“Incoming distress call,” Lieutenant Commander Mattson reported, shattering the optimism of the moment. Something about the transmission piqued her attention too. “Curious… timestamp, six months ago, but origin only six light years distant, carried on a subspace band.” The Shroud, as far as they knew, had never affected superluminal communications, but even if it had, the message carried a timestamp just after the Shroud fell, and there was no reason why it should have taken six months to cross such a meager distance.

A distress call? Fleet Captain Gérard Devreux’s face couldn’t hide his frustration that, just when he thought this might actually be all about telepathic cetaceans, walking beanstalks, and cosmic marvels, duty came calling. “Alright, let’s hear it.”

“To anyone… anyone hearing… to anyone hearing this…”

The message came in fits and starts, not like a skipping record, but like echoes in a cave. “Can you clear it up?” Fleet Captain Devreux asked.

“It’s not interference, sir,” replied Lieutenant Commander Mattson. “The stream is clean.” The overlaps they were hearing were a true, sequential representation of the audio as encoded onto the subspace carrier wave.

“To anyone hearing… anyone hearing this… it keeps repeating… repeating… keeps repeating.”

The voice kept overlapping itself, but as Fleet Captain Devreux listened, he noticed something. It wasn’t a looping transmission. The intonation of the voice varied through each repetition, not like someone rolling back the tape, but as if multiple copies of the same man were talking over each other.

“It’s… over and over… over and over again… again… it’s over and over again.”

And then the message terminated.

In the silence, Fleet Captain Devreux looked over at operations. “Is there more?”

“No, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Mattson shook her head. “That was it.”

But then another alarm went off at her console.

Lieutenant Commander Mattson looked down. “Sir, another distress call,” she reported. “Same point of origin and same timestamp.”

Repetitions weren’t unheard of, Fleet Captain Devreux knew. They arose from perturbations in the curvature of subspace, and although Starfleet’s communications systems compensated for them naturally, it was plausible that one of the more primitive races in the expanse hadn’t figured out how to do it yet. “Maybe this one is a clearer copy? Put it through.”

“Choradian outpost to… outpost to anyone that can hear… can hear this… we need… to anyone that can hear this… help… we need.”

This wasn’t a subspace reflection, Fleet Captain Devreux realized. It was the same speaker, but a completely different message. “Elena, did you say the exact same timestamp?”

“Affirmative, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Mattson confirmed as she rechecked the metadata. “Same timestamp, same origin, same speaker, same everything. Quantum signature is identical. By every measure, they are the exact same message.”

“Except they’re not,” Fleet Captain Devreux stated the obvious. “They’re two completely different messages.” How could two completely different messages be sent by the same person from the same place at the same time with the same quantum signature? “Recheck the readings.”

Another alert sounded at operations.

“Let me guess… a distress call?” Fleet Captain Devreux asked, now his tone a bit more serious, the realization setting in that something was going on here.

“How’d you guess? It’s got the exact same signature too.”

“Let’s hear it,” Fleet Captain Devreux ordered.

“Requesting assistance… we can’t get… get out… time is… can’t get out… time looping… time… time is fragmenting.”

Looping? Fragmenting? What did that mean? Fleet Captain Devreux looked over his shoulder at the commodore from the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity. “Did you hear that, Liv?” He needed an explanation, and he knew where he’d get it.

“I did,” Commodore Olivia Larsen nodded, her fingers dancing across the keys. “The quantum signature of these three messages, I can’t explain it. The universe says they’re the exact same message, but my ears say otherwise.” With a swipe of her hand, she shipped the data streams belowdeck. Maybe Dr. Brooks would see what she wasn’t. Cosmic anomalies were very much his forte.

For a moment, the bridge was quiet with indecision.

But then the swoosh of a door, and a new arrival.

Fleet Admiral Reyes emerged from her ready room with a purposeful gait as she crossed onto the command island. “It seems quite evident what our response must be.”

“And that is?” Fleet Captain Devreux asked as he stepped aside deferentially, caught off-guard by her abrupt entrance. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her there. It was just that ever since the night fell, the admiral had been quite aloof, making only necessary appearances on the bridge while leaving the administration of the squadron to him and Commodore Larsen. His old friend hadn’t even joined them for their leap through the Vadia transwarp conduit, nor had she come down to meet the thistlekin of Jedik V, but now, here she was.

“Elena, give me a sitrep,” Fleet Admiral Reyes asked as she looked over at operations.

“At 1405, we received a distress…” Lieutenant Commander Mattson began.

“No, not that,” Fleet Admiral Reyes shook her head. “I already know that.” She had been following along from her ready room, analyzing the conflicting telemetry herself. “Give me a breakdown of our destination.”

“Our destination…” Lieutenant Commander Mattson fumbled before realizing what she meant. “Oh, you mean the point of origin of the transmission?” The admiral had already decided they were going to respond.

Fleet Admiral Reyes simply nodded. Of course that was their destination. Never had she ever not responded to a distress call, and she wasn’t about to buck the trend now. Even if it was supposedly six months out of date, the anomalous nature of it was enough to warrant investigation.

“Point of origin, six point four light years spinward on a heading of two two six,” Lieutenant Commander Mattson reported. “The Chorad system. Primary is a K0V main sequence star with twelve major orbital bodies, one highly developed Class M world and several lightly developed lunar orbitals. From a no-contact survey conducted by the USS Fremont, its inhabitants are classified as a limited warp-capable civilization with minimal extrasolar presence.”

That was good enough for her. Not likely to threaten the Polaris, even if she took them out there solo, so might as well get to it. “Anything on sensors that could explain the anomalous nature of the distress calls?”

“Negative ma’am, but at these distances, we lack the resolution to be able to see much of anything,” Lieutenant Commander Mattson cautioned.

“Then we’ll just have to get a bit closer, won’t we?” Fleet Admiral Reyes smiled. “Elena, notify Vox he has the ball until we return.” The Diligent‘s commanding officer, Captain Dorian Vox, was more than capable of managing the subspace mapping exercise until they got back.

“Vox confirms transfer of authority,” Lieutenant Commander Mattson relayed after a moment.

Fleet Admiral Reyes stepped up behind the conn and set her hand on the flight controller’s shoulder. “Alright, Mister Reza. You know what to do. Lay in a course for the Chorad system, best speed.”

“Chorad system, best speed,” Commander Omar Reza nodded knowingly. He had, in fact, already queued up the heading. He’d known where they were going from the moment the door to the ready room swished open. This wasn’t his first rodeo with Allison Reyes.

“Engage!”

Commander Reza brought the Polaris around, and they leapt to warp.

If time was really doing what the distress call implied, Fleet Admiral Reyes wasn’t going to leave an early warp civilization alone to face it. And if this was really nothing but an echo from the past, at least they’d get to rub shoulders with another one of the peoples of this curious new expanse. She was done sitting in the dark. It was time to stop moping and start doing again.