Alien as hell.

"Scan complete, Commodore," the man at the Jutland's sensor station reported briskly. "No other ships registering."

"Acknowledged," Commodore Trev Dyami said, flexing his shoulders beneath his stiffly starched uniform tunic and permitting himself a slight smile as he gazed at the main display. Alien ships. The first contact with a new self-starfaring race in a quarter of a century.

And it was his. All his. Trev Dyami and the Jutland would be the names listed in the Commonwealth's news reports and, eventually, in its history books.

Warrior's luck, indeed.

He turned to the tactics station, fully aware that everything he said and did from this point on would be part of that history-book listing. "What's the threat assessment?" he asked.

"I estimate point one to point four, sir," the tactics officer reported. "I don't find any evidence of fighter ejection tubes or missile ports."

"They've got lasers, though, Commodore," the tactics second put in. "There are clusters of optical-discharge lenses on the leading edges of each ship."

"Big enough to be weapons?" the exec asked from Dyami's side.

"Hard to tell, sir," the other said. "The lenses themselves are pretty small, but that by itself doesn't mean much."

"What about power output?" Dyami asked.

"I don't know, sir," the sensor officer said slowly. "I'm not getting any leakage."

"None?"

"None that I can pick up."

Dyami exchanged glances with the exec. "Superconducting cables," the exec hazarded. "Or else just very well shielded."

"One or the other," Dyami agreed, looking back at the silent shapes floating in the middle of the main display. Not only a self-starfaring race, but one with a technology possibly beyond even humanity's. That history-book listing was getting longer and more impressive by the minute.