Celesta just nodded to her com officer but didn’t answer. That wasn’t welcome news. She’d assumed once the computer began parsing through the encrypted portion of the beacon transmission it would become apparent that it was a fake. It was actually the main reason an encrypted sign/counter sign signal was piggybacked onto the standard distress call, to keep someone from doing just what she thought the AU was doing and baiting a trap with another ship’s emergency transponder signal.

It was another two hours before they were able to lock down a general location for the signal’s origin. When she saw it Celesta began to doubt her initial assessment as to what they were seeing.

“Nav, plot a course to the signal’s point of transmission. Ahead full,” she said quietly.

“All engines ahead full, aye.” The deck began to vibrate gently as the two massive plasma engines ran up to full power and the Icarus raced down into the system.

“Tactical, begin active scans,” Celesta said. “Coms, tell the rest of the taskforce to remain silent. Let’s only have one ship broadcasting until we get a better idea of what it is we’re dealing with.”

“Active array is coming up now, ma’am” Adler said. “Threat board will begin populating once we start getting returns.”

“Do you think it might not be prudent to at least arm the forward missile banks, ma’am?” Barrett leaned in and asked quietly. “This is starting to spook me a bit.”

“Do you really think that’s one of our ships down there?” Celesta asked as she considered his request.

“I don’t see how, Captain,” Barrett almost whispered. “But I know I’m really hoping it isn’t and for more than one reason.”

“I think I take your meaning, Commander,” Celesta nodded before raising her voice. “Tactical! Arm the forward missile banks, Hornets only. Standard yield and don’t tie the guidance into the active array just yet.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Adler said, clearly surprised. “Missiles initializing; they’ll be available in thirty seconds.”

Celesta didn’t bother to clarify her orders further as she watched the first weak returns begin to show up on the threat board. The computer would begin trying to correlate the objects to anything in the database to assign a threat number to each. The threat board itself was a holographic representation of local space that was overlaid upon the main display, and she could adjust the opacity of the outside view from her terminal so that the detail wasn’t lost. It would make more sense if the main display didn’t show the outside view at all, but studies had shown that crews had lower stress levels if they could see outside the ship, even if the “view” was nothing more than an image put up on a display.

“How long until we can begin visual confirmations of the objective?” Celesta asked.