snip

The room grew quiet for a time as all the scientists turned their attention to reviewing the logs. As time went on, a few side conversations started as members of the team compared notes or asked for a second opinion. One partial exchange was loud enough for the Vulcan civilian to make out.

”…track quality is pretty bad…”

”…figured it was a result of the noise…”

Stovik himself had noted that the type and quality of the track data was substandard. It was more akin to what the sensors would provide near their maximum range.

The sensor interference was present as soon as the Sentinel jumped into the system, so the focus was mostly on logging the appearances and disappearances of the contact ghosts.

A lot of effort went into the final seconds of the timeline, and Stovik’s display had that portion of the timeline broken down by the millisecond. It quickly became clear that the Birds-of-Prey were not the source of the sensor anomalies. The process had actually started slightly before the Klingon vessels began jumping to warp. Ghosts started winking out while others warped out of the system.

All told, the Science Department flagged 27 vessels that appeared to go to warp, and 35 that appeared to vanish.

Outside of proving the two weren’t directly linked, there was a particular detail that stood out. While some sensor contacts did vanish individually, there were several instances where groups of two to four ghosts vanished simultaneously.

A glance to the side showed Stovik the map the Department had built, logging all the appearances and disappearances of sensor contacts from their arrival to the moment they were all gone. It seemed fairly scattered… but there were hints of what could be a pattern there as well.

Gamemaster Mal Fet

An additional team, the one focusing on friendly contacts, uploaded their data to Stovik’s display. It showed that all the sensor ghosts of the Declaration, Lagertha, Immelmann, and Pontiac disappeared in stages as well.

And the Sentinel’s own sensor ghosts, for that matter.

That caught the Vulcan’s attention.

Two sensor ghosts of the_ Independence_-class frigate appeared as soon as they warped into the system. Just like the computer filtered out own-ship returns unless an operator was conducting an internal scan, it automatically filtered out these sensor ghosts. The sensor operators had already been dealing with high levels of noise interference, along with dozens of other contacts to make sense of as the battle began, and did not have time to look into the automatic filters.

As Captain Asam closed the distance with the other Federation vessels, three other Sentinel ghosts appeared, but were filtered out by the computer as well.

Comparing this data with the contacts for the Klingon Birds-of-Prey showed that the ghosts of the Federation ships disappeared at the same intervals as 35 of the sensor ghosts that had simply vanished.

Gamemaster Mal Fet

Stovik studied the consolidated data on his console, his attention settling on the Sentinel’s own duplicate contacts. That altered the working hypothesis considerably.

“The Klingon vessels are not themselves generating the duplicate contacts,” Stovik stated calmly. “The phenomenon is capable of reproducing Federation sensor signatures as well.”

He isolated the thirty-five contacts that had vanished rather than transitioned to warp, then overlaid the disappearance times with the Federation ghosts. The simultaneous disappearances were particularly significant.

Stovik began sorting the contacts into groups based upon the exact millisecond they vanished. For each group, he instructed the computer to compare their last known positions, relative distance and bearing from one another, proximity to actual vessels, and local gravimetric, electromagnetic and subspace conditions.

He then added another comparison: the Sentinel’s own movements. Two duplicates had appeared immediately upon entering the system. Three more had appeared as the frigate closed with the Federation formation. If their appearance correlated with position, proximity to other vessels, or changes in the surrounding interference, that relationship might identify the mechanism responsible.

=^=Computer, construct a spatial-temporal model of all duplicate contacts. Highlight contacts appearing or disappearing simultaneously and correlate those events against the movements of genuine vessels.=^= Stovik leaned slightly toward the display as the analysis began. The ghosts were not disappearing randomly. Now he intended to determine what those disappearing together had in common.

~Stovik
Science Specialist
USS Sentinel