Lieutenant Terry Latrael was staring out of the Ten Forward window, his thoughts lost in space. One of the ship’s medical officers, Lieutenant Commander Karl Tiranity, walked by Terry, and this caught his attention.

Terry could sense something wrong about Karl’s mind. He couldn’t quite place it, but he knew it wasn’t the mind of a human. Then Terry realized something.

Suddenly some one put their hand on Terry’s arm. If it hadn’t been for his Starfleet training, Terry would have let out a small yell of surprise. He looked up to see an engineer standing over him with a pained look on his face.

“Sir, I was wondering if you might be able to accompany me to sick bay…I’m not feeling well and I’m not sure if I can make it alone,” the engineer said.

“Of course,” Terry said. He would take the engineer to sick bay and then he would alert the Captain of the emergency. How ever, on the turbolift, Terry realized his mistake as he sensed something was wrong with the engineer. He never had the time to even really realize it as the engineer used a hypospray on him.



Three days later

“Sir, engineering is reporting that they have been missing a crew member for the past three days,” Tom reported to Sarah.

Sarah looked over at Tom, who was sitting at the operations console again. “When was the last time any one saw him,” She asked.

“Three days ago in Ten Forward,” Ada replied. “He was seen leaving with Terry.”

Sarah opened a communications channel, and began, “Caft to Latrael.”

After a moment, Terry replied, “Go ahead.”

“Please report to the bridge immediately,” Sarah ordered.

“I was already on my way up,” Terry replied. Sarah cut the communications channel as Terry emerged one of the turbolifts.

“Terry, an engineer by the name of Jason Cartonsian has been missing for three days, and he was last seen with you,” Sarah said. “Any idea what happened to him?”

Terry shook his head as he said, “No, all I know is that he was on his way to sick bay on the turbolift. He said he wasn’t feeling well. I left the turbolift before we reached sickbay.”

Sarah became confused. She looked at the ship’s chief medical officer, Commander Kara Trieal, and asked, “Did he ever make it doctor?”

Kara shook her head, and replied, “No.”

“This is too weird,” Sarah said. She tapped her com badge and said, “Captain to the bridge.”



“Some thing wrong,” Chris asked as he left the turbolift. He was wearing civilian clothing but still had a comm badge on.

“Yes sir, a crew member has gone missing and no one knows even how he got lost,” Sarah replied.

Chris looked at her as he sat down in the command chair, still very tired after a long game of twentieth century basketball with a crewmember. “Sensors can’t find him?”

“No,” she replied. “It’s as if he never existed!”

Chris thought a moment, and then ordered, “Yellow alert. Ada, I want a deck by deck search for this crewmember. If any thing out of the ordinary has occurred lately, I want to know about it.”

“Aye sir,” Ada replied.

Suddenly the ship shook violently as the alert klaxon sounded. As Chris tried to stay in his seat, he ordered, “Report!”

After a moment, Tom reported, “Some sort of interstellar dust is some how penetrating our deflector field and is disrupting our warp field. Another minute and our warp field will collapse.”

“Helm, drop to impulse,” Chris ordered. The forward viewscreen showed the streaking stars turn into the normal star field.

“Get as much information on that dust as possible and see if there’s a way to modify the deflector dish to compensate,” Chris ordered. After a few moments, Chris looked at Tom, who still didn’t reply.



Star Trek Dragon graphics and written material copyright Jon Wasik. Star Trek is a registered trademark
of Paramount Pictures, a Viacom company. No copyright infringement intended.