The Bonaventure had been assigned to scout a sector of space, not far from the Klingon border, but far enough that there were no head ridges to be seen for lightyears. Its primary mission was to categorize the stars in sectors 7759, 9214, 3442 and 6701. This was a simple task, and even science was not largely needed. Both 7759 and 9214 had been visited already, marking the half way point in the mission.

It had been about a month since anything interesting happened on board. Everything seemed calm; engineering had nothing to fix, the marines played cards, medical worked on categorizing cold bacteria, science reviewed new information on black holes. Essentially, nothing was happening.

Even on the bridge, everything seemed as normal as it could be. There had not even been a hail for 2 days, the last one came from earth requesting a status update. Indeed, the bridge was only partially staffed, as the ship was not assumed to arrive at it's destination, sector 3442, for 2 more days.

It was for this reason that the next occurrence seemed odd. A light on the communications console lit; it was red, and rested below the "emergency hail" label. Someone was hailing the ship.

Upon investigation, the computer showed it was signed by an earth vessel of some kind, but the exact encoding could not be deciphered by the computer. This was odd, given distress signals rarely were encoded in the first place. The message itself was in plain audio, and could be played back easily.

Because the encoding could not be understood, the origin had to be determined by scanners - it was coming from a planet in a near by system, system 0618.17; an unnamed solar system which had never been properly scouted, even by the Vulcans.

[GM]