Bart thought back on the admiral’s final words. Obviously he cast a curse on this entire mission, because “uneventful” is exactly what’s going on.

Bart sat at the terminal in the operations section of Mungin watching as the computers downloaded another transmission from Probe 13. Looking up, he scanned the room, painted in a standard eggshell white, with light gray floors and track lighting overhead. There were several computer terminals stationed at various locations in the room, one for each of the team members. Two large screens flanked the walls near the exit to the room. They were set up so the analysts could work together on projects as well as doubling as a communications viewscreen.

Bart let his thoughts wander as the transmission from Probe 13 was being processed by the station’s computers. Operations was on deck two, while security and communications were located on deck one. The deck immediately below them held the rec room, gym, and holosuite. Farther down were the decks that held the living quarters, sickbay, armory, life support, and other sundry functions. The lowest deck, which they had dubbed “the boiler room,” was where the powerful generators that kept the entire system running smoothly resided. The base was very utilitarian, with minimal design for comfort.

Even that wouldn’t be a problem if we were kept busy. Given the lack of work though, plain walls and such become depressing over time. He stared at the walls, trying to motivate himself. He knew he ought to get up and start working on the recovered data, but he was having a hard time convincing himself anyone really cared what they were collecting here.

Looking across the room, he saw Priya listening to a recording they’d made a week ago. She looked up and noticed him watching her.

“Is there something you needed to bring to my attention, Petty Officer?” She spun in her chair to face him, removing her earpiece. The modified communications device was partially hidden beneath her red hair.

“No, I was just thinking about how boring it’s been lately. From the way the admiral had built this assignment up, I was really expecting a lot more than just this. If that Cardassian cruiser hadn’t transited through the system, I’d begin to think the rest of the universe was an illusion.” Bart stretched, feeling the tension in his shoulders and neck. “What in the world is so important about this site?”

“We were told to monitor specifically for any communications between the Dominion and either the Breen or the Tzenkethi.” She rose from her chair and straightened out the earring she wore on her right ear. She followed his lead and stretched also before retaking her seat. Just before she buried her head in her work again, she smiled wistfully at him. “The commander did point out this was an inactive sector of the conflict, Dr. Faulwell.”

“Inactive is right and please call me Bart.” Bart groaned as he stood up from the stool he’d been sitting on. “We could probably all pack up and go home and no one would notice. I don’t know how you keep from going insane, Priya. I mean, the highlight of my shift is getting to listen to that repair facility near Delavi. I swear, I know more about Cardassian freighters and tugs than I ever thought was possible.”

“True, there hasn’t exactly been a pressing need for a Cardassian language expert. You’ve had more than enough time to brush up on your language skills.” She paused for a moment, and then said in a softer voice, “Even if you do still speak with an accent.”

Bart simulated tossing a grenade at her and turned back to the computer terminal. An all too familiar noise announced the transmission from Probe 13 was completed. He called up the results of the transmission, his fingers flying across the touch pad and, as expected, it was the weekly transmissions from Cardassia Prime to various outlying bases discussing upcoming personnel transfers and supply requests.

He noted with a passing interest the Cardassians had changed their encryption system again. He transferred the data to his padd and walked over to the replicator to get a cup of coffee. Armed with fresh caffeine, he sat down at the small table nearby to see whether this was simply an updated system or if they’d actually done a communications change.

“It could be worse.” Priya’s voice broke through his concentration. Her almost cheerful voice caught his attention and he turned to see her resting her head on one arm, looking at him.

“Oh? This I have to hear.” Bart chuckled, setting the padd down.

“We could be sitting on top of this rock. Nothing like temperatures averaging around twenty below zero to help you appreciate how good you’ve got it,” she said. Bart felt his skin crawl at the thought of being out in the almost permanent blizzard conditions that existed just beyond their lair. Priya continued, “Of course, it’d beat being on Antros III itself.”

“It’d be a little tougher being stationed on an airless world, I must agree.” Antros III might have been a Class-M world once long ago, but something had stripped it of any atmosphere it had. In a way, it reminded Bart of being on Earth, only in reverse. Here, the moon was habitable (if only barely), but the planet was a huge ball of rock, hanging over their head. “Remember when we first got here and Jamie was spending all that time examining Antros with the short-range sensors? I thought Zarinth was going to have a conniption fit if he didn’t quit messing with the settings.”

“Serves him right. I thought I had some tough trainers when I first joined the militia, but Zarinth is incredible. I’m surprised his people haven’t killed him yet.” Priya shook her head in amazement.

Jamie Cruz entered the room just then. “Well, he’s trying to keep them sharp. A bored security guard is a dangerous security guard, especially around all this equipment. I’ve already had to explain to McKenzie why he can’t take over the zero-g racquetball court and turn it into a target range.”

“Oh, don’t tell me he’s on that kick again,” Bart said in an aggravated tone of voice. “I thought Zarinth got through to him last time.”

“I thought so, too. I guess they’re as bored as we—”

Cruz was cut off in mid-sentence by a sudden chime from the computer. “Incoming message from Probe 42.”

“Forty-two? Have we ever gotten anything from that one?” Cruz looked from Priya to Faulwell apparently hoping someone would have an answer.

Bart rushed over to his station and typed in a few queries into the main computer. “No, in fact, Mungin shows no traffic of any type ever coming in on it. I’m getting a preliminary reading now.” While he examined the results the computer was sending him, Priya started running a diagnostic on the traffic. After a few minutes, Bart looked up at Jamie. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. This is seriously strong encryption on this message.”

“I’ve been looking at the message logs,” Priya said, following up on Faulwell’s initial report. “There was no preliminary chatter, nothing that would tell me who might have sent it or why. It just started at a specific time and stopped at a specific time. No acknowledgment from whomever received it either. I honestly can’t say if it was Cardassian, English, or straight binary.”

“Bart, any chance these might be Jem’Hadar communications?” Cruz asked, sitting down with the Bajoran officer to go over her preliminary analysis.

“I don’t think so. This doesn’t resemble anything we have on record for them.”

Bart was busy typing in a new diagnostic test when Cruz came over and tapped him on the shoulder. “Okay folks, I know you were just getting off shift, but if you don’t mind…?”

“Mind? Are you kidding?” Bart looked up at the warrant officer with a surprised expression on his face. “After the past few weeks, this is definitely worth losing a sleep shift over.” The cryptanalyst got up and started pacing around the room, his fingers interlaced behind his neck. “The only problem is, there’s only this one piece of traffic. We’re going to probably need a lot more if we’re going to break it. The sample is too short to run most of the tests I know.”

“Well, that’s not exactly up to me, Bart.” Cruz smiled at the linguist’s enthusiasm. “However, I’m sure we can dedicate a link to monitor this probe.” He moved back over to his workstation and tapped his combadge. “Sabran, we’ve got a new signal down here. If you wouldn’t mind, could you come down here and run some tests?”

“Why would I mind, Mr. Cruz?” The Vulcan’s confusion was evident even over the link. “Is that not why I was assigned to the team? I will be down there shortly.” Bart watched as Cruz started to explain further and then apparently decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Sabran would be in the operations center before he could finish.

The group quickly divided up to begin analyzing this mysterious signal. Bart began by getting a printout of the signal. Taking a look at the entire message, he punched some commands into the computer to begin looking for any anomalies or sections that repeated. He was looking for anything that would give him a chance to start identifying the encryption system. In addition, the computer would provide a frequency count of individual letters as well as groups of two, three, four, and five.

“Priya, any luck identifying what language this is?” Looking up, he realized two hours had passed while he had been analyzing the results the computer had given him.

The Bajoran looked up from the padd in front of her and pinched the bridge of her nose. “No, but there’s nothing here besides this message. As far as I can tell, it’s machine code of some kind. We’ll have to break into it before I can find the actual language. How about you?”

“Nothing. The first rule of cryptanalysis is to know what the target language is,” Bart admitted, stretching his arms over his head. “It makes it a heck of a lot easier to set up your diagnostics if you know what you’re going after.”

Sabran looked up from his scope, “So, she needs you to break the encryption before she can identify the language and you need her to identify the language before you can break the cipher? Most unfortunate.”

Bart laughed, “Well, I can break it, eventually. I’ve translated a few artifacts without having a clue who made them or what their purpose was. It just helps if you know something about the culture. The more clues you have, the better your chances are.”

Priya looked over at Jamie. “How are you doing over there, Mr. Cruz?”

He looked up from his station and smiled. “Please, call me Jamie, okay? I’m patching a range of subspace frequencies into Probes 24 and 38, since they’re the two closest to 42. If we pick up another unidentified message, it’ll alert those two and we’ll try to triangulate the message. If we’re lucky, we’ll catch the receiving station acknowledging and we can see where this message is going.”

“How long will that take, Mis—Jamie?” Priya asked, picking up her padd again, and touching a few symbols on the page with her stylus, isolating them for further study later.

“Reprogramming the probes? Already done. How long will it take to find where these messages are coming from? All depends on if and when they transmit again. I can’t find what’s not out there. I’ve filed the initial report with Starfleet. I forwarded a section of what we picked up for them to do some crunching on those big computers they’ve got back there.”

“Do you believe they’ll have any more success than we?” Sabran asked. “I’m having difficulty even identifying the transmission method for this message. It’s akin to nothing I’ve ever encountered.”

A silence settled back over the room while they continued to examine the message. After a little while, the silence was broken by a beeping coming from Jamie’s console. Touching a control, a fuzzy picture appeared on a small communications screen set in the wall.

“This is Raven, over,” Jamie replied to the hail. When they had arrived, their orders explained that even over secure comms, they were to use cover terms. If the Federation was able to break Cardassian codes, there was every reason to believe they could return the favor.

“Raven, this is Tiger. Reference your last message. Drop all else. Ironclad coverage on lone wolf in the pack. Forward all reports to this station every twelve hours. Out.”

The message faded out as the transmission was cut off, leaving an eerie silence in the room. What in the world have we discovered? Bart wondered.