They had been on their way from the planet for about a couple of hours, when the small rectangular unit hanging from Alice's belt beeped and... spoke?

Tomiko immediately grabbed it and yanked it off the belt. "Dammit! We've been examing that chip for months and NOW it comes up with something... when most of the sensitive equipment was on that Universal class ship."

Alice glanced over, her facial expression calm. "It wouldn't have given us anything more. It was attempting to transmit from a place with force fields of some kind. Any type of place like that has ways of preventing information from leaking outside unless they want it to. I'd venture to think that the chip's incompatible technology was the only thing that allowed it to send us even THAT much."

Tomiko bit her lip. "Encountered something like this before, have we?"

"I'm your elder, little girl," Alice said with a grin. She reclined in the pilot's seat. "If you're done now, I can take a look at that data and see what we DID get."

"Yes, of course," Tomiko said, disinterested. She threw the device up in the air, letting it land in Alice's lap.