Shelaf, who had kept his silence to far, spoke up. "Woah! Mysterious aliens and our first thought turns to attack and defence!?" He stood up, pacing the length of the room and turning back. "What about setting up first contact protocols, finding a way to make peaceful contact, modifying our sensors to get through the hull? These are all things we need to think of. How about protecting our comms system from the overload, do we have logs of the comms message?"
He stopped pacing and turned to glare at the assembled officers, his gaze focusing on Reece. "There's no need for you to be bothered with tactical systems, sir. I can deal with that. I've been using them long enough. If the science department..." here he nodded at Lee "Can figure out what that message is, that will free up Engineering to figure out how to protect our comm systems, reinforcing them against whatever that message is." He sighed and sat down.
"Seems to me this is a peaceful, first contact mission. Theres no indication this ship has any hostile intent, and when they see a ship cruise up thats raising shields and all manner of tactical systems, it'll assume the worst. I'd recommend not making any moves that could be seen as even slightly provocative, or this thing will jab us and run faster than we can react." He finished speaking and looked at the assembled officers, awaiting their opinions.
As she listened to Chief Greegy's remarks about it being a first contact style mission, Archangel's face took on a slightly greenish tint as she flushed in embarrassement. For a moment, she wrestled with her conscience about talking back to senior officers. Her more rebellious side won.
"I didn't mean that we go into this with an aggressive posture, Chief," she said. "I thought that we should at least have the capability of defending ourselves against any possible threat. We don't have to engage the measures if the vessel doesn't prove to be hostile." She glanced down at her PADD before looking up at the captain. "I think our best defense against the transmission is to disable all power to the internal communication systems. Take them offline completely. But, as a fail-safe, it might be prudent to replicate ear defenders for all crewmembers and have sickbay standing by, in case it doesn't work."
In the back of her mind, she prayed tat it would. It was one of the downsides of going up againt the unknown : You had no idea how todefend yourself against it should it prove to be hostile. However, the excitement factor made up for it. This was one of the main good points to space exploration, discovering new forms of life.
While she waited for someone to voice their opinion about her defense plan against the harmful transmission, she glanced down at her PADD. One problem potentially out of the way, two more to go, and she only had the faintest inkling of how to deal wth them. She was definitely going to need Tactical's help on this one. Weapons systems were not one of her specialities.