Before the struts had even settled on the duranium deck, Admiral Reyes knew something was wrong. Why else would Commodore Olivia Larsen, Captain Titus Bishop and Dr. Tom Brooks be standing there in the middle of the shuttlebay waiting for them? She could see it on their faces too. Well, on the faces of the commodore and the captain, at least. The physicist actually looked rather excited, but she knew that wasn’t always a good thing.

Admiral Reyes rose swiftly and made her way out of the back to greet the waiting officers. “This is quite the welcoming party. To what do we owe the honor?”

“Subspace decided to go and shit the bed,” Dr. Brooks answered, cutting straight to the chase without any cordialities. “In quite a curious way, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.” For a man who’d spent his entire career tinkering with the spacetime continuum, that was saying something too.

Commodore Olivia Larsen, the new Managing Director of the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity, had only been on the job for several weeks, and she didn’t have as casual a relationship with the admiral yet. Consequently, her words were less colorful and more professional: “Ma’am, at approximately 1100 hours, we lost contact with the subspace repeater at Gamma Hromi. At first, we figured it was an anomaly, but over the next few hours, we saw further degradation of our long-range comms net until the last link was lost.”

“Since 1620, we’ve been completely out of touch with Fourth Fleet Command,” Captain Titus Bishop added, the displeasure evident in his tone. He understood the purpose of their mission to K’t’inga, and the backdrop under which it was set. Although they were in presumably allied territory, they were poking the bear, and the Klingons could be brash – especially since the rise of Toral. He did not like surprises generally, but especially not one like this. Not right now. A blackout of comms was far from ideal.

“Was it a system failure?” Admiral Reyes mused. These things certainly happened from time to time. “Or a malware attack?” They’d had issues with that recently on Duraxis when a Borg cyberweapon was unleashed upon their reactor facility. “Physical loss even?” That was the most unlikely, not because there weren’t powers posturing for a fight, but simply because, if her crew had found evidence of such a thing, they wouldn’t have waited for her to return. Devreux, Larsen or Bishop would have paged her right away, even in the middle of the diplomatic conference.

“We considered all those possibilities,” Commodore Larsen confirmed. “However, as we dug deeper, we got our answer. It isn’t that the repeaters stopped talking, but rather that our signal can’t reach them. Subspace is no longer serving as an effective medium for the link.”

Admiral Reyes looked over at Dr. Brooks. This was very much his domain, especially since the passing of Dr. Lockwood.

“As best we can determine, it’s as though a blanket has been thrown over us, and any signal we send is lost within its folds,” Dr. Brooks explained. “Think like a jammer, except not.”

Admiral Reyes frowned. What type of a comparison was that?

“What I mean to say is that a jammer would suppress us from the point of origin,” Dr. Brooks elaborated. “But in this case, we can get a pingback from the Klingon outpost on Beta Penthe, but not from many other vectors or distances.”

“What about a series of jammers, say along our border, to cut us off?” Ambassador Drake asked.

“If it was just Starbase 86 and Gamma Hromi, I’d give you that as an option, but we can’t get a pingback from Qo’noS or B’Moth either,” Dr. Brooks replied. When considering such a theory, B’Morth was particularly interesting since it lay in the clean opposite direction of the Federation. “It’s as though our carrier wave is geofenced to a slice of this local sector block, and the team is working right now to ascertain the exact dimensions of this perimeter.”

“Could this be the Empire’s doing?” Captain Alleyne asked warily. “We didn’t exactly have the kindest of exchanges with General Kloss down there.” In fact, she’d never seen a negotiation as hostile as what she’d just borne witness to.

Captain Bishop and Admiral Reyes exchanged a knowing glance. As Polaris Squadron’s strategic operations officer, and a seasoned veteran that could be trusted, he’d been one of the few Reyes had read into what her clandestine team had uncovered. Really just him, Drake, Alleyne and Devreux. Plus Dr. Brooks, because somehow the enigmatic physicist was involved.

“I doubt it,” Dr. Brooks shook his head, dismissing the idea without a second thought. “Such subtlety and sophistication isn’t their modus operandi. If they wanted to quiet our comms, they’d have done it the old fashioned way… with disruptor cannons.”

That didn’t make Captain Alleyne feel any better, but it did make Captain Bishop chuckle.

“Let’s not forget our friends from the Science Institute,” Admiral Reyes reminded the physicist. “While K’t’inga is an unsophisticated place where they build spaceframes like it’s still the forties, Voragh and his team from Mempa V had a mastery of subspace mechanics that could give even you and Lockwood a run for your money.” Those Klingons, cut from the same cloth as their own Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity, had been instrumental in cracking the code of the labyrinth over Vespara.

“True, but if they were responsible here, it’d be like cutting off your nose to spite your face,” Dr. Brooks noted. “The perturbations we’re detecting in the subspace field are absolute. It’s not a modulation thing. It’s simply nothing in, and nothing out, their own signals included. I don’t see them breaking their space for our sake… there are easier ways.” Like cannons, as he’s said earlier. Lord knew there were enough of them here in the bustling system at the heart of the Klingon military-industrial complex.

“Do the Klingons know yet?” Admiral Reyes asked.

“Would be hard not to,” shrugged Dr. Brooks. “Have got to assume they’ve realized they can’t call big daddy Toral by now.”

“While that may be the case,” Captain Bishop acknowledged. “So far they’ve given no outward indication of their awareness. No shift in posture, no change in force disposition, and no hasty arrivals or departures. Nothing at all that appears out of the ordinary for a system of this scale.”

That was itself curious, Reyes thought to herself. “I doubt that will hold for long. Let’s stay vigilant.”

Captain Bishop nodded. His folks were already on it, as was Captain Vox over on the Diligent, eyes up for even the slightest change.

Admiral Reyes then turned back to Dr. Brooks and Commodore Larsen. “When you said nothing in and nothing out, did you mean just signals, or does this issue go beyond that?”

“You mean can we transit the boundary?” Dr. Brooks confirmed.

She nodded.

“At a fundamental level, signals are just low mass-energy variations of our ships,” Dr. Brooks replied. “If a signal isn’t getting through, it’d be odd to assume a ship would.”

“With your permission, Admiral, I’d like to test that assumption,” Commodore Larsen jumped in. While Dr. Brooks was an impressive theorist, she was far more an empiricist. She’d learned it was dangerous to jump so swiftly to conclusions.

“What’re you thinking?”

“A field trip,” Commodore Larsen proposed. “Let me take a runabout out and probe the boundary.”

Captain Bishop looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “Olivia, you realize we’re deep in Klingon territory, don’t you? They may be our allies, but they’re not going to just let you take a joyride through the core of…

He was cut off mid-sentence as Admiral Reyes’ combadge chirped.

The admiral tapped it. “Reyes. Go.”

“Bridge here, ma’am,” came the voice of their chief operations officer, Lieutenant Commander Elena Mattson. “Sorry to bother, but you may want to get up here. I’ve got a quite grumpy Klingon General Kloss on the line, asking for you by name.”

“On my way. Reyes out,” she replied before tapping her badge off and turning to the others. “Who wants to take bets whether he wants to go another round or whether this is about this new development?”

“It could be both at the same time,” Ambassador Drake chuckled.

“I’d better get back to my ship,” Captain Alleyne added.

“Agreed,” Admiral Reyes nodded. It was probably for the best if something was about to pop off. “Both of you.” She wanted Ambassador Drake over there too, just in case. “Tom, get back down to the lab and see if you and the wizkids can figure anything else out. Larsen, Bishop, with me.”