Not 'Trouble', Precisely, But We Do Encounter A Strange Vessel...

I arrived on the bridge and relieved Ensign Bayarmaa, who stood up and headed towards the back of the bridge and the turbolift calmly. I found a note written into a file on the console addressed to me. I opened it, figuring it was current astrometric data, and it was, but appended to the end was a single sentence, "PS: If you change your mind about dating people, per the new regs, I'm officially getting in line for a date: call me."

I sent the note to the coms console in my quarters and resolved to speak to Sankara about it after my shift was done.

Things were largely uneventful for the next three-and-a-quarter hours as our two ships sailed on through deep space at a quarter impulse, scanners boosted to maximum sustainable gain looking for a habitable system to colonize. At least twelve members of the Ishtar's crew had refused to swear the new oath and would have to be set down as colonists, my shift briefing had informed me, while nearly fifty members of the Justice's crew had decided to request and been granted 'Colonial Retirement' on our first colony world.

However, at the three-hours-and-fifteen-minutes mark or so a strange warp signature came hurtling out of a relatively nearby star system on an intercept course.

"Yellow alert!" Captain Lance barked, and we waited for them to establish coms protocols, broadcasting the universal signs of greeting according to the new regs, such as the Fibonacci Sequence out to the hundredth iteration.

A few minutes later the ship, which was moving at warp 5.55 by our metrics, came within visual range to the naked eye, and then in under five seconds, slowed to a relativistic standstill, a feat even the Justice couldn't match. We waited for their hail but revived none, until the science officer, (one of the transfers that I didn't know yet,) said: "They are bathing our shields in a low-frequency radio wave burst, I think they may be attempting to communicate via an analog radio signal." He said.

"Can the sensors de-code it?" The captain asked.

"Possibly, but the result would most likely be gibberish without first understanding their signaling patterns." The science officer, a female Andorian, replied.

"Try anyway, at worst we are no closer to communication than we are now, and signal them back by dimming and brightening external lights in the universal greeting pattern. What's the response from the Justice?"

"The Brevet-Captain is coming on screen now." Lieutenant-Commander Shlegli, our coms officer, replied, and the screen lit up with the face of the Empress-To-Be.

"Captain, we received the subspace burst about the ship trying to hail you, do you want us to close and attempt communication also?" She asked.

"Um, negative, it might spook them, they probably approached us first because they were afraid of your larger ship, hold station and feed us any data you can." Captain Lance told her double.

"Very well Captain, but understand that you are to patch them through to me when communications are established, Brevet-Commodore Lance out." The, (apparently now Brevet-Commodore,) said, and cut the feed.

"Computer, visual of the other ship, main screen," Captain Lance said, and I got my first good look at our new contact. They were clearly a relatively primitive race compared to the federation, in all except their warp and maneuvering technology. Their ship was long and round, consisting of an immense central column around which were arrayed six rings of pre-synthetic-gravity living and working quarters. It was armed only with gauss cannons and photon torpedoes, both now outmoded by imperial standards, though they still were a threat to the Ishtar, and obviously, they had not discovered sub-space signaling. Their warp drive was unusual, however, consisting of three pairs of nacells attached to three spars which our scans of their approach indicated generated three separate warp fields that combined into one to allow this ship to put on quite a turn of speed, far above the warp 5.55 they approached with.

As I watched they started to dim and brighten their own running lights in some kind of pattern, and after two repeats I understood it. "Captain this is a variant of the Fibonacci Sequence called the Saransk Pattern which starts with three ones and the past three numbers are combined to form the next number." I said, and the captain smiled. "So the computer informs me ensign, and we may be getting a clue to their culture, as all their designs seem to be based around the number three." For the next hour and a half we exchanged information rapidly using light pulses, while the computer digested the information and built up enough data to form a solid enough base to activate the universal translator, then the screen finally came on, and we all were in for a shock.