Sitting in the command chair, minding shop, could only be done for so long. Then one had to give into the boredom induced walking about the bridge, hands clasped behind back and giving the odd nod of one’s head to junior officers as you passed near them. But eventually even that would start to wear thin, on the pacer and on the crews subjected to it.

“How’s it looking down there?” Nathan asked on his fourth such orbit of the bridge as he passed near Ops.

“Two trips out of the interference zone now to send up large datasets and request extra tools or supplies.” Rrr tapped at their console, bringing the expedition site up on the main viewer. The image was sharp enough to make out individuals moving about. One more zoom level and they’d be able to tell who was who, but wouldn’t be able to see the whole campsite.

“I reckon they’ll be calling it quits for the day soon, once the grav lifts are set up. Then popping open that flagstone in the morning,” Rrr continued.

“You reckon? Or you know?” Nate asked, attention on the viewscreen. “Step back the magnification a few steps, let’s look at the city as a whole.”

Rrr complied, the viewscreen stepping back the image in several quick steps, the ruined city still stretching beyond the confines, but the central courtyard easily now a mere hand width across.

And then a large grey shape blotted out the image, vague colour shifts hinting at texture, a bright flash of green, then it was gone, back to the city and a few micro-adjustments as cameras cycled to correct focusing.

“Republic,” Rrr answered before they could be asked what that was. “You wanted geostationary orbit; they went for a standard orbit.”

“So, they whizz past every what, ninety minutes?”

“Close enough,” they answered.

Nate nodded once, then turned back to Rrr. “Reckon, or know?” he asked again, shortened this time.

“Know,” Rrr admitted with a slight grin. “Lieutenant Michaels advised that if they could get them set up and configured with an hour of sunlight left, they would attempt a lift. But they have five minutes left on that particular timeframe.”

“When did she say that?” Nate asked.

“An hour ago, via an operational report.”

Nate just made a noise at that, turning back to the viewscreen. “This monolith is impossible,” he grumbled. “It’s too tall and, frankly, should be a ruin like everything else down there.”

“Do you want me to make it worse for you then, sir?”

“You’re going to tell me anyway, Rrr, so might as well.”

The Gaen officer changed the viewscreen image, away from the ruins below and long shadows stretching across them, to a detailed rendering of the monolith and a series of factoids about it. “It’s not impervious to damage, just so highly resistant that natural erosion isn’t going to do anything to it. The team on the ground took some scrapings, and when compared against data from the probes we have spread around the system right now, it has more in common with a few of the moons of Leytan VII than any natural mineral formations of Leytan III.”

“Habitable moons by any chance?”

“One of them might be habitable to Tholians, but the others are frozen wastelands.” Rrr brought up datasheets on four different moons to prove their point. “I’m retasking some of the more advanced probes we have to conduct full surveys of these moons right now. First one should be arriving in two hours and we’ll have probe-complete surveys done by morning.”

Again, Nate nodded in understanding, then turned to face the bridge, clapping his hands together and holding them in front; all in an effort to snap himself and others out of any boredom induced stupors. “Right, well, as much as I love survey work, the first couple of days are the worst while we bring information together and start chewing over it. So, on that note then, Rrr, you have the-”

He was cut off by a persistent chirp from Rrr’s console. “Captain MacIntyre is hailing,” the Ops chief announced, opening the channel when Nate gave him a quick hand gesture and turned to the viewscreen while still at the front of the bridge.

“Captain MacIntyre, to what do we owe the pleasure at this hour?”

“I couldn’t borrow Doctor Terax, could I?” Mac asked from the sanctity of his ready room. “We’ve got a bit of a situation brewing over here, and Blake asked if we could summon reinforcements.”

“Certainly,” Nate said, reaching back to tap on the edge of Rrr’s console, the Gaen rapidly sending a message to sickbay. “Anything else we can send over, or anyone else you want to accompany Terax?”

“I’d personally ask for Gabs,” Mac confessed, “but I’m not going to interrupt her expedition at the moment.”

“Doctor Terax is on his way to transporter room three,” Rrr said for both captains to hear. “He also says he’s not happy about house calls at this hour.”

“When has Terax ever been happy?” Mac asked. Then stopped and shook his head. “That was unfair of me.”

“Perhaps,” Nate said. “But accurate.” Both captains shared an acknowledging nod of heads at that. “What’s the emergency?”

“Well, not sure really how to put this.” Mac was genuinely lost for words as he looked into the middle distance for inspiration. “Blake just said ‘strange energies’ and left it at that. Would love to stay and chat, but I think I need to go see for myself what is going on.”

And then the channel went dead, the viewscreen defaulting to the stars directly ahead of Atlantis.

“Strange energies?” Nate asked, receiving a shrug of shoulders from Rrr in answer. “You know, this job, being explorers on the edge – never boring.”