The Continuing Story of Deep Space 2: Page 33
"Captain this is Louis. We have accessed some files. We have found a very interesting one and I am patching it to you right now."
"Great Louis ! I have to do some things first. Arthur out." and as he turned to commander Luke again he was ready to ask his chief of communications more information. That man was still holding something back.
"Computer to Commander Davis: priority communication for you received.", issued from Luke's Communicator.
"Rout it to this terminal", Luke said, tapping the terminal infront of him.
At the computer's prompting: Luke gave his authorization, at which point 5 lines of data appeared on the screen: the first one stating who the message was sent to; and the last four giving the access codes, in an encrypted form, which Luke spent a few minutes unencoding. There was no apparent sender of the message.
"Here are the access codes for the station. I took the liberty of placing a special decryption program in all of the runabout's computers -- for just such an occasion as this -- it will know
how to read this data, and display it to Lieutenant Colonel Jan, when it receives his personal authorization.", Luke said, preparing to send the data to the Beta on Arthur's command.
The captain nodded. Make it so. He knew already what Jan would say ... Good heavens.
Stardate 49989.6: Lieutenant-Commander Jola Kosovri Personal log
It is allways sad to say good-bye. Two years ago we had almost eight hundred people aboard Deep Space 2, but at these last hours there are only twelve of us left. Operations chief Franco Guidomas has just shut down the main reactor. The systems are now only operational on auxilliary power. Only a few systems are working now. The USS Hornblower is already in a position to take us aboard, but the engineers are making the last level one diagnostic and we have to wait for the final result. I believe that all the scientists have had the opertunity to gather all their data. It has been very busy. But the last two weeks, when there were only few of us left, this station seemed a bit spooky. Last night during our last dinner on Deep Space 2, suddenly all power went off line. The lights were out. And a few seconds later, without any alert nor warning all systems were on line again and working as nothing had happened. The funny thing was that as this all seemed to be happening in about five seconds, the real time the systems were off, was almost four hours. We hadn't got the time to investigate the incident further, but I have put a remark about it in the station's log. When we had confirmation of the time, by relay station 67, we were more at ease. Still I was a bit worried about the future of this station. It was very un Starfleet like, to leave all this hardware drifting in space like this without a crew. When I contacted Starfleet about what the future of Deep Space 2 would be, a certain Vulcan rear admiral Povek explained that the new crew had been assembled and that in about two months they would arrive. I still think this is strange. If anyone else just dropped in, they could steal or damage the station. But what can I say ? I am only a modest little lady officer. Actually this little lady officer is going to be the first officer of the ambassador class USS Hornblower, to serve under the famous captain Tony "Jumper" Wickers. I am so excited that I have already fogotten this assignment. No ... I will never forget this assignment. Oh, I have got to go. Franco has just called. There is no time to shutdown the holographic programs. We are history, and may the next team have a successfull assignment too. Kosovri out.
End Log
Captain Arthur was alone in ops. He was still worried about the secret station. As Luke got back to ops, Louis had sent this part of the accessed computer files. Running a space station with a few officers was not something to brag about. It could be dangerous. Certainly now. Arthur was still looking at Jola Kosovri's picture. She didn't look familiar. Kosovri's personal log was something nobody should ever read as these kind of logs could be very private. The captain had to read them. There could be a clue to the DS2 mystery. Maybe he had better started at the end. That was the most interesting part. Power failure, lights out, time jump, no explanation. So all of this had already started before the previous DS2 crew had left the station.
As Arthur crosschecked the other officer's personal logs, they all mentioned the incident, but a few in a different way. The logs were genuine, no doubt about it. Pitty they didn't contain more information.
"Runabout Beta to DS2. We believe our sensors are picking up weak human life signs. I suggest we go in."