Investigation

The Scoutship Interphase was finally brought to rest on the hanger deck. Slightly smaller than the runabouts aboard, the vessel was gunmetal grey and looked slightly out of place amongst the much lighter colored hulls of the shuttles. Although the hull was mostly intact, there were sections where no plating existed. The only vessel that looked worse was the Hellcat, repairs having not even started on the experimental vessel. Still missing most of it's hull plating and the plating that still remained scorched black, it was going to take the crew weeks to get back into service.

Junora and Ensign Jackson both stood outside the vessel looking at it's design and more importantly for a way in. Eventually they found what appeared to be a loading ramp and after connecting an auxiliary power pack to the external controls, the ramp dropped down and they walked inside.

Shale had sent Jackson down from the Bridge. Although most Starfleet officers could man any of the stations on the Bridge, Jackson's knowledge of Operations was limited. He was a junior engineer by training and Shale thought he'd be more use to Junora examining the scout craft than messing up on the Bridge.

The area inside was black, the only light coming from the hanger behind them. Junora switched her wrist beacon on and started to sweep the room with the beam. Ensign Jackson did the same, but headed straight ahead towards the front of the vessel and the cockpit area.

"This looks like nothing we've seen." Junora said as she looked around at the rear compartment.

"Must be some sort of advanced vessel, maybe even a prototype, but it's definitely Starfleet." Jackson replied.

Eventually they reached the cockpit area, which was split into two levels. The lower level had four stations, two on each side and Junora started to examine the controls. Nothing worked, the ship was totally dead. "We're going to have to take a look at the power plant." She said. "See if we can get some power back on in here."

The second area of the cockpit was above them, reached by a short ladder. Ensign Jackson started to climb the ladder to see if they could find the pilot. There was no-one there. The consoles were black, just as the others on the lower deck, but Ensign Jackson could see why the pilot sat here.

The upper level was made mostly of clear aluminium alloy. The helm console also appeared to be able to turn through one hundred and eighty degrees, allowing the pilot to see three hundred and sixty degree's around the vessel.

*But where's the pilot ?* Ensign Jackson thought to himself.

"Nothing up here." Ensign Jackson replied. "Let's get some power line's hooked up and see if we can't get the main computer online. Maybe we can get some answers from there. We can work on internal power later."

Ensign Jackson noticed the comm badge on the console and started to pick it up, but Junora called from below and Ensign Jackson left it where it was and climbed down the ladder.

Junora was back at the rear of the vessel, having opened the rear panels to look at the warp core.

"Take a look at this." Junora said, moving away from the opening. Ensign Jackson looked inside and saw what had caused Junora so much surprise. There was no warp core to speak of, the area was almost empty. Of course the compartment was dark and it was entirely possible they could have missed something, having only a wrist beacon for light. But there was definitely no warp core. Whatever propelled this vessel at faster than light speeds, it wasn't conventional.

"Let's get some power in here and we can start to examine everything then." Ensign Jackson stated as he headed down the ramp.

Half an hour later the crew had managed to hook up the power lines and the scout ship was starting to come back to life.

Ensign Jackson was examining the ship's database, trying to gain access to any sensor or pilot logs, but all he found was security lock-outs. Every time he thought he'd bypassed one, another popped up in his place.

"Take a look at this ?" Junora remarked. "Is this what I think it is ?"

Jackson came across to the operations console and looked over Junora's shoulder.

"There's definitely a holo-matrix stored in the database. And just look at the size of it, it's probably twice the capacity of the EMH, but it's somehow compressed into half the memory." He remarked.

"Could this be the pilot ?" Junora asked.

Jackson thought for a moment before answering. "I doubt it, there's no holoemitters aboard. Without emitters, there's no way to project a hologram. My guess is that it's someone's 'pet' project, these scout ships can be out in space for months on end. Someone's probably just been working on it to pass the time."

"So where is the pilot ?" Junora enquired. "He must be somewhere ?."

"I just don't know." Jackson replied. "Maybe he tried to transport across to the Leviathan, maybe he was never here and the message we saw was just a recording."

"But he knew who we were." Junora replied. "How could he leave a message unless he'd seem us."

"Let's see if we can't download the programme into a holobuffer and try and reactivate it on one of the holodecks." Jackson remarked. "Maybe this hologram can tell us more, I can't seem to access any of the ship's logs."

"I'll go get the equipment." Junora replied, heading back down the ramp.

Ten minutes later, ASHER was downloaded into a holobuffer and was on his way to the holographic research lab. Apart from Sickbay, the lab was the only area of the ship with holo-emitters that were currently accessible by the crew.