Commander Anacostia-Bolling sat at the desk in her ready room aboard the USS da Vinci; a cup of herbal tea in one hand a Padd in the other, numerous other Padd’s spread across its surface, between her and the XO, Lieutenant-Commander Alara Ley.

“I’ve been reading through all these since we set out.” The Commander waved the particular electronic device she was holding in the general direction of her Trill companion.  “I used to think it was just me Captain Eglin was secretive with.  Turns out he had the same attitude with everyone.”

“He was previously a covert operative in the intelligence service.” Replied Alara.  “Or that’s the rumour, no one’s ever meant to believe.”

“He’s certainly good at hiding stuff.” Bemoaned the Commander. “Half his service carrier is either classified top secret or redacted.” She picked up a second Padd to show the lines of text on the screen, or rather the handful of words scattered between blank spaces.

“Why are you looking at all this old stuff?” Alara asked. “I thought we we’re hunting for a ship?”

“Because things just don’t add up.” A-B stated plainly.

‘Ask her how?’ The familiar voice echoed in the Trill officers mind. “Shh, I was just going to. Why do you feel somethings wrong?”  She asked the Commander.

“Put simply the route taken by the Valparaiso.”  A third Padd indicated the zig-zag patrol route of the Excelsior-class vessel, before it veered off towards a remote colony on ‘Royce III’; then looping back around and heading as straight as an arrow for the Hydra Cascade.

“You thing someone there, told Robert where to look?”

“I’m almost certain of it.  Somewhere down on that planet he’s got an old contact or someone he used to work with.”

“How do we find them?”

“I think I know someone who can help point us in the right direction.”

**********

It took an hour to get in touch with Number 3 Decommissioning and Storage Facility and its Commander; Hars Bilwat.  The Bolian was rather surprised to be contacted, but more than happy to assist in retrieving the information  Anacostia-Bolling had requested if it was available.

So he sent Kavas and his team over to investigate the once proud Excelsior-class starship.  The USS Valparaiso almost looked intact, only the big hole in the saucer section told a different story.  The pilot of the shuttle brought them in close; before the Andorian beamed across to the derelict with two others.

The ship was in total darkness, only the light from their torches illuminated the way.  however they knew enough about the design of the ship to find their way around; and at least the environmental systems appeared to be functioning, which meant they didn’t require space suits.

“It’s a bit chilly.” Commented one of the team; a youngish blonde man, not long out of completing his training.

“Nonsense.  This is perfect” Replied the Andorian.  “You humans like things far too warm.”  Referring to them as ‘pink skins’ was generally frowned upon these days, though this particular one, did look more pink than most.  Or at least he had until they’d come aboard.

The three of them headed towards the ships main computer core, the other member of the team also human but close to twice the age of his companion and bald; carried a small portable power unit.  They’d beamed in fairly near to their destination, so only needed to open the one set of doors to reach the core.  A pair of magnetic clamps and a bit of brute force had the two halves of the door parted enough to step through.

Bingham; the bald headed member of the team; wasted no time in connecting up the power unit to the computer core and its interface.  Once everything came to life, Kavas started inputting a few commands.  After about ten minutes, he let out a sigh of disappointment.  “Well it was worth a shot, but the main memory and backups have all been wiped.  There’s no data here, and even the deleted stuff has been overwritten to prevent retrieval.”

“Is that normal?” Asked the young assistant.

“Normal and what actual gets done are two different things.” The Andorian answered.  “Our only other bet is to check the logs on the transporters themselves.”

Bingham carefully disconnected the power unit after Kavas had shut the system back down.  Rather than take a long walk, he had the shuttle pilot beam them from their current location to that of Transporter Room 1.

**********

Roughly two and a half hours later, Commander Bilwat was back in contact with the da Vinci.  His team had managed to retrieve the information from one of the backup systems for the transporters.  Stored within its memory; the coordinates of the last five locations anyone had been beamed to from that set of pads.  One of those five locations was on Royce III.  Anacostia-Bolling thanked him for his efforts and promised the Bolian she would owe him one.

“Well we have a set of coordinates somewhere on Royce III.” A-B smiled turning to her XO. “And confirmation that Captain Eglin went alone.”

“So we’re looking for a needle in a slightly smaller haystack now.” Alara replied, taking a sip of black coffee.

‘It’s a start at least.’ The voice of her late husband stated calmly.  ‘You’ve always expected the answers to come too quickly.’

“And you’ve always been happy to wait until things fall into place.”  She realised she’d spoken aloud again.   Alara still had difficulty with conversing with her symbiont through thoughts alone; especially when he said something annoying.  Her husband could be like that at times, and seemingly that hadn’t entirely changed, even after his passing.

“You do know they say talking to yourself is the first sign of madness?” Mary smiled.

“I wouldn’t say that exactly.” Replied the Trill. “The first sign of madness is when you answer yourself back.”  She ignored the rather loud ‘raspberry’ echoing through her mind.  For a being of great age and the combined knowledge of six previous life-times lived; Ley had a rather cheeky side.  Had that always been the case or had her husband Mar had a bigger impact on the symbionts life than even it had realised.  Where in fact did one life begin and the other end?  Was she one person or many?  And why did she love black coffee so much?

She was too lost in thought to realise the Commander had jumped up out of her chair and was heading for the door. “Come on, we’ve got more bread crumbs to follow.”