“Sorry Jack, what do you mean Nye is… missing?” Varen’s glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose, landing precariously on the tip, along with any chance he had for an uneventful day. The morning so far had been filled with such promise; Food had his favourite pastry in plentiful stock; there hadn’t been a line at Beans’d It; the overnight security report had been mercifully clear, and he even managed to file away the final reports of that nuisance trader on the galleria who claimed that DS-47 was actually a Tholian hologram.

Then Captain Anderson had rushed into the office with a pale face and a nervous twitch, chasing all the morning’s achievements out with his hurried strides.

“It’s quite a small ship. Did you look under the cushions?” Varen offered a weak smile as he scratched an eyebrow, a twinge in his forehead already beginning to form. Was it too much to ask for a quiet day? Just one, small, uneventful day?

“I looked under the whole couch. She was en route back from Free Haven one minute, and gone the next. I’m not just talking about missing check-ins; I mean full sensor blackout, and it’s not just her…” The nervous look on his face turned to a grimace as he glanced at his note PADD, and back to the Bajoran Captain, “…Roseau went dark as well, coming back from Cardassia on a parts run.” He delivered, setting the PADD on Varen’s desk, sliding it over to him. “I had just talked to Sirok this morning to take their sit-rep; everything was fine.”

“It could be communication faults, or interference from the Badlands. They have been acting up recently,” Varen mused, poking at the edge of the PADD with the tip of his finger. It could be a number of things, but two of the Task Force’s commands going quiet simultaneously was an anomaly that gave him an unease that no amount of good mornings could settle.

Varen levered himself up from the chair, leaving the PADD where it lay on the desk as he wandered over to the small balcony that opened out onto the galleria below. He was entirely sure that Anderson had compiled a very thorough briefing, but he was far more interested in what he might have left out.

“The Breen? They’ve been fairly quiet recently. Is it possible they’re trialling some new disruption weapon?” Uncomfortable possibility number one on the table, possible but unlikely.

“When have the Breen ever had a tactical advantage and not run wild with it?” Jack raised his eyebrow.

“Not the Breen then. What if the Tzenkethi have decided to make good on all the pronouncements of our inferiority?” Varen gripped the edge of the balcony, savouring the sounds of the galleria below that wafted up to the office carried on the fragrance of fresh pastries.

“If that were true, there would have been a declaration from the Autarch, and we would be having a whole different conversation right now.” Jack remarked.

“Surely not the Cardassians then? Or at least their True Way, desperate to stir up some old hate and plunge us back into a war we barely won?” He mused sorrowfully, catching a glimpse of the faint green glow from the nearby Rolor Nebula through the large overhead windows. Less than a handful of officers had stood in this office in the station’s short life, built on the promise of friendship and unity. Had they, too, considered such dark possibilities?

“Var..” he started, forgetting his place for a moment, “Captain, Sir…” his tone calm, yet clinical, attempting to draw the Commanding Officer from the drain of dark thoughts his mind was currently circling. “The who or why at the moment is not the concern. What matters now is, how do we want to handle this? If it’s as bad as you’re thinking it could be, sending one ship alone could be a suicide mission. But if we send a detachment, we risk a show of force that could instigate those around us, for argument’s sake, maybe nothing.”

Jack moved to the chair in front of Varen’s desk and collapsed in it, “I’m not trying to be a saber rattler, and if it were just one ship, I’d say wait a day or two…but two ships, in two different sections of space at the same time? Common…there’s no such thing as a coincidence like that…” he sighed, mirroring the stress of the situation.

A cough at the doorway cut through the quiet tension, and both men turned to see a young lieutenant peeking around the wide doorway, her face flustered with seriousness.

“Sirs, there is an urgent communication from Fleet Command.” She nodded towards the desk panel, where the blinking emblem of the Fourth Fleet pulsed urgently, the lightning bolt set into its heart twitching with silent frustration.

“Don’t tell me we’re due for another audit?” Varen half-joked. That would be just what they needed, a surprise inspection from headquarters, right when they had mislaid two ships in somewhat suspicious circumstances.

“I don’t know, sir. It’s marked Command only.” The nervous flush of her face was already beginning to spread down her cheeks as she offered a nod and disappeared back into the bustle of the central office.

Jack nodded to the lieutenant as she departed, and when she left, he secured the office doors. Command-only communications were never a good thing, and most of the time came with a high security clearance. Once he was finished securing the room, he hit the flashing emblem for the CO. Reports, Still Images, and Video Clip feeds from the Federation News Network filled the viewscreen behind Varen’s screen, as a more prominent message from the Fleet Admiral was superimposed above them all.

Varen’s eyes danced across the screen, leaping from word to word, each more worrying than the last. The headline of Fleet Admiral Ramar’s message was clear, concise, and terrifying, and one word echoed painfully in Varen’s ears.

Disappeared.

“Dispatch someone to find those ships, and do a roll call of all 47 commands.” Varen was already on his feet, pushing his glasses back up his nose, turning the bridge white with the force of his fingers. “I’ll head to Ops and start a roll call of the base.”

Jack had walked around the desk to review the message with Varen. He had only seen half of what the Bajoran Captain had, and already the pit of his stomach was in his chest. The scale of arbitrariness that had befallen them was staggering. He was concerned for the two ships that had gone dark, but he had deeply hoped he was airing overtly on the side of caution. Now was not the time to relish in the truth of his gut feeling.

“And I want actual face-to-face contact with every captain, I want you to see them in the flesh,” Varen instructed as he began clipping his uniform closed, his fingers fumbling over the clasps in haste.

“Wyll…we have ships stretched between here and Shackleton…” his words were not of defiance or opposition, but of cold-cut reality. Task Force 47 had primarily operated out of the Thomar Expanse of the Alpha Quadrant for some time, but devoted a considerable amount of manpower to the expedition of the Shackleton Expanse in the Beta Quadrant some months ago. Still, some ships had remained there on extended assignment. The task before them was monumental.

Varen’s panicked fiddling with a particularly infuriating clasp at the neck came to an abrupt stop as he looked up towards Jack, his face as flustered as the young lieutenant’s only moments earlier.

“I’ll take the Nobel.” Anderson declared, stepping forward and attending to Varen’s last clasp. For a moment, his mind faltered as he wondered if the USS Nobel was possible effected as well, but shook it off. “You get the station; I’ll get the Noble. I’ll report back as soon as I hear back from our ships…” he almost said ‘…If they respond.’ But did not want to end their meeting on a worse mood than they were already in.

“Helios Division is still in the expanse, use them if you need, Sehgali can be…” More words from the briefing packet danced across Varen’s lips again, stopping the sentence midbreath.

Displaced.

Right now, the only thing they could both be sure of is that they were both here.

“Every. Single. Person, Jack. No one goes missing today.”