We drifted through the strange system's outer reaches in almost-silence, watching the windows as systems slowly came back online.

It was beautiful. Space always is. It was also forbidding, and there's always a touch of that, too, in the vast near-void between stars and the few friendly islands that orbit them. But in a familiar system, especially one with colonized worlds and most especially one in which your homeworld orbits, in them there's always that little knowledge-of-safe-solid-ground you can feel within reach, maybe you can even see it out the window.

But not here. Here we knew nothing.

"Damage report?" The Lieutenant asked hopefully.

The First Engineer took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Almost. We don't have enough sensor suites back yet, and the ones we are getting data from, we have to filter it for errors. Lots of damage. And the transit-ruptures mean we spilled more than half our nanite reserves into infraspace during the jump."

We all looked out the window, as though expecting to see a spreading silvery cloud, though of course that was foolish. We did see the pale halo of escaping plasma, but that was, if not alright, not a disaster. Plasma could be replaced. Exotic matter, not so easily.

"Repairs aren't going to come fast, because we have to prioritize. I can tell you that all artificial intelligence is down. No, no, don't worry, backups are intact, they're not dead, but we don't have enough hardware to run them yet. I don't think we'll be able to restore them all until we get back to a friendly port."

"Which will be difficult," the Lead Navigator said, "since we don't yet know where we are. Without the AIs there's enough computer power to run basic systems but not compare star-charts in three dimensions at any kind of speed. Though, uh, I suspect we may have managed to skip under to another spiral arm, just from the data I've been able to scrounge."

Silence again. Not quite stunned, we were all better-trained than that, maybe even a hint of elation at being farther from our own little finger of the galaxy than anyone ever had been before. Even if we'd done it by accident, and paid a heavy price.

The Lieutenant turned away from the window and tapped a console's still-glitchy readout. "What sensors do we have available? We should be making use of the whole crew for any that aren't just machine-readable. Or that can be presented in visual or auditory form."

"Hmmm," said the First Engineer. "Let me see." Various low-level machine language consoles came and went in the display. "Ah. Well, worth a shot. Radio sources, we can listen for patterns. We're pattern-seeking creatures, after all." A frequency selector slid slowly back and forth and we all leaned in, listening, though of course the sounds would be coming from all the ship's speakers and not from the First Engineer.

Static. Static. Squealing sounds, and then...

"Stop," said the Lead Navigator. "Right there. Yes, just a little bit back. Amplify that."

It was a low, almost thrumming sound, but had a constant rising-falling frequency to it, a complex repeating one. Then it broke, and something else rhythmic took its place. Gathered tones in near-perfect harmonics, coming from the speakers in cadence.

The First Engineer took in a sharp deep breath of surprise. "Oh shit that's mu—"

"Shut up," the Lieutenant said. And we all listened. But the First Engineer was right.

It was music. Beautiful, strange music, some sort of multi-stringed instrument, a driving percussion beat, and then...

...a voice. Only not speaking, though there were what must have been words, strange breathy resonant words which themselves went up and down the scale of tones, like the piping calls of a tree-hopper, or the harmony-buzzing wings of bismuth-bugs. Almost more instrument than voice, nothing like any speech any of us had ever heard, nothing like any speech anyone had ever heard only this speaker, this music-voicer, this was a someone, right?

A person.

"First Engineer, get K'klmp!k repaired and booted. Top priority over everything but propulsion and life support."

The First Engineer just nodded. K'klmp!k was our linguistic-expert AI. The First Engineer's tendrils danced over manual backup controls, and we waited, which was fine, because we could also listen.

There was a brief silence from the speakers, and I ached, wanting to hear it again, but then another chord broke in. A new song. This had another voice-instrument, higher-pitched, still beautiful, almost dangerously so. We all listened. I felt...it cannot not be described fully, the mix of euphoria, apprehension, near-disbelief, a touch of awe. I can still summon it, all these years later.

I don't know how long we stood there listening. We saw the First Engineer get K'klmp!k conscious and working again, scanning every frequency, matching words, comparing, learning. I saw video feeds spring up for analysis, too, and they were interesting enough in their small snatches, but mostly, I wanted to listen. I wanted to savor this moment. We all did. Here and there the music would break, and there was just speech, but that was fascinating too, the warm-tone voices, almost music themselves.

Then the Lieutenant came in close to me, spoke low. "Sergeant, you understand what this means?"

"Yes, Lieutenant," I said back just as softly. "First Contact. An intelligent species."

"It would seem so. We will have to navigate this situation ourselves, without any contact with the Council of Worlds. It may be dangerous. Are you ready?"

I considered. "Yes, the situation is inherently dangerous. But—"

I cut myself off as translations suddenly spun into the air beside us.

I have spoke with the tongue of angels

I have held the hand of a devil

It was warm in the night

I was cold as a stone

But I still haven't found

What I'm looking for

But I still haven't found

What I'm looking for

I tore my sight away from the words. "But, Lieutenant, with any species that can make such music, I think there may be some good chances."