Mads frowned at the screen in front of her. Since Frontier Day, and with these new signals cropping up all over the place, the base was a flurry of activity. They were going over the base with a fine tooth-comb to make sure no systems were infected with anything, even dust it seemed, and every since storage location was being checked to make sure there wasn’t so much as a wayward cortical node aboard. 

That was the plan anyway. And so far in her checks, her teams had found nothing. Mostly it was checking that the contents of the storage bins, lockers and containers matched what was on the cargo manifest. 

Only… this location didn’t actually say what it contained. She checked the date of arrival and her eyes narrowed. It was the same date as a cargo of borg technology she’d already had moved to offsite secure storage. She certainly wasn’t going to send one of her junior officers in there, she needed to check this out herself. 

“Computer, log a request with security for an officer to meet me at the following location,” she said, rattling off the deck and section number for the storage location. 

Cole was still sitting in The Gates Inn, nursing his tea, when his PADD chirped. He was on duty so he had set it to take any calls that came in. Now a call came in requesting a security officer. He looked at the location.

Storage? he thought. He shrugged his shoulders and finished his drink. Standing up, he nodded to Terry and took his leave.

Once he was in the lift, he called up the manifest for the hold he was headed to. Everything seemed normal. He knew the Operations department was just going through everything and making sure it was all accounted for but he couldn’t fathom why security would be needed. He looked back at the request and for the first time, he realized who had sent it. Captain Thane-McGowen. This made him take a little more interest. A captain wouldn’t waste time calling security for nothing. He rode the rest of the way in silence.

A few minutes later, the lift came to a halt and the doors parted. He made his exit and walked the few dozen feet to the hold that he had been summoned to. He stepped inside and found the head of the Operations department already waiting for him.

“Captain. Ensign Cole Shepard, Security. You needed me for something, Ma’am?” he asked.

Mads looked up from the report she was scrolling through on her padd and offered a smile. “Yes, thank you for being so prompt. Please, if you’ll come with me.”

She turned and headed down the corridor, toward the storage locker. “I’m sure you’re aware that we’re checking all storage aboard at the moment and moving anything problematic to off site storage. Mostly it’s been going smoothly, but I’ve come across a locker with no contents listed on the manifest.”

She looked at him. “Which means we need to check it out personally.”

Being in Security, Cole had indeed heard about the task that was being under taken. He had almost gotten assigned to it himself. He turned and followed the Captain as she led the way to their destination.

“How did the locker get aboard the station with a blank manifest to begin with, Ma’am?” he asked as they walked.

He looked around as they walked and could see several other Operations and Science Officers that were going through lockers and crates as well.

“You mentioned moving problem items off the station. Have there been many?” he inquired. 

Mads shook her head. 

“It wouldn’t have… at least, it shouldn’t have. I have someone from ops tracking through the records to see if there was any data corruption and how far that might’ve spread. But this does seem to be the only location we’re not actually sure what’s in here. On the plus side, though,” she said, frowning as she checked the locker numbers they passed with the number on her padd. “It seems to be one of the smaller ones. So whatever is in here isn’t going to be that big.”

Not that would make much difference if it was Borg tech. Even the trace of a code was a problem, so she didn’t even want to think if they had something like a drone in here.

“There have been a few, yes,” she added, belatedly answering Cole’s question. “Tech we still had that was being worked on for some reason or another. It’s all been locked down and moved just to be on the safe side.”

Cole listened as they walked and tried to think of what sort of Borg tech it may be. The Captain had said it was pretty small and there was actually quite a few Borg items that fit that description.

“So what’s going to happen with all the stuff that’s getting moved? Is there a team going through it?” he inquired.

“As far as I know it’s all being either locked down in secure sites, or destroyed,” she said, giving a small shrug as they reached the locker. It was small, about the size of a lockbox, in a bank of lockers.

“Okay, this is us,” she commented, looking at a locker in the middle of the group. “Well, at least we’re going to be confronted with a drone or anything in there. Not unless it’s a very small one.”

Although, in her opinion, being confronted with a Drone was far less scary than having your own crew turn on you.

“Alright then.” Cole said. “How do you want to handle this, Captain? Is there a protocol we need to follow or do you just want me to open it?”

“I’ll open,” she said. “You… well, let’s both just be ready for whatever happens?”

With that, she punched in the release code, then the release button. She managed to avoid leaping back as they both looked into the blackness that was the interior of the storage locker…..

It took Cole a few seconds to realize that he had been holding his breathe. He wasn’t sure what it had been expecting but this wasn’t it. He finally released it when he looked into the abyss of the locker and saw absolutely nothing. 

“Well. That explains why there wasn’t anything listed on the manifest.” he said to the Captain. “But it now begs the question, why was there a manifest at all?”

He had a feeling that they were about to embark on a good fashion mystery.