Uhura halted the playback. Spock appeared astonished, his eyebrows climbing toward the sharp edge of his bangs. Scott, whom she had already told, merely furrowed his brow and shook his head in confusion.

“I compared the other flare signatures against my singing too. The echoes are fragmentary at best, massively distorted and rearranged, but it’s the same in every case: the one pattern to which they all show a statistical similarity is my own singing voice.”

“It’s incredible,” Blake said.

“I couldn’t believe it either,” Uhura said. “But it led me to check the records, to confirm that I had taken leave at every one of those ports of call.”

The Asimov’s captain leaned forward. “So… what did you do on those leaves?”

Uhura traded a look with her former Enterprise crewmates. “I… don’t know.”

Spock leaned back. “Of course. Every incident was prior to our encounter with…”

“With Nomad,” Uhura confirmed, appreciating his reluctance to say the name in her and Scott’s presence.

“Nomad?” Blake asked.

Spock fielded the question. “On approximately stardate 3450 local time, all life in the Malurian star system was exterminated. Upon investigating shortly thereafter, the Enterprise encountered a small but immensely powerful robotic space probe calling itself Nomad.”

“Like the one launched from Earth in the early twenty-first century?”

“It was, in fact, that very probe. Or rather, a hybrid of that probe and an alien probe with which it had collided and somehow fused. That probe, known as Tan Ru, had been programmed to collect and sterilize soil samples, for unknown purposes.” Spock frowned. “It seems unlikely that such a mundane mission was its entire purpose, for it possessed truly extraordinary power and sophistication, far beyond anything we possess. However, that was the portion of its mission profile that survived the collision, and that somehow became blended with Nomad’s programming to seek out alien life.”

“Seek out life… and sterilize,” Blake deduced.

“Yes. The hybrid probe’s damaged logic compelled it to exterminate any life it deemed imperfect—which was all life.”

“And one probe destroyed Maluria? All four planets?”

Scott finally spoke. “Aye, Captain. That wee floating toolbox wasn’t much to look at, but it packed an incredible punch. I would’ve given anything to crack it open and see what powered it, if it hadn’t been a bloody damned mass murderer. If it hadn’t…” He fidgeted.

Blake looked puzzled. “I remember hearing about the Malurian extinction… but I don’t recall any connection to the Nomad probe.”

Spock steepled his fingers. “That aspect of the event was classified. Starfleet and the Federation Council agreed that the involvement of an Earth probe in the annihilation of four planets should not be publicized, lest the facts be… misunderstood.”

“Okay, I get that part. But how did the Enterprise ever survive an encounter with a planet-killer like that?” Blake asked.

“Through a bad pun,” Uhura said, not laughing.

“Excuse me?”