A report is filed one night by the overnight junior ops officers on duty at DS13 operations. An audio version of how it went down, told by that same junior officer to his buddies at the bar later, goes like this:
“Oh, man. So there was this shuttle, a Romulan Republic civilian shuttle, that was just… hauling arse towards the station last night. And it hailed us, but nobody was there. And so Martin wanted to photon torpedo the thing and I was like, dude, there might be somebody on board, you can’t just photon torpedo Romulans anymore. So we slowed it with a tug and then tractor beamed it on board and Martin got to call security and we opened it up and there was nobody on board! Wild.”
“… yeah, man, Carlos read life signs while they were out in the black but not after it was tractored aboard. We’re all pretty sure they were a fluke. There were some papers aboard. Dry academic stuff, archaeology stuff. I queried that one scary Romulan Lieutenant Commander in intel about it but got a severe out-of-office, she’s not even on board or whatever. Anyway, engineering’s got it now, because the computer’s locked down tight. Intel’s gonna have to go through the stuff, medical’s gonna have to look at the life sign issue… security’s having a cow, someone’s on the line with the RRF now. I guess it’s a mystery we’ll all have to figure out…”