By Any Other Name by H. Peter Alesso

Author:H. Peter Alesso [Alesso, H. Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Video Software Lab
Published: 2024-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Anomalies

Aboard the Excalibur, the bridge hummed with tension transcending the usual battle readiness. Each flicker on the sensor panels sent ripples of unease through the crew. The sabotage on Janus had left them on edge.

Ethan stood at the main viewport as his ship patrolled the Cygni system. The familiar tapestry of stars and nebulae felt alien now.

"Anything?" His voice was directed toward Lieutenant Chalamet, manning the sensor station.

"Just… fluctuations, sir," she replied, her voice strained. "Subtle distortions, almost like a mirage. Nothing consistent enough to identify as a ship."

Ethan grimaced. This was the third such anomaly they'd detected in the past week.

Ghostly flickers on the edge of perception, hinting at a presence that remained stubbornly out of reach. Were these merely natural phenomena, or was it an alien cloaked in their insidious technology? Ethan was certain this was confirmation of the information he had acquired from Raja.

"Chief Kovalenko, are those new sensor arrays ready?" he asked, turning towards the stern-faced Master Chief.

Kovalenko nodded curtly. "Aye, Captain. We've been running calibration checks non-stop.

But the tech's…unconventional."

The word hung in the air, heavy with unspoken uncertainty. Kate's team of scientists had worked tirelessly for the past week to improve the sensor systems to deal with these persistent abnormalities. The new devises pushed boundaries, but this felt different—desperate times call for desperate measures.

◆◆◆

A few days earlier, he had found Kate in one of the repurposed cargo bays, surrounded by a tangle of wires.

"Elias." She looked up, a flicker of surprise crossing her face. "I wasn't expecting you down here."

He hesitated, momentarily forgetting the urgency of his mission. "We need you, Kate. We need your…" he searched for a delicate way to phrase it, "...unconventional expertise."

A wry smile touched her lips. "So now I'm an asset, not a liability?"

"Kate, I…." His words failed him. "These anomalies we're finding as we patrol the planets, they could be ships, but our sensors…"

She nodded, cutting him off. "I know. I was suspicious of the interference we were having in the facility as well. The distortions are too subtle and interwoven with the space fabric itself. It's brilliant camouflage if that's what it is."

"So can you …"

"We can try," she finished, her voice determined. We need to find a way to strip away the background noise, to see the signal through the distortion."

The next few days were a whirlwind of focused frenzy. Ethan marshaled the ship's resources for Kate's testing, pushing the Excalibur's engineering capabilities to the limit. She worked with a single-minded intensity that left even the tireless Kovalenko breathless.

Her results came in quiet triumph rather than a dramatic explosion.

"I think…I think I have it," she said, staring at a screen filled with pulsing waveforms. "See the pattern here? It’s faint, but it's there. A resonance, subtly out of phase with the natural fluctuations of subspace."

"Can you isolate it, enhance it?" Ethan asked, his pulse quickening with anticipation and fear.

"With time, yes," Kate nodded, her usual confidence returning. "We'll need to build filters, amplifiers… It won't be perfect, but it might be enough to reveal what's out there.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.