“Captain, we are approaching the coordinates of the sensor buoy.” said Lieutenant Junior Grade Ezra Bennett from the helm conn.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Captain Scott Bowman replied from his captain’s chair. “Drop us out of warp.” The ship lurched slightly as it slowed, the bridge crew leaning forward slightly in their seats. The front viewscreen showed the streaks of stars shorten, and then become pinpoints once again.

“I see it, Captain.” Lieutenant Dathasa said, pointing towards a small object on the viewscreen, spinning lazily on its axis against the backdrop of a looming, grey brown planet. 

“Ezra, bring us to a full stop please, and hold position ten kilometers from the buoy.” Captain Bowman said.

  “Aye sir, holding at ten clicks.” Ezra responded, tapping the console. “Relative velocity is now zero.”

Lieutenant Commander Cruikshank’s fingers danced across the science console’s smooth surface. “Our sensors are picking up a low-power transponder pulse, Captain.” He said, his eyes glued to the display. “The signal strength is intermittent, but it is definitely from the Winslow.” 

Scott nodded his head. “Tactical?”

“No immediate threats, Captain.” Lieutenant Commander O’Donnell said, checking over her readings. “I’m detecting a minor leak from its internal systems and the power cells are nearly depleted.”

“Understood, Commander.” Scott replied. 

“Captain, I recommend we transport it into one of our auxiliary cargo bays.” Craig said, looking up from his monitor. “The signal is too weak to decrypt at this distance, especially with the substantial level of interference present.” 

“Make it happen, Commander.” Scott replied, and then tapped his combadge. “Bridge to engineering.” Craig immediately left his seat and headed for the turbolift doors as Garion’s response came in. 

Go ahead, Captain. Lieutenant Beckett replied over the comm.

“Commander Cruikshank is transporting the sensor buoy from the Winslow to Cargo Bay Three. Please meet him there and assist him.” Scott answered. “I want that thing stripped down as quickly as possible.” 

Affirmative, Captain. Garion replied. I’ll transfer transporter control to the console there and initiate a containment field as soon as it comes aboard.

Commander Cruikshank and Lieutenant Beckett stood behind the cargo bay’s console as the shimmer of the transporter lit the room with a flickering of blue light. The battered exterior of the buoy materialized, hovering in the air for a second before coming to rest on the deck plates. Up close, the damage was far worse than it had looked from the bridge. The signal arrays were all either warped or broken, the hull was covered in scorch marks, and one of the stabilizers had been totally sheared off. 

“This thing is a wreck.” Craig said, letting out a low whistle and staring down at the battered unit. 

“Yea, well.” Garion began, moving to stand beside his friend, “Let’s hope the good parts are still salvageable.”

“It looks like it’s been through a war.” Craig said, moving slowly around the buoy, scanning it more closely with his tricorder. 

“I’d say several.” Garion chuckled, kneeling down to remove the access panel. When the panel opened, he was met with a number of sharp sparks, and a cloud of acrid smoke engulfed his head. “Damn it!” he shouted, amidst a fit of coughing. “This thing should be taken out back and shot.” 

“If you’ve quite finished,” Craig said with a smile, “I’ve located the source of the transponer pulse, but it’s extremely weak. This poor thing has been screaming into the void for forty years.”

“How romantic,” coughed Garion, waving his hand to clear the smoke and sticking his head back into the access panel, “Yep, it’s what I thought. This power core is a joke, it’s totally shot! I’m surprised the thing hasn’t already gone critical, just from the entropy. I can rig a bypass to bring the comm buffer back online, but I’ll be holding its hand the whole way.”

“Yea, yea” Craig said, continuing his scan, “Do your electric wizard thing, and I’ll prep for the data packet retrieval.”

With a quick flourish, Garion connected the bypass relay, and the whole buoy shuddered as a low hum filled the cargo bay. The unit’s amber status lights flickered to life, erratic but functional. Garion shot a crooked grin over to his colleague at the console. “Say it…” 

“No.” Craig said, not looking up from his console. 

“Say it.” Garion repeated, his smile growing.

“Why do you always make me say it?”

“It helps me do a better job.” 

There was a long beat of silence before, with a deep sigh and an exaggerated eye roll, Craig said, “You’re the best damn power systems guy in all of Starfleet.”

“Aah, There it is.” Garion said with a laugh. “Okay, minimal power routed. You won’t have any command functions though, just the buffer access.”

“Okay, I’m picking up the encrypted packet.” Craig confirmed, working the console. “It’s old style Starfleet compression, no timestamp. It looks like an audio log.” There was a long pause. “Final transmission, USS Winslow.” he finished, quietly. He looked to his friend, who was standing again. “Ready?”

“Oh yea.” Garion responded, rubbing his hands together, “Let’s get into it.”

Craig pressed the playback button on the console. The air around them hissed as the transmission began. Then a tired, strained voice began speaking,

This is Lieutenant Commander Haynes, executive officer of the USS Winslow. If you’re hearing this, then we probably didn’t make it. 

There was a pause, and only the hiss of compressed audio was heard.

We were running a routine magnetosphere modulation test on what we thought was an inert planet – but it wasn’t. The Cardassians had some kind of installation under the southern continent. Buried deep, completely masked. We had no idea. When we ran the test, the planet’s magnetosphere reacted violently. It was only minutes until it had collapsed entirely. 

Another hissing pause.

By the time we got the ship turned around, they were on us. We didn’t even see them until they opened fire. Three Galor class ships came out of nowhere. Maybe even from the surface of the planet itself. The ship is crippled. Captain Singh is dead. I’m sure the Cardassians are long gone by now, the planet’s atmosphere is almost completely gone. I’ve set the ship to land on the planet. With any luck, some will be able to survive…

The hiss of silence from the compressed audio was broken now by a warbling klaxon blaring in the background. There was a sound of garbled voices and then, suddenly, the recording cut out. Silence now filled the cargo bay as Garion and Craig looked at one another, stunned. 

“My god..” were the first words heard after the recording ended, as Craig finally found his voice again. “That’s a hell of a message to leave behind.”

Garion tapped his combadge. “Lieutenant Beckett to Captain Bowman.”

Yes, Lieutenant?

“Sir, we’ve retrieved the Winslow’s final message,” he said slowly. “You’re gonna want to hear this in person.”

Scott didn’t move for several seconds after the recording ended. The lights of his ready room glinted softly off the surface of the PADD he had just set down on his desk. “A crash landing,” he said quietly. “The Winslow didn’t disappear, she’s down there. Somewhere.”  

“I’ve run an initial scan, Captain.” Craig said. “I can confirm a wreckage trail on the southern continent. It looks like it might be Federation wreckage, but I can’t be sure from this far away.”

Scott nodded slowly. “If there is wreckage down there, there could be data, crew logs, even remains.” He looked at both Craig and Garion sternly. “We owe it to anyone down there to figure out what happened. Garion, prepare a shuttle and some EVA suits. Craig, when we get closer to the planet, I need you to verify the location of the crashed ship.” 

The two officers nodded their acknowledgement, and then turned and left the ready room. Scott stood and paced for a moment, coming to a stop looking out his window at the planet in the distance. Somewhere down there was the Winslow and her crew, and Scott was determined to figure out where they were and bring as many home as he could. He tapped his combadge. “Bowman to Commander Saberwyn.”

I’m here, Sir. Was Bema’s reply.

“Assemble the senior staff in the conference room.” Scott ordered. 

Yes, Captain. Bema said dutifully. 

Scott was already standing at the head of the conference room table when his senior staff came filing through the door. After everyone had sat down, he tapped a button on the console, and the shimmering projection of a planet appeared in the middle of the table. Overlaid on the southern half of the planet, was a thin red line representing the predicted debris path of the Winslow. 

Scott took a deep breath. “This planet,” he began, “was apparently the home to a secret Cardassian installation during the Federation/Cardassian War. As you know, the Winslow was sent here forty years ago, after the war ended, to map this sector and run tests and experiments on some of the systems here. One of those was an atmospheric test, here on this planet they believed was uninhabited. We have confirmed from her last transmission that the experiment went wrong, and they inadvertently collapsed the planet’s atmosphere.”

A murmur broke out around the table. Sriarr’s tail flicked back and forth and he asked, “So what happened to the ship?”

“She was attacked,” Scott answered,  “By Cardassian warships stationed around the planet. The Winslow was totally outgunned. She didn’t stand a chance. After taking critical damage, the ship crashed onto the planet’s surface here, we think.” he pointed at the red line. 

“So the mine was never decommissioned after the war?” Tom asked. 

“It appears not.” Scott replied. 

“And now, Starfleet sends us here with no warning of secret mines, or information about the Winslow’s fate.” Dathasa said, in a clipped tone. “It feels like manipulation.” Bema cast her a sidelong glance, but didn’t say anything. 

“That possibility is not lost on me.” Scott said, “I personally feel like we owe it to the crew of the Winslow to investigate the site, find their remains and retrieve whatever data we can.” The heads of the senior staff bobbed in agreement.

“I’ve got a team prepping a shuttle right now, with EVA suits. No one steps onto the surface without full protection.” Garion said. 

“It doesn’t look like that planet is rotating very fast.” Ezra said, studying the map. “I can put us into a low orbit above the crash site, and I’ll keep the engines warm in case we need to beat it out of here.” 

Vail leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest, preparing to ask the question that was on everyone’s minds, but nobody wanted to say out loud, “And what if someone is still watching the planet?” 

Scott let the question settle a moment, allowing the murmur to die before he answered. “Then we do what we were trained to do.” he said finally, “We defend ourselves, but we do not provoke.”

Scott looked around the table at his senior staff, his eyes resting on each officer briefly. “We leave in one hour.” Scott concluded. “Bema, I want you to lead the away team. Craig, Garion, Vail, and Dathasa, you’ll go down to the planet’s surface as well. I don’t expect trouble, but it would be foolish not to be prepared for it.” He stood leaning over the table, palms flat on the surface. The room remained silent for a moment, then Bema stood and collected his PADD. The rest followed suit, and they began to file back out of the room. Dathasa lingered just a moment longer, her eyes on Bowman, before she also turned to leave.

“Dath?” Scott called to her back as she was about to exit the room. She turned and looked back at him, and saw the concern plainly on his face. “Take your disruptors with you.” He said with a small smile. She smiled back, nodded her head once, and walked out of the room.