Personal Log: OPS Lt. Cmdr. Solan Arquette

Chief Operations Officer’s log, stardate six-nine-three-one-six point one. It has been a long day, so I will attempt to keep this brief. I will file a more formal and detailed report tomorrow, but I feel it necessary to take down some of the more important facts so they aren't lost.

Captain Kane and the admirals of the Frontier Fleet went missing this morning, which was the first sign that anything was wrong. I still don't know where they were taken or how, and I've been too busy putting out the proverbial fires caused by the events of the day to ask questions. Whatever the case, the events of the day truly began for Operations when a series of subspace distortions arose around Pandora Station, cutting us off from the rest of Starfleet. Our attempts to contact other vessels in the area, as well as the rest of the Frontier Fleet, proved fruitless.

There began to appear signs of ... strange activities around the station, which rapidly proved to be an important discovery: apparently the subspace rifts were caused by the presence of photonic entities from what I can only imagine is a different ... dimension for lack of a better word. I am not a scientist; presumably Lieutenant Vrass will be able to give me some explanation in the near future. I encountered only two such entities today: the first was a young girl named Alice, who entered the science labs when Lieutenant Vrass, Commander Jalando and I were investigating a discovery from the Atlantis – a probe that we had managed to capture using the Epimetheus' tractor beams and transporters. It came with a message: they were under attack by the same rifts that had, until then, shown no true hostility to our station beyond that previously mentioned.

The second was intentional, in a hallway on Deck 80. I beamed to an area and was joined by Virt, who proved most helpful in my brief dialogue with the entity. Apparently it viewed Virt and other holographic images as more real than the humans, vulcans, andorians and other carbon-based lifeforms aboard the station. It wanted its questions answered but refused to give a great deal of detail itself. According to the entity we are not lifeforms, holographs are 'empty shells' – except Virt, who he recognized as being different.

Later, Commander Jalando – against my advice – decided to give the entities until 1930 hours before he would attempt to close the rifts. His plan was to employ anti-leptons to close the rifts. In theory this would work and, when 1930 hours came, it did at first. However, almost immediately the rifts began firing a great number of torpedos at Pandora. While none of them were individually capable of harming us, the sheer number employed was too great for the shields to hold. We suffered some damage, particularly around the anti-lepton emitters and the communications gear, which we will have to repair quickly. Through quick thinking Ensign Gatto, Commander Jalando and I developed a plan to attempt to communicate with the entities. It worked.

The long story made short, almost as suddenly as they had come, the rifts withdrew. As they did so, Captain Torn of the Atlantis appeared in Main Ops. That was.... a few hours ago. Since then the major repairs have been begun on the station, but we still don't have full communications ability. All in all I am proud of the way my department handled the crisis, and I intend to suggest several members of the crew for letters of commendations, not the least of them Ensigns Kaylin and Gatto. Ensign Kaylin has proven herself a good leader and I also plan on requesting that she be made Assistant Chief of Operations formally.

Computer, end log.