Posted by Captain John Tiberius Glen (Captain) in Main Sim - Bridge
[Snip]

The probe data flowed in uneven waves, each telemetry burst stitching itself into a growing mosaic of the Expanse—one that shifted, flexed, and refused to settle into anything predictable.
The first packets were routine.
Probe One mapped a corridor of elevated subspace static, its path still clean.

Probe Two drifted off-course for a moment as a gravitic ripple brushed past, its inertial compensators correcting with only a minor stutter.
Then the deeper returns surfaced.

Probe Three registered a sharp gravitic shear spike—so sudden it tripped its inertial grid for half a
second before stabilizing. Probe Four’s report followed: a faint band of scattered chroniton particulate, diffuse but unmistakably tied to the outer Vey’lan boundary.
The rhythm began soon after.

Probes Five, Seven, and Nine—spread across three different vectors—picked up identical subspace
amplitude cycles. A nine-point-one–second rise and fall, steady and unbroken, resonating like a slow,
measured heartbeat across the cosmic-string lattice.

Probe Eight skimmed through a micro-distortion filament. Its hull registered faint chroniton pitting, the
pattern consistent with the same strange layering seen near earlier Vey’lan incursions.

The Redmist-adjacent probes struggled.
Probe Six fought through a magnetic flux burst;

Probe Ten’s feed jittered under heavy EM scatter.

Probe Twelve caught phase-lagged ghost echoes of the Merrimack’s own navigational ping—returning
from angles that made no physical sense.

Then the first Aperture-correlated anomalies appeared.
Probe Eleven reported increasing subspace turbulence ahead, but layered over the chaos was a low, breath-like modulation—soft, cyclic, disturbingly organic in its cadence.
And just behind it, from the deepest-ranging probe—Probe Twelve—the strangest readings yet:
* A faint, accelerating chronometric shimmer matching no known natural signatures.
* A momentary drop in subspace resistance, as if something ahead were pulling—not with gravity, but
with intention.
* A distortion arc that bent the probe’s sensor return into a closed loop for 0.4 seconds, sending its own
signal back at it before letting go.
* A harmonic thread, thin as a whisper, aligned perfectly with the Vey’lan Aperture frequency—despite the probe being well outside its expected influence zone.
A single line in the data summary blinked amber:
ANOMALOUS PROXIMITY SIGNATURE: SOURCE UNKNOWN. PROBABLE APERTURE
INTERACTION.
The readings from the Expanse already suggested movement, shifting tides, and restless distortions.
But the Aperture’s fingerprints—subtle, impossible, unmistakable—told a different story.
It wasn’t just the Expanse that was stirring.
Something near the Aperture was looking back.

Glen’s immediate thoughts were, well done to the Navigator for avoiding any of that, but then he realised how difficult this mission was going to be. All that telemetry will need to be analysed fully, but they we’re going to make slow progress mapping the Expanse, and what in Klingon Hell was looking out of that Aperture?

And that’s before we even add the Shiarians into the mix, Glen thought.

M’Mera cleared her throat from her own station as her security research on the Shiarian came in.

“Captain,” she began, her voice low but steady, “herrre’ss the essentiaal overrrview on the Shiarain Dominion.”

“They arrre a heavily militarrrized, expansionissst powerrr. Everything about them—theirr physiologgy, theirr culturre, theirr fleet behavior—isss built arround dominance and contrrrol of strrategic ssspace.”

She tapped the display once, claws clicking lightly.

“Physically, they arrre larrrge and well arrmorrred. Averaging over two meterrrss tall, with a chitin exoskeleton and fourrr upper limbs. Excellent motion and low-light detection. They sssee movement before mosst humanoidss do.”

A brief lash of her tail punctuated the point.

“Theirr ssocial strructure iss rigid. Rrrank determineesss rrrights. In diplo­macy, they interrpret any softer approach asss weaknesss—unless backed by visible sstrength.”

She shifted her weight, whiskers forward.

“In operational behaviorrr, they tend to act prrreemptively if they believe theirrr interrresssts arrre threatened. Theirrr fleets move with tight, hive-like synchrony, and they wield interdiction tech capable of sssnaring warp fieldsss.”
She growled to herself as she finished.
“My assessment, ssirr: they will likely test ourrr boundarrrieesss. A firrrm stance and rready defen­sive posturre will discourage any incursion.”

Glen paused, his expression grave, “Our mission will demand both unwavering resolve and careful coordination. We are facing a highly hostile alien threat, and in addition to that challenge, it appears there is a significant risk posed by the instability of space within the Expanse itself. Unforeseen threats could emerge at random and without any warning from either the enigmatic Shiarians or from forces beyond the shifting fabric of reality itself”.

The more M’Mera spoke the more Cross felt an overwhelming feeling of dread but she held her composure while her face stayed neutral ,yet she wondered if this would be her last mission alive.

All the drama and nervous looks on the bridge were making Stella want to giggle but she just refrained. Instead, she listened to the signal. And a harmonic one at that. Not altogether different than a particular one she loved to play on her violin. ” Excuse me captain? Lieutenant M,mera? What if anything do we know about their communications or signals? I’m picking up stuff which may be twin magnetars or to make things really creepy it could be some form or weird signal. I’m not sure about the presence of magnetars in the area. “

M’Mera blinked lazily at Stella for a moment as she deciphered her question. “Magnetarrss?” What arre those?”

“Lt. Zavey, can you answer Lt. Gagnon?” Glen asked his CSO. “I’m a pilot, not an astrophysicist!”

Cross had heard enough,for the first time since being on the Merrimack she wanted out of the bridge ‘’Captain , do keep me informed’‘. The CMO did not even wait for a reply and left for sickbay.

Zavey turned in her chair to speak to the Captain. “We launched all 12 probes as soon as we came upon the Caradthian Expanse. I initially thought we might get duplicate responses from a few of them, but that’s not the case. The probes sent into the Expanse started off fine.The first probe flew through an area with some interference, but nothing dangerous. The second probe drifted a little when something like a small gravitational “bump” nudged it, but it corrected itself quickly.

“But then things got strange.”

“The third probe suddenly hit a sharp, unexpected gravitational jolt, which was hard enough to briefly knock out part of its stabilizers, then the fourth probe detected a faint trace of unusual particles that usually appear near the edge of the region called the Vey’lan boundary.” She looked back at the readings on her console.

“After that, several probes started picking up the same repeating pattern—like a steady pulse or heartbeat happening every nine seconds, coming from different directions at once, and one probe flew through a tiny distortion in space and came back with light damage from particles similar to what was found near past Vey’lan encounters.”

She looked thoughtful as she tried to understand what all the information might mean. “The probes near a region called the Redmist struggled the most, one got hit with a burst of magnetic turbulence and another had its signal scrambled by heavy electromagnetic interference.”

“The last probe detected something even stranger: It picked up echoes of the Merrimack’s own navigation signal—but the echoes are coming from impossible directions, as if the signal has bounced off something that shouldn’t be there.”

Then her gaze settled on Lt Gagnon. “I haven’t detected any magnetars as of yet. They don’t naturally produce nor would they cause the rhythmic nine-second “heartbeat” pulses,, chroniton particles, gravitational shear spikes, or echoes that return from impossible angles.”

“It sounds, like we should make searching for Magnetars a top priority,” Captain Glen replied, “and to continue to monitor closely.”

“Lt. Gagnon, please continue to see if these signals are some kind of communication, and also if they can determine the shape and size of whatever they are being reflected off?” Glen asked.

“Navigation!” Glen asked, “Please review and make route alterations as necessary.”

“Aye sir.” Said the Ensign at helm.

Stella turned to Lt.Zavey and said in a somewhat low voice as she was listening to the void. Lieutenant Zavey the magnetars throw out x-rays and gamma rays , both of which traveling at the speed of light. These never change so you could use them for any equations you needed to calculate the surroundings of the magnetar.”

Zavey turned back around fully to her console and looked over the information once again. She contacted the lab, who were responsible for programming the next batch of probes. She told them to include magnetars in the programmed search. Her console lit up when they were ready. “Captain, I have two probes ready to search and identify magnetars within the spacial field. Awaiting your order to release them.”

Captain Glen replied, “release the probes, ensuring each device is carefully monitored as it enters the designated area, so that data collection begins without delay and the mission proceeds with optimal efficiency.”

The Veridian Expanse folded around the Merrimack in slow, drifting layers of green haze as the ship advanced along its careful search pattern. While science primed the probe bays, deployment had to be held until the corridor ahead stabilized.

At Tactical, amber light washed over M’Mera’ss whisskers as she refined the long-range scans.
“Hrrrm… Captain, Sssecurity is detecting grravitic twisst currrents ahead,” she reported, tail swaying. “Localized—thrree pointss of sshearr, drrifting farr fassterr than naturral movement. Ssomething is pusshing them.”

The viewer flickered as the haze parted briefly, revealing a faint, luminous distortion—like a cosmic string snapping back into place.

M’Mera leaned in, narrowing her eyes as the ship briefly lurched before the stabilizers kicked in.
“That wass a wake. Whateverr causssed it passed thrrough minutess ago… no warp ssignaturre, no impulssse, no ion trail. It movesss without leaving the norrmal fingerrprintss.”

Ahead, the Expanse shimmered once—slow, rhythmic, almost deliberate.

The Merrimack held course toward the Rift, wrapped in a region that clearly was not as empty as it appeared.

Zavey had held the probes back until the wake passed. “Aye, Sir, probes away now. We should be receiving input any second.”

Stella didn’t notice what was on the viewscreen. Per the captains orders she was looking for anything that might be communication in all the jumble of screeches and screams from the area of space that they were in. She sat so still that it looked as though she may not be breathing. She had successfully recorded the last blast of radiation from the magnetar. She sat and listened. From one wavelength to the other. She slowly turned a dial. Each time she moved to a different wavelength her fingers could hardly be seen to move lest she miss something.

Long-range probes deployed by the Merrimack have begun returning structured telemetry from the surrounding Expanse.

Magnetar Detection:
Two dormant magnetars have been positively identified along the outer edge of the search pattern. Both are quiescent—no active emission cones—but their magnetic fields remain intense and uneven, creating intermittent shear fronts and localized subspace drag. A third contact initially flagged as a magnetar was determined to be a collapsed remnant field, likely the decayed core of an older stellar object.

Anomalous Readings:
Several probes recorded transient gravitic wakes moving between the magnetar influence zones. These wakes do not follow predictable stellar mechanics and appear to pass through magnetic interference rather than being distorted by it. No propulsion signature—warp, impulse, or ionization—was detected.

Rift Proximity Effects:
As probes closed on the Rift’s projected coordinates, harmonic subspace resonance increased sharply, interfering with probe cohesion and shortening operational lifespans. Data suggests the Rift is actively interacting with surrounding magnetic fields, subtly re-aligning them toward its position.

Summary:
The Veridian Expanse is not randomly unstable. Magnetars are present and influential, but they do not fully account for the observed motion patterns. Probe data indicates at least one additional force or presence shaping the region as the Merrimack advances toward the Rift.

Further probe deployment closer to the Rift will carry increased risk of signal loss and structural failure.

Stella had been listening carefully. Shed caught the noise of the active magnetar that was now almost familiar to her. Still though she thought that they might be a bit close for one of these evil little things. And then the noise from the others. They were doing what they could. unnatural things. She remembered the sound from a lecture long ago. The sound of gravity bending reality. That was what the professor had said at the time at any rate. It was then she felt something odd giving her goosebumps. She shivered and tried to calm herself. Finally, she took off the headset, and took a long deep breath, crossed herself and put the headset back on.

The CMO made contact with Bridge =/\ All the medical displays flickered with the transient static at the Expanse’s interference. Vital readouts remained stable, yet several panels re- calibrated twice before settling, though for now everything seem to have gone back to normal ....I’ll keep in contact =/\= her message was straightforward to let them know what happened.

=/\= Thank you Lieutenant =/\= replied Glen.

“We’d better check all other systems,” Glen said. “Not all of them have the same backup redundancies built into them as Sickbay. Some may not have reset again on some vital power, comms or life-support systems.”

Zavey immediately ran a diagnostic on her console to see if it had been affected before giving any more results to the CO.

Zavey’s diagnostic showed that there were intermittent interruptions in the sensor readings as well. Obviously caused by the gravemetric waves, distortion, and pulses.

GM Nosferatu
Your Darkest Nightmare

Rana stepped onto the bridge in the midst of all the hubbub. He didn’t know what was happening, but he did know that as he was coming up in the turbo-lift he had the feeling that the turbo-lift and himself had stepped away from one another for a moment and it was quite unsettling. He looked around and then at Glen asking him. ” Sir are we all right? I know I just had a most disturbing thing happen to me.”

Rana Singh Number One

“Welcome to the Bridge, Commander,” Glen said to Rana, “Sorry that our quick departure has meant that your arrival has been somewhat rushed. I trust that the experience was a result of these gravimetric disturbances rather than some spiritual event?”

“Dr. Cross,” Glen told the CMO. “I can see you now, if that’s convenient for you. Sorry, but I’ve been in meetings most of this morning.”

Cross bit on her lower lip ,it was true she had felt the need to talk with Glen but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what it was.

‘’Thank you Captain but the issue was resolved ‘’ the doctor wasn’t about to bother the Captain with problems that where trivial and of little value. Right now he had more important and pressing issues to deal with.

Cross CMO.

“Oh! Well, that’s good to hear! I do like it when people bring me their own solutions to their problems. I suppose you’re prepared for lots of trips and falls if the ship continues to shake the way it has been?” Glen asked her.

• Glen, CO

’’ Oh don’t worry about me I’ll hold on ‘’ Cross replied with a hint of humor in her tone ‘’Well best get back to sickbay Captain’’ and with a slight nod she left bridge.

Cross CMO.

Rana listened quietly and politely as the captain and Cross had their conversation. He then said to Glen , My incident on the lift captain. It was not a very spiritual thing but it resulted in giving me an idea . Well one of the words I called the lift did. I think that one thing that might help us at least a small bit might be rubbish sir.”

Rana Singh Number One

“Are you suggesting that you believe our waste disposal system could be employed more effectively to achieve a smoother journey through the Expanse, Commander?” asked an incredulous Captain.

• Glen, CO

Rana knitted his eyebrows in thought knowing himself how silly the whole scheme was going to sound, and he truly hoped that the science officer might listen and give at least a bit of support to his scheme in one form or another. Finally steeling himself he plowed ahead. ” Yes, sir well there I was on the lift thinking that I was about to lose my Timbits when I got the idea. We’ve been using all these probes. Probes are made by sometimes faulty people and things can go wrong. That or the people who build them can only build them from specs that they are aware of. So, I thought that this may be the conditions that the manufacturers of the probes never thought of. So instead of just relying on them we should gather together a considerable pile of rubbish. Scan the lot so that we were aware of what we had down to the molecules “

Rana took a deep breath then to see if anyone would throw something at him. ” We then,” he began again speaking,” We shoot the whole lot of rubbish out of torpedo tubes. However much we could gather. We fire it into the center of the beast out there sir. Right into the maw. But we then fire out a couple of probes to follow at a large distance watching our innocent little pile of garbage as it moves forward to meet the beast. The question to be answered is where will it all go or does something truly odd happen to it?”

Rana Singh Number One