The only reason Zony Tixia wasn’t scared out of her mind was the light still emanating from the alien transmitter she had found. When all the other power aboard Argent went dark, the only source of light in the crew quarters corridor was the little row of yellow indicators along the edge of the odd mechanism. Even her blaster pistol had lost its charge, but for whatever reason the transmitter wasn’t affected.

It was then she noticed something unusual. After the strange voice told her “you were warned, lieutenant,” several new indicator lights appeared at what the signals officer now believed was the base of the device. There were a total of eight lights. Four of them were lit up with colors ranging from a light green to a dark orange. Then they shifted, moving the colors around to other lights. Zony watched the indicators shift for a minute or so, looking for any familiar sign the device might have enough of a connection to human technology for her to make some use of its capabilities.

Then it hit her. It wasn’t mechanically activated. It was bio-electric, and the circuitry was activated by sound. It was the only thing that made sense. She turned the device over and over. There was something odd about the small panel lights too. The patterns looked familiar for some reason. By now Zony was seven feet off the floor and wedged into the relatively small alcove above the spot she had chosen for a hiding place. Without light or power, there was no chance she would be able to find her way to safety. The fact the emergency autosystems hadn’t engaged yet was alarming enough without dwelling on the no-power problem.

She decided to test her theory. After twisting herself around to make sure the alien device didn’t float away, she let go of it and let it drift. The yellow lights and indicators went out. She was suspended in total blackness.

“Here goes nothing,” she said quietly.

She put her hands back on the object and the yellow lights brightened back to their original intensity. The tiny indicators at the base of the object began to blink again, repeating the same pattern from when they first appeared.

“Bio electric,” she exhaled. “Hmmm.”

She continued turning the device over, looking for more indicators. Finding none, she returned her attention to what she could see. By now she had two theories. One was the yellow indicators were there to signal a complete charge. They were on the head side of the device in order to make use of the wearer’s peripheral vision without being unduly distracting. If, for whatever reason, the device’s power level dropped, the light would either dim or go out, which would be visible to the wearer without obstructing their view.

The second theory was a little more fuzzy, but the longer she studied the visible patterns in the smaller indicator lights, the stronger it got.

“Alpha, Beta, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot..” Zony watched the indicators change their patterns as she spoke. Eventually different colors appeared and the entire sequence had been altered.

“Zulu, Yankee, X-ray, Whiskey, Victor, Uniform..” Again she watched, and saw almost exactly what she expected to see. The indicator lights were changing their patterns based on her voice print. They were visual indications of the sound patterns they had recorded. She surmised that’s why they lit up when the enemy broadcast was received.

But there was one thing out of place. Every recorded pattern had an identical pattern attached to it. Zony concluded after a short time those were identifying flags there to signify a different voice. Using that as her theory, she began walking the device through all of its possible command sequences, speaking as quietly as she could and starting with the most basic elements. After discovering how the device stored numbers and phonetics, she watched for unusual responses. Then she hit the jackpot.

After replaying the enemy broadcast, she recognized the device had two response flags to the sound it had heard. One was a longer series of values which was very similar to the one the device used for her own identifier. The other flag was shorter and didn’t match anything else she had seen so far. She reversed its values and began feeding discrete values into the device until she was able to duplicate the pattern. Once she did, the yellow lights all switched to green and the indicators did as well.

“Command mode?” she whispered to herself. She tried a number of plausible-sounding commands. “Status? Location? Report? List?”

“List” caused all but one of the indicators to go out, and the one that remained turned yellow.

“Commands,” Zony said. In her own voice, she heard the device begin to list commands. “Position. Energy. Contacts. Coordinates. Stored.”

“Hmmm. Position and coordinates? Why both?” she said quietly. The device answered in Zony’s voice.

“Position is user. Coordinates is destination.”

Everything that had happened for the past two weeks flooded back all at once, but this time, Zony had a different perspective. The intrusion into Argent’s engineering section. The sudden appearances and disappearances of ships and people, especially Colonel Atwell. They all along knew their enemy was using some kind of teleportation device. Now they had one of their own, and if Zony’s suspicion was right, this little device had stored every piece of data the Argent Signals Officer needed to effect a rescue plan of her own. She held the device up and spoke a little louder.

“DSS Argent Engineering.”

And then she vanished.