Alexander had been sitting on the Venture’s bridge for the better part of 6 hours now with his position almost entirely unchanging. The bridge around him was a different story: a bustle as the different departments were carrying out their duties helping with the exploration of this new system and the neutron star that is contained within it. However, Alexander was waiting for confirmation from one of the officers on the bridge before giving his next order.

“Sir,” it finally came from one of the stations along the back of the bridge, “the communications buoy is deployed. We’ll receive all information from our probes for a while once we leave orbit.”

“Very well then,” the captain stood, “Not much to see here. A star went neutron and destroyed the planets within its own system. We’ve seen it thousands of times. Helm, turn us about and continue us on our original trajectory, warp 2.”

“Aye, sir,” the young female Human at the conn responded.

Many of the senior officers were taking the time to indulge in their own hobbies, as encouraged by Alexander. This gave many of the junior officers a chance at bridge duty that they may not have otherwise had. Knowing that Alexander remained on the bridge, not having much else to do in his own right. He had learned that there was a lot of downtime before boldly going where no one had gone before, and this was just a boring reality of multi-year missions.

Several hours had passed and the Venture was getting ready to enter night mode. Just as Alexander stood from the central command chair a chime at several different bridge stations went off. Without waiting, Alexander asked, “Something interesting from the probes?”

“Negative, sir. Ahead of us. Some… object…” the officer at the back reported seemingly confused.

“Object?” Alexander pressed a few commands into the arm of his chair to see the sensor read out. “Interesting. Looks like it is losing orbit, too. Helm, adjust course to intercept.”

Tapping his comm badge the captain ordered, “All senior staff report to the bridge.”