The USS Pennine slowly made its way above the forest about 50km from the marine base. Lieutenant Stone watched the sensor display over Jan Fisher's shoulder, eagerly awaiting a sign of the crashed shuttle.
"Are they working right?" Stone asked.
"Yes," Fisher replied. "I've checked and double-checked. There's nothing there, this is the third pass."
"Nothing at all?" Watson asked from the pilot's seat.
"No, it's almost as though the shuttle just vanished," Fisher replied.
Stone studied the display for a further few seconds. They had been searching for a good three hours and had found nothing, no trace of metal, no smoke, no life signs, other than the local species.
"Stand down red alert," he called out. "Marc, send a message to control stating area search to no gain."
"Yes sir," Hedley said and began tapping his console.
The command module lighting changed from a dim red to white and brightened the whole atmosphere of the craft.
"Rich, take us home," Stone ordered.
Watson swung the runabout around and headed back towards Serenity.
".....that's right," Stone spoke to the computer terminal on the desk of his office. "We've found absolutely no trace, I would need to see the initial incident logs before it can be investigated further."
"Well, we can't be having rogue craft disappearing into our planet," the Marine Captain replied.
"I've advised Starfleet Security, and thought it best to advise you as any survivors may come to the closest base, that being you," Stone said. "I believe Commodore Hunter has also been informed of the situation."
"Okay, I'll speak to the Commodore regarding this. I don't believe tritanium can vanish to be honest, Lieutenant."
"Neither do I. Have a good day," Stone said. "Stone out."
The terminal changed to display the Federation crest and Stone sat back in his chair. As he did so his terminal bleeped once again. He looked back at the screen which displayed the words 'INCOMING TRANMISSION'. He tapped the terminal's control panel and the screen changed to a text transmission. The message was addressed to all Starfleet Department Heads and was from Sector Operations.
Stone quickly scanned through the message and then shut the terminal down and left the office. He walked to the reception desk beside the main entrance and spoke to the secretary there and then went and sat in the lounge. As he sat down the announcement chime rang out and the secretary began speaking.
"All Search and Rescue Personnel to yellow alert. I repeat, all SAR personnel to yellow alert until further notice."
The alert panels in the lounge changed from black to amber displaying the alert state. Starfleet must believe a threat was coming if they had ordered everyone to the increased alert state. It was just a matter of when.
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