The chirping in the dark was insistent, demanding and worse it was annoying as well.

It had been ignored. It had been grumbled at. Each time it had stopped, but come back. The third time was the charm. But as Tikva went to reach for the communicator on the bedside table she was pulled back with gentle but undeniable strength from her partner. And she could have resisted, or offered resistance, but it was just comforting to be held so firmly.

“If it was important, they’d have just made a call over the public address,” Lin whispered. “Or shouted down the line anyway. Just leave it.”

“Three times is obviously someone trying to gently wake me versus having me rocketing to the bridge,” she replied, her words defeating Lin who turned loose one arm to search for the commbadge. “If it’s not important I’m telling them to go away.”

“Yes ma’am,” Lin said. “Bet it’s Stirling anyway.”

“No bet,” she said with a single chuckle as her hand finally found the chirping little device in the dark, collected it, and tapped it. “Theodoras here,” she finally spoke, not disguising the fact she was barely awake from her voice.

“Sorry to disturb you ma’am,” Gabrielle Camargo apologised straight away, “but we’ve got an interesting situation developing and Commander MacIntyre and myself thought you might want to see it.”

“Define interesting,” she responded after a pause to stifle a yawn.

“Well, umm,” Gabrielle hesitated for a moment. “Perhaps ma’am if you just looked out a window you could judge for yourself?”

She sighed, loud enough and long enough she knew the communicator would have picked it up and carried it along. “One moment,” she finally said before untangling herself from Lin and sitting up so she could look out the windows in her bedroom. “Computer, open the blinds.”

There weren’t any actual blinds to open, just an electrochromic layer to the windows that were blocking the light of the gas giant’s atmosphere. Normally blocking outside light wasn’t a concern, unless a ship was nearby and you wanted privacy, or the ship was orbiting the wrong way around a planet and you kept getting the planet or the star pouring into your room. But as the layer was powering down the purple and peach haze brightened the room, casting everything in a strange hue.

And outside, just within sight of Atlantis and only partially obscured by the gasses, were a number of large jellyfish-like creatures, bobbing along mostly on the currents with their bulbous bodies and long tendrils dangling underneath them. It took way too long for her brain to process their size but when it hit her, she couldn’t stop her eyes opening wide.

Holy shit!

Those things are huge!

Space jellies!

Uh, no seriously, those things are huge. Like being able to threaten Atlantis huge.

Oh shit!

But space jellies!

“That’s certainly interesting,” she heard Lin say as she too sat up, wrapping an arm around Tikva’s shoulders from behind and bringing the duvet with her. And more importantly comfortable soothing warmth. Warmth and comfort that rightly her duties said she needed to break from and at least go and momentarily see what was going on.

“Sorry, didn’t catch that ma’am,” Gabrielle said through the communicator.

“Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll come up to the conference room. You can brief me there,” she said directly into the commbadge. “Theodoras out.” And one tap to close the channel before she tossed the commbadge back onto the bedside table before leaning back into Lin, just watching the creatures outside for a moment. “I best get moving,” she said, barely above a whisper. “But you’re not making it easy.”

A colossal effort of will, a shower and a fresh uniform later and Tikva was stepping out of her quarters as the unlucky one who couldn’t go back to sleep. And on the opposite side of the corridor, standing there like he was an original fixture of the ship from her commissioning, was one Lieutenant Fightmaster, a padd in one hand, a coffee cup in the other which he offered dutifully without a word said before falling in beside her on the very short walk to the nearest turbolift to whisk them the paltry five decks to the bridge.

While it wasn’t ambrosia, as was due to all starship captains but woefully never in supply, it was the next best thing. And after her second sip, she realised it was straight from her favourites list too. She stopped and credit due to Fightmaster he stopped straight away, no discernible misstep past his captain that she noticed. “Mr Fightmaster, are you monitoring my replicator orders?” she demanded, eyeing the coffee, then up to him.

“Yes ma’am,” he responded with no hesitation. She could sense it, or more precisely not sense it – hesitation. He didn’t stop to think about how to respond, he just did. Truthfully. “But only your food and drink preferences from the replicator in your ready room and the conference room. Those are the only two places I can access records as your yeoman.”

“And your reasoning for this particular choice?” she asked as she resumed her path to the turbolift.

“You order it at least once a day, averaging sixty per cent of the time as your first drink of the day once on duty.”

She glared at him once more, over the rim of the cup as she sipped again. Having someone do data science on her coffee choices was a bit much, to be honest. She’d honestly had no idea what to do with a yeoman when he was first assigned to Atlantis, but she’d not only gotten used to him but started to rely on him for so many other smaller details. And there was certainly an advantage to having someone bring her coffee first thing in the morning, even if it was just making the morning report easier to swallow most of the time.

“Stirling, no more analysis of my food choices, please. You must have better things to do with your time.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

“Now, what’s on the padd?” she asked before ordering the turbolift to the bridge as they stepped in.

“It’s personal ma’am,” he answered.

Personal?

Oh poor boy, now we have to know!

No, we don’t. He’s entitled to privacy.

Ahhh…

“Your evening plans with Ms W’a’le’ki weren’t interrupted by all of this were they?” she asked and finally got a reaction from the young man – momentary shock. But he recovered quickly enough.

“We had no plans for this evening,” he answered.

Stirling was saved from further interrogation by the turbolift arriving and doors hissing open to the bridge where Mac was standing nearby, obviously waiting. “Sorry for the hour cap, but we’ve been monitoring the situation and it kept evolving.”

“Who doesn’t want to get woken up after only a few hours of sleep for space jellyfish?” she asked, earning a chuckle from her executive officer before they made their way to the conference room. “As fascinating as jellyfish are, even starship-sized ones, I’m guessing there’s more to this than first impressions Gabrielle, so let’s have it,” he stated as she sat down finally.

“Well they’re not jellyfish,” Gabrielle started, bringing up a scan diagram on the monitor behind her. “They’re more analogous to a siphonophore,” she continued. “Portuguese man o’ war is an example of one. It’s a colonial organism made up of smaller entities all filling a specific role and purpose within the larger entity.”

“Any other time Gabrielle I would love to sit here and listen to the entire science department regale me with what you’ve learned about these creatures,” Tikva said, stopping briefly to suppress a yawn, “but can we perhaps move things along?”

“Oh, sorry, yes,” Gabrielle said, only momentarily faltering in the face of her presentation being interrupted. She’d truly grown since first coming aboard the old Atlantis only a few years ago. “Let’s see, key points,” she muttered aloud as she checked a padd and then rapidly moved her presentation along a few slides. “A number of them are following us, or more precisely they’re following our impulse engine exhaust trail.”

“Hydrogen ions,” Tikva said before sipping at her coffee.

“Yes ma’am. We think they’re consuming them. The atmosphere out there is plentiful in hydrogen, but we’re throwing out free hydrogen ions. No need to break down the chemical cocktail at is the atmosphere to get at hydrogen when someone is giving out a free meal.”

“So, we just move faster than them. What else?” Tikva asked.

“The creatures are attracted to our subspace communications attempts.” Gabrielle let that one sink in for a moment before continuing on. “Since first spotting the creatures we’ve made four attempts to regain communications with the Rubic and every time we send out pulses the creatures move towards Atlantis. I’m just guessing here, but these things could be why Rubic has stopped transmitting. Either they’ve done something to the Rubic or someone onboard has realised what we’ve concluded and stopped transmitting.”

Tikva set her coffee cup down and leaned back in her chair, staring at her science officer for a moment. “Okay, now that’s interesting,” she said. “What about active scanners?”

“As long as we run them there’s a generalised trend towards us, but it’s not the same as the momentary rushes after each comms pulse attempt.” Gabrielle flicked to the diagram of the creatures again. “They’ve incorporated dilithium-chromate into their biology, which is responding to our scans and communication attempts. As well as blocking them too. I’m just guessing without further information, but I’d say they’re responding to our scans as some form of,” Gabrielle shrugged, clearly uncomfortable with needing to supply an answer in this context, “mating call?”

“Mating call?” she asked.

“They’re large gas bags in a gas giant’s atmosphere. They’ll build up an electric charge eventually, then possibly discharge it via the dilithium in their biology, producing low-level subspace signals that others nearby can pick up and react to.” Gabrielle shrugged again. “Ma’am, a science team could spend years studying these creatures. I’ve had a few hours and some multi-purpose probes.”

She waved the young woman down, indicating for her to sit down at the table opposite Mac to her right. “Mating call or ringing the dinner bell, either way, we’re garnering unwelcome attention.” She turned to Mac. “Guess we stop trying to call out and use the active scanners sparingly. Passives only from here on out.”

“About that,” Mac replied. “We might have visitors of a more directly hostile intent before much longer.”

“Oh?”

“Probe one and two have both been destroyed by disruptor fire by ships that couldn’t be positively identified before being destroyed,” Mac continued. “We’ve reduced the possible belligerents to the Breen, Tzenkethi and Romulans.”

She sighed and rubbed at her face momentarily. “It’s the Breen. They started this in the first place.” Mac nodded in agreement. “We’ve got four days to find the Rubic, rescue their crew, avoid the jelly, sorry siphonophores and a Breen raiding party. If the Borg show up, tell them to take a number.”

“Before or after their welcoming speech?” Mac asked, answered with a glare. “Before, gotcha.”

“Fighting in these conditions isn’t something commonly taught in tactics classes,” she continued. “Blind, slow and whatever we do to see just gets us attention.” She thought for a moment. “Don’t suppose we have a twentieth-century submariner aboard ship somewhere we can drag up to the bridge for ideas?”

“Probably a couple of holodeck programs we could mine for ideas too,” Mac answered. “You and Blake have a collection of anachronistic flight programs; someone must have a sailing one.”

“Actually, Dr Pisani does,” Fightmaster interjected from where he’d stationed himself against the wall. “She was talking about it in Port Royal a week ago.

“Probably as bad at it as she is a pilot,” Tikva found herself saying far too quickly. “I’m sorry, that was mean of me.”

“Oh, she is bad,” Mac said. “But I bet a hobbyist is better than whatever the Breen have aboard their ships.”

“Here’s hoping.” She pushed back from the table and stood. “Gabrielle, keep monitoring the creatures. See if you can’t come up with some way to lure them away from us. Mac, get Blake up here and brainstorm some ideas. I’m going back to bed and when I get up I’ll see both of you for a briefing over a meal.”

“Call you if we stumble across the Rubic?” Mac asked.

“Naturally, but just rescue the poor folks straight away.” Then she turned to Stirling. “And as for you young man, go do whatever it was you were doing and you can join us for breakfast as well.”

The situation all caught up on and wheels set in motion, she could now return to her quarters. To her bed. To sleep.

To Lin’s arms.