Marching Orders, Part I
Posted on Mon Sep 21st, 2026 @ 9:41am by Captain Percival "Percy" Tapper & Commander Theya Zh'Líran & Commander Samuel Jameson & Lieutenant Sean Hope & Lieutenant Tyler Hunt & Lieutenant Malax & Lieutenant Taras Mikovich & Lieutenant Gabriel Calhoun
2,315 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
Outward Trajectory
Location: Bridge / Briefing Chamber, Deck 1
Timeline: MD01
Commander Percy Tapper emerged from his Ready Room with both his Executive Officer and Second Officer in tow. His usual open and warm expression was now clouded with narrowed eyes and something far more serious.
He looked to the helm station and, seeing Lieutenant Sean Hope manning the controls, addressed him.
"Lieutenant, please lay in a course for the Zakdorn system and signal Cochrane Operations that we're requesting detachment."
"Heard," Sean quietly added, tapping in several coordinates. Opening the viewer, he inputted a key command, signaling them that the USS Eventide requests detachment.
He turned quickly to the officer manning the communications station. "Ensign, please contact all members of the senior staff and have them report to the briefing chamber in ten minutes."
"Aye, sir."
"And Ensign, please send an invite to our resident subspace physicist."
The communications officer nodded once more, holding his earpiece with one hand and quietly transmitting the orders.
Several faces throughout the bridge showed a mixture of perplexion and surprise at the orders. Most knew that Eventide's warp engines were new and required further diagnostics before leaving. However, the more shocking part of the order to disembark from spacedock was the lack of ceremony.
Sensing the silent reaction from the bridge crew, Percy explained. "Our christening ceremony will have to wait," he announced. "We have orders."
Sitting at the operations post, Hunt simply nodded and moved forward with getting things underway. The Zakdorn system was a bit off and the fact of a rushed departure allowed him to conclude that this might be some sort of emergency situation. "We'll be ready to depart in an hour."
[Briefing Chamber, Twelve minutes later]
Eventide's briefing chamber had obviously been designed for efficiency rather than comfort. A rectangular console island occupied most of the room, leaving enough space for ten people to stand around it without having to negotiate for elbow space. There were no chairs. Percy decided it was probably for the best. Sitting tended to make meetings longer, and this particular mission briefing needed to be short and sweet.
Every member of the senior staff was present.
Percy stood at the head of the table with his hands resting lightly on its edge. To his right was Samuel Jameson, Theya beside him, and the rest of the senior staff had gathered wherever there had been room.
The lone participant of the meeting who was not part of Eventide's senior staff--though, no less important--was Dr. Alistair Dusczak. He had taken up a position near the far end of the console. Percy had met him properly only recently, though the renowned subspace physicist had already become deeply offended when his new commanding officer had improperly used the word quantum.
Percy looked around the room.
"Thank you for being here. Some of you may be meeting each other for the first time, but that's the way of things in Starfleet, isn't it?"
There was absolutely no point in pretending this was a routine departmental meeting. The people gathered around the table were the officers and specialists who would carry the consequences of whatever he told them next.
"I've already spoken with Lieutenant Commander Jameson and Commander Zh'Líran. They know what I'm about to tell you."
Percy then touched the console and the large screen on the port wall came awake, replacing the reflection of the room with a field of black.
"We've received orders from Starfleet Command."
A set of coordinates appeared first. They meant very little to most of the room, and Percy suspected that was going to change soon.
"Eventide has been ordered to Zakdorn space. Specifically, the Luujak Nebula. As we speak, Cochrane Operations is readying the ship for detachment. Mister Hunt informs me that we should be underway within the hour."
He paused, exchanging a small look with Jameson.
"Our shakedown cruise has been cancelled and further warp drive tests will be cancelled altogether. I've been informed by Admiral Sterling that our christening ceremony will be held at a later date."
Percy touched the console again and the coordinates vanished only to be replaced by a thin horizontal line.
At first glance, it looked almost like nothing. A faint disturbance against the black, rising and falling in a pattern that repeated itself with a precision that bordered on irritating. There wasn't anything dramatic about the pulse--no ominous colour, no convenient alien voice, nothing. It appeared as a simple soundwave.
"This was detected by Federation listening posts approximately two weeks ago."
Percy glanced briefly at his Comms Chief, Taras Mikovich, before returning his attention to the screen and the group as a whole.
"The signal originates somewhere in the vicinity of Sector X-7786, adjacent to the so-called Galactic Barrier. I've been informed that Starfleet is now referring to that region operationally as the Outer Disk Coherence Transition Zone, or OD-CTZ."
He gave the acronym a moment of consideration and could feel a slight upturn of his lips at the thought of renaming something that rolls off the tongue so easily into mouthful of alphabet soup.
"Yes. I know. I dislike it too."
Sam smiled with an internal chuckle .
Percy touched the screen and enlarged the trace. The signal became more distinct, though still frustratingly sparse.
"Every warp-capable civilization with a sufficiently sensitive communications array appears to be hearing some version of this transmission. We don't know who sent it. We don't know how old it is. We don't even know what it says."
He rested one hand on the island before him.
"The one thing that we do know is it's artificial." He looked around the room. "Our listening posts have determined that the transmission is using stellar bodies as part of its propagation system. The simplest explanation is that it's using the gravitational and electromagnetic environments around stars to redirect and reinforce successive portions of the signal."
Percy's gaze then fell onto Alistair at the other end of the room.
"The more complicated explanation is why."
He turned back toward the screen.
"The signal appears to become considerably stronger when it reaches the Luujak Nebula--the opposite direction of where the signal originates. Starfleet believes the nebula's composition is somehow amplifying or otherwise interacting with the transmission."
He tapped the console on the island and a second set of coordinates appeared on the screen.
"Two vessels are already there."
Percy brought up their names.
"The Iphigenia, an older NX-class. And the Vulcan science vessel, Ni'Paar, a Suurok-class."
The two names remained on the screen next to icons of the vessels.
"They've been attempting to decipher the signal for the better part of a week. Unfortunately, their efforts have produced nothing helpful."
His finger moved across the console and screen returned to the faint repeating waveform.
"They've also been experiencing system failures and taking physical damage while operating inside the nebula. Nothing catastrophic so far. Though, definitely enough to make everyone on those ships considerably less enthusiastic about their working environment."
He folded his arms and looked around the room.
"Eventide's communications array is one of the most complex in Starfleet. That's why we've been chosen."
Percy's expression seemed steely and focused. "We go to Luujak. We figure out what the signal is doing. We determine what it wants. And, if possible, we figure out how to answer it."
There was a long pause before a voice from the other side of the table piped up.
"I believe you have omitted the interesting part."
Percy glanced down the table at Alistair. The man was in his mid-fifties, standing at perhaps six-foot-one or six-foot-two, with the slightly angular build of a man who probably watched what he ate and engaged in little to no physical activity. He didn't appear frail, however. His long and narrow face featured prominent cheekbones and a pronounced jaw. His features was handsome in a rather severe way rather than conventionally attractive.
There was a term Percy's sister often used for some of her colleagues: resting bitch face. For Alistair Dusczak, he reckoned the man always seemed to carry an expression of mild dissatisfaction. Maybe it was just resting bitch face.
"The signal," Dusczak said, "is behaving as though it were designed by someone who knew it would be heard."
Percy raised an eyebrow.
"That's what artificial means, Mister Dusczak."
"No, Commander. Artifical means someone made it."
Dusczak pointed toward the screen.
"This is considerably more interesting, Commander."
He stepped closer, almost pushing Lieutenant Malax out of the way in the narrow space available.
"It is repeating itself, but the repetition isn't exact in the same way a conventional beacon would repeat. There are tiny phase differences between cycles and they are very deliberate."
He glanced at Percy and then at Taras, perhaps for emphasis.
"Stop calling it a signal, please. It encourages everyone to think of it as something transmitted from point A to point B. What we're looking at right here may be a process. It isn't using the stars to carry the information. There seems to be some kind of participation happening."
The Chief Operations Officer looked around the table. "Sounds as if you're implying that someone or something is simply reaching out in various directions hoping to get the attention of anyone. Which brings up the question on who else out there is receiving this signal and will likely show up as well."
'If memory of the most recent Star Charts Starfleet has assembled, the Zakdorn system is the other side of the Romulan Empire, no?' Malax replied quietly from the small space he now occupied next to Ducszak. 'And the communication .... it's plausibly heading towards Romulan space. Particularly if the nebula is amplifying it.' He heard the paranoid tone within his own analysis. The signal was in the vicinity of the Romulans so logic dictated it was something to do with them. The upper echelons of Command would be happy with his analysis as it likely reinforced their own. 'It's prudent to expect a Romulan interest, however uncharacteristic it would be since the war.'
Taras Mikovich was an accomplished communications officer with a history of thinking critically, of listening, and hearing things differently than others did. This was odd. This was nonsense. He listened. He listened again, but between all the chatter and all the speculation, he could hear nothing.
To be blunt, he was nearing the point of shouting at everyone to shut the hell up, but this was the Captain's mission briefing, not Taras' comm station on the bridge. He couldn't blame them for noise.
What he could do was chime in with his two cents. "We don't know anything right now. All of it is speculation and conjecture. We don't even know if this is truly a message to be honest," interjected Taras.
He crossed his arms. They really should provide us chairs he thought standing there. "If it is artificial... constructed. Made by someone or something, then we also need to entertain to possibility that it is a siren's call." Taras looked around the room. "What are we doing? How are we responding? We're sending ships into a treacherous nebula trying to investigate it like some Pavlovian response."
"There have been no contact with the Romulan Empire since the end of the war," Hunt brought up. "No telling what new technology they have thrown together over the last twenty years. What little we know about the Romulans is that they don't want us near their territory. And this puts us in their backyard."
Percy raised an open hand and addressed the Denobulan armoury officer. "While it's completely reasonable to believe the Romulans have also received the signal, and while I agree that caution should be maintained, it must be noted that the Romulan Empire has historically respected Zakdorn sovereignty. Or so the Zakdorn tell us."
Doctor Dusczak smiled and it wasn't at all warm. "The smug officer is correct--all of this is just speculation." With a slight nod of his head, he indicated Taras.
"We haven't heard much from the Romulans since the war," Taras said in a stern tone. "They operate in the shadows. Let's not fool ourselves by thinking if they aren't actively openly trying to exterminate us that they aren't out there scheming, manipulating things, and playing a long game of chess." Taras had some personal experience with that, but what was public knowledge versus what was redacted was often different.
To Be Continued...
Captain Percival Tapper
Commanding Officer
USS Eventide
Commander Samuel Jameson
Executive Officer & Chief Science Officer
USS Eventide
Commander Theya Zh'Líran
Second Officer & Senior Mission Specialist
USS Eventide
Lieutenant Commander Gabriel Calhoun, MD
Chief Medical Officer
USS Eventide
Lieutenant Sean Hope
Chief Astrogation Officer
USS Eventide
Lieutenant Malax
Chief Armoury Officer
USS Eventide
Lieutenant Tyler Hunt
Chief Operations Officer
USS Eventide
Lieutenant Taras Mikovich
Chief Communications Officer
USS Eventide
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