"Missing Puzzle Pieces" - 50303.16

[Garnoopy 0]

Lieutenant Junior Grade Garnoopy

Personal Log Stardate 50303.16

“Missing Puzzle Pieces”

 

As a child, Garnoopy had put puzzles together with his family every so often. They’d go on a vacation to some foreign location, and bring back a puzzle showing a picture of something they’d seen on the trip.  

 

The enjoyment of figuring out how pieces went together and the patience it required to do so was amazing to Garnoopy. But the best part of it all had always been the ending. When you smiled, sat back, and looked to see a picture made up of hundreds of little pieces. A picture you had worked to put together, and the end result always filled you with a sense of pride at your accomplishment.

 

Garnoopy was stuck. On the bridge, he was attempting to put yet another puzzle together, but nothing was fitting. Roget had been to Proxima Centuri before, but hadn’t told anyone. Proxima Centuri had housed a top-secret science facility, which he hadn’t known, and certainly hadn’t been in any of the Federation files on Proxima Centuri he had looked up. What had they been doing down there?

 

Data scrolled across his engineering station, but none of it was being read. His attention was completely elsewhere, trying to fit a list of facts into what was seeming to be an impossible match up of information.

 

He tried to put the information into order as to what happened: Proxima Centuri, Dr. Cummings, Top-secret research, Romulans, biogenetic attack, Aries, Atragon, quarantine, Roget, Manticore. The puzzle pieces didn’t make any sense.

 

What didn’t fit? Since when did Romulans use biogenetic weapons? That didn’t fit. Unless of course, the Romulans hadn’t used biogenetic weapons. But then why did the planet get quarantined?

 

Garnoopy closed his eyes, and took a breath, trying to clear his head. This was so confusing. He ran through the list in his head again.

 

His eyes flew open. No, he thought, that wasn’t possible. Was it? The Federation did use dangerous chemicals in all sorts of things. Could this top-secret facility have been using some sort of extremely dangerous chemical that the Federation might not normally allow?

 

If that was true, then perhaps the Romulans had attacked to gain the studies of the scientists on the planet, and had accidentally in their brutal attack, damaged some sort of holding tank for the chemicals, which was released into the atmosphere.

 

Getting a tad excited, Garnoopy’s mind continued working. Then, the Romulans hadn’t been able to go down to get the data they wanted due to the release of the chemicals, and the left. The Aries flew in, and couldn’t get down, they quarantined the planet.

 

Starfleet Command must have decided that the fact that illegal chemicals had been being used for research couldn’t get out, so they said the Romulans used the biogenetic weaponry. And now, the Manticore was here to do some work for Starfleet Command. That would explain why this particular ship was here, and not some simple scout ship.

 

But, this didn’t explain Roget having been down there before, and what was the outpost researching that would be so important to the Romulans? A spy would have been more effective, and certainly, the Romulans were smart enough to know how to aim and fire a torpedo to not destroy the very things they came to get.

 

Garnoopy sighed, his theory seemed more possible than the story he had read in the Federation files, but the amount of loose ends and questions that had to be answered to prove him right was staggering. And still, no one had quite explained why they were back here anyways.

 

Where were those missing puzzle pieces he needed to figure out what was going on? And what would those puzzle pieces show when they were all put together, and you sat back, and looked at the picture?

 

Garnoopy stared blankly at his screen and wondered, “What the hell is going on here?”