Asteroid Waves

A scan of the particularly massive asteroid … yields fascinating results. The rock's core is shot through with a network of conductive crystals carrying a weak electric charge. The crew on the … recognize this matrix as a primitive neural lattice and believe the celestial body to be thinking in some capacity, if not fully sapient. They seek permission to excavate the core and transport it to the nearest orbital station for closer study.

… is partially hollow. Within its interior spaces sprawls a dense honeycomb structure crafted of some unknown alloy, housing containers of alien genetic material. By all appearances this is an archive of life, the genetic record of some earlier civilization come and gone. Most of the DNA is hopelessly degraded, but there is still much to learn here.

The …'s survey of the asteroid is temporarily halted as a probe is caught by an errant gravitational anomaly.

The probe manages to transmit some data before it is brutally crushed by the extreme forces - forces that completely dissipate soon after.

A cobbled-together comms repeater has been inexpertly strapped to ….

Science Officer … is confident that this is part of a relay network for pirate communications. Initial analysis indicates that the messages relayed are not of a particularly strategically sensitive nature, but rather private inter-ship communications between individual crewmembers.