Lindsy had spent the last 3 hours back from the docking ring and began to feel that she had enough to work with.

As soon as she boarded the Dutchman, she went directly to the Astrometrics alcove, dropped her jacket behind the chair and started pulling information before she had ever really taken her seat. Four tokens were displayed in order of their reference number, each one a series of coordinates with a logged sensor reading associated. Nothing else. No background information, no vessel identification (except for a scrambled registry string) and no description of what the logging ship saw or why it continued on its course. Only the numbers and whatever they led to.

In the first hour, she finished 3. One represented a gravity anomaly consistent with a collapsed stellar remnant. That would be interesting to a scientist. But, to the Dutchman, completely worthless. Number 2 indicated a zone of high particulates that likely had been in existence so long that whatever caused it was no longer identifiable. Number 3 offered genuine potential for salvage but none of it matched the "particular" nature the Yridian referred to regarding token #3.

Token #3 is the one she kept going back to.

She brought up the raw sensor data associated with Token #3 and ran it through her analytical tools once again, viewing it from multiple angles as she viewed unresolved problems. The data was unlike any naturally occurring phenomena that she could recognize nor did it resemble any normal vessel configurations that existed in her database. There was a regularity in the energy signature that did not exist in naturally occurring events; a repetition that occurred at intervals that suggested randomness and large enough in scope to eliminate any possibility of it being related to a small event.

She put the token data away and started working on the surrounding data.

Coordinates are useful but they are merely numbers unless you know what is around those numbers. What she needed was everything that encompassed those numbers...the historical navigation of that area, the traffic patterns, the chart gaps, etc. Anything that will help her understand what type of space this was and what has transpired in that space.

She pulled every chart available on the Outer Sectors, including current Federation charts, two old Bajoran surveys and three legacy corridor charts that predated many of the political boundaries changes in this section of the galaxy. She layered them on top of one another on the primary display and reviewed where they agreed/disagreed.

The gaps showed up quickly.

These were not navigational hazards, nor were they uncharted territories...these were missing segments in the data that shouldn't be there. Smooth voids in areas that generally contained good documentation. This type of gap was familiar to Lindsy...it typically represented a conscious omission by someone responsible for compiling the charts. These gaps were man-made, not natural and not random...and they followed a consistent pattern.

She cross-referenced these gap locations with both the token coordinates and the Borg derived sensors specifications on board the ship.

She stopped.

The frequency band of the Borg derived sensors on board covered nearly all of the interfering spectrum of the Lantar Nebula which lay between New Ferenginar and the outer sectors where the token pointed. She recorded this weeks prior while reviewing navigational aspects as an interesting fact...now she retrieved it along with the gap locations and the token readings and a shape of an emerging image in front of her became apparent...even though she wasn't prepared to assign a name to it yet.

She began to triangulate.

If a ship had traveled through the outer sectors in a direction consistent with the scrambled registry string associated with the token and if it had experienced something sufficiently significant to cause it to alter course at max warp speed, the most probable location of such an encounter could be determined using heading data and log time stamp associated with the logged reading. She performed this calculation three times using slightly different assumptions for error in the registry data and all three yielded results within a small enough radius to consider worthwhile.

This radius resulted in a single star system located in the outer sectors. Far enough from major shipping routes that routine traffic would not traverse it. Also far enough from Dominion controlled space to allow whatever was present to remain relatively undisturbed during the war years. And, positioned within this radii were three of the deliberately absent gaps she found in chart records.

She leaned back and studied the display for an extended period.

The Gatrao System.

Legacy charts on it included a mining station active until approximately ten years past and had ceased operations with little explanation according to the official documents. Since that time, traffic in this sector had decreased and subsequent updates to charts had become progressively less frequent; examples of how commercial relevance leads to eventual abandonment/obsolescence.

It is precisely the type of place that can be hidden for a considerable amount of time without drawing attention sufficient to locate it.

She called up Token #3 once more, comparing its unique energy signature to possible explanations considering knowledge of Gatrao system.

With knowledge of Gatrao system in mind, she compared its energy signature characteristics - its repetitive intervals - scale - and it took on a significantly more ominous character than it had as simply numbers without a location.

She saved all her created content - triangulated data - chart analysis - sensor comparison - initial routing calculations toward Gatrao - and flagged for Zedd stating she developed something worthy of his review/time to visit astrometrics.

Then she studied display contents for an additional short period and considered a ship altering course running full warp speed filing no report and asked herself what type of entity could cause a ship to behave in that manner and whether the Dutchman was truly prepared to go seek answers for those questions.

She poured remaining cold tea from earlier portion, regardless.

5 Bars of Gold Press Latinum was beginning to appear to be quite a reasonable cost.