Metal Detectors to Maximum!

Posted on Mon Nov 16th, 2015 @ 2:34am by Captain Tim Williams & Lieutenant Commander Horatio Hawke & Lieutenant Commander Ciaran McIntyre & Lieutenant Commander Jean Reynard & Lieutenant Ryan North

Episode: Lost Property
Location: USS Highlander - Bridge
Timeline: MD02 0900hrs

Tim strolled onto the bridge, in a rather chirpy yet at the same time, quite a bored mood. They had been patrolling this region for quite a while now; their last bit of excitement was months ago, back at the Dreyas system. Tim felt like he was only a day or so away from wanting nothing more than another Cardassian Gul to come across them that he could torment and wind up.

"Morning folks," he said, as he made his way briskly to his chair near the centre of the bridge. "Anything interesting on our scanners today then? Who's going to tell me that we're the first ship to see a giant flying space unicorn or something else equally unheard of?"

"Nothing so interesting sir," Ryan replied. He wondered if the captain was always in this good a mood in the morning. "I'm still running a long range deep scan, maybe we'll get lucky and find your unicorn sir."

"We ran through an unusually dense pocket of interstellar medium last night," Jean offered. "It's probably just an outcropping of the nebula we're passing, but it could be... space bat spoor?" He shrugged. "Sorry, titanobiology isn't my thing."

"Maybe a space whale," Ryan offered.

"Whoever finds the goofiest-looking space anomaly gets to paint it in pink over Hawke's bedroom window," the captain announced, settling back into his chair and offering his XO a sidewards smirk.

Ryan raised an eyebrow. "Mr. Reynard, can you free up some computing power for the lateral array, I got a weird spike in x-rays that I'd like to check out." Then he turned to the captain. "Can we make it purple instead, a read an article about the psychology of color a couple years ago that said purple is one of the most obnoxious colors."

"Well if it's going above Hawke's bed, I know what shape I'll be looking for," Mac said with a wry smile, patching into the sensor sweeps being performed at both the Ops and Science stations.

Hawke had never really been one for this kind of casual banter on the bridge, but during the long, uneventful months of the Highlander’s most recent history he had relaxed his well-known rigidity just a little. Enough so that now he shook his head, grinned and said, “I’d give you all nasty looks, but you’ve already got them.”

Ryan went back to his sensor readings. Really, outside of that large spike in x-rays there wasn't a whole going on. As the bridge crew bantered around him, he fine tuned the readings that he was able to get. He focused his sensors on the nebula, hoping that he might get some sort of interesting reading. He adjusted the sensor bandwidith slightly before actually getting a ping back.

"Sir, I'm getting a faint metallic reading from within the nebula," Ryan reported, turning his chair to face the bridge crew. "There's a lot of ionization radiation out there and we're too far away for me to get a good look at what it is."

"Is it the Iron Giant?" Tim asked, remembering the old science fiction classic from the 20th century and wondering what the giant robot would look like if painted in pink and purple hues over Hawke's window.

"I'm not seeing any iron," Jean said, tapping into the sensor feed to check what Ryan had found. "Which is odd, given with an asteroid you'd expect... oh, hello. There's a large percentage of duranium, too much to be a natural formation. Could be hull metal from a ship or station."

"Are you getting any power readings?" Tim asked of either officer, his curiosity now piqued. The Lembatta Nebula would be a good place to hide a ship if someone was so inclined, but they hadn't seen anyone anywhere near it in all the time they had been patrolling the region.

"Nothing that I can see. And nothing that would suggest a cloaked ship of some kind," Ryan answered.

"There's no signs of acceleration, it's moving on a purely ballistic trajectory," Jean added. "Could be a hulk, but then it could just be powered down."

"I'm not detecting any biosigns either," Ryan reported.

McIntyre grimaced slightly at his console. "Should I move us to Yellow Alert, sir? Just on the off chance they're not friendly?"

"Better safe than sorry," Tim agreed. "Helm, change our course to intercept it and increase to warp eight."