Twisted metal

[LoAmi 0]

Lt. Cmdr. Arphazad Lo'Ami and his team walked into cargo bay 3, donning protective gear and flashlight-equipped hard hats, and carrying tricorders. The soon-to-be-engineering lounge was now filled with 10,000 cubic meters of burnt, twisted metal that used to surround the computer core of the Saulk Observatory. Lo'Ami opened the tricorder and scanned the external surface of the metal. Up close, he confirmed the energy signatures that he had scanned from the ship -- the station had been attacked by disruptor bursts that resembled Romulan weaponry. He increased the precision of the tricorder reading. Again, he detected a 5 J variance from what would be expected from a Romulan disruptor. He led the team into the twisted metal, moving slowly and methodically, to avoid jutting deckplates, or worse, moving a weak structural support, and toppling the entire structure.

As they moved forward, a green arm in a tattered uniform was visible on the deck just above them. Lo'Ami made a note to have medical search the wreckage for the bodies of station crewmembers. He took another tricorder reading. A second group of energy signatures were present inside the wreckage. This time, he clearly recognized the signatures of a Romulan disruptor - no variance this time - and of the previous model of Federation-issue type-II hand phaser. The station had been boarded. There had been a battle here.

 

Finally, the team arrived at the computer core, and began to search for data crystals. The main computer contained all of its data crystals, although they were charred. Lo'Ami did some quick mental math on the rate of capacitive discharge of isolinear circuitry. In that physical state, some data should be recoverable, he calculated. He scanned the crystals, only to find that they had all been de-energized. Whoever boarded the station had come to destroy its data. His hopes for finding any information were rapidly deteriorating.

The next stop was the backup computer. Few would have bothered to manually de-energize the data crystals here - a large bulkhead from two decks above had crashed clear through the computer core. Most of the chips were shattered into pieces, but still energized. They formed an "unsolvable" jigsaw puzzle.

 

Lo'Ami left the wreckage carrying the pieces of the backup computer data crystals. Most of the data was clearly lost forever. But, he hoped, after pasting them back together and performing sophisticated data recovery procedures, some of them would help resolve the mystery of who destroyed the Saulk observatory.

Aside from the work in engineering, the science department's next task was clear.