Commander Richards had been listening intently to the conversations next to him. This was still a very important part of the process, and he was thrilled to be there. If only his wife and son could be there. Regretfully, being part of an in-system patrol vessel meant keeping family members at home. Families were only permitted on long-term, deep-space exploration vessels, another reason why he wanted to be stationed on the Enterprise. The initial thought of being stuck in Cardassian space for six months almost made him jump out of his skin. Staying for a week... that sounded better. The last several days had been quite a chore for him. Not only was he adapting to a new crew and captain, he was still configuring the new console. The station he was sitting at was only meant for general use. The specific controls and displays for sensor analysis weren't included. Once the new console was installed and configured properly, Kenyon had spent the last two shifts trying to configure the sensor array properly. He was amazed anyone could see anything with the array as misaligned as it was.

Well, if forced to admit, they weren't that far out of line. Proclaiming the inaccuracies, however, had gone far to make him immediately invaluable to the captain. To him, Captain Bolerov was in his mid sixties, and wouldn't be on active duty much longer. Considering Kirk's proclaimed discomfort in the position he currently held, Kenyon could wind up the captain of the Warlord in a couple of years, when Bolerov retired again. That suited him just fine. In his mind, he repeated 'Captain Kenyon Richards'. It had a nice ring to it... and... if Bolerov retired within the next three years, Kenyon would make captain before he was forty.

For the sake of being overly thorough, he had been running complete diagnostics on the sensor equipment for his entire shift. The last thing on his list was a field test of the broad spectrum tachyon burst, the BTB. Kenyon had been curious about this technology ever since he was told it existed. For several years, Starfleet had been able to detect cloaked vessels by using a tachyon beam. This, however, was the first implementation of a refracted beam which created a three hundred-sixty by two hundred-seventy degree sweep that would encompass the entire area around a ship at once. Before, you either had to know the location of a cloaked device or ship, or hope it crossed the beam. Now, if it was anywhere within several ten thousand kilometers of the ship, it would get discovered. Supposedly, even improvements made to cloaking technology were still vulnerable to detection because of its wide range of detection frequencies.

With the conversation dying down at the center of the bridge, Richards decided to finish his testing. "Commander Kirk, I was finishing my sensor diagnostics earlier. Do you mind if I initiate a tachyon burst?"

Kirk scratched his head. "Weren't you testing that equipment yesterday?"

"Yeah, but I made a few adjustments after that," he added innocently.

Stephen briefly considered whether the Cardassian escorts would care, or even notice. "Na, I don't care. Let it go."

"Aye, aye, Sir," he replied officially. "Initiating broad spectrum tachyon burst." He pressed a button on his console. The graphic just above showed a radar-like display with a beam sweeping around a silhouette of the top of the ship. He was shocked, as was the rest of the group, when a dot lit up behind the silhouette. Like everyone else, Richards simply stared at the display for several moments.

Stephen was the first to speak up. "Commander... what WAS that?"

Richards shook his head. "I dunno, Sir. Let me do it again." He initiated the burst again in front of a slightly concerned group of people. This time, the sweep went cleanly. "Maybe it's just a glitch in the equipment." Kenyon offered with a shrug. "I'll give it another..."

"No, it wasn't," the Betazoid woman seated next to him countered. "I sensed a great deal of surprise and shock coming from back there. It's gone now, but there were a lot of somebodys back there who were more surprised than us, or I wouldn't have sensed them so far away."

Why couldn't this be easy, Kirk thought. "Commander Richards, go back in the logs. See if you can get any specs on the bogey."

"Aye, aye, Sir." Kenyon had to admit, he was a little uncomfortable about that. He wasn't expecting to find anything, but pull off a simple test. He looked quickly through the log entries and found the record of the tachyon burst. The only downside to these bursts was it didn't give details, just revealed presence.

"You don't suppose the romulans came out here?" Callis asked.

Picard shook his head. "I doubt it. They have their own problems right now... besides, after making such grandiose gestures of peace, it would seem counterproductive to be caught in the alpha quadrant now." He thought for a moment. "Perhaps it's the Defiant. Captain Kira Nerys is supposed to be attending at least part of this event."

Richards shook his head. "It's too big to be Defiant. I'm measuring it at just under four hundred meters in length, about two hundred meters wide."

"Perhaps a K'vort klingon cruiser," Callis offered.

Kirk shook his head. "No, those ships are wider than they are long." Callis shrugged. "I don't know what it is," Kirk admitted, "but our escorts need to know... so does the captain." He tapped his comm badge. "Bridge to Captain Bolerov." He waited a moment. "Kirk to Bolerov, I need you to wake up, Sir."

Eventually, Kirk's comm badge popped. "What is it, Commander?" the captain's voice asked weakly.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, Sir, but we need you out here."

There was a heavy sigh. "I'll be right there."