Posted by Lieutenant Thalos ch’Ravik (Chief Of Security) in Main Sim - Bridge

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

And somewhere within the bending geometry of space itself, something was listening.

Stella sat there in front of her display. One hand gripping it tightly to keep from flying off somewhere and the other tapping away. Recording something that she didn’t understand but which might be important. Her forehead glistened, both from fear and excitement. She caught the non-random sound and placed it in its own sound file. She tapped her fingertips across the edge of her display. She took a deep breath and whispered to herself. ” Man, I missed Mardi Gras this year!” Turning in her chair then she spoke to the captain. ” Captain sir? I just recoded something which wasn’t random. I’m not sure what it was but it wasn’t just background noise. With your permission I’d like to send their possible message back to them twice as they sent it and then send it to them in reverse so they may understand we are sentient beings at least. It’s the only thing I can come up with in such short time I’m afraid “

“Permission granted lieutenant! Continue all efforts to make contact with them,” the Captain replied.

The Captain continued, “We have no way to defend ourselves against these attacks. They come from a field of science in which we are ignorant. And as the XO implied, attacking them with our conventional weapons would probably have little effect on them, and so is no deterrence to their attacks. We have two options. We must either negotiate with them, or else return home. Right now, I don’t see that second option as failure at all. I told the admiral that this was a mission that demanded several ships, and no Starfleet intelligence mentioned these controlled spacetime curvature weapons or propulsion methods. I believe that those are the reason for the fracture of space within this whole Expanse region itself, and that intelligence itself is worth our little trip inside here. So a change of priorities. I think we ought to forget the mapping exercise as the fractures and eddies of space here will change as frequently as the shape of sand dunes in the desert, and instead concentrate on making First Contact to trying to build up some kind of relationship to make future diplomatic discussions possible. So, put all our efforts now into communication rather than surveying.”

At hearing the captain suggest retreat the hairs on the back of Rana’s neck stood up. Retreat? On his first mission out as the XO? He knew that he told the captain that he couldn’t see any way to use their standard weapons, but he had hoped against hope that someone might come up with something else. He took a deep breath. He knew the captain was right. But still. He could only hope that their comms officer was successful.

At hearing the captain give her the go-ahead Stella began to transmit the signals to the other vessel. Or whatever it was. Twice repeating their own signal and once playing it back to them in reverse so that it made them look like something more than a parrot or something that their signals were just bouncing off of. She sent this three time like this. And after that she began to send numbers along the same wavelength they had transmitted from. Nothing hard. Just one quick beep followed by a silence, and then two, followed by a silence until she had counted out to ten. Stella turned then to the captain and said quickly not wanting to look away from her comm display too long. ” Messages sent captain. Along with a few numbers.”

“Then let’s hope they play the lottery!” replied the Captain.

The bridge of the USS Merrimack held its breath.

Red alert lighting continued to pulse across the command deck, washing the consoles and uniforms in alternating bands of shadow and crimson. Outside the forward viewscreen, the fractured Expanse twisted slowly—stars bent and smeared by the lingering gravitational disturbances that seemed to permeate the region like invisible tides.

The Shiarian vessel remained present, though “present” was perhaps the wrong word.

Sensors still struggled to define it as an object in the traditional sense. Instead, it manifested as a distortion in the stellar backdrop—a region where the light of distant suns curved inward and folded across itself, hinting at mass and structure that conventional scans could barely outline. It did not drift or maneuver like a normal starship.

It simply repositioned, appearing several thousand kilometers off its previous vector without detectable propulsion.

On the communications console, the focused transmission beam from the Merrimack’s dish cut through the chaos of warped subspace like a needle through turbulent water.

The signal Lieutenant Gagnon had isolated—those faint, repeating gravitational modulations buried within the noise—was transmitted back toward the alien vessel. Once. Twice.

Then the reversed sequence followed.

The bridge waited.

The stars beyond the viewscreen seemed to shimmer faintly as localized gravitational harmonics fluctuated. Sensor telemetry displayed minute oscillations in spacetime curvature around the Shiarian craft. The distortion surrounding it rippled in a slow, deliberate wave.

Not an attack.

A response.

The modulation pattern returned.

At first it was faint—barely distinguishable from the surrounding gravitational interference. But as the sensors refined their focus, the signal clarified. The repeating intervals matched the structure Stella had identified earlier, though now the sequence had changed.

The pattern repeated four times.

Then something new followed.

A pause.

A single modulation spike.

Another pause.

Two spikes.

Another pause.

Three.

The sequence continued, steadily building—simple, deliberate pulses propagating through the surrounding gravitational field like ripples on the surface of an unseen ocean.

On the bridge displays, the pattern resolved unmistakably into a progression.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

The alien vessel was no longer merely broadcasting a repeating signal.

It was answering.

Around both ships, the chaotic eddies in spacetime began to calm slightly, the violent distortions that had battered the Merrimack moments earlier smoothing into slower, more stable currents. Structural integrity warnings across several decks eased as the surrounding gravitational stress lessened.

The Shiarian vessel had not fired again.

Instead, the distortion surrounding it expanded outward in a slow halo of bent starlight—almost like a curtain drawing back. For the first time since contact, a faint outline of the craft’s true geometry appeared through the lensing effect: vast, angular planes arranged in impossible orientations, as though the structure existed across several angles of space simultaneously.

It did not approach.

But it did not withdraw either.

The two vessels now hung suspended within the shattered Expanse, communicating not through radio waves or subspace channels, but through the bending of spacetime itself—each pulse a whisper written directly into the structure of the universe.

And for the first time since entering the region, the USS Merrimack was no longer alone in the silence.

Something out there had begun to speak.

It seemed like forever. Or at least three lifetimes plus a bit more since Stella had finished her second message. She waited there at her comms terminal staring. Listening intently. Willing her ears to pick up something that star fleet machinery could not. Her nerves felt on fire. Each one seemed to reach out to the very edge of her body and want to go further. She tried very hard to hide her feelings, but it was hard. Where her fingernails had once clacked across the console her right and now clenched it in a death grip.

It was then a strand of hair came loose and brushed across Stella’s cheek ever so lightly. She nearly screamed with fright. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she readjusted her hair and then once again adjusted her headset. She supposed that the silence was a good thing. At least the ship wasn’t being torn asunder. She had almost calmed herself down into a normal state when the first of the transmission started to come in. Once again, she jumped and watched the signals go across the screen and said in a wavering voice as she heard them in her headset. Her breath caught. They had sent not only the original signal but the set of base ten numbers as well! Her head spun and she couldn’t seem to breath for a moment. Then she burst out. All energy she said in a quivering voice. “Sir, Captain! We have them! They have answered everything! She cleared her throat then in a clearer voice spoke saying. “Sir they answered all the numbers ten and backward. They understand the base ten number system!”

“is this the point where the Captain has to announce, ‘Thar She Blows’?” Glen laughed. “I also believe that Einstein said something like ‘God does not play dice with the universe’! Good work, Lieutenant, but what do we do now? Are we any closer to communicating with them, than if they’d played us back some musical notes?”

Rana who had been listening to the exchanges going on between the captain and Lieutenant Gagnon stood with a stony look on his face as he sought to make sense of what had been happening. He did have to give credit to the Lieutenant. In the sort time he had known her she had not particularly impressed him. A bit too emotional and probably not as bright as she should be had been his first assessments. Now however he saw that he may have to change that.

Sitting at her science station, Zavey was encouraged when she heard the Zairians had communicated. Did that mean the Merri wouldn’t be blown up by the aggresive species? Would they have a chance to contact them on a more level playing field? She mentally crossed her fingers and continued monitering her station.

Stella heard the captain speaking and her face began to turn red. What did that, that, well no other way to say it. THAT MAN say? She might have just done no less than establish first contact with an alien species! She thought this to be a pretty nifty little accomplishment herself. She felt as if she had just tip toed around the swamp and rubbed every gator on its nose telling each and every one what a good gator it was without being bitten and THIS MAN wanted to know what she was going to do for an encore?

Stella had to do some counting of her own before she could calm down. ” Yes, captain that certainly is what Einstein said, and he was a fool for saying it since even during his lifetime he was being proven wrong by Heisenberg. The universal law of chaos would really rattle the old fellow I suspect ” Stella paused for a moment then before she said,” Yes captain if you wish I think I could play them some music using their own signals. All that needs doing there would be a few simple changes involving changing length or strength or signals or giving them a few other quirks. Or for all we know captain they may have given us a primer of some sort and are waiting for us to learn to speak or read. Perhaps we could have engineering adjust the universal translators. Or captain I could just try to try to open up a video feed to their ship and you might give it a go? It might be what they are waiting for. The captain instead of a comms Lieutenant?”

The Caitian chief engineer stood just off the engineering console on the bridge, golden eyes narrowing slightly as she listened to the exchange between the captain and Lieutenant Gagnon. The faint vibration of the Merrimack’s engines thrummed through the deck plating beneath her boots — a familiar heartbeat that she always felt more than heard.

M’Mera’s ears flicked forward as Stella finished speaking. The idea of manipulating the signal through engineering pathways immediately triggered a dozen technical possibilities in her mind. She stepped a half pace closer, resting one clawed hand lightly on the edge of the console as the bridge lighting reflected softly along the faint stripes in her tawny fur.

Her tail swayed once behind her before she spoke.

“Captain,” she began in her smooth Caitian voice, the consonants carrying the subtle rolling r’s and s’s characteristic of her speech. “If Lieutenant Gagnon wishesss to experiment with the sssignal, Engineerrring can assist.”

She tapped a control panel beside the station, bringing up a quick systems diagram of the ship’s communications lattice.

“Comm sssignalsss already pass through the EPS relay matrrix before reaching the trrransmitterrr arrrray. With a minorrr rerouting I can give herrr prrrecise contrrrol over amplitude, waveforrrm length, and modulation harrrmonicsss.”

Her whiskers twitched slightly as another thought occurred to her.

“And if thisss… converrrsation… become morrre complicated, we could tie the universal trrranslatorrr corrrrrelatorrr into the comm loop. Let the computer begin mapping linguistic patterrrnsss as the exchange prrrogressesss.”

She glanced toward the viewscreen where the unknown presence waited somewhere beyond the distortion of the Expanse.

The Caitian’s tail flicked once again.

“Of courrrse,” she added calmly, “opening a visual channel isss also possible. I can boost the sssensorrr and comm powerrr couplings to cut through the local subssspace interrrferencce.”

M’Mera folded her arms lightly behind her back, posture relaxed but attentive.

“But perrrsonally, Captain,” she said with a faint feline half-smile, “I rrrecommend we let Lieutenant Gagnon play herrr music firrrst.”

A small pause followed.

“Firrrst contactss have begun with worrrse opening notes.”

Stella chuckled at M’Mera’s remark. ” I don’t know Lieutenant. ” She began, ” As a person who plays and listens to music a lot there are a couple of those old composers I would like to make disappear. I could easily broadcast the musical version, but would it be something they could dance to? ” Stella finished with a half-smile. ” I think your idea is top notch. “

As she waited for the captain to decide on which idea to use first Stella started to type into her console. Rearranging, and lengthening some notes, shortening others and placing new or different things in between and inserting pauses. She paused and rearranged things several time as she struggled against what she knew about her music to something a race completely unknow might think was half decent at least. After running through things three times, she was finally content with what she had and saved the file.

“This is all way beyond my level of expertise,” replied the Captain. “With your Comms training you’re better placed to decide on our next action than me, but I think I’d agree with M’Mera that you should play some of your music to them first, and then have the computer map linguistic patterns. I also would think it would help to underscore something that we might share together, rather than video contact which could serve to highlight our differences.”

Stella lifted her eyebrows a bit at the way the captain said he trusted her to make the decision. The whole thing made her feel like a bug stuck on a pin in someone’s bug collection. Darn. Mardi Gra was over anyway. Might as well see if she could raise some Cane here. Maybe get some odd aliens to tap their toes or whatever it was they might have.
Stella smiled at the captain sweetly and said simply. ” Aye sir. My first little will be three minutes long and will contain sounds of shrieking, ripping, tearing and other sounds all set to a melodious beat and broken up or connected by lower or higher notes made quite nicely, I think. The second song is not much different, just a lot more lower notes. And away we go. The second one will run four minutes by the way.” Stella said as she pressed the send button for the first file.

Rana was amazed thus far. Here they were in the middle of nowhere with creatures who seemed to have the ability to control time and space. They might as well be paying for their supper outside of God’s kitchen. Rana took a deep breath as he stood by the captain’s chair and said as Stella sent out the first of her songs. ” Well, I certainly hope that the Lieutenants musical skills are wondrous sir.”

Rana Singh Number One

Zavey continued monitorind her console and trying to help engineering focus the information. “Maybe we should start off with something simple and increase the complexity as we go?” Sending shrieks and ripping and tearing didn’t sound like a good idea to her.

Lieutenant Elyss Zavey
Chief Science Officer USS Merrimack

“Aliens communicating through music isn’t so far-fetched,” Captain Glen told Rana. “Earth’s Voyager and Nomad probes, launched over 300 years ago, carried human and animal songs for potential extraterrestrial discovery. And we all are aware of the alien probe that visited Earth in 2286 seeking Humpback Whale songs. Music is a universal behaviour among sentient beings, found in every Federation society, thanks to shared elements like rhythm, pitch, and emotion that cross cultures. I think the shrieking, ripping and tearing is meant to symbolise emotion, but it’s a bit avant-garde. Maybe tone it down a little more if possible. I’m conscious that we only get once chance at success here, so there isn’t room to be too flexible.”

The Captain was still carrying the burden of the failed Bolay mission, when the Merrimack made First Contact with the Ocean’s Bluff and one of the Bridge crew was heard to remark about the Bolay likeness to Earth’s Dolphins. The result was a conflict that is still ongoing, and a diplomatic impasse has still not been resolved. But it was doubtful that such high stakes diplomacy had ever been attempted before by playing music.

” Sir,” Stella began. ” I’m hoping that these people have evolved musically in the same fashion we have. Our first music was imitations of the natural world around us . Banging sticks and rocks together, grunts and whistles. all to mimic storms, landslides or the sounds of animals. The ripping, tearing and screeching here are the sounds they would hear here. Along with that I’ve added a bit of rhythm and harmony to make the sounds seem to come together and then apart. A cosmic two step if you will. ”

Stella Gagnon Lt.jg. Comms

“Okay then, continue as you were,” Glen replied. “I’m just very concerned that we get this right; seizing upon this singular but fleeting opportunity in which to act… and I didn’t really think about music at that level… and its biomimicry aspects. I was thinking more of the mathematical nature of music, such as how music is rooted in frequency ratios, precise time divisions based upon rational whole numbers, and of the symmetry, of the geometric patterns, and transformations like inversion and transposition. Of course, biology and nature also use all of those too… Fibonacci sequences, fractals, spirals. It make perfect sense really because the form, shape, and growth natural things are themselves governed by physical forces and mathematical laws.”

• Glen, CO

Elyss bit her tongue so as not to say anything more, but she did not agree with the Captain or Lt Gagnon. What the Lt proposed sounded far too aggressive to send out as first contact to a warrior species. What if they took it as an invitation or a challenge to fight? All she could do was maintain her presence at the science station and hope for the best.

Lieutenant Elyss Zavey
Chief Science Officer USS Merrimack

On the other hand, Captain Glen was imagining that Lt. Gagnon would playing something similar to Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring or maybe Modest Mussorgsky’s Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells, while knowing Gagnon, in actual fact, she was probably lining up some post-punk/atmospheric tracks from Southern Death Cult, or environmental psychedelic rock containing ambient/nature samples from XTC, or even some avant-garde electro-pop from Bjork. So, it wasn’t at all clear if Elyss’ concern would not be proven correct.

• Glen, CO

Thalos remained at his station, listening to the steady flow of discussion across the bridge. The conversation had shifted heavily toward calculations and projections — complex modelling that, while important, was not his area of expertise.

He chose not to interject.

There was no value in speaking without purpose.

Instead, he monitored his console with unwavering focus — weapons systems, internal security grids, and sensor alerts all remained within optimal parameters. That was his domain. That was where he was most effective.

Still, he followed the conversation closely, absorbing what he could. Understanding the broader situation, even outside his specialty, was part of command.

His antennae made a small, thoughtful adjustment as voices overlapped around him.

For a fleeting moment, a different thought surfaced — Elyss, likely contributing with ease to this very discussion.

He dismissed it just as quickly.

This was the bridge.
This was duty.

And Thalos did not allow distractions to take root.

Lieutenant Thalos ch’Ravik
Chief Of Security
USS Merrimack

Rana had been waiting for what had seemed an inordinate amount of time. While fact was that they hadn’t been turned into a glowing bunch of space debris, it occurred to him that the aliens might just be trying to figure out the most amusing way to destroy the backward creatures. Finally, he looked to the captain and said, ” It seems an inordinate amount of time since we sent the last signal. Do you think we might try to find a plan B so to speak?”

Rana Singh Number One