[snip]

El heard the XO’s question off Galen’s comms. Then the bridge replied back about radiation. What did they teach these guys? With half a mind she replied back, but thinking of what the XO was asking. [o] Negative. That hull there is thin but it is a good barrier to the radiation. Even with a hull breach it would not affect us with our distance and our shielding. The atmosphere of the world .. could be a problem. [c]

Then she switched to the XO’s question. Things were coming together in her mind and, truth told, explaining it was helping her think it through herself. [o] The lights are a kind of transmitter, sir, projecting energy, using the light to express mathematical formulae. It’s kind of like our computers using working through code to spit out a solution to a problem. What we are seeing in the light is the outworking of the math and seeing the program operate. The math is based on complex warp theory channeled as a communications wave that is outwardly manifesting as the lights and burrowing through subspace. Think of this this way, sir. We could maybe do the same thing utilizing say the nacelles with a complex working of a warp field but doing that standing still. [c] Whoa, she thought. Could they do it? She glanced at the Cochranes and chewed her lip instead of a nail. Did the computers have that kind of capacity to do it? It would be like getting a toaster to make an omelet. Doable but probably very messy. And boom if they messed up. Could it be a kind of wave to nullify that one? Simple wave theory but what a wave! [o] That ship was built to do what it is doing. Us .. not so much, but that’s the picture [c] Now did that come out as though she were eng-splaining ‘engineering for dummies’ to the XO?
El, Eng

Further to the XO’s question El tried again, watching the data flow along the screen on the ship. It wasn’t ‘that’ big. Sure 50 m by 40 m and diamond shaped did make up a lot of internal territory but it made for a big power plant. Idly she wondered whether there was another one at the far end and this burrowing was like pushing a string through and to talk from one end to the other like a string attached to two tin cans.

[o] Sir, the two flashing lights are using in part computer code that I recognize from the planet’s computer there. So there is some commonality but I don’t think that ship is necessarily made from the planet below. The code is mathematical and formulaic with a foundation of faster than light mathematical principles. That is the language they are communicating and are combining that with power to dig into subspace. That ship is unmanned and one big power plant. Hull is thin, only an inch thick but of a very tough metal that we can’t identify. I’d hoped we could beam over but it’s all generator - too much radiation in there for anyone or even a probe to get in and live. My guess, and this is a huge guess, is that these Serpents sent this big engine through on impulse through the spatial soup that we got caught in and waited for that to clear to send a signal back home to say that space is clear to travel again. [c]

El, Eng

As El and Black conversed the blinking/pulsing alien structure seemed to grow higher in energy output on their screens. Ahead of the Bonaventure a tiny aperture burrowing into subspace began to form up about 400 meters distant. The opening was currently 20 inches circular and expanding by a quarter and inch per minute. Going off her earlier readings and if it indeed was meant to send a type of comm signal at this energy rate, the structure would need a fully opened aperture of about 25 inches or so around. If they were going to do something to interfere with this thing, they had but at most 5 minutes to do it.

GM CockRoach