"Are you sure it wasn't outgassing?" Smith skeptically asked Jones with his arms folded.
"I've seen outgassing readings before. This wasn't outgassing, sir."
"How do you know?" Hayes asked anxiously, the air suddenly felt chilled with the dark look from Wilson.
"Because the contact registered as 'solid', even for the instant that whatever it was was visible. The main computer registered measurements taken by the sensor grid. Here." Jones pulled a display out from the side of her computer monitor and then handed Smith the display. He thumbed through the data in seconds, then looked at Jones.
"Holy crap." Smith angled the display at Aaen.
Aaen decidedly agreed, "That's not outgassing."
"Could it have been a ship of some kind?" Connors asked, running routine diagnostics on the phase relays. If anyone had transit on or off the ship to wherever, she didn't want to be tinkering with it, especially in the event of an emergency. Something about completing these steps just felt necessary, but she couldn't figure out why.
"It would have to be a pretty small one if it was. Based on my analysis of the readings I gathered, whatever it was was roughly the size of a torpedo." Jones answered over her shoulder. Supposedly. A probe maybe...? She asked herself in silence, scanning her computer's screen. Cloaked somehow? To disappear off the sensor grid as fast as it appeared as it did. If it was something small, and cloaked, a power surge would be the only thing she knew of that might cause a momentary instability in the field matrix that would render it even minutely visible for an instant like that.
"Jones, I need your best-educated guess." Aaen paused for a second. "What do you think the contact is?"
"If I had to guess," she paused to think for a moment. She didn't want to look stupid in front of the rest of the crew by misinforming her captain, but she also didn't want to risk over-estimating what she might have seen. "...I'd say either something or someone is on board a cloaked ship out there." She felt a knot form in her stomach. She hoped she was right.
So did Smith.
The sensor screen flashed thrice again. "THERE! At one o'clock!" Jones pointed sharply, wide-eyed. The contact faded in and out in a blink again. "It's even got the same shape as the first contact." Assuming we're looking at the same thing as before, she told herself with confidence.
The sensor screen flashed thrice again. "There it is again! Same shape, but it's at eleven o'clock, now. Same relative speed. It looks like it's matching our speed and relative course."
The contact appeared two more times. Each new instance was accompanied by more sensor alerts, but this time the contact had a different shape and angular position relative to Odyssey. One of the contacts appeared at port-ventral-aft about fifty meters out. The second contact was a little over double that distance out, but at five-o' clock, and starboard-ventral-aft. Is someone or something toying with us? She asked herself. What-the—
The sensor screen flashed thrice again, this time accompanied by the 'new contact' alert, and a navigational alert. "We're approaching our destination! Recommend slowing to 'all-stop'!" Jones declared aloud.
"All stop! Go quiet!" Smith commanded Wilson. Connors knew that order. She immediately re-allocated more of the ship's power in the stealth system. Sandberg knew to call up and engage 'Silent Running' mode, and then activate the stealth system.
"Aye! Engines powering down."
The deck felt like it momentarily elongated beneath them along the ship's long axis and then the illusion relaxed as the crew felt the declining hum of the translight nacelles rolling vibrating grumble in their ankles.
"Reverse thrusters answer."
Jones watched their destination's estimated dotted line perimeter inch across their hull as the finely dotted perimeter gradually came to a stop promptly a few hundred meters behind Odyssey.
"Alright. We're here." Wilson declared uncertainly. "Wherever 'here' is. I can't find any stars out there."
"Confirmed," Jones added gasping. She wanted to know what in the heck the sensors detected. She began running a battery of active multi-spectral scans. Whatever the heck it was, she kept telling herself it wasn't outgassing.
Hayes' computer screen flashed thrice. Another alert sounded.
"You got something, Hayes?" Smith asked directly.
"We just got 'pinged'."
"From where?"
"From somewhere on all three axes'. No one particular fixed point. It looks like it's shifting around a lot." Otherwise, she would have been more specific!
The bridge darkened like the hull had been shrouded in a fine fitted pitch-black layered darkness.
"Alright, Captain, we're invisible." Sandberg declared with a righteous tone in his voice.
Aaen leaned forward in his chair and looked sharply at the viewscreen.
"Jones. You got anything?"
"Nothing yet, sir."
"Hayes?" Smith asked. Wilson finished securing the engines and then looked at Hayes' computer screen. Whatever the quantum-techno-gibberish meant, Hayes' was deep-in-thought about all of it.
"The ping wasn't just a 'ping'. It was a message. The only encrypted part is the name of the sender." She accessed the message from the queue and eyed the lines of black text populating across one of the grey boxes on the screen. She read the text in seconds.
"Well?" Smith asked. "Report."
"The sender's asking us to re-modulate our short-range communications antenna to a frequency of 10986 Gigahertz, on the Delta-Echelon band."
Aaen and Smith exchanged a puzzled look. What the heck is 'Delta-Echelon'?
"Reply with a request that they identify themselves," Smith commanded.
"Aye, sir," Hayes carried out the order promptly.
Two minutes later. "No response from the sender."
The tension on the bridge could be cut with a knife.
Aaen took a breath, "Okay. Match that frequency and connect,"
A chime sounded to signal the comm line had been connected.
*****
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