Captain Ethen Kwerk is on his routine pre-flight walkthrough, checking that all was well before officially taking his ship out on patrol. With the Star Ship Taurus designated duty border patrol and being away for a month, everything has to be spot on. She will be patrolling the border between the Terra Prime System and the Thavian System, considered to be a quiet, tame zone since the ending of the Border Zone Wars and now suitable for a ‘new’ crew, on a relatively easy shakedown trip for Taurus. Captain Ethan was happy with this assignment, for though his crew were his regular tough seasoned team, he did have some ‘new blood’  aboard on this trip and wanted time to help them find their way and fit in. Developments, however, were to overtake any ‘settling in’ plans he may have had.

‘Captain, Admiral Haines is on the line and he doesn’t sound too happy.’

‘Thank you, Skyla, I'm on my way, I’ll take it in Comm. ‘C.’ The image of Admiral Haines filled the huge Forward screen of the Ship’s Communication Centre as Ethan stepped out of the elevator. The Admiral was not a man known for any kind of casual chat, always stern looking, a man for whom life was not to be enjoyed but to be endured. Today, he looked even more serious than normal which set off alarm bells in Ethan’s mind. This didn’t look good and the Admiral hadn’t even opened his mouth yet.

‘Admiral, good of you to call.’

‘This is no social call Kwerk, this is a serious matter, Stellar Force business of the highest urgency. Now listen up.’

 Kwerk, feeling duly chastised, gave his commanding officer his full attention.

‘We are somewhat concerned about an MC Class Conveyor Ship which was on its way to Stellar Base One when it quite suddenly disappeared. Vanished off all our tracking sensors. Without warning.’

‘Without warning, you say?’

‘Yes, Kwerk, that’s what I said, making no effort to hide his impatience. 'There was no hint of anything untoward, no trauma, no malfunction of any kind detected or reported. Up until this point she had been having an incident free run, only interrupting it to pick up an item from the research station at Sentine Stern. She didn’t check-in at the final checkpoint prior to entering Stellar Base One’s Security Ring, just simply vanished.. There was an anomaly registered which we think may have been  an explosion in and around the vicinity the missing vessel was reported to be but there’s something not quite right about the time scale involved and no evidence of wreckage detected?!’

There was a brief silence as if the Admiral seemed to be hearing this for the first time himself, even though he had said it. He quickly recovered and continued.

‘You are to take your ship to the last known coordinates of the vessel in question and see what you can find. Further information is being downloaded to you as I speak, Code One Channel. Report back directly to me,  understand, to me. That is all. Admiral out.’ With this the screen went blank. That was it, the Admiral had said his bit, the Taurus had been assigned a mission and they were off, shakedown or no, the show had started with no time for a rehearsal. They had been given the proverbial needle in a haystack to find, with scant information to go on. In this case the needle was a ship and Space was the haystack.  One thing Kwerk was certain of was that there was never a haystack as big as the area he had to search, space is very definitely a BIG, big place.

‘Okay then, set course for Stellar Base One, Outer-quadrant Beacon. Take Her Out!’ With the command given and the course and speed set, Star Ship Taurus was on her way to her first assignment following a refit. There was a tangible air aboard the ship, a buzz of excitement, anticipation and just a touch of nervousness shared by old hands and new alike. There was always this edge, this nervous tension at the outset of a new mission which was always a journey very largely into the unknown. Yes, space travel had become a familiar mode of transport by this time, nevertheless, space was / is vast and at no time has anybody said that  it had been or will be conquered.  There is always the possibility of a surprise awaiting the unwary travellers, waiting to catch them out should they be foolish enough to drop their guard. Ethan could never be called an unwary traveller, on the contrary he was very much aware and so was his crew, well seasoned, well respected, experienced campaigners and never complacent. They never took anything for granted, everyone of them very familiar with the danger that lay out there in that cold black nothingness of space, the new  crew members would have to learn fast . It was not a friendly environment and had to be respected, taken extremely seriously because if you didn’t take it seriously you could be dead. Paradoxically, for Ethan, Space held a magnetic fascination almost beckoning, drawing him on and had done so from his early childhood, not only a fascination but a beguiling beauty all its own. He had a great love and  respect for it, almost an obsession. Before they got fully underway he wanted to pay a special visit to the new crewmen, just a little extra encouragement, it was the fatherly instinct, or was it the mother hen in him. One of the attractive traits of The Taurus, why people were lining up to be part of her crew was the fact that her captain was so highly admired for his loyalty to his crew, he cared for them, possibly a little too much? Some thought his relationship with his crew was perhaps a little too chummy? Certainly the hierarchy didn’t approve.  But, whatever the case was, he got results.

Having checked out and chatted with the new crew members it was time to check out the latest information concerning the mission. All he knew was that it was an MC Class Conveyor, therefore she was a civil commercial cargo carrying vessel. Now, if she was on standard commercial business then it’s unlikely they would have a Stellar Command StarShip tracking them, so why was Taurus involved? Ethan was puzzled, the civil arm of Terra Prime's galaxy fleet, The Stellar Force Recovery Unit, part of the General Crime Investigation Service, would normally attend to something like this, so why were we involved?  And, did the missing craft have a name? It was at this point in his deliberations that Science Officer Abi approached him.

‘Just received mission data from Command, captain,’

‘Thank you Abi,’ said Ethan, looking down at the data tablet his science officer had just placed in his hand.

‘That’s interesting,’ he said more to himself.

‘Captain?’

‘Oh, it’s just that the missing ship was registered on my home planet, not only that but I think I recognise the vessel in question. If this name is correct then I am very familiar with it.’

Indeed the ‘Oona Celeste’ was registered on ‘Aarde Een’, sister planet to Terra Prime, Kwerk had served aboard this very ship in his early, some would  say, reckless youth.

‘Don’t trouble yourself looking for The Celeste in your data banks, Abi,  because she doesn’t technically exist.’

‘That does not compute, Captain, Command would not send us out to find a non-existent craft?’

He could see that his android colleague was having a little difficulty understanding her captain’s remark.

‘Don’t trouble yourself, Abi, what I mean is she is or was known as a rogue-ship, heavily involved in piracy until GCIS got hold of her and put a stop to her criminal activities. Nothing was heard of her after that, until now?’ Ethan could feel the hairs on his neck rise. Something about this affair, this mission, was odd. The Admiral’s manner, choice of words, the more he thought about it seemed odd. Keeping his thoughts to himself for the time being he suggested they join the others on the bridge.