The Resolute held contact with the object for the length of one engagement and no longer. What follows is reconstructed from 6.2 seconds of usable sensor return, taken across the array-fire exchange on Day 40. There was no second pass. There was no cooperative emission. Most of this sheet is the record of an instrument reaching for a reading and closing on nothing.
The Sensor Section files it because the protocol requires a contact file. The protocol does not require the file to be useful.
Geometry & Hull
| Field | Reading | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Overall length | 180–260 m (envelope only) | Low |
| Hull form | Asymmetric; no bilateral plane resolved | Low |
| Section count | UNDETERMINED | — |
| Surface | Non-returning across most of the sweep; absorbs more than it reflects | Low |
| Registry / markings | NONE DETECTED | — |
The hull did not give the array a clean silhouette at any point in the exchange. Where a return was expected, the instrument logged absence. Whether that absence is shaping, coating, or an artefact of the geometry, the section cannot say.
Note (Lindqvist, science relay): “We are not failing to read it. It is arranged so that there is nothing to read. Those are different things, and the second one should worry us more.”
Propulsion
| Field | Reading | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Drive type | UNDETERMINED | — |
| Manoeuvre profile | Came about faster than its mass should allow | Low |
| Exhaust / plume | NONE OBSERVED | — |
| FTL signature | NONE — appears to traverse by junction only | Moderate |
No drive plume was recorded at any heading. The object changed bearing without a visible reaction mass and without the thermal bloom the section would expect from a vessel of the reconstructed envelope. The absence is consistent. It is not explained.
Armament
The one section of this sheet with data, because it is the section the Resolute met directly.
- Primary: kinetic; rail-accelerated penetrators, beamed flat and fast. Round signature does not match any ISCA or SNG pattern on file.
- Magazine doctrine: patterned fire — bursts, not sustained. Sparse, deliberate, as if rounds are not cheap to it.
- Targeting: locked the Resolute without an emission the array could trace. We did not see it look at us.
This is the part of the contact the crew did not have to reconstruct. They were inside it.
Emissions
| Field | Reading | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Active sensor emission | NONE DETECTED | — |
| Thermal | Below floor; colder than its own exhaust should permit | Low |
| Internal signal | One directed pulse, lower-band of the harmonic-stack spectrum | Moderate |
A single directed signal pulse was logged late in the exchange, beamed off-axis into the junction’s deep margin — not at the Resolute. Lower-band; light-speed; gone in under a second. The section’s reading: it was not talking to us. It was talking to something else out there.
That means there is a second one.
Provenance Flag
One low-confidence inference, recorded and explicitly not relied upon: elements of the round signature and the lower-band pulse sit close to Tarvan-design-lineage hardware on file from the Drift-era contact records. The match is partial. It may mean the object carries diverted hardware. It may mean the instrument is pattern-matching noise to the only catalogue it has. The section will not stake a classification on it, and neither should the reader of this sheet.
Assessment
Nothing on this sheet rises to a species designation, a vessel class, or an intent. The contact is logged as TVA-S/2192 — a tracking label, not a name.
Recommendation: Take the object’s protocol-refusal at face value. Do not pursue. Do not escalate. Hold the chair’s reading — that it was not after the Resolute, but guarding something the Resolute came too near. The institutional reading will take years. The crew calls it the Splinter in the meantime, because a crew needs a word, and UNDETERMINED is not one.