[Log] The Narstrom Incident.

I attended the third day of the inquiry into Novara Narstrom yesterday. I hope she gets off.

I think the charges against Novara are spurious at best. An abandoned ship, no distress signal, no life signs for hundreds of miles. Any scavenger would have a case for believing the ship was abandoned. Nothing can survive for long out there in the desert. Well, that's not strictly true because there's one thing that can - the sandworms. Now come on, between the impact of the crash, the hostile environment and the man-eating sandworms the likelihood that there would be any survivors is tiny. And let us not forget a very key word in what I just said : abandoned. If a ship is abandoned, it's open for scavenging. That's always been the way I've known things. And if the ship wasn't abandoned, there's no way she could have known about it. After all, let's not forget that she sent out a message on the public channel - why did the pilot or the STC not immediately respond? No, the more I think about it the more I think it was a set up. 


I've known Sisko for a while, but I never thought he was capable of this.

 I witnessed some of the events that led to the trial and left her space station just hours before it was destroyed. As I recall the sequence of events, Novara sent out a message on the Al Raqis public channel that there was an abandoned ship deep in the desert and asked for help salvaging what was left. I arrived shortly afterwards and was subsequently joined by several others all of whom witnessed the very same thing. An STC shuttle craft firing phaser streams at Novara's ship. She was lucky to get her shield up in time otherwise we'd be talking about a fatality. After several minutes of sustained phaser fire, we heard a huge thunderous roar and looking up we saw one of the STC's starships had entered the atmosphere and was now firing round after round of photon torpedoes at the shield. Shortly afterwards her defence barrier collapsed but not before Novara was able to power up her engines and subsequently she escaped to the supposed safety of her space station.

As it was, I had business of my own at her station and when we entered standard orbit we were greeted with the STC ship lingering menacingly outside of the station shields. Having the shield code frequency, we were able to successfully dock with the station. As we unpacked the goods into the landing bay, I noticed Novara talking to a Myrmidon. Thinking nothing of it, I left the same way we'd arrived and we only later found out that Novara's station had been destroyed when its shields failed, fell planetside and burned up in the atmosphere. 

If anything, I'd say that the STC should be facing a count of attempted murder and possibly terrorism charges. I suspect they won't. They have a knack of getting themselves out of trouble. Meanwhile an innocent trader much like myself faces the wrath of the Al Raqis legal system. It's a crying shame. 

Log Update - I recall Novara mentioning on the public channel that she'd seen STC officers on board her station shortly before planetfall. More fuel for the fire.