The briefing room at the SAR Headquarters in Serenity City was full. The team were all busy studying sensor and incident logs trying to unearth a clue as to what happened to the shuttle a few days earlier. Stone got up from his seat and wiped his hand down his face.
"This is impossible," he said out loud. "There's no sign of debris or a cloak, so where has it gone?"
"Sir, receiving communication from Starbase 901, urgent," Hedley called out.
"On audio," Stone replied becoming alert.
The comm system bleeped.
"SAR, Lieutenant Stone, go ahead," Stone answered the message.
[Lieutenant, we have a runabout missing, no distress signals received, no transponder,] a male voice replied.
"Understood, we'll launch immediately," Stone said and nodded to Watson who also stood up and abandoned the trawling through data. "Do we have an exact last location?"
[Not as yet sir, we're trying to triangulate a possible area, but we're having some difficulties, the flight plan is not on the system.]
"Understood, we'll make our way to the starbase, Stone out."
He walked quickly to the armory locker and tapped in the code. The doors slid open and he started handing out the phaser rifles to the team.
"Get the Pennine started, we launch in a minute," he ordered.
The runabout was 'parked' on the exterior of Starbase 901, held in position by the station's tractor beam. Jim Stone and Janice Fisher had transported directly to mission operations room where the Ops team was busy attempting to find any clue as to the last position of the craft.
"We've been having difficulties with the flight planning system, and it looks as though the flight plan was not filed correctly, either through a computer error or an operator error, that we can't say," the young Ops officer reported. "We've had the computer check all subspace communication logs and the last transmission from the craft is a communication between Captain Saitek and his son, which doesn't really give us any idea as it was in Serenity."
Stone nodded and took a seat at the Ops terminal, he tapped in a few commands and brought up the flight path of the craft out of the system.
"He could be going anywhere in the quadrant, he's clearly taking a route which takes him back to Federation space, but the question is has the shuttle been ambushed, had system failure, crashed, the possibilities are almost endless," he said, thinking aloud. "Have all Starfleet craft been alerted to the missing ship?"
"Yes sir," the ensign replied.
"And they are aware that we have a command rank officer missing?" Stone asked.
"Yes sir," the ensign again replied.
"Monitor sensors, we'll take the Pennine on the same heading and see if we can come up with anything," Stone said.
He got up from the seat and tapped his combadge.
"Two to beam to the Pennine," he said.
The transported effect consumed them and moments later they were standing on the transporter pad of the USS Pennine.
"Rich," he said as he walked into the command module. "Plot a heading to match our missing craft, the data's been downloaded and engage full at warp 2."
"No prob," Rich replied and entered the commands into the pilot's terminal.
The runabout turned away from the Starbase as the tractors disengaged and slowly increased speed until the warp engines engaged, heading directly back towards the interior of Federation space.
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