[snip]

Kord’s attention was on the space around them. Old sentinel habits held as he waited, ready for an attack that might never come.

William checked the scan data on the communications network and went from each logical conclusion to the next. From high bandwidth search leading him down the rabbit hole… or up the rabbit hole… He had infact never seen a rabbit hole nor did he do well with metaphors, or was it a simile? He shook his head and focused “Captain, I’ve traced a QE signal connected to the Pyramid and Captain Rogers Comet station to a third location orbiting close to the Star’s orbit, the EM interference is too great so we’d need to move closer to get a clear read. I recommend at least sending a probe first to find out what exactly is out there.” He looked at the screen a moment longer “Whatever this communications signal is it works similar to our subspace signals.” He explained although he was certain unnecessarily.

It was lucky that Kord still had his attention on a possible attack as Captain Glen had become so engrossed in the progress of the away team that he had quite forgotten where they were. However, William’s questions snapped him out of it.

“A probe?” he asked William, “Yes! Of course!”

Glen asked Helm, “How many scientific probes do we have left?”

Helm replied, “The ship has 25 scientific probes, Sir! But we’ve used 2, so 23 left… but we also carry 25 more unequipped casings.”

“Ample!” replied Glen. “Send a probe to the location given by the CSO, close to the star’s orbit. You could have it lock on to the precise subspace EM frequency that the QE signal is using for a more exact location… Also send another probe around to the far side of the star from us and have it remain there to monitor, just so we can watch so that those Orion’s can sneak into this system from that side unobserved by us.”

Glen looked back to the viewscreen where Tinga, Erickson and Smith were still in conversation with he speaking Orb. The Orb was now saying that they should follow its directions to some central command. Glen thought this was all taking too long. With the Orions on their way, they needed to pick up the pace a little.

-Glen, CO