27 February 2789 (Lexington)
0630 local time aboard the Always Ready
Capt O'Bannion entered the bridge. "Morning Mister Hogue, I take it another boring night?" As he sat down and pulled up the ships log. "What the hell is this?" He asked as his eyes found the log entry noting the extremely faint jump signature. "Mister Hogue, answers, why was I not awakened?"
Mister Hogue could not but feel the eyes of the sensor tech on the back of his head as he slowly answered his commander "Sir the signature was so faint I figured it was just a sensor glitch and not worthy of disturbing you."
"What part of the standing orders are not clear to you? ANYTHING out of the ordinary means just that, a faint sensor read of a jump signature qualifies as out of the ordinary." Capt O'Bannion said as he turned to the communication tech, "Comms get me fleet command and notify Colonel Mitchell that we have possible but unconfirmed hostiles in the system and that a full report will be transmitted within the hour."
Turning back to Mister Hogue and fixing him with an icy stare he softly spoke "Mister Hogue, you better hope and pray that this was a sensor glitch, because there will be hell to pay if this delay in reporting a possible hostile costs the Cavalry lives, I might just walk you to the nearest airlock and toss you out of it."
Turning to the sensor tech, Capt O'Bannion said "Pull up the sensor logs, I want to see this faint signal. See if we can get a read on if it was jumping in or jumping out. If jumping in, we got some time, if jumping out, then whoever it was did what they came to do and left, and that is not good."
"Sir, Capt Gonzalez is on the comms, they are secure using laser communication." The comm tech reported.
"Hector, we got a possible problem. My sensors picked up a extremely faint jump signature last night. We cannot tell if it was leaving or incoming."
"Why I am just hearing this Pete? I mean it has been quiet a long while but we are a single jump from Combine lines. We could have a damn warship inbound to our location right now!" Capt Gonzalez almost yelled, in the background, Capt O'Bannion heard his fleet commander order "Comms order all ships to immediately prep for jump to Tango 1. Contact Cavalry HQ and notify them of our actions. Suggest Colonel Mitchell sound a general alert and disperse his troops ASAP."
"Pete, make ready for emergency jump to Tango 1. I want a full write up of what the hell happened. I hope to hell I am wrong but we are not taking any chances. That jump signature could easily be a scout ship leaving after seeing our deployments and right now a Combine warship or more could be making ready to jump right into the middle of us. It will take the fleet 15 min to make ready to jump, pray we make it."
"You got it Hector, I will have a full write up for you asap. Making ready for Tango 1."