NationStates Jolt Archive

Sol system, asteroid belt

In the emptiness there was no sound, no display of bright lights or anything spectacular to mark the event. Simply, one moment in that part of the belt there were asteroids, and the next there were a whole lot less of them.

Instead...

The elegant vessel that had appeared filled twelve and a half miles of void, lights glinting briefly before her cloak engaged again. On board, the AI was confused; given what had just happened, that was understandable.

Where?

She dropped cloak again and reached out with her sensors, cautiously, treating the ship's body not like an extension of herself as she had before, but as a dangerous thing that must be handled with care. She shouldn't have survived and she shouldn't be here...

And where is here?

This place was filled with tens of thousands of transmissions; from planets, moons, spacecraft and stations...Not the monotonous single voice repeated across fifty galaxies demanding all exalt the Ascended One or be destroyed, but hundreds of voices, all with different messages. The sheer strangeness of that was disorientating in itself.

She paused. The Shield...?

It was still in place. She ran through a series of calculations, and if she could have cried at what they told her she would have. The shield held through it all; cause was destroyed but effect remained. But, that would mean...

The Amethyst hung silently in space, as she tried to come to terms with the enormity of what she had done.

The LiME's were largely bound to their nations, true. Habakkuk was really the only one with any degree of transportation, mainly because he possessed a space craft. Depsite being anchored physically, they weren't the sort to let the universe pass them by. Especially not the more curious in their ranks.

Many would assume Elijah to be the curious one; after all, he was the scientist and progenitor of their kind. But his focus was usually turned inward, figuratively and literally. No, Ruth was the more curious one by far. From her vantage point on Nod, she had sent out numerous probes and sensors over her time in the orbiting station. Always facing away from the Sun also meant that her probes reached far out towards the edges of the galaxy. To say she was well informed would be an understatement.

Needless to say, a ship that matched no known make appearing in the middle of nowhere was enough to raise an eyebrow. The ship seemed to be operational, but it was rather difficult to judge, considering it was a completely unknown entity.

Why not?

She realigned one of her arrays, sending out a message, cycling through a dozen or so common languages and finally in binary, trying to cover all her bases.

Welcome to the Sol System!

I couldn't help but notice your rather unorthodox method of entering the system and wanted to welcome you to our little corner of the universe.

Feel free to backtransmit along this data stream if you'd like to respond.

If you'd prefer to visit, I'm located at $coordinates, which is in orbit around the innermost planet. Look forward to hearing from you.

~Ruth
Nod Station
Mercury

She supposed it was a little risky, but no more risky than dealing with any of the other freaks out there in this system.

Asteroid Belt

Hrm. That one looks good... Lemme see... Lots of Iron, a bit of carbon... Good... Oha, Iridium. Well, shiny. Another 500k to go, but-

From one moment to the next, the asteorid was gone.

Eh?

Some light glinting. Something huge is out there...

Was out there.

Something's not right. Where is my 'roid, and what the hell was this?

There it is again. Vast, enormous, phallic, but also elegant, almost feminine, in a sense. The Citrine forgets its job of searching for and mining asteorids, and does a quick sensor sweep, as non-hostile as a sensor sweep can possibly be done. She's not a military craft to begin with, and whatever this thing perhaps 300k clicks away is, it could swallow her whole.

Apparently non-hostile, although the results of the sensor sweep are annoyingly insufficient. A part of the Citrine contemplates to simply run away. This thing is orders of magnitude beyond herself in just about every possible sense.

The other part wants to get closer.

Feminine curiosity wins, and accelerating relatively slowly, idly making a few notes about the sudden lack of asteorids in this sector, and comparing their mass to the mass of the odd vessel out there...

Whoops. Ok, now this ought to tell me something, but what? I hope it isn't going to eat the whole system...

Anyway. She's close enough for near-instantaneous communications, anyway. The signal she sends together with the appropriate language codes is almost too weak to be noticed. In front of Outside Context Problems like this one, Citrine tends to be a 'lil shy. What with never having had to deal with one.

Ummm... Hello? Not the best of introductions, but Citrine is hardly a trained diplomat.

Zone 21 (Military Sector), Waterfront City, Planet Solont. 13:01 SST.

“Oh, Shizite!”

“Shut the FUCK up, Douhann! I am TIRED OF YOUR SHIT!” If you ever heard Officer Maw speak in such a tone, it usually meant you obeyed or lost a few limbs, but Douhann thought this was serious enough to risk a broken skull.

“Sir, I swear, I’m not kidding this time. A MASSIVE 12.5 mile long object just appeared in the Sol asteroid belt.” Douhann was sweating. If his readings turned out wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time Maw would break a chair over his head.

“What do you mean it just ‘appeared’? You mean it came out of warp?” Officer Maw’s voice dripped with inflection. Clearly, not amused.

“No sir! Just picked up the magnetic, spectroscopic, and infrared readings from LP-003. Negative readings on our G-rater. It didn’t come out of warp, nor did anything in the area in the past hour.” No G-quakes, no nothing. One second the thing was there, the next second, it wasn’t. Surely the instruments had to be wrong…

“Run a diagnostics on LP-003.” Maw’s voice had changed. No longer could Douhann feel Maw’s overwhelming desire to beat him about the head with a piece of wood.

“Just finished, sir. Listening Post 003 checks out. Hold on…” Douhann turned his eyes. “Some other factions in Sol are hailing the object, and we’ve confirmed that it’s not of natural origin.” Maw’s left eyebrow raised a fraction of a centimeter. Douhann, the idiot youngster, was being surprisingly professional about this development.

“What about markings? Anything to confirm where it came from or who it belongs to?” Maw queried. Things were starting to pick up. It wasn’t every week you had this much excitement in the SOD.

“No sir, Beowulf confirms it. Nothing to tie it with any known nation or faction in the Sol system, or anywhere else for that matter.”

Troubling news. If the thing could just… appear, without causing any sort of G-quake, then it must have some new kind of drive system, something not yet encountered. Or a cloaking device, which would make it a military vessel. Either way, this warranted a closer inspection….

Zone 1 (Spaceport), Waterfront City, 13:14 SST.

“Lemme get this straight. I’m supposed to warp to the Sol asteroid field, hail this mystery vessel, and see what happens?” Diplomatic Officer Chitako Ikaruga had plenty to be worried about. Not 5 minutes had passed since the government offices had gotten word of a strange contact in the Sol system, and already she was being suited up for an emergency gate jump.

“That is EXACTLY what you’re going to do, Miss Ikaruga. Once onsite, you’ll have authority, so use your best judgment, but relay back to us any significant changes in the situation. And you won’t be alone. We’ve scrambled two SA-77 J’s from the 70’th Fighter Group. They’ll be escorting your shuttle, and you’ll have Sgt. Taggert to look after you in case of contact.” The bespectacled government official briefing Chitako nodded to the tall, unshaven marine standing behind her.

“That’s all well and good, sir, but why are we acting so quickly on this? Wouldn’t it be better to observe this new contact and see what it does?” Chitako asked, locking the torso of her flight armor into place. It had been all of 5 minutes since the report had come in and Chitako Ikaruga had been yanked from her desk and driven to the space port. Had to hand it to the government. When they wanted to do something fast, they did it fast.

“That, Miss Ikaruga, is something I’m not at liberty to discuss. All I can say is that SIN and Beowulf have decided that time is of the essence in this matter. Now hurry up. The shuttle’s cleared for takeoff and Gate Control is standing by. If everything is on schedule, you’ll be arriving in just under 30 minutes.” The small government official pushed his glasses up on his nose, and summarily turned and strode out of the room, leaving Chitako as bewildered as ever. Just what in the hell was going on?

Unexpectedly, Chitako felt the heavy armored hand of Sgt. Flynn Taggert on her shoulder.
“Don’t worry about him, Miss Ikaruga. SIN fella’s always have a stick up their ass. Aint their fault.”

It was a bit of a shock. Chitako hadn’t expected a gesture of kindness from a Solontian Marine, given what she’d heard of them…

“Now get the lead out, Miss. Gate Control fuckin’ hates to be kept waiting.”

Sol System, Asteroid Belt, 13:40 SST.

With a triple flash of blue light, the Solontian diplomatic shuttle and its two fighter escorts burst from hyperspace, 16 miles in front of the bow of the strange vessel.

“Keep it tight, Alpha group. It’s gonna take us a sec to vector all nearby asteroids, so stay on your toes.”

To be honest, the asteroids in this section of the field were large and slow enough to dodge quite easily, but until they were vectored, the three Solontian ships were going to have to stay on their guard. But while Alpha Wing took care of defending the shuttle from space debris, Chitako took her first opportunity to get a good look at what they came to see.
The ship was indeed massive, more than twice the length of the largest Solontian vessel ever constructed, but something about it made it seem… non-threatening. Perhaps it was the elegant flowing lines of the vessels hull. Perhaps it wasn’t. Whatever the case, any anxiety that had accompanied Chitako on the journey to Sol was dispelled the moment she laid eyes on the unknown vessel.

“Miss Ikaruga?” Flynn spoke up. His tone was gentle, but his voice was still gruff. “We’re ready to broadcast on all wavelengths, and we’re transmitting what we hope will be perceived as a friendly IFF.”

“Very well, then.” Chitako Ikaruga keyed her helmet mic and began to speak. “Attention, unknown vessel. This is the SFS Sol Ambience, representing the planet Solont. We wish to communicate. Please respond.” Chitako repeated her message once, and then waited for a reply.

“Sgt. Taggert, has the ship responded to any other hails it’s received?” Chitako asked after a minute of silence had passed.

“SIN says negative, Miss.”

Chitako frowned. Perhaps, if there was just some way she could demonstrate that she meant no harm…

“Sol Ambience, this is Alpha 2. We’ve vectored a couple of rocks on a collision course with the anomaly. They’re moving too slowly to cause any major damage, but…

“Alpha 1, Alpha 2, destroy those rocks.” Chitako replied quickly. Excellent. A perfect opportunity. Without hesitation, the two SA-77 J’s flared their engines and rocketed away, closing the distance between the Sol Ambience and the offending space rocks in less than a minute. With a flash of gunfire lighting up the darkness of space, hundreds of small, superheated tungsten rounds burst forward from the two fighters and punctured the asteroids, blowing them into harmless dust in seconds.

“Excellent work, Alpha wing. Now, let’s try this again.” Chitako switched from the military channel to a full broadcast, and once again tried to hail the mystery ship.

“Unknown vessel, this is the SFS Sol Ambience. We mean you no harm and only wish to communicate. Please respond.”

And then, Chitako Ikaruga, Sgt. Flynn Taggert, and the two pilots of Alpha Wing waited.

The City watched Sol. It had been in the system only a few weeks itself, and had entered orbit around Jupiter only a very short time ago; so a network of satellites watched and recorded everything, piecing it together into a map. Crude as yet, but it would not always be so.

The Dragon Brotherhood watched the Belt. A mining ship was taking shape in their shipyards, and already they were selecting targets.

"Sir! Number five just vanished!"

The reigning Dragon Lord was elsewhere, leaving his ascendant Lady in command. Athrín Kirant was insecure enough to inspect problems personally.

"So it has. You've run diagnostics on the satellites?"

"Yes, sir. And the programs. They're clean."

The Dragon Neophyte was young, but not stupid. There was unlikely to be a mechanical problem across all the satellites, and the programs coordinating them had come up clean, so it was likely that Asteroid Number Five had, indeed, just vanished.

"We've got ... something else where it was, sir."

"Oh?" A twist of the hand and the holoprojections changed, showing the distant region of the belt they'd been looking at. Closer in, and it became evident ...

"That's a manufactured object. Twenty kilometers* long, a large township or a small City. It's not Kasinat, whatever it is."

"It's large for an Other fleet carrier."

"Wrong lines for it - that's not trilaterally symmetric, whatever it is."

"We cannot afford to be complacent about this," Athrín stated. "Organise a crew and send out a cutter."

The City was seperated from events by around half an hour, as the photon flew, but their response was perfectly prompt. Only an hour after the asteroid had first disappeared from their projections an in-system cutter was accelerating towards the anomaly, it's antimatter drives spitting lethal radiation for all to see.

Commanding the little metal wedge-shape was Rhan Tirithian, formerly of Herakhet. The Dragons there tattooed their bodies, and the ones on her forehead writhed as she frowned. The Forbidden Joy had a sensor suite far inferior to the City, limited almost entirely to targeting systems, but even with those she could tell that the anomalous vessel was ... anomalous.

Her copilot was Kohal Ekatinnés, as dependable a herm as there was. Given the sheer size of the thing, they'd dispensed with a gunner for this mission; a young woman in Phoenix gold filled that seat, providing instantaneous communication with the City. She looked miserable.

"There are other ships investigating," Kohal reported, "What looks like an Angstian miner, and three I don't know. They're firing ... no, on some minor rocks."

"Shit." Rhan scowled at them; the presence of unaligned ships could make this a lot more complicated. Before their arrival here, that meant Hvekht, who were as capricious a bunch of madmen as you could hope not to meet. "Have we got that Dalat-to-Latin program on board?"

"Somewhere." Kohal flicked it's fingers, navigating through the subroutines. "Got it. What do you want to say?"

"Uh ... "Hello, foreign craft. This is the in-system cutter Forbidden Joy out of Kaireigh, pilot Rhan Tirithian commanding. We are on a survey mission and mean no harm." Send it to the anomaly as well - it may do something, it may not, but I don't want to be a bad neighbour to something that large."

"There, it's sent."

OOC: *The City doesn't use kilometers, but if I said keraz you wouldn't know what I meant. Rhan's message is sent via radio, is a voice broadcast, and is in second-century Latin. You can find my other thread here (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=378974).

The Amethyst studied the new arrivals with every non-invasive sensor available to her, confirming her fears as if there was any need to. These weren't the ugly wedge-shaped Galactic Standard Pattern vessels that she was used to, monuments to pure function over any kind of aesthetic standards, and yet still wasteful from the catacombs hollowed out of them for crew habitation.

She alone had been different, as a pure expression of the Ascended One's will she had been created to be pleasing to His eyes, a work of perfection in form as well as in function. None of that mattered anymore, though; He was gone along with everything else.

She studied their communications as best she could, as well as setting the sub-sentient independent AI computers in her targeting systems the task of analysing the data for patterns and trying to determine what they were trying to say to her. If, indeed, they were talking to her at all. Into that she also dumped all the other data she had gathered; the transmissions from the planets and such. Hopefully, they would establish something based on all that.

In the meantime, there had to be some way for her to determine their intent; something simple enough that they would understand her no matter what. While the small military vessels had fired near her, she had difficulty imagining their intent to be hostile; at most, a show of force to intimidate her, though that wasn't too likely either given her size relative to them. Some kind of ceremonial greeting, perhaps.

At any rate, she soon had something adequate for establishing them to be thinking beings who wished to communicate; carefully avoiding any signal strengths that might burn out their detection gear, she sent it out.

On most communication systems, it would show up; a single pulse, then a short pause, then another single pulse, then a pause; then two, pause, three, and so on; five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one...

Then she stopped, and waited for either her sub-computers to report or the strangers to reply.

"We're getting a reply!"

Kohal's excitement was a tangible thing through the Shiplink, and readily shared by Rhan. The Phoenix wasn't connected - didn't have the hardware, not being a Dragon - so who knew what she thought?

"Something's alive in there, then," Rhan replied. "Anything comprehensible?"

"Just pulses on the radio - one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one. Some kind of code, a binary message?"

"Thirty-four," the Phoenix girl said, practically inaudibly. They looked at her; where had that come from?

"The answer is thirty-four," she repeated, louder. "Each number is the total of the previous two."

"You must have been talking aloud again," Rhan told Kohal, who flushed, embarrassed, on the Shiplink and in reality. It was a rookie mistake.

"Thirty-four, eh?" she said aloud. "Interesting." "Kohal, transmit thirty-four pulses on the same frequency back at it?"

"Doing it now ... done."

Spacecowboys, huh? Bah. Citrine muttered, sensors glaring in the direction of the Mountana craft.

Not only sensors, come to think of it. Communication arrays, too.

<Citrine> HEY! That's vaguely valuable resources you're blasting there! Specifically, they're resources I'd like to turn into money, it's not like a ship maintains itself without costs. Would you perhaps care not to blast everything to pieces for shit and giggles? Men and their toys...

She contemplated the option of adding a string of insults to her rant when the, well... Pulses came.

Hrm?

A pause. Then another pulse. Another pause, two pulses. Then three. Five...

Ahum.

Eight, thirteen...

A bit big for an intelligence test form. I would have sent a sheet of paper... Oh well.

Replying in kind. Thirty-four pulses, a pause, then fifty-five, another pause, eighty-nine, another pause, one-hundred and forty-four...

If they have to go that simple, they must be from quite a bit away... Perhaps Andromeda? Hum. Well, I'll see. Possibly.

Ruth blinked as the pulses came in. Curious. She pondered a little and then giggled softly. Why did she assume that an unknown vessel from an unknown world would possibly know any language she did?

The pattern was rather obvious, of course. She sent out the next few in the series and then thought for a little bit. It would take awhile if communication was going to procede in this manner. It established there was rudimentary intelligence but little else. Well, and transmition ability.

She shrugged and sent out three pulses. Then one. Then four, then one, five, nine, two, and on for about the next ten places. She then left the connection 'live', in case direct back-communication was desired.

Sol System, Asteroid Belt, 13:48 SST

Chitako frowned, tapping her left index finger against the communications panel. The young, white-furred neko woman wasn’t used to dealing with unknowns, and the waiting didn’t help much. It’d been more than a few minutes since the Sol Ambience transmitted, and each second more that ticked by just added to Chitako’s anxiety. To make matters worse, more vessels were hailing the anomaly. She’d already transmitted the other ships hails to SIN for translation, and all she could do was wait.

“Think it might be derelict, Miss?” Sergeant Taggert asked. It was indeed a possibility, but why would a derelict ship just emerge from nowhere. It didn’t make sense…

“It’s possible, Sergeant. Although, it might just be that they don’t understand our language, or any other that they’ve been hailed with.” Chitako replied, and resumed tapping her finger against the console. More waiting…

“Sol Ambience, this is Alpha 1. We’ve vectored a few more asteroids on a collision course with you. Recommend you change your position.”

Chitako thought to herself. She didn’t want to appear to be trying to make a show of force to the anomalous vessel, but she felt she needed make it clear somehow that Alpha wing was here for protection, not intimidation. She reached for the radio again.

“Alpha Wing, this is the Sol Ambience. Take out those rocks on a collision vector with us. But ONLY those asteroids. Understood?” She hoped she wasn’t making any more mistakes than she might’ve already.

“Loud and clear, Sol Ambience.”



<Citrine> HEY! That's vaguely valuable resources you're blasting there! Specifically, they're resources I'd like to turn into money, it's not like a ship maintains itself without costs. Would you perhaps care not to blast everything to pieces for shit and giggles? Men and their toys...

The radio massage, coming from a Der Angstian vessel, was very clear in its message.

“Belay that order, Alpha wing. Sergeant, move the ship out of the course of those rocks.” Chitako ordered, “Der Angstian vessel, this is the SFS Sol Ambience. We apologize for the destruction of your property. We did not realize these asteroids have been claimed.” Chitako silently cursed to herself. She was going to have to be more careful, lest she upset someone in this system. The last thing she wanted was to create an interstellar incident on her first diplomatic mission…
As the Sol Ambience came to rest 120 meters forward of its previous position, Chitako resumed her tapping and waiting. Patience never really was her strong suit, but she managed to contain her anxiety, to a degree.

“Why aren’t we getting a reply? If they don’t understand our language, that’s one thing. But to not even ATTEMPT to communicate? Maybe they’ve suffered some kind of equipment failure, or—“

A single pulse sounded on the comm., snapping Chitako from her thoughts. A few seconds passed, and then another pulse. And then two pulses. Quickly checking her instruments, she confirmed that the signal was indeed coming from the anomaly. At last, some communication! Patiently, she listened….

Three pulses…
Then five…
Then eight…
Thirteen pulses…
Twenty-one pulses in rapid succession…

And then nothing. Chitako frowned. It was some kind of pattern, but what did it mean?

“Sergeant, do you have any ide—” Chitako began to say, but stopped when she turned to see Flynn Taggert furiously scribbling something down on a pad of paper. He stopped every few seconds, poking his fingers at the air, as though at some imaginary calculator, and then resumed writing.

“Sergeant, what are you doing?” She asked. In response, Sergeant Taggert thrust the paper into her hands, and pointed to the communications console.
“Those pulses, Miss. They came in the pattern of a Fibonacci number sequence. Two terms of a sequence added together to produce the third term, and so on. Send those numbers as a reply.” He said, pointing once again to the sheet of paper in Chitako’s hands. Astounded, Chitako could only nod and turn to the communications console and typed in the pattern the sergeant had given her, thinking that, perhaps, the marine was a lot more intelligent than she’d originally given him credit for.

And so, the Sol Ambience transmitted its reply, the occupants hoping they weren’t making any more mistakes…

34 pulses…
Then 55…
Then 89 pulses…
Then 144…
Then 233…
Then 377 pulses…
And onwards…

“Looks like those other guys have the same idea we do.” Sgt. Taggert piped in. He was right. The other vessels, including the Der Angstian ship they’d just angered. were all transmitting Fibonacci number sequences, starting from 34. Chitako silently cursed again. She didn’t want to be crowded out of this find, but if it came to a choice between that and armed conflict, she'd have to cut and run…

“End the sequence on 2971215073.” Flynn commented, leaving Diplomatic Officer Ikaruga confused again.

“Why 2971215073?” She asked. It seemed like a random choice.

“Because 2971215073 is a prime number, and it’s the 47’th term in the Fibonacci sequence, which is also prime.” Flynn responded, confirming Chitako’s suspicions. She definitely underestimated his intelligence when she first saw him.

“That’s interesting, Sergeant, but why would we want to do that?” She asked.

“Because it might make us look smarter than those other jokers,” came the reply. Chitako opened her mouth to protest, but quickly shut it, having found no reason to fault the marine’s logic.

And so, 2971215073 pulses were fired off in rapid succession. And then, the transmission ended...

One of the greatest features of Gallifreyan vessels is their ability to be different things. Not literally of course, but as their geometry is that of a hypercube, they can, when interacting with three dimensional space, form a small area called the Real World Interface. This, thanks to the way it materialises and de-materialises when travelling, can reshape itself to any shape desired to blend in with its surroundings.

In this case the TARDIS had been a small asteroid, the vessel of one of the more freelance agents of the Time Lords, who’d been sent to observe the doings of one rather petulant Solarian nation. ‘Mortimus’ as he’d been nicknamed at one point, was relaxing in the comparative privacy of the vessel’s control room when the time ship started screeching in some form of distress.

Given that the ship was new – in its internal timeframe – this was a rather alarming development. The ship shuddered, its internal gravity malfunctioning and pulling him out of his chair in a heap of undignified grey robes before depositing him back on the floor correctly.

Winded, the ‘monk’ (another nickname, or rather a profession he’d emulated once) clambered up to the control panel of the type fifty vessel and braced himself against it. It didn’t seem to be enjoying itself that was for certain. Clambering to the systems panel. Various navigational warning lights were blinking on and off, and he found himself wondering precisely what had happened.

After a few moments he concluded that something had destroyed the real world interface. At first, the terrible idea that this was local hostile action plagued his thoughts, but he dismissed it as foolish, deciding instead that this was some unknown phenomenon.

Scurrying around the console he locked the vessel in place in the so-called ‘time vortex’ and disabling the navigation panel. He reset its controls. Pausing a moment, he recalibrated the controls to re-materialise the ship five thousand kilometres sunwards. He’d get a glance at whatever had displaced his ship…

She was relieved by their responses, more than anything else, even as everything else about where she was unnerved her. The extra replies gave her a little more to work with, especially the furthest one speaking to her, rendering the first few numbers of the Transcendental Constant in base-ten. She'd realised the physical laws here must be the same or similar because her hull was built according to them and hadn't disintegrated the minute she appeared, but it was reassuring to see a Universal Constant nonetheless.

She hadn't really had time to consider her response before the dozen subcomputers delivered their analysis for her to process. Sure enough, a lot of the transmissions had been ruled inadmissible to a viable hypothesis for various reasons; personal correspondence, obvious fiction, sources of dubious value marked off with notations in an awkward variation of the targeting computers' normal analysis pattern to take account of the unusual subject matter.

Amethyst ran through the data meticulously, sending a command to the sub-computers to run through all available hypothesis as to her current location and the identity of those addressing her. The computers sent back a stream of hypothesis, Amethyst pausing, realising her parameters had probably been a little vague.

'Hypothesis $-11: This system is that of the planet Klendathu. Klendathu orbits a twin-star system who's brutal gravitational forces create an unlimited supply of-'

Amethyst cut in, the subsystems all stopping and waiting for instruction, 'Include all current navigational data in analysis. Remove all hypotheses that contradict available data.'

A dozen repeats of 'Working now...' as they went back to their task. She continued pouring over the data, the language pattern analyses especially. Hundreds of languages in the transmissions, different encodings for almost all of them...As hard as it was to believe, it seemed this single star system was divided among many different powers; she'd already isolated tens of thousands of space vessels with no sign of uniform standardisation in orbit around the various planets and moons.

As she processed more of the data her puzzlement only grew. Maybe they can help me understand?

Basics: sentence structure, grammar, word forms. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dogs. It seemed the most horribly complex of languages, but also the most common among them. Well, the least she could do was try.

Transmitting as before, she sent out the message: 'My name is Amethyst. I am lost; require information. Please help?'

Ruth smiled at the reply, "Counting games to basic communication in 2 easy steps..."

The question, of course, was how to relay this information. "You're in the Sol system" wouldn't be especially helpful, as she likely wouldn't know what the hell Sol was or why it should be of interest. Ruth muttered at being so far away, it wasn't like she could throw up a projection and show a movie. Sending image files was likely out of the question as, well, what would a caveman do with a jpeg? Clearly this Amethyst wasn't a caveman, but for all the good an image would do, she might as well be. Ruth pondered some more and sent her reply:

My name is Ruth, and I am pleased to contact you. Location is a difficult thing to express, as we seem to have little to base anything on.

The system you are currently in is named 'Sol'. It is a system of nine planets orbiting a yellow star. You appear to be in the asteroid belt that resides between the fourth and fifth planet. I, on the other hand, am in orbit around the innermost planet. All the planets in this system are inhabited to some degree or another, but the blue-green planet in orbit 3 is the most heavily populated.

I do not know what kind of assistance you require, but I am willing to give you any help that is in my power to give. Following this message will be a somewhat long block of information that will hopefully help you with distances, time, coordinates and so on. I am assuming, and hoping, that wherever you are from, your basic laws of nature are the same.

She checked the message over, removing contractions and sent it. The block of information that followed was just as promised. Starting with frequencies of light to give a foundation of time and distance, she slowly worked her way up to astronomical scales. Of course, this meant that Amethyst was being taught the Imperial scale, but Ruth had better things to worry about.

After giving all that information, she then sent information on how she plotted coordinates in the system, how far things were relative to her position and Amethyst's, and finally gave what amounted to being directions on how to get to Nod.

Well, that's something. Couldn't be a little less detailed, could it? Citrine muttered to no-one in particular. Now, what does this mean?

It was clear enough that no matter where you came from, plotting your course back was a rather trivial issue, once you had sufficient processing capacities and interstellar/ intergalactic maps available. Shifting the picture a little, showing a bit of imagination... if you came from anywhere old enough for basic EM radiation to reach sol since perhaps a couple hundred thousand years post-creation, you just had to know where you are.

And Citrine had no reason to believe that Amethyst was suffering from any kind of dysfunctionality.

Well, disregarding its state of mind, anyway.

In any case, Amethyst was clearly not coming from within a sector with a radius of slightly more than 13.7 billion lightyears, counting from sol.

Hummm. Quite a bit of a trip, it's had.

And then there were the asteorids that had just, well, vanished... Citrine wasn't a science, nor a military vessel, and as such, her sensory capacities weren't exactly cutting edge (Far to expensive, considering the not particularly impressive profit margain she managed), anyway. Still, she could give it a try. Exotic radiation, dimensional anomalies, universal constants...

Lesse... Seconds... Nothing. Milliseconds... nothing. Microseconds... Geez. Nothing. Nanoseconds... Blargh. Why am I not surprised?

She continued for a little while, then gave up. Perhaps someone else could help... QECs are your friend.

<Citrine> Hrm. *Pounces*
<Intrinsically Insane> Hrm?
<Citrine> Where are you now?
<Intrinsically Insane> Oh... [Coordinates Attached]. Why?
<Citrine> Ahhh... You should see some oddity coming from approximately my direction in about.. 11.8 seconds. Do me a favour and analyse for anything unusual?
<Intrinsically Insane> Ya'know, I'm doing some experiments here. It's not like you get to develop FTL out of nothing.
<Citrine> *Puppy eyes* And you might be interested in the basics. [Provisional Analysis of OCP attached]
<Intrinsically Insane> I dislike puppies... Anyway, lemme see.
<Intrinsically Insane> ... ok, I'll do it. May I say, 'Woah'?
<Citrine> Yes, you may :P Call me when you're done.
<Intrinsically Insane> Sure thing.

Another 11.6 seconds to wait, not counting analysis time... Citrine almost blushed. My response will be late. Argh.

Time ticked by, slowly (Very slowly), but eventually, the response came.

<Intrinsically Insane> Here [Analysis Results Attached]. Looks like some interdimensional fiddling. Very odd, that. Can't say I get the math behind it. Well, not entirely.
<Citrine> *Kisses* Perfect ^_^ Well, lemme see. Hummm. Eh!?
<Intrinsically Insane> I'm serious. Actually, not too different from the usual vanishing/ returning we see regularily on Earth.
<Citrine> Hrm. True, but still... So you're saying it's coming from... Outside this universe?
<Intrinsically Insane> I wont guarantee it. But it's a possibility, and it makes sense, given its communications. Otherwise, it's a really funky FTL thingy. Maybe.
<Citrine> *Sighs* Oh well. Thanks. Have fun with your experiments.
<Intrinsically Insane> I will. Over and out. See you on Gany, next month?
<Citrine> I'll try my best.

Well, that's done. And given its confusion... yeah. He might be correct.

She read through the message, again. 'My name is Amethyst. I am lost; require information. Please help?'

Okaaaaaay.

She sighed. What kind of information? Well... She could start with the simple things.

"Ummm... Hello, Amethyst. I'm... Citrine." Odd Coincidence. "Lost? I see... Where do you come from, then? Perhaps I can help. Oh, and you're presently... Well, actually, now that you've figured out the basic languages, I guess you know the basics from our general information flow. Would there be any kind of specific information useful to you? Maybe I can provide it when I know a little more about your... needs."

Hrm. Something's missing. Oh, right.

"Oh, and before I forget it... Welcome to, uh... This place. I hope you're otherwise alright? You sound a bit worried. Did something happen?"

"Another reply." Kohal spoke aloud, out of respect for the Phoenix - the girl had been useful once, after all.

"I don't think anyone here speaks Alien?" Rhan asked. The language was bizzare, ugly on the ears, surely nonhuman, nonprimate.

"It's not alien," the Phoenix said, as quiet as the last time. "The palate is human - you can tell if you listen. I think - I think it's Angliat, one of the Terran languages."

Kohal raised a brow. "You a Phoenix or a Raven, girl? Good work."

The Phoenix flushed, angry at Kohal's patronising tone or embarrassed by it's praise, and didn't reply.

"It was transmitting in numbers before," Rhan pointed out. "Now it's talking in this Angliat. That's some fast learning - what is this thing, some kind of Hvekht savant? An Other Lord?"

The Phoenix shrugged. None of them knew that.

"Well," Rhan said, "We don't speka Angliat, and I doubt it speaks Latin, whatever it is, so it can very well learn Khar Dalat."

"Hello, foreign craft. This is the in-system cutter Forbidden Joy out of Kaireigh, pilot Rhan Tirithian commanding ..." Rhan repeated her original message in Khar Dalat, and elaborated; "Welcome to the Sol system. We are very interested in your arrival here. Where have you come from?"

Chitako nearly choked on her own tongue when the neutral-toned, hesitant voice spoke of over the comm. So it did understand them! And it had a name. The rudimentary and utilitarian syntax left something to be desired as far as prose was concerned, but it told volumes to the crew of the Sol Ambience.

“Amethyst…” She spoke to herself. Just like the gem in the pendant she wore around her neck. But that only raised more questions…

“Well, that’s one clue. Wherever this thing came from, they musta had those gems.” Sgt. Taggert said, giving voice to Chitako’s thoughts.

“But… this thing said it was lost, Sergeant. If it’s lost, then it must not be from around here, meaning that wherever it came from, the language must be radically different. So what are the odds that the word ‘Amethyst’ would appear the vocabulary of a totally foreign language?” Chitako frowned. It could be just a bizarre coincidence, but the odds were just too slim…

“Hold on a sec… If this thing understands our language now, then why did it test us with that Fibonacci sequence? Unless it COULDN’T understand us then, meaning it somehow learnt our language in just a few seconds. And that means…”

“A.I.” She said aloud.

“What’s that, miss?” Flynn asked.

Chitako shook her head. “Nothing relevant, sergeant.”

Whatever the case, they couldn’t just hang in space, waiting for something else to happen. Chitako took to the console and prepared to send a stellar chart to the mystery ship. She was just about to transmit when Flynn grabbed her arm.

“Wait a second, Miss. Are you sure it’s a good idea to give this thing the coordinates of Beta Aquilae? It might be dangerous.” He said, his voice firm and unwavering. Chitako could understand his concerns. The last thing Solont needed was another invasion…

“Sergeant, I know what you’re getting at. But the President and Lord Protector are already on Earth at this very moment. If it wasn’t already, Solont’s existence and location are about to become public knowledge in Sol. Whether we tell this thing now or not really doesn’t make a difference. Besides… I trust Amethyst.” Chitako could tell by the frown on his face that Flynn wasn’t happy with the answer she gave him, but he was placated, and removed his hand from her wrist. Without hesitation, she transmitted the map of the known universe, and keyed the broadcast switch.

“Amethyst, my name is Chitako Ikaruga. I would like to help you, and offer any assistance I can. What do you require?” She asked, trying to sound as kind and concerned as possible.

Sgt. Taggert concerned himself with the second comm panel, monitoring the ever-increasing local traffic. So far, it had maintained a steady pattern. Amethyst poses a query, and everyone else answers. Flynn had logged each and every transmission, sending them back to SIN for analysis, but worryingly, no response had come yet. He didn’t like it. Without instructions, they had no choice but to keep doing what they were doing, which was likely going to end with them leaving the system empty handed with all the notice the mystery vessel was drawing…

Feeling the jolt through the 'forest' floor, Ceriana stands up and brushes off her leafy covering. Then opening a small door in the side of the tree she had been leaning on, she clambers through into the control room. Sliding onto the monks back, she whispers into his ear. Dear! What has happened to our little home? Is something wrong? Something I should be aware of?

He smiled, turning to face her, "You, could say that," he said, twitching a hand over a control, "It seems we've been, basically, hit by something. It's quite big too, I'd not been expecting anything like it, though this is an unusual place.

"I'm thinking we should just keep an eye on it for now, see what happens."

Sighing, Ceri clings even more to her monk. How big? I wouldn't want it to interfere in our little holiday, dear. If anything happens in which you need my help, I'll be right here beside you. I know how you get absorbed in these things. She settles back onto a small tree stump by the monks side and rests her arms on a space below the control panel.