"Trail of a hundred years"

Doctor Seth
Medical Officer USS Sulu
http://come.to/dr.seth


Doctor Seth walked into the empty Stellar 
Cartography lab.  The room was dark when 
she entered.

"Lights full."  Seth ordered, bringing the under 
used facility to life.   The stellar projections 
illuminated in the circular room even while Seth 
stepped onto the round control platform and 
activated the controls to display the area of 
space at the Sulu's current location.

"Computer, scan the Sulu's sensor logs.  Plot 
current position of starships USS Sulu, and the 
Teth Garrol."

Small, glowing images, indicating the position 
of the Sulu and Teth Garrol appeared on the 
stellar chart in the proper position.

"Computer, add position of the planet killer we 
are currently tracking to Sigma Rogallis III."

Again the projected, room sized display 
changed showing a glowing, cone shaped 
image representing the planet killer.

"Computer, scanning the databanks of what is 
known about this particular machine, and what 
is known about the earlier machine 
encountered by the USS Constellation and 
USS Enterprise a hundred years earlier,  it's 
behavior, patterns of movement, cycles of 
fueling off of near by planets, and also recent 
and former starcharts of this quadrant over the 
last hundred years, extrapolate a possible 
course taken by the machine to reach Sigma 
Rogallis III."

The lights on the stellar cartography control 
panel lit up like a Christmas tree while the 
computer scanned the input data and charts 
before it projected a possible course the planet 
killer had taken.  Seth's eyebrow shot up in 
Vulcan fashion.  The indicated trail was not 
very long considering this planet killer was 
thought to of been operating for the last one 
hundred plus years. 

"Computer, is this an accurate estimation of the 
course taken by this planet killer?"  Seth asked.

The computer responded, "Affirmative.  Course 
displayed coincides with planetary systems in 
the vicinity that no longer appear on current 
starcharts when compared to surveys 
conducted one hundred years earlier."

Seth scrutinized the path the planet killer had 
taken.  It spanned a few hundred light years, 
but was nowhere near long enough to indicate 
this machine had been consuming planetary 
systems over the last century.   The trail did, 
however head back towards the L370 system, 
indicating that could have been this machine's 
origin, just like the one the Constellation 
destroyed near Rigel 7.  Now the real question 
was, who created / activated this planet killer 
and why had it laid dormant for the last 
century?

Seth pondered over her findings while 
downloading the information to a datapadd for 
further study.  She'd already approached 
Lieutenant Treymond with her idea on luring 
the machine away from Sigma Rogallis II.  She 
suggested that they make the doomsday 
machine follow the Sulu while they lead it close 
enough to the Sigma Rogallis star to trap the 
hulking device in orbit using it's shear size and 
girth against it and to their own advantage.  
Since the Lieutenant had assured the Doctor 
that once Captain Salinger returned from his 
meeting with the crew of the Teth Garrol, that 
he'd inform him of Seth's wish to discuss her 
ideas, Seth saw no logical reason why she 
should approach the Captain again.

Taking the padd with the downloaded stellar 
cartography data, Seth deactivated the lab and 
exited.   There seemed to be nothing more for 
her to do other than to return to sickbay and 
wait for the Captain to agree to hear out her 
ideas about the planet killer.