Chief Engineer’s Personal Log
Stardate 997.1
I had hoped for further clues, but not like this. An entire town, gone. Thousands inhabitants missing. Captain Thoggev was very confident when he told Meme-Ar that the inhabitants were likely still alive.
I do not share his confidence.
The initial conclusion that what affected the town was a transporter effect was based on the quantum signatures remaining in the surrounding material. It didn’t match transporter effects, it was that a particular form of transporter malfunction creates signatures similar, and nothing else in our data banks came closer to matching the observed signatures.
It is possible that we’re looking at the after-effect of some form of advanced transporter effect capable of removing a 6km diameter cylinder in a less than a minute. It is also entirely possible that we’re looking at the aftermath of some weapon capable of disintegrating the same area.
There is evidence that there was something physically present at the time that the effect, whichever it was, happened. The 0.1c particles emitted from 100m above the ground. The warp-speed particles emitted much closer to the ground, the effects on the soil microbes which Nikolai reported.
Why? Who or what is responsible and why are they doing this? Destroying starships, killing and kidnapping crew, removing an entire town. To what end?