“I think I have an idea.”  Two days had passed on the USS Nova.  Commander Park was sitting at the science console as the ship moved at full impulse towards the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt.  The senior staff was gathered on the bridge.  There was a remarkably small group on the Nova classes. Park was holding down the CO and Science position.  “We’ve been assuming that it’s a localized issue.”  She put the data they had been working on since the event had begun.  “Given that we’ve traveled some distance, the evidence and theories are starting to suggest otherwise.”  She shifted the data and charts, “It’s not a consistent effect but seems to have varying boundary points.”

Next to her at communications, Cadet Catrin Williams worked through the hypothesis.  Two days of relative silence would have sounded like a dream any other time.  This was a nightmare.  Her regular duty schedule had been thrown into chaos.  She hadn’t slept well.  She’d developed a sudden need for coffee.  All these things were new to her, and she didn’t like it.  Catrin worked to understand the communications side of this event, “As we’ve moved, there’s been a few signals that we’ve picked up that we didn’t have before…and signals that we had before that we no longer have a connection with.”  She sat back in her chair, tired despite it being the start of her shift, “It doesn’t make sense, commander.  It’s like it’s all over the place and nowhere simultaneously.”

Park stared at the screen, her eyes tired of the same data repeating.  “We know the effect it’s having – warp engines, sensors, and communications.  The data on the cause is harder to understand.”  She clicked through the reports, searching for the answers.

The door to the bridge slid open, and Lieutenant Ebenezer Edwards stepped onto the bridge, PADD in hand, “I think I have something.” He handed his report over, “I think we’ve been looking at it all wrong.  We’ve been trying to identify extreme possibilities or rare occurrences.  The problem in all this could very well be something as elementary as subspace harmonics.”

Park read through it as he spoke, feeling the cold realization creeping from her neck into her back.  How had they missed this?  How had she missed this?  She sent the report to the science console, “Did you get any sleep, Chief Edwards?”  The data streamed over her screen, and the gathered bridge officers slowly drifted over to see the results.

“Not much, Commander Park.  We spent the last few hours checking to make sure we weren’t seeing something that wasn’t there.”  He waited for her to finish inspecting the report, “We’re not wrong, are we?”

Park wished with everything she had that they were wrong.  Edwards and his team had done extraordinary work. The chill had moved from her back and filled her body.  “Your work checks out – you have my compliments, chief.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is we have no idea what’s causing this… how long this will last…or what boundaries there are to this thing.”  She turned to face the expectant faces of her senior staff, “We’ve got about eight hours until we intercept the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Get our crews back on standard sleep schedules.  Whatever this is… we’ll need to be fresh when we start to face it.”