Collective Hindsight (Book 1) - Aaron Rosenberg [3]
Her Nasat crewmate nodded, antennae wobbling. “As the captain mentioned, it was during the Dominion War. There’s a Federation outpost near Randall V, strictly surveillance, and they put out a distress call. A ship had appeared in their system, and it wasn’t one of ours. Not one of the Dominion’s either, but it was putting out an alarming amount of energy. We were sent in to investigate and get the new ship out of there before it could endanger the outpost. We also had a time issue—if the Dominion noticed the ship’s energy output, they’d come investigate themselves, and that could expose the outpost.”
Fabian took over. “We did disable it, ultimately, and the outpost was kept secure. But Salek was killed in the process.”
Sonya nodded. She could see why the files had been classified—the outpost’s existence and location would have been critical information during the war. The best way to keep that data from falling into the wrong hands was to simply seal the materials from everyone, and swear those involved to silence.
“Are we sure it’s the same ship?”
“Would I mention it otherwise?” Tev tapped out a command on his padd. The wall monitor switched to an image of the runaway vessel, and a second image alongside it. “On the left is our current objective. On the right is an image from that earlier mission. The two are identical, including several distinct points of damage.” Circles appeared on both images, highlighting several of those areas, which were then magnified and overlapped. They were a perfect match.
“Good work, Tev—you and your search engine. Okay, so it’s the Dancing Star. But you guys disabled it once before. And Randall V is”—she called up a star chart and located the system—“well over a hundred light-years from here. What happened?”
Fabian shrugged. “I don’t know. It was too big and too tough to dismantle the hull, and we were in a rush, so we disconnected the power supply. Then we tossed it into the sun. No way it should be here now.”
“Well, it is, so find out why. Go back over your old mission files. Then reconstruct the mission for me. I need to know exactly what happened with this thing the last time we met it, so that I can deal with it this time.”
“Time may be an issue, too.” Gold had stayed quiet during the discussion about the ship, and Sonya had almost forgotten that he was still there. Now she turned toward him.
“What do you mean, sir?”
Gold frowned. “I’ve had a look at the charts for the area, and the mission logs of captains who’ve passed through here. One of them mentioned a strange ship at the extreme edge of sensor range. Unfamiliar design, somewhat boxy but not Borg, energy emissions of an unfamiliar kind. But not to us.” He tapped a command into the console, and a new picture appeared over the twinned runaway. This one was an ugly squared ship, and one they all recognized instantly, for all that it was blurred from digital extrapolation.
“The Androssi are here?”
“Not necessarily right now,” Gold corrected Fabian, “but they have been, yes. And that means they know this area. Which means they could be back.”
“And this ship has an unusual energy system,” Pattie supplied, “which I’m sure the Androssi would want to study and exploit.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Gold agreed. “And I’d rather not fight one of them if I can avoid it. So I’m afraid we need to solve this thing sooner rather than later. But that’s par for the course, isn’t it?” He moved to sit in his command chair.
Sonya turned back to her team. “Okay, this changes nothing. We need to figure this out sooner than soon, but we weren’t going to dawdle anyway. Tev, I want you looking at options. Pattie, Fabian, start work on that reconstruction. Get Soloman to help you—he was here too, so he’s another perspective. Plus, I want to know as much about this ship’s operating system and data files as he can remember. Get going.”
It wasn’t until they’d walked out that she realized why Fabian had looked so sad about her order. Salek had been in command then, yes—Sonya had never met him, but she’d heard good things about