Collective Hindsight (Book 1) - Aaron Rosenberg [6]
“What do you mean, contacting them?” Carol asked. “Can’t we just open a channel?”
“We could,” Salek agreed. “But if anyone else is within sensor range, that will pinpoint the outpost’s location.”
“Actually,” Gold corrected him, “we can’t do that even if we wanted to. The whole point to R5-3791 is that it can’t be found. Not even by us. We don’t know which of those asteroids it’s in, and it’s been designed to foil passive and even most active scans.”
“Precisely.” Salek tapped one long finger on the table. “But the outpost’s own sensor array is exemplary, and will be able to provide a host of useful data on this vessel. Thus, when we arrive in the system, we must make contact with them, without knowing their location and without attracting undue attention. Blue, that will be your job.” He glanced at his team. “In roughly two hours we will reconvene here to examine what we have discovered and plan the next phase.”
Salek turned to go, and Kieran exchanged a grin with Fabian. In the months they’d been working together, no one had been able to convince their Vulcan team commander that the words “approximate” and “rough” did not go with precise time measurements. But since Salek was willing to put up with their little peculiarities, they suffered his as well.
Two hours later, the team met back in the conference room. A model of the unfamiliar ship rotated on the screen while they shared their findings. Next to it was the image of a small, cylindrical object. Fabian looked at it with admiration as Pattie finished her explanation of the changes she had made to the device in order to communicate with the base.
“…so these radio beacons are now set up to send and receive short-range bursts in their immediate area. We’ll deploy a bunch of them when we arrive, and they’ll have overlapping coverage—we’ll be able to hear the outpost’s signal no matter where they are in the system. But the real key is this one.” She tapped her padd and a section of the beacon enlarged, with a schematic beside it. “This links all of the beacons together, and any signal one receives is immediately echoed by all the others. They all broadcast on a low-level radio frequency that the Dominion isn’t likely to pick up.”
Kieran nodded. “So it’s a mirror trick—with each beacon echoing the messages from the outpost, no one can tell which of them got the original data and which are just repeating it. That way they can’t use the beacons to narrow down the location.”
“Very efficient,” Salek said, and Pattie sat back down, antennae vibrating with pride. “Now we can communicate with R5-3791 and share data with them. Stevens, please tell the others what we have determined about the vessel itself.”
“It’s big,” Fabian said, and the others nodded.
In the year he’d been serving on the da Vinci he’d learned not to gloss over the things he thought were self-evident. Salek had told him early on: “Do not omit any detail, no matter how obvious or trivial. It may prove useful.” So now he made sure to include everything, even something no one could possibly miss.
“About the size of a Cardassian battle cruiser, a little narrower but a little longer.” Everyone nodded again as a battle cruiser appeared on the screen next to the model. It was an impressive display—one cruiser could carry two destroyers within its bay, and a destroyer could easily fit two Sabre-class ships within its own hangars.
Kieran took over. “The metals are a strange composition, though the elements are all familiar. Some type of titanium alloy, apparently, with a particularly high conductivity. Good for channeling weapons or shields, definitely. But the way the energy inside there is being damped out, it’s got some pretty strong shielding as well.”
“I’ve ruled out every race I can think of,” Carol added. “This is somebody new.” Fabian again