Discovery Class Starship

FI-ESV Better Margins

Hyperbolic Stellar Warp Trajectory

26,814 Light years from Sagittarius A*

March 2220

After five months in warp, the Better Margins fell out of a ripple in spacetime and returned to the darkness of space. According to charts and calculations they should have been five AUs below the south pole of Epsilon Tauri but there was nothing anywhere near them. Telescopes and sensors couldn’t pick out anything. There was no star, no planets, no rocks, nothing large enough for the equipment to pick up anywhere within its range of detection. The place their ship had come out was somehow more empty than even normal interstellar space.

The strange emptiness sunk into the previously chipper and excited minds of Zephyr Athabasca’s illegal contact crew like a heavy stone thrown into a lake. As the hours ticked by and their sensor sweeps continued to turn up nothing but empty space, the mood on the Better Margins began to turn sour and bitter, and months old conflicts began to flare up again.

Zephyr drummed her fingers on the table of the conference room during an informal planning meeting. The silence in the room hung heavily in the air as the senior members of the crew looked askance to one another, unsure of how to proceed.

“Well,” Alice Pendragon said softly, breaking the silence in the conference room, “I admit that this is somewhat unsettling, even knowing that it is what these aliens do.”

“This is what they do,” Zephyr nodded in agreement, “it’s…efficient if nothing else.”

“Makes you wonder what they’d want all that mass for, doesn’t it?” The golem named Sing Easterly said from across the table, steepling her artificial fingers.

“Oh I have a few ideas,” Zephyr said.

“Well, for the moment, there’s nothing here, so how would you like to proceed at this point?” The captain of the Better Margins asked the CEO of the corporation.

Benjamin Nesco hadn’t particularly wanted to go chasing these aliens but he wasn’t prepared to let Zephyr take his ship without him, which would have been the alternative. At least this way he could hopefully stop her from getting them all killed.

“I think the next step is we pick a smaller system in the Hyades, maybe 45 Tau or V*V994 Tau, one a bit less likely to be picked for the initial round of mining,” Zephyr explained, “And we set up shop there, and see if we encounter these aliens again.”

“How much of this is about the aliens, and how much is about avoiding the ESS?” Benjamin asked, crossing his arms.

“Careful,” Zephyr told him.”

“I could say the same to you,” he told her, “Or is it about somehow atoning for the deaths?”

Zephyr smacked her hands on the top of the conference table and stared daggers at the captain.

Alice coughed loudly, “Look, we’ve had five months to sit on the fact that we are probably violating an international statute. No one has any pretensions left about that, right? We’re here to try and contact the aliens. If we do, and we can work something out, everyone will shrug and go back to their business, the ESS won’t be able to say anything if we manage the mining rights negotiation ourselves and can hand them documents when they finally catch up with us.”

“They can’t track us through warp unless they see us leave, if we leave this system before they get here, which we should do, they won’t be able to find us,” Zephyr said.

“So, what, we just hide out here and become pirates? What if we can’t make contact with the aliens? What if they attack us?” the captain insisted.

“We’ve had this conversation several times now,” Zephyr said, “And I’m getting bored of it.”

“Zephyr,” he hissed.

“Ben, she’s right,” Melissa Stevenson the ship’s XO said softly to him, “We’ve been having this conversation since and before we left. Everyone knows where everyone else stands.”

“I’m prepared to risk violating the statute to make contact, I understand we might fail to make contact, there, I said it, does that appease you?” Zephyr said somewhat sullenly, “I’ll take the legal fallout if this goes sideways, I was always going to be the one to do that, I’ve made peace with it.”

“Appease me? Not really, but I agreed to chaperone this dog and pony show, so here we are,” he said gesturing equanimously to the empty space around them.

“So here we are,” Zephyr repeated to him.

Alice lightly clapped her hands together and said with somewhat enforced cheer, “Well! If that’s decided, let’s head over to V*V994 Tau and have a look at the state of things, ne?”

“Alright yeah, V*V994 Tau it is,” Zephyr said, “Melissa, have Alex spool up the drive, meeting adjourned, Ben, can I speak with you for a moment?”

The captain grunted noncommittally but remained seated as everyone else filed out of the room.

Zephyr waited until the room had cleared and the door had been shut, letting the silence linger for a long few moments as the starscape outside began to rotate on the holoscreens.

“Listen, Ben…” She said finally.

“I know,” he said, “I was out of line there.”

“Yes but, I need you to understand, I have actually thought about this a lot,” she said.

“Then what is this all really about? Is this really about contacting aliens? Or is it about atoning for the deaths somehow?” He asked earnestly.

“Maybe at first, it was a bit of both,” she admitted, “but it’s been five months, I’ve had a lot of time to sit on it, and sitting on the fact I might now be a wanted criminal, and yet…”

Her voice trailed off, into silence, and in that silence, Alex Upland spoke over the intercom from the bridge, “All hands prepare for kick, thirty seconds.”

“And yet?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.

Zephyr said nothing. She watched the stars continue to rotate past and then pause as the ship came into alignment for its warp. She instinctively relaxed her muscles to soften the gut punch as the ship launched itself into the warp tunnel once more.

“And yet,” she said finally, “Look at Alice Pendragon, she saw those aliens first hand, same as you, and she’s been climbing the walls for a chance to try and contact them. Try and understand where she’s coming from. This is a legitimately exciting thing, it’s not just scary, it’s really awesome.”

“Awesome in the original sense of the word maybe,” Ben said softly.

Zephyr’s voice started to pick up speed as she excitedly infodumped, “Look, Ben, if I’m going to break the law, I definitely want to do it over something as cool as this. Aliens that dismantle planets and harvest suns? They even scrape down the rocks and gas to a level less than that of the normal interstellar medium, they’ve got to be at least Kardashev I, and that portal technology they use is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, it’s an entirely different method of faster than light travel. If we could gain access to a technology like that it would totally change the lives of everyone on earth. We could have portals between major cities, planets could be connected in real time, and that’s just one thing, these aliens are so advanced we don’t even know where to start, the potential for advancement is huge, this is literally the most important discovery in the history of the human race.”

Ben took a breath and nodded, “Alright, but I’m still the captain, if I decide something is too dangerous, that’s that, understood?”

“Yeah,” Zephyr agreed, “Now come on, let’s go meet aliens.”

Horizon Breaker Class Exploratory Mining Vessel

FI-EMV Stoneburner

Hyperbolic Stellar Warp Trajectory

26,814 Light years from Sagittarius A*

March 2220

After five months, the technicolor glow of the warp tunnel collapsed around the Stoneburner and disgorged the EMV back into dark space. As the warp ended, the atmosphere in the mining information center was tense and nervous. The proximity alerts immediately began going off, and Kaito Pendragon turned to look at Owen McGregor, who was sitting in the operations chair normally occupied by Alice Pendragon.

“It’s the Animal Farm and Gravity’s Rainbow,” Owen said with a glance at the console, turning off the proximity alerts, “besides them, there’s nothing bigger than a bolt within a billion kilometers.”

“Nothing?” Kaito asked, boggling slightly at the marvel of it, “Where’s the star?”

“Gone,” Owen told him flatly, “There’s nothing out there. We’re in deep space.”

“Hey guys?” Eleanor Murphy’s voice came out of the speakers from the pilot’s cradle, “Did we come out in the right place? Where’s the star?”

“They took it,” Owen said, amusement battling with horror. It would be funny if it wasn’t so scary, “Those aliens took absolutely everything.”

“Scary,” was Murphy’s only reply.

“Captain Faraday is on the tightbeam, want me to put him on?” Owen said to Kaito.

“Please,” Kaito said with a nod. After the comm chirped to inform him that it had connected, Kaito said, “Captain Faraday, welcome to Epsilon Tauri.”

There was a pause before the other captain responded, asking ‘This was the system you had been mining in?”

“It was yes, not that there’s much left to mine it seems,” Kaito was putting on the jovial airs of a host entertaining guests, a faint veneer pulled taut over all their collective horror.

“The Better Margins doesn’t seem to have stuck around, do you have any idea where they might have gone?” Captain Faraday asked him, hiding his unease behind a clipped military tone.

“Knowing Zephyr, anywhere but here,” Kaito said somewhat bitterly.

“You think she would have anticipated being followed?” The destroyer’s captain asked him.

“Zephyr is too smart for her own good,” Kaito told him, “I think she planned all this out to send us on a merry chase around the star cluster.”

There was a long pause before Captain Faraday replied.

“We’ll be splitting up to cover systems more quickly,” the other captain said, “Which means your ship won’t have military protection in the event of something happening. We’re strongly advising you return to Aldebaran.”

“With due respect sir, my wife is…” Kaito started to say before the other captain cut him off,

“Yeah, I figured you’d say that,” Faraday said cutting him off, “We can cover more ground faster with three ships anyway, we’ll forward you search plans, standby.”

“They’ve cut off the tightbeam,” Owen said.

Kaito nodded, put his hands behind his back, and only somewhat awkwardly began to pace the MIC, his magnetic boots clanking on the deck as he half swam half stepped along in microgravity.

“That woman’s going to have us running around for months trying to find her,” Owen grumbled as he set up the comms array to accept the file transfer the Animal Farm was sending them.

“So who’s the bigger idiot though,” Kaito mused, “Is it her, or is it us for agreeing to work with her?”

“Definitely us,” Dianicia Botheys answered, speaking up for the first time from the mining foreman’s seat that Owen would be in if he wasn’t in operations seat.

“At least she paid well,” Murphy’s voice said through the intercom from the pilot’s cradle.

Owen chuckled and Dianicia laughed bitterly, “Yes, at least there’s that.”

“If y’all’re interested, I’d keep you on even if the company folds,” Kaito said, “We’ll just fly off into the sunset.”

“In deep space with no suns,” Murphy quipped.

“We’ll see what space looks like by the time this is all over,” Owen said fatalistically.

“You getting the course packet up there Murphy?” Kaito asked the pilot.

“Yep, all plotted in, we’re set to go on your command,” the girl answered him.

“Well heave to then, we’re burning oxygen,” Kaito said before strolling out of the MIC.

Pacifier Class Scout Battlecruiser

UNDF Mercy Given

Hyperbolic Stellar Escape Trajectory

8 AUs from HD189245

April 2220

The warp drive cut out, and the night sky enveloped the Mercy Given once more. This was the fourth system in their near straight shot towards the galactic core, they were now sixty-nine light-years from Sol. Captain Maeve ODonnell was expecting and hoping for another quiet system.

The variable main sequence star cast a warm yellow light on their hull as the ship fell upwards on a long hyperbolic coast. It seemed like all would be quiet this time as wel–

“Captain, I’ve got something here,” Sensor Specialist Edwin Penrose said softly from the sensor station, his brows furrowing as he tried to make sense of the data he was looking at, “There’s a really weird energy signature coming from the gas giant in this system, some sort of energy source.”

“Is it them?” Maeve asked, nervously, “Is it the aliens?”

“The energy readings look similar to what was seen in the Hyades,” Edwin replied, “It might be them, I’m not sure.”

“Let’s get closer,” Maeve said with a snap of her fingers, pointing at ship’s navigator Charlie Hatfield. The redhead jumped and immediately began plotting a course.

“How close you want to get Cap’n?” He asked her as he started spooling the drive again.

“Take us out half a million klicks from the planet, maintain present vector,” Maeve said pursing her lips and nervously taking a sip of her coffee and drumming her fingers on the console.

Executive Officer Pandora Eisley clapped her hands, “Alright people, this is what we came here to do, let’s get to it!”

The bridge launched into a flurry of activity, Charlie and Edwin quickly tapping away at their consoles to prep for the next phase.

“Sound general quarters, set alert condition to blue, I want us fully suited up and depressurized before we make the warp, we’ll take no chances on this,” Maeve said nervously, draining the last of her coffee before pushing herself out of her chair and heading for the bridge’s suit locker.

Pandora nodded and keyed up on the shipwide channel, “Attention hands, blue alert, we are moving into a potential contact scenario, all stations report when ready for depressurization.”

“Warp sequence is set cap’n.” Charlie reported before climbing out of his seat and quickly donning his flight suit. Maeve finished climbing into hers and settled back into her seat.

“Ready to make history?” Pandora asked Maeve before closing her helmet screen.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Maeve said before closing her own.

“I’m reading all seals green,” the XO said, this time through the bridge’s suit channel.

“Alright, pump the air out,” she told her second in command.

There was a momentary roar as the fans kicked on, quickly fading away into the silence of near-vacuum as the air vacated the bridge.

“I’m going to need to modify the warp sequence a bit,” Charlie’s voice came into her earpiece, “the closest I can get us without spending a while doing calculations is a million and a half klicks.”

“That’s fine warp when ready,” she replied, her eyes watching the starfield out the holoscreens.

“All hands brace for kick,” Charlie said over the shipwide radio channel. Maeve squeezed the armrests on her chair and instinctively breathed out as a sharp twang reverberated up through the hull and into her spine. The star rushed closer as they dropped back out of warp.

“Scopes,” she said, motioning to Edwin, “What are we looking at?”

“Standby, resolving,” the sensor specialist said. A moment later the hot gas giant resolved on the main screen, one half of the world distended and blown out into space in a titanic starburst of gas and dust.

“We think there’s a ship in there somewhere?” the XO asked.

“Some sort of big drilling machine apparently,” Maeve answered, “If the reports from the Hyades are accurate.”

“It must be big to have done something of that scale to the gas giant, could even an RKKV strike do that?” Pandora continued.

“You’ve seen the footage, these guys don’t really do small scale,” Maeve said pensively.

“Should we start transmitting at them?” Erica Sanger asked from the comms station.

“That’s what we’re here to do,” Maeve said with a nervous sigh, “Launch a courier back at Sol to report contact, once it’s away start sending the greeting and lets see if we don’t get blown out of the sky.”

There was a soft thump as the courier drone fired itself off and Maeve forced her breathing to steady. The tension on the bridge remained taut as a cable as Erica ordered the ship to start transmitting. The ten seconds it took for the light to reach the planet and return seemed to take an eternity. Maeve realized she was holding her breath as they crossed the ten second mark and nothing happened.

“Any change?” Maeve asked Edwin.

“Nothing,” the sensor operator said breathlessly.

“Keep at it,” she told Erica, drumming her thickly gloved fingers on the console. The younger woman nodded and cued in a sequence to automatically repeat the transmission.

The silence of deep space was their only reply.

Dirge Singer class Heavenly Container of Life

i34_2015 Lament for Lost Worlds

Hyperspatial Transit Trajectory

Hyperspace

April 2220

From her vantage point atop the alien skyscraper, Jean Paoloni could see clear to the edge of the dome, it’s artificial nature made obvious by her altitude. This wasn’t the tallest tower in the City of Stairs, that honor went to the tower the Jvanti had built up to the door in the roof. It wasn’t even the second tallest, it was simply the tallest building that Jean could easily climb without wings or special access which she would struggle to get as an alien, metropolitan though the Jvanti were.

Jean saw a diverse mixture of species. Some, she recognized from the messages the Kiwawentoa had sent to the Empiricist what felt like a lifetime ago now. Some, she had never seen before. The city was densely inhabited by creatures of every shape and color and configuration. The Jvanti were of course the majority, but the city really was quite diverse.

Beside her, Msipek hooted softly, “Jean has followed the path of Aktotep to the place of the Jvanti, Jean is as Itoatha and Yanerhi. Msipek is as Kasalt in the mountains.”

Jean shrugged in response, “It’s no big deal,” she told em, “The Path of Taybor contains no shame, Msipek is as Markeesh, but the army of Kiynhas will not defeat Jean.”

The creature hooted out a small laugh, “As brave as Yanerhi,” ey said.

“Jean seeks the Ones Who Came Before, on behalf of all humans of Kaba-Atatop,” she replied, “Jean also walks the path of Taybor, as is the duty of all warriors of Sol.”

Msipek’s many eyes swiveled towards the challenge tower looming above them in the center of the city, “The Night Gods denied Aktotep the salvation of the Kaba-Aunjin, Mspiek is as Renyo to the Kaba-human.”

“Well if it comes to that, we won’t go down without a fight,” she said. From what Jean could tell, at the peak of their technological power, the Aunjin were barely industrialized when the Kiwawentoa showed up and uplifted a small number of them. They hadn’t been able to fight the Reshapers and could only mourn as their homeworld was dismantled and most of their species killed.

“The Kaba-human would be as Yanerhi on the High Plains?” Msipek asked her, referring to a somewhat desperate battle the long remembered band leader had fought back on their homeworld for control of the Song Glades.

“Well the Kaba-human certainly won’t be as Asixwish,” she answered.

“The Aunjin will sing the bravery of the Kaba-human, in the face of the Night Gods,” Msipek told her.

“See to it that you do,” she said, smiling faintly, “Now, what can Msipek tell Jean of the Challenge tower?”

Δ

Heartspear Skyfisher led Jean and Msipek up the challenge tower, fluttering along beside them as they climbed and chattering incessantly about the history of his people. Jean rode on Msipek’s back since the stairs were rather too large for a human to easily use. She rather relished the comfortable softness of the wooly creature’s fur; the contact was rather grounding after being away from humans for so long.

Jean and Msipek didn’t talk much, having settled into a companionable silence after the revelations about the Outside Gods. Heartspear, on the other hand, was a chatterbox. His role seemed to be that of an emissary or diplomat, mostly between the various Jvanti clans, but occasionally also between visiting alien factions. He accomplished that goal by seeming to never stop talking. She knew he was trying to talk slowly for the benefit of their translators, but even so, the sheer rate and volume of information exchange seemed rather particular to the flying creatures.

“What’s the story with the other races living here with you?” Jean asked him during one short pause in his storytelling, “You said you haven’t had to translate for non-lightspeakers in a while, but there are lots of different creatures here.”

“They are refugees of the spinward realms beyond the gate of Kalatoe,” He said, “They became trapped here after the destruction of Kalatoe and have remained for generations. We have created machines for them which allow them to speak the light.”

Jean thought about that and ran the mental images she had of the creatures she’d seen through her mind. Sure enough, she recalled that most of them seemed to wear small screens somewhere visible on their bodies.

Jean nodded in understanding, then followed it up with an “Ah, that makes sense” when the Jvanti continued looking at her inquisitively. She fell silent and let the flying alien go back to his history lesson.

Two thirds of the way up was a Jvanti checkpoint that informed them Msipek would not be permitted further up the tower. Heartspear explained to them that the door seemed to operate on the principle of giving a species one shot at access. The Aunjin had already attempted the climb many centuries ago when Aktotep had come to the City of Stairs, so the door would not open again if there was an Aunjin nearby. The same went for the Jvanti, they had blown their chance and were now locked out.

“Why don’t you just stage a revolt and blast the door open by force?” Jean asked their guide.

“Many eons ago, the Gnir of Kalatoe tried to do so,” Heartspear responded, the translator somehow managing to convey sadness in his tone, “the blast exposed their environment to vacuum and they nearly all perished. That is why the spinward realms beyond Kalatoe are lost to us. Occasionally a small team will traverse the ruins, but it is a dangerous journey.”

Jean had some thoughts about that and wasn’t sure such a warning would do much to stop humans from attempting something similar. The risk seemed mitigable, especially with warnings about that potential outcome, but it seemed worth trying to talk to the Kiwawentoa before resorting to a potentially high risk prison break.

And so she left Msipek and Heartspear behind at the checkpoint and awkwardly clambered up the too-large stairs towards the top of the tower and a rendezvous with destiny.

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