Cloak and engage at warp 6...
O'Brien: Aye sir. Cloak is engaged and functioning normally.
Nog: Course laid in and engaged. ETA is appromately ten hours.
Kira: Commander, I believe that those bouys are emitting some sort of sensor jamming signal. I'm having trouble scanning the surrounding areas.
Odo: That could mean that there are Jem'Hadar ships in hiding in this area.
Hennessey: Red alert. I want this ship ready for battle if necessary. That does explain why none of our other probes picked up the bouys' presence. What about antiproton beams?
O'Brien: I'm not picking any kind of antiproton readings, but the sensor's effectiveness has been reduced by almost 50 percent. If there is an antiproton grid set up anywhere, we're not going to have much time to do anything about it by the time we pick it up.
Hennessey: Is there any way to increase sensor effectiveness?
O'Brien: Not without causing a phase variance which would give away our presence instanty. If there are Jem'Hadar in the area, they would be on us before we knew what happened.
Odo: So either way, we won't have much warning before an attack.
Hennessey: That's a risk we'll have to take for now. Maintain course and speed.
Ten hours of waiting and anxiety later...
Nog: Commander, we are approaching the bouy.
Hennessey: Bring us out of warp. Prepare to disengage cloak and raise shields.
Kira: Sensors are having trouble picking up anything beyond 0.1 lightyears.
O'Brien: The bouy is definitely emitting some sort of jamming signal. I'll have to run some sensor sweeps to figure out if we can trace any of it's subspace signals or the original source of that jamming signal.
Kira: I'm picking up scattered subspace signals. Most of them are fragmented or encrypted. None of them seem large enough to carry much information, though.
Hennessey: Can you trace them?
Kira: No, but it does look like the signals are being sent in the direction of the wormhole.
Nog: Can't we just destroy this bouy, regain sensors, and end the transmissions?
O'Brien: That would not only give away our position, but I doubt that it would be very effective in stopping the signals. We would have to destroy every bouy within 2 lightyears to weaken the signal that much.
Odo: And we could never get it all done before the Jem'Hadar showed up.
Kira: I think that I might have something. It looks like some of the signals are coming from a large array 0.4 lightyears from here.
O'Brien: You're right, Major. It looks like this is the relay station we were looking for. It we can take this out, the entire network will go down.
Hennessey:
Decloak, raise shields, and engage at maximum warp.
Engage at maximum warp.
RETURN TO UTOPIA HOMEPAGE