“There it is again,” Gabrielle Camargo declared to the near silence of the bridge around her.

“Our mysterious little sensor blip?” Commander Nathan Kennedy asked from the centre seat, not even bothering to look up from the padd he was so clearly not engrossed with.

“Near identical signature to the last ten times,” Gabrielle confirmed, spinning around to face the rest of the bridge. “Right out there on the edge of the slow zone. Shows up, then disappears before I can get a good read on it. Permission to launch another probe out there?”

Nathan didn’t respond immediately, finishing the sentence he was reading before setting the padd down in his lap. The effort it took to raise his head and look at the ship’s science officer, and third officer, was evident. He, like so many others aboard Atlantis, was busy fighting boredom.

They’d barely arrived in orbit of Betazed a few weeks ago when the news of whole star systems and sectors going quiet had arrived. And in the middle of the very same FNN newsbreak, everything went silent from the rest of the Federation as well. Whatever was happening across the Federation had completely encapsulated the Betazed system. Subspace communications and warp drive still worked within the system, after a fashion, but the system’s outer worlds now lay within whatever anomaly cut off the rest of the universe.

No one was exactly concerned about a couple of ice giants and a few rocky balls of frozen methane. A few scientists and some resource extraction teams had opted over the last two weeks to suspend their operations and relocate back to the safety of Betazed. No one was thinking some attack or such was about to happen, but better to be in the volume of space where rescue could arrive in a timely fashion, not hours or days.

“Is it going to be like the last five times where you launch a probe, watch it for a few hours and then see it disappear into the slow zone with no new information?” Nathan eventually asked, immediately raising a hand to stop any protest. “Sorry, sorry, that came out wrong.”

Slow Zone had been the name for the anomaly proposed by a newly minted Lieutenant Goresh Krek, one of Atlantis’ handful of astrophysicists. It had only faced competition from one person on the ship, but was catchy and soon became the working name for whatever had wrapped the Betazed system up like a bubble.

Subspace hadn’t disappeared, just become troubled waters. Filled with random noise that meant subspace communications became indistinguishable from background noise. But that same nature torn at and dissolved any warp bubble that came into contact with it. The inner system wasn’t completely immune, but ships and stations throughout the system were close enough to be able to shout over the noise. And a handful, just a handful, had engines powerful enough to generate a warp field that could at least let them violate the classical laws of physics, if somewhat reduced from the expectation. And the effect did seem reduced the closer one got to the system’s primary.

Nathan drew in a breath, thinking before speaking this time. “Instead of a probe, which would take hours and hours to get to the edge of the slow zone, what about we send out a Harpy instead?”

Gabrielle just stared at him for a few moments, blinking, then shook her head. “Dammit, why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because you’re used to firing off probes and letting their dinky little warp drives do the job?” Nathan countered, offering a smile. “Honestly, only just came to me. You’d have gotten there eventually, Commander.”

“After launching the entire inventory of probes into whatever that mess is and catching nothing but more sensor echoes.” Gabrielle had half turned back to her station before spinning back around. “Would the fighter’s warp drives work in this?” she asked, waving a hand to indicate the universe at large.

“I have been informed by smarter minds than mine, that where Atlantis goes, the fighters, shuttles, and runabouts should be able to go; to a point. Maybe not as far from the primary, but unlike the probes, faster than the speed of light.”

“Works for me then. Mind if I head to the shuttlebay and see if I can scare up a pilot or two?” Gabrielle glanced around the bridge, quiet and half-manned as Atlantis hung in high orbit over Betazed. “Seeing as we’re so busy right now.”

“And leave me in the hands of all these junior officers?” Nathan chuckled, indicating the turbolift with a motion of his head. “Go on. I’m sure we’ll somehow manage not to burn the ship down. And maybe we’ll have something to tell the captain when she gets back from planet-side?”

“Great bird help us,” Gabrielle muttered as she slipped into the turbolift. “I’ll impress upon the pilots the urgency of ‘any news is good news’. I’ll even settle for engine exhaust at this point. Anything to distract from the politics of matriarchs and hospital administrators.”

As the turbolift door closed, a chirp started up at the now vacant science station. All eyes fell upon it as the chirp repeated, then silenced before another started up at Operations. What had been unknown had obviously been identified by the computer. The young Andorian seated there stared at the console as if it was written in some obscure language for a second before turning to face Nathan, confusion on their face. “Um, sir, sensors are picking up a starship at the edge of the slow zone. They’re hailing us.”

“On screen, Ensign Th’chiral,” Nathan ordered. He wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting to see as the holographic panel at the front of the bridge snapped to life, but a Starfleet officer wasn’t in the top ten. The bridge around the woman was compact and echoed the design era and lineage that Atlantis herself was drawn from. And while the number of officers he could see were less than on Atlantis’s bridge right now, it looked busier than his own. “Commander Nathan Kennedy, USS Atlantis,” he announced.

“Captain Sofia Santisteban, USS Tizona,” the young woman answered back with a friendly smile. Captain was a curtesy of position, not rank, as betrayed by the three pips on her collar. But if it was her ship, she was entitled to it. “And am I glad to see you.”

“I can say the same to you, Captain,” Nathan replied. “Nice to see another friendly face.”