“Three dead.” Jeremy Agats stood in the middle of the small command-and-control office, reporting what he had found to Gracie Lothan. “They didn’t die from natural causes. Chris and Jane found traces of intense phaser burn marks.” He gestured to the transporter pad in the corner. “We need to get the power restored before we figure out what else happened here, but it doesn’t look good.” He held the badge Lothan had retrieved from the shuttle. “Do you really think that was Pike in there?”
Gracie walked around the room, examining the archaic consoles. It was like a museum. All the classic lines, buttons, and switches. Time had stood still for this universe. “There wasn’t enough of him left to tell. The hair didn’t seem like him, so maybe not?” Lothan motioned to two other cadets to follow her. “We’ll get to work on the power.”
The lights flickered on and the consoles blinked for about thirty seconds while the slow, uneven rumble of the power plant stumbled through its startup sequence. Gracie Lothan adjusted the input and output matrix as the centrifuge slowly evened out. The readings went from red to yellow until the board was mostly green. It had taken them four hours to grasp the functionality of the system and then another four to get the activation sequence moving beyond a blinking red light. Three hours later, they watched the screens as the system passed the minute mark, then two minutes. Thirty minutes later, the few yellow indicators had stabilized. Lothan wiped her brow with a spare towel as she congratulated the team. She walked up the stairs and into the main command-and-control area where Agats stood with his teams working on the consoles. He glanced up as she walked in. “Good work on the power. I wish I had better news about what happened here.”
She came up beside him, searching the displays. “How bad?”
“Well, as far as we’ve been able to gather, this was the rebellion base against the Borg…but it wasn’t just the Borg.” He scrolled through the reports to the earliest record. “There was another.”
Gracie read the excerpt. Twice. “V’ger? V’ger and the Borg? That’s…I don’t even know what to think.” She shook her head slowly, as if piecing together the last parts of the puzzle. “You said this was the rebellion. Dead man in the shuttle, three dead here. Not much here recently.”
He scrolled back through the data to the later history. “Lots of logs to sort through, but there’s evidence of a breakdown with the group. Differing ideas on what to do, how to do it, and where to go. Whoever was down here decided one thing, and the others decided another. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Who the others are and where they were…or are.”
Lothan eyed the transporter pad. “Any record of its use?”
“They activated it two years ago. The destination is unusual. For one, it’s not on the planet. It’s elsewhere in this solar system.” He gestured to the consoles. “Figuring out where is a challenge. The computer core is ancient compared to us.” He worked the switches, frowning as he worked his way through the logs and systems. “Wait a second. You see this, Jerry?” The cadet leaned over, copying the frown. “You see what’s missing?”
Jerry returned to his screen. “It’s the same here. Most of the logs follow a standard sequence. Until we get to the last few months. Then it becomes scattered.”
Jeremy scoffed. “That means someone either edited or removed entries. But why?”
Gracie pointed to the transporter pad. “Whoever took the last ride out of here would know. Is there anyway to recover the data?”
Agats thought for a moment. “We have plenty of backups and systems to prevent this from happening, and even those fail. These older systems wouldn’t. I don’t think the rebellion was thinking like that, anyway. If you’re one of the last Starfleet outposts, you’re just trying to survive.”
Gracie remained focused on the transporter pad. “We have to find them. If they’re still alive.” She turned, feeling Agats eyes boring into the back of her head. “We’ve come this far. We can’t ignore the possibility of finding someone. The way home might just be through the transporter.”
Agats didn’t want to have to argue with Lothan. Not because she was wrong, but because she was right. He’d found out the hard way when Gracie Lothan knew she was right; it was a fool’s errand to debate her. He sighed, and that devious smile of hers returned. She enjoyed pushing him around a little. “I’ll compromise. We’ll connect your commbadge to a tricorder. We’ll connect one of our badges to yours. If any of the readings are suspect, we’re pulling you back.”
