Deep Space Eleven was motionless but watchful in the void of space.

The stars across the region seemed farther apart, their light thinner, filtered through the edge of Federation space. The station’s hull was lit only by its own navigation strobes and internal systems—functional glows without warmth or vanity.

The traffic lanes, charted and cataloged by habit, remained active on paper but saw little real use. No scheduled arrivals. No patrol transitions. Just the low hum of background telemetry and the occasional handshake from a distant beacon confirmed the station still existed.

Inside, the station turned on in stages. Systems cycled, diagnostics rolled forward, and lights began to rise across unoccupied corridors. Alpha shift was still an hour away, but in Operations, the day had already started.

Under the watch of Gamma Shift personnel, Operations moved at a subdued pace. The overhead lights held to their pre-dawn dim, casting long shadows across consoles and unoccupied stations. The air was cool, still carrying the static scent of a scrubbed atmosphere. Gamma shift watchstanders moved sparingly, speaking only when necessary, as they carried out their work with the low, practiced rhythm of personnel trained not to disturb the silence unless it was broken first.

Lieutenant Commander Loyo Mojis, Strategic Operations Officer of Deep Space Eleven and Gamma Shift Officer of the Deck stood at the center of Operations with the stillness of a Bajoran who didn’t believe in guesswork.

Tall and angular, with a face that seemed permanently caught between suspicion and certainty, Mojis carried the quiet authority of someone who had spent too many years on the frontier not to notice when things started to go quiet for the wrong reasons.

He’d been at the central console for over an hour, parsing through a sequence of irregular phase readings that had begun registering in the outer sensor lattice three nights ago. At first glance, the anomalies were insignificant: minor spectral deviations tucked below the ambient scatter threshold. But Loyo had learned long ago that the patterns that tried hardest to look random were rarely accidents.

He had isolated the signal half an hour earlier—a recurring deviation embedded in the passive sweep of the portside sensor grid. It pulsed every ninety-seven-point-three seconds, steady and surgical, originating from a fixed coordinate 1.2 million kilometers off the station’s forward port bow.

It wasn’t a reflection or energetic drift.

The subspace harmonics were too stable. The resonance gradient was precise. The decay curve followed a controlled slope indicative of dampened emissions. He ruled out known traffic patterns, filtered Arbazan’s residual radiation, and cleared every registered contact within a three-light-hour radius.

 Loyo knew it was too damned peculiar to ignore.

He tapped his combadge.

“Operations to Commander Thorne.”

“Right here, Mister Loyo,” Thorne said in between sipping her morning coffee as she strode toward the center console from the turbolift.

“Three nights in a row,” she said before he could speak. “I’ve seen the scatter in the overnight summaries—thought it was telemetry drift.”

“It isn’t,” Loyo replied, stepping aside to give her full access to the console. “It’s phase shielded. Repeating on a fixed interval. Origin’s holding just outside the portside boundary—1.2 million kilometers. Too clean to be natural, too weak to trip a flag.”

Thorne studied the readout, lips pressed into a thin line. The pulse repeated. Ninety-seven-point-three seconds.

“Filtered out the usual culprits?“ she asked.

“Arbazan residuals, beacon traffic, buoy returns. Civilian pings came up clean. It’s not ours.”

She nodded once. “It’s external, it’s deliberate, and it’s quiet.“

“Which makes it dangerous,“ Loyo said.

Now, she looked at him. “Anyone else flagged it?”

“No one. I pulled it under gamma authority and sat on it until I could run it down.”

Thorne’s gaze lingered on the waveform. She took a sip of coffee, then set the mug down beside the console.

“Log it. Everything. Cross-check for telemetry anomalies in the forward sensor array and verify that all components running in passive modes are functioning properly. And lock the data behind your codes.”

“Yes, ma’am.“

“You did the right thing bringing it to me.” Thorne’s tone softened slightly.

“Computer, locate Captain Maddox.“ Thorne ordered.

“Captain Maddox is in the Station Commander’s Office.“ The main computer reported.

“Naturally, he would use the service entrance,” Thorne said almost to herself.

Thorne left Loyo without a word, her pace clipped as she crossed Operations. Gamma Shift didn’t stop her. They barely looked up. Whatever it was, it didn’t concern them—yet.

She reached the forward bulkhead and stopped in front of the main office door. The standard Starfleet identifier was affixed cleanly to the frame:

CAPT L. J. MADDOX, STARFLEET

COMMANDING OFFICER, DEEP SPACE ELEVEN

She hit the chime with a single press.

A pause. Then:

“Enter.”

The door parted, and she stepped in.

Maddox was already standing behind his desk. The office was spare, all function—dim LCARS glow, a side console live with station diagnostics, the faint hum of power couplings under the deck. His presence filled the room more than anything else.

“Talk,“ Maddox ordered.

“Gamma Shift picked up a phase-shielded signal just outside the outer sensor net,“ Thorne replied. “Repeating interval—ninety-seven-point-three seconds. Low power, fixed position. Loyo’s been monitoring it for three nights. It held steady again tonight.“

“What’s your read?“ Maddox’s jaw moved once.

“It’s not scatter. Too disciplined. It filtered clean from the Arbazan bleed and corridor echoes. Deliberate monitoring.

“Who else knows?“

“Just him. And me.”

Maddox nodded once. “Roust Harin. I want a subspace harmonic sweep and phase-layer mapping as soon as possible. Lock it behind Level Six access.“

“It’s already secured.”

“Move.” Maddox didn’t thank her.

Thorne turned and left as she sipped her coffee.