Captain Lindhurst nervously drummed his fingers on the console.
"Can you confirm the sensor data isn't corrupted? Are you certain we aren't at Proxima?" he said softly to Lieutenant Brandt.
After a few seconds tapping at his console the heavy set man sighed and turned around.
"I'm sorry sir, it's confirmed. We have no recognizable locks in star patterns. The system is checking all stars, starting with the brightest, for spectral analysis but that will take hours. Our records are definitely still intact and the sensors are reading right... This isn't our target system."
Staring at the fore view ports at the unfamiliar stars Lindhurst tried desperately to think of something for the crew to focus on. However he was having difficulty focussing himself. They were lost!
"Sir, I'm getting an odd reading on the magnetometers." came Timmins' cautious voice "I thought it was just an iron asteroid but it seems to be... accelerating. Range approx. six thousand kilometers and closing at two hundred meters per second. Acceleration about zero point six G's Estimated mass fifteen thousand tons metallic."
"Chief?" Lindhurst said, sitting up in his seat. "What's on the other sensors?"
A few moments sped by as Timmins checked, the tension rising dramatically in the room.
"Not much at this range but I think I have something on infrared. Patching it to your viewer."
The Captain looked down at his monitor and frowned. It looked odd, sort of patchy as if made up of wadded bits of paper stuck together with tubes.
"What kind of ship is that? It's not even symmetric! What's it's vector? Is she heading directly towards us?"
Again time strung out.
"She's definitely heading towards us sir... It's possible that the sensor readings just look odd... maybe that thermal signiture isn't comparable to it's actual structure, but either way I can't map that signature to any known ship. I think..."
Suddenly Timmin's eyebrows shot up and he pressed his hand to his earpiece. At the same Time Lieutenant Brandt suddenly got tense.
"Sir!" Brandt's terse voice cut in "Comm signal... I think."
"You think?" Lindhurst said turning to him. "What do you mean 'you think'?"
"There is a carrier wave but the frequency, modulation and format are unknown. I've never seen anything like this before. Give me a few minutes to work with it."
Brandt furiously began to work at his terminal, processing the raw data from the short signal through the ship's computers. Attempt after attempt failed to get any kind of pattern out of the data but finally...
"Got it!" he gasped, making the captain jump "What the hell is this? Sir, I think this is some sort of video feed from the pattern repeats I'm seeing but I'm having difficulty getting the format intelligible."
"Just put it on screen, intelligible or not." Came the Captain's hoarse voice.
"Um, Sir? I mean I can't figure out how to arrange the video signals at all sir. It's weird it's as if the line signals get shorter before they repeat almost as if... Ah!... I don't believe it!"
"Brandt!"
The lieutenant snapped his head around to the Captain.
"Sorry sir, I think I've got it. They aren't lines they're circles. Hang on, I've got the coding. Patching it you your monitor."
Lindhurst looked down at his monitor trying to release the death grip he had on his armrests. First a black disk appeared on his monitor, then started flickering.
"It's some sort of circular scanning Sir." Brandt said, still working at his terminal "I'm working on the coding sir. It's a kind of phase modulation with five shift patterns. I think they're the colour cycles."
The image flickered again, shifted, rotated, looking like odd static. Slowly something started to come out of the randomness, colours faded and changed till finally a face popped into existance. For a few seconds it was purple, then it shifted till it was green, but that wasn't what drew Lindhurst's attention. It was the features. They weren't human!
The 'face' had three eyes each on short boney looking stalks coming forward out of the face, one at the top and one on either side. The eyes themselves looked... almost human, though it looked like there were two irises inside one another. The face itself was a ridged sphere, slightly flattened at the top, and between the three eyes was what looked like a mouth... maybe. It was a crinkled opening with hints of some pinkness inside.
Silence reigned on the Bridge for a few moments as all the crew stared at their monitors.
"Th... that's the first frame sir." Brandt's rather muted voice stated. "Do you want me to play the message? The audio portion was simpler to decode."
The Captain just nodded and stared at the screen as it suddenly became animated.
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