She’d only known the man for a little over two weeks, but she already had an immense respect for her chief engineering officer. Despite conservative estimates on warp availability, Lee had managed a solution that would allow them to jump to warp 5, if only for a fraction of a second. 

With a bit of coordination and luck, they got the hell out of that star system, although they were probably the last to do so.

After the briefest of jumps, they appeared at the edge of the system, moving along at one half impulse power behind the USS Aurora. Ahead of them was the greatest gaggle of unusual ships that Noelle had ever seen. 

There was little time to stare and gawk at the ships through the viewscreen, however.

On the bridge, Nephenee was having a field day intercepting the communications traffic between the vessels. 

“There are multiple requests for identification from various vessels, captain,” she said, replaying the set of relevant messages for the rest of the bridge to hear. 
“That’s… A bit to take in all at once,” mused the acting captain. “Has the Aurora responded?” 

“She has,” responded the science officer, still picking through the morass of communications. “Diplomatic as expected of a Starfleet vessel. Shall we respond with a message of our own, captain?” 

Noelle nodded slightly, giving a wry smile. She pressed a button on the LCARS interface on her armrest. 

“This is Captain Noelle Tatham Poole of the USS Illustrious. We mean no harm and are currently engaged with recovery efforts of our own people.”

She sighed, and sank back into her seat as she finished the general hail. From what she could see, the other ships were cooperating with each other, but she could only hope that that would hold. 

“Captain?”

Noelle straightened herself back up in her seat. She would need a nice, long rest after this shitstorm blew over. “Yes, Nephenee?”

“The Aurora has just sent us a set of coordinates. It looks like they aren’t comfortable getting too close to the other vessels.”

Noelle nodded. “That’s a sound enough move. Helmsman, move us into those coordinates.”

The science officer didn’t seem to be finished, however.

“It also seems… A good number of the traffic here is in fact transmitting in Earth languages,” said the science officer with an intrigued expression. “Japanese and English, specifically. It seems to back up the evidence that we are in an alternate universe… No, that each ship here is likely from independent universes.” 

“If that is true, how has this happened? Or… to what purpose?”

“It’s… Not unprecedented, but nothing on the scale of this.”

“I see… 	This is going to be a diplomatic mess, isn’t it?” she shook her head. “We may have a common ground with fellow… Earthlings. But they will likely be the people we will have watch out even more for. There’s no knowing from what kind of Earth they came from.”

“In anycase, we need to get up to speed with the Aurora,” continued Noelle, nodding toward Alara. “Let’s see what they’ve learned from the other ships.”