A loud alarm pulled Lee from his much needed slumber. He sat up instantly, adrenaline pulling his reluctant muscles off the thin bunk. His eyes darted between the three others who shared the sleeping quarters while his mind shook off the haze of sleep. Two of them were already up and pulling on their light environment suits, simplified space suits that would keep them alive in the case of a hull breach, but weren't designed for long term space exposure. Taking the cue Lee slipped his feet into the legs of his own suit and, trying to mimic the actions of his clearly more experienced roommates, pulled on the rest of the suit. It was snug, but light and didn't restrict movement much. The helmet was folded up behind his head and its activation tab hung off his chest. A strong tug on the tab would release the spring loaded mechanism and the helm would shoot up over his head and snap into place in an instant.

"Get up, Jim." he called to the bunk above his where the other member of the room sat rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"What is it?" Jim asked.

"I don't know." Lee said snapping the thin collar closed around his neck. "But I get the feeling it's not bedtime."

One of the soldiers stopped on his way out the door and looked back at Lee, thinking for a moment.

"Uhh, you two should get over to engineering. Someone will give you orders there." he said, then spun around and flung himself down the corridor. Lee noted how he used his hands, grasping the thin rail that ran along each wall, to maneuver and gain momentum rather than depending on the reduced friction of his feet. Lee followed suit, setting off in the opposite direction.

The chief engineer of the Hammer, a short, serious woman names Daynes, stood mesmerized in front of a large display. Without taking her eyes off the screen she waved Lee over. He walked up next to her and looked at the display for a few seconds.

"What's that?" Lee asked hesitantly. Finally breaking her eyes away, Daynes gave Lee a bewildered look.

"Beats me. I've never seen anything like it." she said turning her attention back to the screen. There amidst a jumble of sensor readings and ship status displays was an image of a large object against a starry background, an external view. The object looked like a huge, dark sphere with a wide tube roughly half its diameter protruding from both sides. The figures on the display showed the tube to be roughly 200 meters in diameter. It was big enough for the Hammer to fly through with ease. The surface of the entire object was smooth. The only visible features were a cluster of small protrusions just above the tube.

"A ship?" Lee guessed.

"It's big enough to be a small station, but I've never seen a design like that and it won't respond to any of our hails. But the real interesting... There it is!" she said excitedly, pointing at the screen. For about a second one of the protrusions flickered with a bright red light.

"That's what the alarm was for. That's coherent light. Like a laser. But it's diffuse and not very intense." Daynes stared blankly at the display, deep in thought. "I think it's some kind of signal. It flickers on and off in repeating patterns about once a minute, but they don't have any structure I can recognize and they're too short to contain much information."

It was Lee's turn to sink into thought. The two of them stared silently at the display while the rest of the ship's crew hurriedly prepared for emergency procedures.

"Coherent light." Lee muttered to himself. "Diffuse, coherent light." He suddenly looked over at Daynes.

"Optical frequency signal?" Lee said. "Does this ship have an optical frequency comm system?" Daynes eyes grew wide as she turned slowly toward Lee.

"No." she replied. "I've never seen an optical comm on a ship."

Lee took a deep breath and a grin crept onto his face.

"Then I guess we're gonna have to improvise." he said.