When Admiral Janeway strode onto the bridge of the Enterprise, she looked immediately to the head of Ops. K'itar's people had provided the raw data from the cast-offs' transmissions, which she had forwarded on to Commander Kadohata for analysis.
"Admiral," the commander greeted her from her spot standing at one of the back science stations.
"Any progress?" Janeway questioned as she walked over.
"Nothing so far. They're using such a weak and obscure bandwith that it's difficult to find it as it fades in subspace." Kadohata turned to face her superior before she dropped a small bomb. "It's actually radio signals."
While not at Tom Paris's level of expertise, Kathryn Janeway knew enough history to know what those were. "Radio signals?"
"Or this planet's version of them." Bringing up a new display on the screen, Miranda pointed out the details. "The signal is degrading rapidly – for something that was sent only two days ago, there's barely traces of it left. It does give us a general idea of a direction, but we can't narrow the field down to less than a width of one hundred light years."
Kathryn felt her heart begin to sink, but this wasn't the time. "Is it a frequency that we would find on our normal sensor sweeps?"
"No, Admiral. We wouldn't know it was there if we weren't looking for it."
Janeway nodded. "Keep at it, Commander. The captain?"
"In his ready room, Admiral."
After gaining admittance, she walked directly over to where Picard was seated behind his desk. "We may have a bigger problem than we originally thought."