*
Each of us has a good friend who works for the government. We didn’t know that the four of them were the former crew of lieutenant Ding Yumei. We learned from our friends that a shuttle from Mars had to change its trajectory and they needed to investigate why.
When our friends disappeared, we went looking for them in a location which we once agreed upon, and found a small nine-pointed yellow star. As we touched it, it must have broadcast a signal, because a flying car landed right next to us, and we were escorted to some base. There, we had to get into a “comfort cabin” (more like a coffin) to keep us alive as we were launched into space. When we stepped out of the coffin, we were in a base on the moon!
Lieutenant Ding Yumei was there waiting for us. She sent the stars to call in her old crew because she has no one she can trust. It’s a first contact situation, she explained, and the aliens will consider humans to be a hive-creature, because of the totalitarian rule of the three goddesses. She explained that Mars shuttle was boarded through the airlock – three objects were left in the airlock: a puzzle box, a modified human satellite and a bag full of yellow nine-pointed stars. The crew of the Mars shuttle, called Sarah Biffin, had to land on the moon after their maneuver, because they didn’t have enough fuel to land on Earth. They reported taking the maneuver to avoid colliding with an unknown space vessel, and Ding Yumei wanted us to interrogate them further.
Then, however, colonel Eljan Birtanov walked in accompanied by three farsan (biotic elite warriors of the Survivor). He placed lieutenant Yumei under arrest, and mentioned that he knew about her affair with a member of the organization Freedom before Life. As he prepared the arrest us as well, one of the farsan, Sirikit Kitiyakara, suggested to turn us into reserve crewmembers on the Nancy Wake. It was either that or prison, but it meant going into cold sleep and being woken one by one to replace any of the crew of the Nancy Wake which would be incapacitated.
So it came as a surprise when we all woke up at the same time. We were aboard the Nancy Wake, but the computer wouldn’t give us all the information before we go to the bridge. We found the bodies of the previous crewmembers, as well as some other things but we still need to piece together what happened. According to the ship’s date, we have been in cold sleep for nearly a whole month.
*
*
Slowly, we came around and investigated our surroundings. The four dead bodies of the former crew of the Nancy Wake were killed, so it seemed, when someone overrid the ship’s controls and gave the command to pursue another ship at maximum acceleration. Three seconds of 13g were enough to kill the entire crew, although the captain managed to regain control of the ship and reduce acceleration to 1g, before she died.
An urgent message called the ship from Colonel Eljan Birtanov. He, we believe, is the one who gave the command to pursue the other ship. Surprised to see that the crew was replaced, he demanded that we land on the moon and surrender the ship. We decided otherwise.
We checked the ship logs, apparently the Nancy Wake plotted a course towards a point in orbit on the other side of the moon. We approached (slowly) to discover that the other ship, the Malala Yousufzai, was already pushing at 2g towards Jupiter.
We also checked the objects in the ship’s cargo – a modified satellite, a puzzle box and a bag of yellow nine-pointed stars, which we believe to be tracking devices. Glyph spent a few hours on the box, using our proximity to Earth to send a data query to Earth’s data network. The box, apparently, is a device which was designed to study languages through an analog process by linking commonly seen images with letters and words. The crew of the shuttle Sarah Biffin from Mars were stumped in identifying the word for a spindle, but Glyph solved it, as well as the next image of a distaff. The box was solved, but it was empty.
Except that as soon as the box was solved, the satellite started broadcasting and melted from energy overload. Another ship approached – a yellow ship shaped like a nine-pointed star, but one of the points was broken.
It attached to our airlock, opened it from the outside. We quickly put on space suits as it opened the inner door of the airlock and entered the ship, an alien creature! It is small, floating oval shaped creature covered in bumps, from which either tentacles or sensory organs emerge. It is yellowish-brown in color, and is surrounded by small floating devices which it can move telekinetically. One of the devices appeared to be a radio-like object through which it communicated with us.
Its name is Chmaa. It required only about 14 hours to learn English (although the puzzle box must have helped). It explained to us that it has eight brains, and that it brought a gravity drive to Earth to sell it in exchange for knowledge of human culture and language. Instead, the humans shot at its ship.
The communication with Chmaa was time consuming, so we had time to observe the Malala Yousufzai and its destination. Jupiter and the human base on Io, on closer inspection, had another artificial object in orbit, a series of four giant metallic sleeves, big enough to fly a ship through, arranged like pan-pipes. Before the Malala Yousufzai could reach Jupiter, however, it disappeared! Chmaa explained that it used a gravity drive to jump away.
Chmaa seems to have a clear concept of trade and contracts. It told us that it considers us teaching it English as the fulfillment of the agreement it originally wanted in selling the gravity drive. Then it suggested to help us navigate the Nancy Wake and use the gravity drive in exchange for helping it investigate a human artifact in deep space, evidence that humans may have had the ability to travel faster than light even before the Nancy Wake and the Malala Yousufzai were built! Chmaa must make a risky and complicated gravity jump in order to reach a spot not close to any star, but on a direct path between Sol and Alpha Centauri b.
We agreed, but we didn’t know how jarring the jump is going to be. It felt like a second has passed, but the ship’s computer said that nearly a whole month passed. We were starving, dehydrated, hair was falling out and even our teeth wobbled in our mouths. A wracking experience. Whether Chmaa suffered during the jump or not was impossible to determine.
And then, when we gradually found the strength to think straight again, we saw on the ship’s displays the object which Chmaa wanted to investigate – a massive ship, with a mass of thousands of tons. The ship displays the old flag of Japan (back from when Japan existed as a state) and has some Japanese letters printed on its hull.
*
We approached carefully. We listened to their radio emissions and discovered two channels – one for speaking in Japanese and one for music in Japanese. We interrupted both with short and friendly messages.
To our surprise, a human in a spacesuit came out of their airlock to peak at us and take a photo. We were guided towards the airlock to land and enter. There, first officer Yoshikzaki Ayumi greeted us and took us to see captain Yotsuyanagi Hiroshi. Yotsuyanagi invited us to a tea ceremony. He believed that we came to destroy his ship, the Sakura no Hana (“cherry blossom”).
A long discussion was needed to bridge the gap in out mutual assumptions. The Sakura no Hana left Earth 23 years ago, from the now defunct state of Japan. It was a secret mission, to build a generation ship and send it to colonize Alpha Centauri b, to preserve Japan’s culture and state. The crew believed that their mission is almost certainly doomed to fail, unless a scientific breakthrough is found during the 120-year journey to a new star system.
Instead, a disaster happened.
Captain Yotsuyanagi believed that if humans develop faster-than-light travel, they would send a war vessel after the Sakura no Hana to destroy her. He found it hard to believe that contact with alien life was peaceful, and that faster-than-light travel found its way into the hand of fugitives rather than the governments.
He then explained what the disaster was. A failed experiment in quantum physics caused the Sakura no Hana to lose its store of matter scooped from Saturn, which was converted over the last two decades into anti-matter. Without this energy, the ship has almost no chance to complete its mission. If we help investigate what happened, Captain Yotsuyanagi will give us an alien artifact which the Sakura no Hana picked up on its voyage.
So we went down to the engineering department. We found out that everyone there was a doctor of quantum physics in addition to their various fields of expertise. The chief engineer Dr. Kanai Kaname performed a gran experiment three weeks ago which somehow depleted the ship’s energy stores. She then, according to the theory of chief of security Dr. Yoshioka Shinya, threw herself out of the airlock in shame.
We discovered that the log of the experiment itself was erased. The log of the emergency airlock in the engineering department was erased as well, because of a malfunction due to moisture from a cleaning fluid.
Sergei meanwhile returned to the Nancy Wake to talk to Chmaa. He almost died as someone has apparently cut through the tether. Who would do such a thing?
Chmaa decided to come to the Sakura no Hana and speak with the crew directly, to trade information with them.
And we decided that we must investigate further, and understand what happened three weeks ago.
We made notes of the names of crewmembers of the engineering department as well as the two commanding officers of the ship:
Captain: Yotsuyanagi Hiroshi m
First mate: Yoshikzaki Ayumi f
Engineering department: 12 men, 11 women, 2 non-binary
- Applied physicist: Dr. Yukutake Yohei f
- Armorer: Dr. Sonoda Kenbun m
- Assistant chef: Dr. Hagino Kouichi f
- Assistant technical engineer: Dr. Yoshikoshi Takanori m
- Chief doctor: Dr. Abe Tomohiro m
- Chief technical engineer: Dr. Yoshimura Shuntaro f
- Chief uniform inspector: Dr. Takahara Akio f
- Data analyst: Dr. Suda Akira m
- Dead chief engineer: Dr. Kanai Kaname f
- Decorations officer: Dr. Tanaka Kenichiro f
- Division head: Dr. Ishitsuka Masaki f
- Entertainment officer: Dr. Sato Tomoya f
- Game coordinator: Dr. Yamanaka Takayoshi m
- Gardener: Dr. Yatomi Yutaka m
- Hairdresser: Dr. Yoshikawa Ichiro m
- Head cook: Dr. Sawado Nobuyuki x
- Head of security: Dr. Yoshioka Shinya m
- Liaison officer: Dr. Tsubokimoto Mio f
- Life support specialist: Dr. Okazaki Ryuji f
- Paramedic: Dr. Akimoto Takuma x
- Psychologist: Dr. Tamura Masafumi f
- Quartermaster: Dr. Wada Takeshi f
- Sanitation engineer: Dr. Komura Takayoshi m
- Secretary: Dr. Yoshida Yoshikuni m
- Sports instructor: Dr. Ito Hiroshi m
- Theoretical physicist: Dr. Morita Katsuhiro m
*
We continued the investigation. All the crewmembers listened intently as Dr. Morita Katsuhiro gave a talk about the way that the gravity drive works, based on a conversation with Chmaa, and what it means for the Sakura no Hana.
We found an anonymous note telling us to look in the bed of Dr. Yoshikawa Ichiro, and although Glyph spilled some ink and was caught violating Dr. Ichiro’s privacy, they did find an electric cutter under the bed, the tool that was used to sabotage Sergei’s tether the previous day. We investigated Dr. Ichiro, but he seemed surprised about the cutter.
As we started to check the security footage, someone painted on the door of our guestroom in Japanese “what is worse than death?” – we were able to trace both the note and the graffiti on our door to Dr. Komura Takayoshi. Takayoshi escaped into the elevator.
By the time we caught up with him, Takayoshi locked himself with Chmaa in the biological section of the ship, and told the crewmembers that he has a bomb. Chmaa left a transistor for us outside the door, so we were able to communicate with it. Despaired, Takayoshi opened the door for us.
He explained what happened – he witnessed the experiment by Dr. Kanai Kaname as she collapsed the quantum wave function and used-up almost all of the anti-matter stores of the Sakura no Hana. She attempted to double the speed of the ship, but instead double the ship herself, sending two identical copies of the ship from the same point in opposite directions. The second Sakura no Hana is now travelling back towards Earth.
This caused Dr. Komura Takayoshi to go mad with rage. It meant both the failure of the mission, as well as the loss of the individual uniqueness of each crewmember – a fate worse than death, according to him. He tried to convince Chmaa to turn the Nancy Wake around and destroy the copy of the Sakura no Hana.
When we revealed our discovery, Captain Yotsuyanagi Hiroshi decided to send a tightbeam message to the copy Sakura no Hana to warn them that they are flying in the opposite direction, gave us a file (of alien origin? How is that possible?) that was trapped in the frequency of space dust along the path of the ship. We analyzed the file to discover that it was some piece of music, seemingly human. The captain asked us to to help their mission if we can.
We decided to request that the condemned Dr. Komura Takayoshi be brought to our ship, to which the captain readily agreed. We decided to take a risk and jump straight to Alpha Centauri b, a short jump but one which will still deplete much of our fuel. From there we will have the possibility for only one more jump if we do not find any fuel.
So we jump.
*
The red dwarf of Alpha Centaur b is part of a twin-star system with Alpha Centauri a, a few weeks travel if we choose to go there without a jump.
The system has two planets: Proxima Centauri b is a hot planet, while Proxima Centauri c is almost Earth-like, a possible candidate for the Sakura no Hana to colonize?
A space system orbited Proxima Centauri c, looking like two spiky crowns pointing outwards from a ball of steel. A vazzav station, said Chmaa.
We also saw two ships, the Morning dew evaporating, a vazzav ship.
And the Drown in acid, an iyidee ship.
We tried to communicate, but Chmaa warned us that communication with vazzav is nearly impossible, they have a different concept of time and sequence. They sent us this matrix:
We observed the iyidee ship charging the station, being chased by the vazzav ship, but attaching to the station and stealing fuels, it seems. The iyidee ship then escaped to the EZ Aquarii A system, 7 light years away.
The vazzav followed us as we entered orbit to study the planet. Proxima Centauri c seems cold, volcanic, toxic and stormy – a young planet. We sent that information to the Sakura no Hana. Then the vazzav ship Morning dew evaporating touched our airlock and gave us a vial with a sample of their atmosphere, which is rich in methane. We observed a vazzav:
Their ship looked filthy and crawling with green insects which seemed to obey the vazzav.
We discussed among ourselves what we should do next. Meanwhile the vazzav sent us a file that showed that the Drown in acid came from the system Luhman 16, 5 light years away.
So we made up our minds, and approached the vazzav station. We broke inside, though the rotation of the station was so fast, that Maeve almost broke her arm. Sergei climbed into the station and found two vazzav waiting for him. Barrels came rolling by and he took them, but then one of the vazzav attacked him with a blade, and he barely moved away.
We decided to jump to Wolf 359, 3 light years away. We loaded the fuel into our engine, but one of the barrels was trapped, and contained a hive of green insects! Sergei quickly escaped the room and closed the door, we put on spacesuits and shunted the air from the Nancy Wake to clear out the insects. Then we jumped.
*
We soon realized, with some amount of horror, that the bluish-greenish insects in our ship were not all shunted out with the air from the ship. What’s worse, they seem to have multiplied during the jump and now infested the ship in larger numbers. Dr. Komura Takayoshi took it upon himself to eradicate them, to study them and design means of reaching hard-to-reach nooks and crannies in the Nancy Wake and hunt them to the last.
In Wolf 359 we found a red dwarf, a flare star and one of the smallest stars close to Earth. Only one very small planet, only slightly larger than the Earth’s moon, orbited the star. The system was surprisingly clean of debris and asteroids.
Around the small planet was a large ship, and a small station. Chmaa told us that the ship, called Ditakak was of izru design, and that the station was called “Circle Claim” and was probably built by the ship. The ship had a hole in it, and a faint distress signal emerged from the airlock.
We hailed both the ship and the station. The station had a dangerous-sounding static, as if someone was building a self-learning AI inside, a highly dangerous thing.
We decided to investigate. We went into the Ditakak leaving Chmaa behind. The Ditakak was depressurized, and its gravity drive was sabotaged by some kind of bomb which unleashes a swarm of robotic worms to gnaw at it silently. We saw that an izru was in the airlock, but then Chmaa sent a call for help through the comms.
We rushed back to the Nancy Wake but it was too late. Something attacked our ship, an organic-looking ship attached to our airlock, pried it open and some formless beast burst inside and tore Chmaa to shreds, and then left, depressurizing the ship.
Dr. Komura Takayoshi was quick enough to barricade himself in the med-bay, but fell unconscious nevertheless. Chmaa was dead.
On the ship’s screens we could see the alien ship pushing the station “Circle Claim” down unto the planet, aiming it at the small archeological station on the planet’s surface. Then it sped away.
Sergey and Dave entered the Ditakak again, while Glyph and Maeve stayed behind. They rescued the izru, Udirdiha, who came with an armed battle space-suit and a staff. She was grateful to be allowed to come to our ship.
It took about 720 hours for us to be able to establish full communication with her. Meanwhile, Dave installed a metal fabricator on the Nancy Wake and Uridiha installed an observatory which gave us a starmap to navigate by. We looted as much fuel, oxygen, food and water as we could from the Ditakak.
Uridiha explained that her staff is a treasured izru item which allows a colonist to survive on a hostile planet by building everything from scratch.
With her help, we pieced together the story. Apparently a drah called Hfffu arrived at the station while the Ditakak was busy establishing a station to power and serve the archeology dig on the planet’s surface (which they found when they arrived). Hfffu snuck into the Ditakak, sabotaged the gravity drive and then vented the ship, killing the crew except for Udirdiha. Udirdiha, having the very low-status role of the ship’s soldier, was sent with her battle suit to investigate Hfffu’s ship, but she never dared leave the airlock when she saw that her crew was killed. She stayed in the airlock and waited for rescue, as Hffu took over the space station.
When we arrived, Hfffu frantically started programming an AI for combat purposes, but some unknown-species attacked and killed both Hfffu and Chmaa (both drah) – but no one else, and then left.
We landed on the planet and investigated the debris. We found five more survival staves, a jar of salts (Dave designed a tap to help investigate the substance, necessary for biotics) and the archeology site itself, with cave paintings showing some space-farers (balls with tentacles?) arriving at a city of onion-domes, and being hunted down by their own kind for the sin of visiting that city.
It seems we have discovered everything there is to discover in this system, and it’s time to move on.
*
It has been a long time since we had time to relax and to think. We decided to take a few more weeks simply orbiting the planet Wolf 359a, eating rations and relaxing. There were many secrets that bugged us und Uridriha couldn’t give us all the answers that we wanted.
Eventually, we decided to jump to Wolf 1061, putting five more light years between us and Earth.
We discovered an M-class red dwarf which is part of the Ophiuchus constellation. It has three rocky planets, all orbiting very close. The furthest, Wolf 1061c was inhabited! A planet with green and blue like Earth, only a bit smaller, and polar ice caps. It orbits Wolf 1061 every 1,615 hours (about 67 days).
A space station orbits that planet, in a geosynchronous orbit around a city on the surface.
Uridriha started tearing away parts of our computer. She claimed that our overly complex computer makes the Nancy Wake vulnerable to attack. She then started fixing the damage she did, but simplifying our systems to the point of making our live support less reliable. Dave tried to check things and keep the ship from falling apart.
The station is called “Fuel for Information” and is comprised of two rotating cylinders affixed to a frame of non-rotating pipes. We could dock among the few ships (including one izru warship) an speak with an iyidee crewmember. We were offered free passage via shuttle to the ground, but if we want to buy fuel, food, oxygen and water we’ll have to pay. Information? The iyidee can both buy and sell us information, and was interested in conducting experiments on us. We decided to wait with that for now.
Dave joined us from the ship and all of us took the shuttle down to the city. The city is called “the circumference of a circle divided by the radius” so Glyph started calling it “2 pie”. The city is divided into three sections: an izru section, an iyidee section and a drah section. In the middle is a kind of starport/market and neutral territory where we landed.
There we were assigned accommodation, but before we could check it out, we were accosted by a swarm of hshsh.
One of them could speak English!
The hshsh were in a state of terror, because the obligator in the city was dying and only the izru scientist Mikdiniha knows a secret that could save her. They believed, for some reason, that we are also obligators?
So they took us to her, and to our astonishment she was a human woman! Her name is Olivia McCollum, and she is indeed dying. She explained much about the situation. Apparently Earth is exporting obligators, humans trained to obtain information through interrogation. She left Earth about five years ago. Recently, she was hired by iyidee to investigate a mysterious safe found on the planet Wolf 1061a in this system. The safe could be opened with a song – the song Don’t Stop Believing by the band Journey. A human band!
In the safe were six doses of a valuable medicine, and the iyidee gave her half of the stash as payment, three doses. The medicine can awaken biotic powers in a non-biotic person. Olivia took the medicine and developed carapace biotic power, but she got greedy and took another dose, hoping to develop a second power. Instead, she suffered horrible and unstoppable cellular decay and is dying. She told the hshsh to get the secret from the scientist Midkiniha for her just out of curiosity, because she doesn’t believe that she can be saved.
We offered to take her in a cold sleep coffin back to Earth, maybe they can save her there. She recorded a message for us and gave us codes that will allow us (so we hope) to return to Earth safely. She also gave us the last remaining dose of the medicine, and Glyph took it, gaining advanced reflexes.
*
With Olivia McCollum safely in cold sleep, it was time for us to plan our next move. Lots of residents from the city of “The circumference of a circle divided by its radius” came over to talk to us.
Hshsh interviewed Sergei about what were the toughest battles that he was in. Later we learned that it was on behalf of the drah Bvraa, who wanted to impress us. When Sergei said that experienced warriors are the most dangerous, Bvraa responded by taking us to the edge of the city, a radioactive area, where we waited for it as it assassinated a setiaodn (a snail-like creature) in a laboratory and broadcast the event on a rock it asked us to polish. Bvraa wanted us to hire it to assassinate someone, and pay it with one of our crewmembers. Instead, we hired Bvraa to give us intelligence against the izru scientist Mikdiniha in exchange for telling it about humans.
The intelligence proved useful. We assaulted Mikdiniha’s spiral from two sides and took the scientist by surprise. Glyphs enhanced reflexes and Sergei’s brute aggression prevented Mikdiniha from activating any defenses or calling for help. Udirdiha instructed us that we can interrogate Mikdiniha by threatening his life.
He relented and revealed his secret – the reason for establishing the Compact. The Compact, according ot Mikdiniha, was created to solve mysteries together. The mystery of the statistical unlikelihood of so many sentient species developing the same level of technological advancement at the same time and at clos proximity to each other, and the mystery of the “inevitable extinction” – archeological evidence show that in the past, other such “bursts” of space-faring civilizations occurred, and that each species which achieved the ultimate technological level (fusion power, crystal capacitors, biotics, quantum computing and the gravity drive) – has never survived for more than 1.5 million hours before either destroying itself (in war, environmental disaster or a nuclear catastrophe) or by ascending to virtual life in a digital world. Each species reacts differently upon discovering the inevitable extinction, and the Compact is a joint effort to avoid it.
With this knowledge, Uridriha could now call herself a scientist. It is a major advancement for her. Uridriha was surprised, however, that we did not kill Mikdiniha.
We then also met an iyidee which wanted to speak with us. Their name is Rushdu-Avliv-Demak-Peokran-RADP. They want the crew to investigate Lacaille 9352, ships do not return from there. If we will be the first to return, RADP will give us a brand new ship, or another 120 modules to add to the Nancy Wake.
So we took the shuttle back to the station, “Fuel for Information,” and we allowed the iyidee on board to experiment on us (experiments of us coming closer as a group and scattering to see if we go insane or become stupid). Glyph messed with the iyidee a bit. They still filled our fuel tank and we were ready to jump to Lacaille 9352. We figured that returning to Earth with an even bigger ship and more information will give us more of a clout.
*
We jumped to Ross 12B and then to Lacaille 9352. In Lacaille 9352 we were surprised to encounter an entire fleet of warships. The weird bean-like ships came in three sizes – the smallest ones, which later turned out to be remote-operated drones, could maneuver very fast. The middle-sized ones were bigger than the Nancy Wake and the large ones were more than a hundred times bigger, but there were only three of them.
As soon as we jumped in, the ships started hailing us an warning us in Compact Standard not to try to escape. We figured our chances of jumping away to be risky. We’ll have to fight our way against a few of the small ships at the very least.
We negotiated with the locals, a slow process which required Glyph’s full attention to nuances in meaning. The local species, the omo, explained that the planet on Lacaille 9352 is their “second homeworld” – their prison, so we learned.
The Omo used to be part of the “Old Compact” but their aggressive expansionism united the other species of the “Old Compact” against them. Their warfleet was defeated and they were confined to a prison planet here on Lacaille 9352 about seven million hours ago. They were stripped of their technology and reverted to their aggressive tribal warfare among each other. The planet was selected for its poor mineral resources, so technological advancement was slowed.
Over time, the omo on the planet united themselves again and put aside violence and imperialism. They regained most of their lost technologies, but decided not to develop space flight.
All that, until strange craft appeared in their sky. Their system was visited by a species from LHS 292, which the omo concluded had hostile intentions – they came to survey the omo system for expansion, and refused attempts at communication.
The omo responded by quickly building a fleet of their own, preparing to launch a preemptive strike. Three vessels from the new Compact arrived in their system and they dismantled these ships to prevent them from jumping away. The omo calculated a narrow time frame in which they have a chance to launch their preemptive strike, before their intention to do so will arrive at LHS 292 through lightspeed communications. Seven years. But any ship jumping away could be observed by spies from LHS 292 and ruin the element of surprise.
So we were not allowed to leave.
The omo told us that they heard that our species, the humans, are known for being best at military intelligence, and asked us to help them in their war. They will reward us for helping them, but if we do not want to help, they will take our ship and leave us on their planet until they return from the war. If they lose, however, the hostile species from LHS 292 will surely come and kill us along with all the omo.
After much deliberation, and mainly because of Sergei’s bloodlust, we decided to join the omo taskforce. They gave us teardrop-shaped rifles which can fire radioactive particles and offered very little time to train, before the entire fleet must jump simulatanously. They also gave us two of their small drone-ships to control.
So we did, and arrived at LHS 292 at the edge of the omo fleet. An inhabited marshy planet with a warfleet in orbit greeted us. The ships seemed like spherical or semi-spherical objects covered with a lattice of cables. They moved into position to intercept us, and it seemed that the omo outnumber them three to one at least in tonnage.
We charged forward. Udirdiha unleashed our entire arsenal of missiles and we sent the two drones forward, but the battle turned against us within minutes. The missiles and the drones were taken over by the enemy and turned around. Omo ships were disabled one by one – apparently by hacking attacks.
The Nancy Wake, probably because Udirdiha sabotage our computer and made it more stupid, was the only ship still capable of maneuvering freely in the entire omo fleet. We turned around and started accelerating as fast as we can (decelerating, actually), with a desperate hope of escape. The enemy hackers hacked our airlock open, and Maeve jumped to close it before we all get killed – she broke her arm in the process.
All seemed lost, but then the enemy ships seemed to be disabled themselves, and did not use the opportunity to open fire and pulverize the omo fleet. Something strange was happening. As we managed to get our inertia under control, we were dangerously close to a large enemy ship. Sergei said that we should take our chances and try to board the enemy ship rather than start accelerating slowly out of the system (which will take 16 hours before we can jump if we accelerate at 5g!).
So we are going to try to board, and see who those aggressive species of LH 292 are.
*
We entered the alien ship, wearing our suits. Only Dave and Dr. Takahashi stayed behind.
The corridors are full of equipment which is alien to us, curved surfaces rather than flat and the equipment seems very delicate and fragile.
Within seconds, we were attacked by strange monsters, small but aggressive.
Glyph, augmented by their fast reflexes, caught one. We beat the others away quickly, one was injured and one escaped and called for reinforcements.
We started to move more quickly, Udirdiha urging us to find the computers of the ship and observe them to shut down their quantum functions. Sergei operated the ship’s internal sensors which were based on optical cables to locate what seemed like the computer room, or maybe a chicken coop. Meanwhile, the local aliens were coming at us with a combat robot of some kind.
In the room that looked like a chicken coop the creatures ambushed us with laser pistols, but we survived their barrage with minor injuries and pressed forward. Sergei’s suit was torn, and he detected that the ship had breathable, albeit warm, air.
In the cages were sponge-like orange blobs. Wires sticking to them made us think that they are some kind of organic computer.
It took some doing, but Glyph managed to interface with the computer and attach their translation dumb-AI into it. The orange sponges learned standard Compact and started communicating with us through text, asking us to intervene on their behalf.
The winged aliens, the zwik, consider these sponges to be food and are not aware that the sponges are self-aware. Now that an another spacefaring species was present, the omo, the sponges made their move and disabled both fleets. They asked us, being the outsiders, to mediate.
First, we had to name the sponges, and we decided to call them Miriams. The Miriams opened the comms for us and we explained the situation to the omo, and started negotiations with the zwik.
We learned that the zwik are not as techonologically-advanced as we thought. They relied on Miriams to operate advanced machines and design complex components. They sent scouts to the omo prison-planet and scouted it for habitation, but the omo mistook the flying zwik in the sky for drones and sent digital communications at them, which the zwik never detected.
The omo were now ready to call off the attack and return to their home planet. The zwik had to dismantle their fleet and liberate the Miriams. The Miriams agreed to replicate another cold-sleep coffin for us with the help of zwik, something which will give them the technology of cold sleep and us another coffin. But we had to loan them one of ours first.
One of the Miriams joined us on the ship, to serve as an ambassador of sorts, as they wish to explore new planets and visit Earth. In exchange, the Miriam who came with us we named Alexandra.
The Miriams also told us that a ship has briefly visited and left the system while the fleets were disabled, which they described as a very human-like ship. It jumped to Lacaille 8760, the edge of the mapped space, and we decided to delay our return to Earth and follow that ship first.
In Lacaille 8760 we saw the ship we were chasing, with the English name Chimera painted on its hull, flying through a ringlike structure orbiting a planet, close to the relatively large and bright red dwarf. It looked like some kind of portal, but it didn’t seem to work or do anything. The Chimera accelerated and jumped away, and we decided to follow and jump after her, leading us into uncharted space!
Exhausted and wrung from two jumps in a row, we observed the Chimera docking with a space station orbiting a moon around a gas giant.
We noticed that a star very close to the system we just jumped to (only about one light year away) was not observable before we actually arrived on this system for some reason.
The station hailed us, and we saw on the screen what seemed like a human woman, called Kanisha! She told us that the station is called “Halcyion.” It took her a few minutes to be convinced that we are humans from what she termed “the original Earth” rather than home planet, which was “sort of Earth2”.
We had many questions.
We docked on the same station, called Halcyon station, and the Chimera quickly disengaged and jumped away, but we were too distracted. Kanisha offered human food, a warm shower and other human comforts to our weary crew. She let us use our observatory in the Nancy Wake and then told us the names of all the nearby systems, as the humans call them:
And now, we need to see what we do with this incredible information!
*
Kanisha is the only crewmember on the Halcyon station. Her task, she told us, was to examine an artifact on the planet, an artificial cave. We followed her down to examine it. The entrance to the cave is protected by a powerful disintegrating wall, but there is a side room just before the wall and Kanisha set up her machines at the entrance to try to figure out how the machine works.
The invisible field which breaks anything passing through it into particles is not a defense mechanism, Kanisha claims, but a feature – she believes that the cave is a factory which can fabricate anything and uses raw materials which it breaks down. The products should appear in the side room. When she arrived, the only thing she found was an old dusty electronic device.
Dave identified the device as a gaming console, a few decades old at least. He was able to reconnect it and activate it and found a game inside – Shadow Valley, a fantasy open world adventure game. The save game showed us a book with pictures that reminded us of the archeological site we explored before, warning of a forbidden city. There was also a recording of a game in which two characters spoke about the forbidden city and why it is a bad idea to go there. We came to the conclusion that the entire game console was left here as a warning.
Kanisha asked for our help to unlock the interface of the factory so that it can be used to manufacture things. She even gave us four additional song fragments, the ones which she was given to try to unlock the interface. Nothing worked.
Kanisha admitted that she was keeping us around to delay us from leaving, until more ships arrive. We are the first humans from the “original Earth” which her people met. Her society arrived in 2012-2013 on a planet which they now call Earth2, although at first they thought that they are still on the original Earth with the other seven billion people just disappearing. They had many buildings, but the museums became empty. Warehouses, though, were full and they had plants and animals from Earth, no alien stuff.
She mentioned Melody Savoy, a woman who was both a quantum physicist and a musicologist. Savoy was seen as a kind of prophet because she seemed to know who among the seven billion people belonged to the twelve million and who didn’t, and rumors spread that she helped some people reunite with lost family members. She stopped publishing quantum physics papers and focused on musicology only.
We decided not to wait for the ships to arrive in Halcyion, but to jump and explore the Forbidden City. Kanisha warned us that the Hydra, one of the human ships, jumped there and never came back. After a fierce argument among us, we decided to take the risk. We jumped and found an ancient Earthlike-planet surrounded by a ring of debris. Not asteroids or moons, but satellites. One of them was a big robot-like machine, an omo who was uploaded into a robot body, unable to move but able to warn anyone who approaches.
The omo had no memories of its previous life, but did remember that it came here with a ship and was punished for succumbing to the planet’s temptation. It had vague memories of Melody Savoy. Could she have been on the ship too?
We learned that the planet is full of nanites which were programmed to fulfill the wishes of anyone who comes in contact with them. They fulfill the wishes in a way which creates factories to produce more nanites, thereby maintaining the ability to fulfill more and more wishes. The result, it seems, are always horrific. Sentient beings will hunt and destroy anyone armed with these nanites.
The planet is still covered in dark cities, ancient nanite factories built to fulfill the fantasies of visitors to the planet.
Dr. Takayoshi wanted very much to land and conduct science on the planet, using the nanites to build computers and telescopes. Uridriha wanted to build a warfleet and conquer the Compact. After a long conversation, we decided to jump back to Halcyion, leaving the treasure behind.
The Chimera was waiting for us. Captain Victoria Orlando spoke with an atrocious southern drawl, explaining that after delivering the news that the Nancy Wake has arrived, she turned back and let another ship, the Griffon take the news to Earth2 while they turned around and jumped right back, hoping to escort us to Earth2 immediately. Her accent, apparently, is a deliberate attempt by her family to recreate an accent which was lost when only 12 million people arrived from the original Earth. Apparently none of them spoke with a southern drawl.
Victoria Orlando made some jokes about threatening us with her weapons, but do we dare call her bluff and go in another direction?