of it, we left some pockets of life support hoping they’d leave us alone.”

Avila looked at him, “Sorry, what feeds on power.”

The man shook his head, “We don’t know it just came out of nowhere.“

Avila tapped her badge, “Commander we may have an answer what happened here, but you’re not going to like it.”

—- Three Days Later – USS Luna, Conference Room 1 —-

“The devices are unmanned drones,” the image of Lieutenant Commander James Young said from the space station where he was helping to oversee repairs. 

“We’ve seen similar devices on a smaller scale used for intelligence gathering,” Lieutenant Syvia Voosha said, she was on the Luna, and helping guide the briefing on what had attacked the USS Del Rey Oaks and the station. She gestured to a hazy image captured by the station’s cameras, a ship far off. “A large ship sets them loose, and they either are controlled remotely, or respond to a simple program. In this case go towards energy.“

”Thus they seem to ‘eat’ energy,” Young said, “In this case the station mistook them for living beings feeding off the energy of the Del Rey Oaks’ shields. They have limited capabilities, but in great enough volume can overwhelm a ship’s shields. When the Del Rey Oaks was disabled, they ejected their warp core but the swarm was too close, the core exploded right in the ship’s face.”

”The station shut down all non-essential systems, meaning the swarm couldn’t detect it anymore,” Voosha said, “They have limited sensors so they needed reprogramming or for the main ship to attack the station.”

“Why didn’t it then?” Carrillo asked.

”Likely our arrival. Or at least us showing up on long range scanners,” Voosha said, “This drone weapon is quite resource intensive. It works essentially by destroying the drones, having them overwhelm a shield. Taking out a California-class ship was likely a test, taking down a station, and also a Luna-class, that’s tougher.”

Carrillo nodded, “The USS Majestic is also in the area, so I imagine taking on a Sovereign-class is more daunting and from a distance we may have looked like that. Okay, well let’s get this information to Starfleet. I’ll report into Starfleet, the USS Majestic is arriving in two days to support and we’ll go pick up our captain and crew. This seems like a test, pirates using our focus on the Klingons and Cardassians to see what they can get away with. Young get the station going as much as you can. Alright thank you all, dismissed.”

—- USS Luna, Holodeck 2 —-

Lieutenant Junior Grade William Hume hit the Klingon boarder with the butt of a phaser rifle. He’d been running this scenario for the past few hours. By now he was drenched in sweat, his uniform had been pulled out of place and he looked a general wreck. Yet he was trying valiantly to shave off a few seconds of this training session. His muscles ached and he wanted to quit, but he wouldn’t let himself. 

He’d liked Klar, the ship’s former Klingon Defense Force exchange officer who had served as the XO. But then Klar had betrayed them, leading a Klingon attack force to kill a ship full of Romulan scientists. War with the Klingons was not there yet, but it felt like it was coming. While unthinkable even a few years ago, now it was better to be prepared. 

From the sidelines watched fellow security officer Lieutenant Junior Grade Rosa Flores, “You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep pushing like that.”

Hume ignored her. She had initially started the training exercise but after two hours had quit. Now she watched, ensuring that if he broke his neck or some fool thing then at least she could call the doctor. It was natural for him to be frustrated, she was angry too. They kept coming up on disasters that they could not prevent, or failed to prevent. But then life was like that, for all your best efforts it was easy to get away from you.

”Computer end program,” she finally said. The holodeck reverted to the yellow grid that it was in its default state.

”Why’d you do that?” panted Hume catching his breath.

”Because you’ve been at it for hours, come on let’s wash up and get a drink,” Flores said, “I didn’t join Starfleet to be angry all the time. Some days need to be good too, let’s go make what’s left of this a good one.”

Hume nodded and smiled, “Okay, I just want to be ready.”

”You’ll be as ready as you’ll be,” Flores said as they exited.

”That doesn’t mean anything,” Hume argued.

”Or it means everything,” Flores smirked.

”No, it means nothing,” Hume replied and the doors shut as they went into the hallway.