abstract
| - On stardate 1709, the USS Enterprise was on patrol along the Romulan Neutral Zone, in Sector Z-6, when signals from Outpost 2 ceased. The starship set course for Outpost 4, the nearest of the outposts. About an hour later, signals from Outpost 3 also ceased. When the Enterprise was a little over eight minutes away from Outpost 4 at maximum warp, the ship received word that the outpost was under attack by an unidentified spacecraft; contact was subsequently lost. As the Enterprise approached the border, Lieutenant Commander Spock was able to take sensor scans of Outposts 2 and 3; he determined that both outposts had been totally pulverized, including asteroids they had been constructed upon. Five minutes out from Outpost 4, contact between the outpost and the Enterprise was reestablished. Commander Hansen, the commanding officer of the outpost, reported that Outpost 8 had also been destroyed. Outpost 4 had been hit by an unknown plasma weapon of immense power, that blew through the deflector shield with one shot. Even though the outpost itself was a mile deep within the asteroid, and protected by cast rodinium, the opening attack had caused immense physical damage to the outpost itself. The phaser banks were destroyed and the entire weapon crew killed with just the one hit. After firing, the mysterious starship had vanished, though it remained on tracking sensors. As the Enterprise neared Outpost 4, the mysterious vessel reappeared for a moment, letting loose another plasma torpedo. Contact with the outpost was lost; Lieutenant Commander Spock reported it had been disintegrated. He theorized that the unknown ship was utilizing an invisibility screen to make scanning difficult, but that it had needed to become momentarily visible because such a high amount of power was required to maintain invisibility that it precluded firing weapons.
|