((moved to the appropriate thread, sorry zeph))
Kirio was having a difficult time controlling the ship due to all of the damage they had incurred in the last battle. He had only recently gotten complete mastery of the controls over the Osiris and Kirio considered this a great acheivement, however, the recent battle had made him more reticent about the large scale combat piloting. He preferred the type of battle that the crew had originally faced as their test. Nevertheless, Kirio knew his duty as pilot and knew he would not forget.
Kirio leaned back in the pilot's seat and sighed, he supposed it was time to carry out that sweep Terry had mentioned. It turned out that no one was missing, but the erratic power surges made it impossible to tell with one hundred percent accuracy if the readings were right or not. Deciding a more direct search was necessary to ensure the readings were correct, he resigned himself to allowing the ship to continue its lazy spin.
So he was surprised when the ship was shaken and stilled by some outsider, tossing him against a bulkhead just forward of the stairwell. "What in blazes?"
* * * * *
ANUBIS pinged Terry's personal comm, sounding somewhat stressed. "Sir, there's some...unusual activity on the shortwave. I almost didn't recognize it at first. Whatever just grabbed us is sending a quadratic formula--a sort of handshake gesture. I've sent the appropriate solution, but each time I get a different problem. It's straining my ability." Terry pondered. For the ship's AI to say that his abilities were being strained, an AI capable of mapping exodimensional vectors and navigating the ship through the void of faster-than-light reality, was worrisome.
"Something is trying to establish a sort of...lexicon linkage with our database--what's lef of it anyway. Trying to, I don't know, learn our language. The sensation I'm getting from it is far different than I'd expect from a computer or even an RF module."
ANUBIS sighed inwardly as he tried to process the implications. External cameras showed some kind of object, something large enough to dwarf the lateral view from the port side for several kilometers in either direction. But there was so much debris that had collected on it that the system couldn't identify it specifically. "Should I try to find a docking ring? Something to gain access to?"
Terry pondered more. "We're dealing with something outside of our expertise. Send a shipwide alert, everyone into hazard suits." The name that they had originally called the Goshens sitting in storage lockers throughout the ship...now was a good time to test them out under real world condition.s