[Bridge]
"Jaeger, plot a course one-two-seven mark five-four. How long will it take at maximum warp for us to get there?" Alex stood, taking a few steps forward until he was behind the helm officer before turning to Inzjana. "Is there any way to clear up that message so we know what we'll be running into?"
BRIDGE - SCIENCE STATION ONE
"Unfortunately Lieutenant Commander, the message has been garbled by gamma radiation," Inzjana replied to Wu and just as she was about to turn back to her instruments along came another question from the XO, she was apparently in demand today.
[Bridge]
Nevir was pleased seeing Inzjana getting settled in and starting immediately, and he had to admit, he was also curious about this signal. Especially more so now that it was a distress signal.
"Check to see if it has any Federation frequencies." he said, going over and standing back the Captain's seat. He was unsure whether to take it, considering that T'Ra was technically on the bridge... even if she was pretending to be an ops officer currently.
"Captain..." he said, not sure exactly what to ask... is she going to take her chair, or stand at ops? Nevir was frankly confused.
Inzjana turned around to look at the commander, stating,
"The message's subspace protocol is degraded along with the message...but from what I can make out, there is a federation signature, although given the interference..." Inzjana trailed off, not wanting to hazard a guess.
Of course, as any space traveller knows, space is cold, near to absolute zero in point of fact, unless near to a star or other form of optimal mass. And seeing as all spacecraft burn fuel and use power, they give off a tremendous amount of thermal radiation, making them completely visible to sensors.
Unfortunately this wasn't going to help them much as all electromagnetic waves propagate at the speed of light or slower and they were at warp. But Inzjana had an idea to use subspace itself to determine what type of ship they were heading for, well at least it's mass-shadow anyway.
All spacecraft in the universe using a warp drive run on the same principle: At warpspeed, the starship is not travelling faster-than-light, that would be impossible. It is space itself that is moving faster-than-light because unlike mass, space has no speed limit. But in order to circumvent the light barrier, the warp drive must use negative energy to to compress spacetime in front of the ship and expand it behind. Negative energy has a negative pressure density allowing a ship to seem to achieve the impossible and does so via the Casimir Effect. It was found long ago that negative energy exists in subspace, the dimensional realm that exists under normal spacetime and has a warped geometry.
Starships that use warp drive require a subspace bubble, or warp bubble as it is also referred to. This protrusion in to subspace would obviously produce a measurable effect.
Inzjana measured the subspace warp frequencies and had her answer.
"Commander," Inzjana called, motioning to the screen with her left hand.
