The Three of Us

Part 28 - Aubergine

Aubergine.

It was a Sunday, and there was a message from Lili on Malcolm's PADD. But it was only one word – aubergine.

He sent a reply, seeing that the timestamp was from early that morning. It had likely been sent while she was getting ready for work. His response was – Did you send this in error, Darling?

But the same one-word reply came back – aubergine.

Perhaps she's busy. Perhaps it's some sort of secret code, he thought to himself. He was not scheduled to share any meals with the captain that day, yet it promised to be a full day for him all the same. Duties needed to be re-split and re-thought out, what with Curtis and Haynem both out indefinitely. Security needed to conduct its own readiness drills. It had been far too long.

And so he let the odd message go, but it stuck in his craw, and he wondered just how the hell he was supposed to interpret the cryptic message.

=/\=

Travis piloted as Diana monitored. "There's a really big anomaly, bearing one mark two seven five point six," she said, peering into a scope.

He steered around it as they noticed a shimmering in the distances. "What's that?" asked the captain.

"It's apparently made of refined alloys," Diana said, "but I think the anomaly is distorting our readings."

Hoshi was listening and said, "I've got static, but it seems like there's some sort of a message out there. It's audio only."

"Let's hear it," said Archer.

The sound was odd and contained clicking, sometimes it seemed almost like Morse code. At other times, it seemed very nearly like an animal whining in pain. At still other times, it was a little like speech.

"It repeats after a while," Hoshi said. "I'm guessing it's a distress call."

"Can you translate it at all?" asked Captain Archer.

She shook her head. "I can't pick up the syntax."

"The ship, or whatever it is," Malcolm said, "it's not moving much, so far as I can tell."

"So it possibly is a distress call," Jonathan concluded. "Can you get any biosign readings?" he asked Diana.

"I'm getting the same distortions," she replied. "Near as I can figure, the biosigns are Ikaaran, but I can't be certain, sir."

"Can you cross-reference the hull alloy readings to the Ikaaran database, or any readings we got from their mining site?" Jonathan inquired.

"Too much distortion," Diana replied.

"Can we do any better with the visual?" asked the captain.

Hoshi flipped switches. "It's not working. This anomaly seems worse than others we've encountered before."

"I wonder if a shuttlepod would be able to get better readings." Jonathan mused. "Maybe we could get closer."

The shimmering changed, and the ship fired something away from them. It detonated, and the staticky message became clearer for a moment. "... Trapped. Need assistance. Repeat." It was a woman's voice.

"Get me Tucker," Captain Archer said to Hoshi.

"Go ahead."

"Can we line Shuttlepod One with an extra layer of Trellium D and head into the heart of that anomaly?"