Illusion

Posted on 18 Dec 2011 @ 1:50pm by

891 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: M8: The Kzinti War!!!!
Location: USS Cosmos (NCC-2704-B)
Timeline: 10 years ago

On:

The orders and events had happened so fast Silonez didn't know what to think, twenty hours ago he was sitting behind a desk reading a meaningless report about fifteen year old Romulan cloaking technology when two men in suits asked him to come with them to a briefing.

Fifteen hours ago he was on a shuttle to space dock, his first destination was USS Cosmos an older Excelsior class ship, the transport shuttle had aboard it an engineering team whom seemed as confused as he was about there mission, a restricted salvage mission to an area near the Typhon expanse on the federation side of the boarder.

Pushing the old ship to the near breaking point they arrived at the region in what would have been considered a record time, but this mission was classified so anything like that would be considered to have never happened. Silonez was in the vacant intelligence office aboard the ship, he'd been asked for a wish list of equipment and there it was, everything from Spectral scanners to micron scanners, to the most advanced metallurgical scanner in known space. He thought this was some serious business, it got more interesting when he was summoned to the bridge.

As he exited the turbolift he looked to the main viewer and was taken back first by the view of the mass number of small nebula's that made up the expanse, then by the wreckage floating in space, he paused and walked over to a science station, "The wreckage indicates something similar in size to a Challenger Class frigate, but these weapon signatures don't match....." he paused "What??"

"Mr Ericson, what is it?" Captain Silvar asked in a very Vulcan monotone

"Two weapon signatures one isn't in the computer library, now being cataloged as Kappa six, and one with only a designation, and a very old one I might add, Sierra Indigo Six."

"Is this a base line match or a confirmation?" the Captain asked

"Baseline only sir, decay rate won't allow for anything else, and the decay by estimate shows in the area of 36 plus hours since the battle took place."

Another person spoke "Your confirming the second signature as Sierra Indigo Six."

"Yes sir, it matches the records, I assume that they have paid us a visit and brought friends?"

Captain Silvar stood up and spoke, "Who are they?"

"Incident Sierra Indigo too place along the neutral zone approximately one hundred years ago, the species designated Sierra Indigo entered known space from points unknown to investigate and collect what we can assume is intelligence on the part of the galaxy and collect other hard data." Silonez said trying to give as quick a summery to the events of over a century ago.

"Romulans?" The first officer asked

"No, non-humanoids."

Captain Silvar looked at the intelligence officer, "We can assume that Sierra Indigo have vacated the area then, commence the salvage operations."

"Yes sir, I would recomend we keep some fighter compliment for cover and patrol though." Silonez said trying not to over extend his authority.

As if the old ship had gone from being a solitary figure in space it opened up to become a hive of activity as over a dozen work-bee shuttles flew in formation into space towards the wreckage.

As the salvage operation got underway and the work shuttles collected the hull fragments silonez walked off the bridge and back to the turbolift. The salvage teams would be bringing the first loads of hull back shortly and he wanted to study them right away. As he exited the turbo lift a crewman handed him a PaDD with the first reports on the metal fragments tht had been recovered, he was struck by the fact that they had been melted at such extreme temperatures.

He looked at the hangar deck and kneeled down to look at the larger fragments collected so far, the metal was definitely dense and did have a similar composition to some of the more exotic variants on the alloys used in the federation and its allies, even the Romulans didn't have anything this close. The metal had traces of various simple compounds in it.

After six hours the fragments that could be loaded into the ship were secured and the remainder of the wreckage was taken in tow for the short trip to starbase. The salvage crews made to strange notes in that the inner hull sections showed signs of hand to hand combat. But no bodies had been recovered yet, that would have to wait for the starbase.

As time passed they had learned that the wreckage was comparable to most federation metallurgical knowledge, but had some improved strength. Technical study showed the level was clearly above starfleet, the rest of the studies would have to wait until arrival at starbase.

The remaining five hours towing the wreckage to the starbase didn't reveal much more about the ship, other than the technological level. When a secured dry dock had been cleared for broken hull of the ship that the recovery mission began.

After six days the mission had taken on the grim task of cataloging the dozen bodies that had been recovered, it was becoming clear that this was going to be a long mission and it would have implications in the future.

End

Lt Cmdr Silonez Ericson

 

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