NationStates Jolt Archive

((OOC: This thread is intended as more of a story than anything else, a window into ongoing deep-space exploration underwent by the MIDF and the Menelmacari Prefecture of Science. The setting is Elrandir Canta, one of five research cruisers attached to the 'mother ship' Elrandir, a truly colossal ship which spends most of its time sitting in deep space near systems of interest, acting more as a mobile starbase than anything else. It's not an open RP thread, but feedback is encouraged. Enjoy!))

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Elrandir Canta, Personal Transmission.
Second of Tuilë, 31871, Transmission 291
---

Pilincár nos Fithurin, Elrandir Canta, Elrandir Deep Space Exploration Fleet, to Idhrindiel nos Fithurin, Menelmacari Arda, Greetings,

Today I’ve finally arrived aboard the Elrandir Canta, where I am assigned to ‘Contact Team Two.’ In case you don’t know, aunt, and don’t care to look it up, these groups are the MIDF teams that are sent to check out sites of interest after the initial probe recon has determined no obvious threats. There’s about ten in all, I think, operating at any one time, and twice that number rotated back to the mother ship.

Anyway, as I said, I’ve arrived. So far everyone’s been far nicer than I had expected –which isn’t to slander the hospitality or esprit de corps of the Elendur or Ciryacáno Luinedhel, whose crew was always quite civil towards me. I suppose it’s possibly because of a different attitude on a more civilianized ship, or perhaps because most of the unit here is new. I’ve heard that the only survivor of the ‘previous’ Contact Team Two apparently took a reassignment when her comrades were killed, but that’s just gossip. That’s rather alarming, in all fairness. On the Elendur there wasn’t much opportunity for real combat, but there wasn’t much of a risk patrolling with the Tenth Fleet. Not that you’d be familiar with that dear Idhy – I know you’re always first into battle. Reckless elf.

Anyway, on to talk about my new comrades, well, there are five of us, led by Roquen Apairë Elanortolmen, a midsize elf, I think he’s more Noldo than anything else, with perhaps just a touch of Sindar in there too. He seems quite friendly from what I’ve heard so far, and was previously the commander of the marine complement of the MIV Anguirel. From what I’ve seen of him so far, he’s as enthusiastic about the whole ‘exploring the unknown’ idea as I am, but he’s not a very humorous person.

Inga-Rambéva Tulcamboiel Hildi is next, as we only have (and I must say, I’m surprised) one officer with us. Anyway, Hildi’s annoyingly good looking, slightly Vanyar in her looks, with especially golden hair, and taller than me. I’m jealous, of course, but anyway, I’ve not met her much so far, she seems rather too professional for my liking. I do hope she’s as good as she seems to think she is, and hasn’t got a rod stuck up her ass.

Then of course, there is me. You know me - the wittiest, and cutest, elf this side of Carnil.

I’m not sure how Alcanén got onto the team, at his age. He says he’s quite a demolitionist though, so perhaps that explains it. He’s about one twenty, and it’s refreshing to have someone on the team younger than me (excluding our fifth member of course). Alcanén is a fairly typical looking guy, brown hair, grey eyes, nice build. You know the type.

And our final member is of course younger than Alcanén, but it doesn’t count for much as he’s a Man, an Arab from Kuwait or Bahrain or somewhere in the Emirates province, I’ve not gotten around to asking. Ibrahim has an obsession with gadgets it seems. He couldn’t stop enthusing for about ten minutes on how wonderful some of the toys we’ve got are. To be fair, I can see his point, even you’ve not got some of these things, but I sort of zoned out when he went on about the gravitic detection gear.

Anyway, I’ve got to report for duty in about half an hour, so I’ll sign off.

All my love,
Pilincár

---

Pilincár laid down the recording device, tossing it onto the shelf by her bed, lined with pictures of her extended family – the inevitable result of immortality and family traditions, the Fithurin house could probably muster a field army of its own from the members it had in or associated with (including their High Lady, Serendis, who was Prefect of Defence and Homeland Security) the MIDF. She was quite convinced she’d drawn a short straw in cabin assignment, as she had to duck under a large semicircular protrusion that housed a trunk data cable leading to the ship’s gun deck, in order to get into her kitchen. Worse, she actually had to share, because of a lift shaft running through part of it, a slightly oversized kitchen with her neighbour, one of the flight crew. For him it was evening, and he was filling the small white room with the smell of some kind of exotic sausage, she didn’t ask, popping her head around the door and reaching into the fruit basket, her hand coming back with a shining red apple.

Pilincár glanced at the chronometer on her wall, pale green figures marking the time by the ship’s clock, ticking upwards slowly, and pulled her duty uniform on fully, walking out into the corridor of the crew quarters, and heading aft.

She arrived a few minutes later, after a refreshing walk through most of the ship’s length and down a few flights of stairs. The contact team briefing room was sandwiched in an otherwise unused space in between the auxiliary reactors and a complicated engine assembly that thrummed in a highly off-putting manner when the ship was under highest accelerations. Pilincár was torn between the urge to salute or wave, and was saved the effort by Apairë waving her into one of the seats at the large circular table.

He sat down slowly, “Good morning, lazy person,” Ibrahim said.

“Glad to see you’ve deigned to joined us commoners,” Alcanén added, smiling at her.

Pilincár smirked and dropped herself into the chair opposite the human, “So, did I miss anything?”

“Nothing much,” Apairë admitted, “We’ve got an assignment next week, when the Canta should be jumping to System E-279. The marine-captain sat down in a chair at the table, “initial probes seem to indicate there’s some sort of war going on in a planetary formation field in the system, and that’s just bizarre enough to warrant investigation. We’ve also got a developmental checkup in E-247-Z, too. Apparently the production colony there is due to go online in four days, and we’re to head out there tomorrow to check their security or something like that…”

“Oh it’s all go,” Pilincár said playfully.

“That it is,” Alcanén agreed, “Apparently we’re not important enough to do the real exploration work, we just shoot things when the scientists say so.”

The elf’s joking was interrupted by the sound of the ship’s public address system, over which a voice called out, “Set alert condition one throughout the ship. Intruder alert.”

Apairë was on his feet quickly, reaching for his sidearm, “I guess you two might just get your wishes after all,” he said, drawing the weapon and hurrying to the briefing room’s door.

---

The internal arrangement of the Canta allowed for the massive vessel’s sections to be quickly sealed off, and it depended on large doors for most of the business end of this. Force walls had their uses – and these were purely secondary in the matter of emergency defence.

Apairë watched the rather impressive sight of the spine-corridor sealing off, with several dozen-meter thick blast doors moving in concert. Apairë reached for an intercom station set into the wall of the corridor, and was quickly connected with the ship’s commander.

“It seems,” the Ciryatári, said, “that there’s been a murder in the crew quarters. Energy discharge, disappeared life sign, and so on.”

“Intruder, or one of the crew?” Apairë wondered.

“I don’t know,” the ship-captain replied honestly, “however, apparently one of the artifacts has disappeared from study room four. Do me a favour and head on over there. I’ve got marines heading for the affected section already.”

“Yes Ma’am,” he said, and turned to the group behind him, “Right. The deck ten armory, then we’re headed for the labs. Apparently something got out.”

Ibrahim chuckled quietly, “So, it’s something else they’ve brought on board which has then turned into a killing machine?”

“Else?” asked Pilincár.

“Oh yeah. Apparently this has already happened on Elrandir Minë once.”

“Humm… That’s reassuring. How’d they get rid of it?”

“They shot it in the head.”

Tulcamboiel was busily unlocking a door, and Pilincár frowned, “you know, that’s quite anticlimactic.”

“Hey, I like anti-climatic when it comes to alien killing machines,” Alcanén said.

“Fair point,” Pilincár conceded.

---

The study room was a fully equipped laboratory designed for examining samples. A dozen artefacts and mineral samples were stacked in trays and test tubes, and Pilincár was drawn to one item that looked like a figure, wide, made of some stone Pilincár didn’t recognise, which glowed with a blue light from gaps in its ‘ribs’ when she put her hand near it.

Apairë was talking about the object that had gone missing. It was one of the more technological devices salvaged from the world designated E-273-C – the third planet of the two hundred and seventy third system probed by the Canta. Like many of the more decent worlds that the Canta had found, it had been host to its own life at some point. Its classification, however, was ‘Dead’ – it had been alive once, host to an underground colony of a race that had left few remains.

Only one functional technological device had been found, a form of spherical device that resembled nothing so much as a soccer ball. They’d been halfway through disassembling the thing when it had managed to power itself somehow and disappear, as if into a teleporter, though the pyrotechnics associated were strange, the thing had disappeared in a shower of streaks of light that burst outwards like an explosion, Four minutes later, the murder had been reported.

They’d found the elf who had been killed in his quarters, dead. He was quite dead, in fact. Whatever had killed him wasn’t a Menelmacari weapon, that much was for certain. He’d been essentially wrapped in a stasis field at differential rates, some parts of his body frozen completely, others simply slowed down, or even sped up. Messy wasn’t quite the word, but only because it lacked a superlative quality required to describe the chaos created.

---

It had been Ibrahim’s idea to head to the secondary sensor room, a control area just above the front of the ship’s landing bay, where various systems monitored incoming and outgoing craft. The room was useful though, because it had direct computer access to the ship’s internal sensors.

The human was busily manipulating the controls before a screen on the control panel, showing a map of the ship, frowning through his closely trimmed beard, “I don’t know,” he said in reply to Alcanén’s most recent question, the auburn haired elf was sitting next to him, busily second guessing every move he made.

“Well, if it’s a wormhole variant, there should be a gravitic field permutation, how about consulting the engine auto-regulator logs?”

Ibrahim shook his head, “I’m telling you, for the last time, that’s not it,” he said, “if it was, there would have been a displacement alert, and we’d have caught it by n--” he stopped.

“I’ve got it,” he said, and tapped a key, bringing up a configuration system, and setting a search programme to find a profile from the sensor archives. “I’ve seen something similar before,” the image of the ship, in plan and port elevation views, reappeared, with several distinct glowing blue circles on it. “It’s like a gauss flayer, one of those teleporter things that breaks down matter and reassembles it…” he said.

Apairë leaned forwards onto the seat-back, looking over the specialist’s head, “Right, What’s it doing?”

“Lurking in airlock seven, I think,” Ibrahim said, “I don’t quite know what it’s doing.”

“Will ECM stop it?” Pilincár asked.

“Maybe,” Ibrahim said, nodding, “maybe,” he repeated, scooting his chair back a little and stepping over to another terminal, and punching several buttons, “Internal jamming to full,” he said, “This might just make the thing jump into a wall or something though.”

“Wouldn’t that be, err, bad?” asked Pilincár.

“Not usually,” Ibrahim said, “phase-accidents tend to just result in both materials being fused and some radiation. Matter conversion and nuclear reactions are quite rare. Of course, if it jumps into something like the gravitic core, or the reactor, we might be in trouble.”

“I don’t think we need worry about that,” Alcanén said, “it’s jumped again, deck three recreation room.”

Apairë pressed at a control bead in the collar of his uniform and snapped off a warning to the bridge, and Pilincár frowned, “What about FTL interdiction?”

Ibrahim frowned, “It can get through it at the moment. I’ve run an analysis program and set it up to modify one of the interdictors, but it could take hours – if ever.”

“Right,” Pilincár said, “Sir, I suggest…”

“…moving the crew into the recreation hall? Already on it,” Apairë said, sub-vocalising into the communications system once more.

“I was going to suggest landing bay…”

“Too easy to space them all,” Ibrahim said, and frowned, “It’s back in the airlock now, anyway.”

“I’ve got an idea…” Pilincár said.

---

The team, minus Ibrahim, who was watching their progress in the sensor room, and talking via the radio, “It occurs to me,” he was saying, “that if this thing is preying on isolated people, you rats have left me behind…”

As one, the team stopped. “Damn,” Apairë said, “he’s right… Tulcamboiel, get back there.”

They approached the airlock’s inner door slowly and cautiously, hunkering down, plasma guns at the ready, covering the door. Ibrahim’s voice crackled over the comm. “It’s gone,” he said, and there was the sound of an explosion, and his voice was cut off.

“Ignore it,” Apairë said, opening the door, “Alcanén…”

The elf rushed forwards and began attaching large explosive devices, each about the size of his palm, and he quickly attached one to each wall, before jumping back out of the airlock, its heavy door sliding shut.

---

Ibrahim had lost a hand. That was really quite infuriating, not to mention painful. Worse, when he shot at the spherical assailant buzzing around the room, the incandescent beams of plasma-fire simply stopping close to the object, before being compressed into the bolts of popular fiction that moved at arrow-speed. The sphere, a burnished metal object with a blue band around its waist that flared whenever its time-alteration equipment did something.

Ibrahim shot it again, unleashing a burst of fire that rippled across the walls and blasted chunks out of the equipment covering them, subliming metal and optronic crystal fragments shot out as shrapnel, but bounced harmlessly off his body armour, and, annoyingly, the drone’s carapace.

Another ‘square hit’ was slowed to nothing and dodged, the machine’s glowing band flaring so brightly that his helmet edited it out. He felt an obscure pain in his leg, and became aware that he was falling. He raised the carbine again, its scope, only slightly visible, showing the target’s profile as he aimed it, but the drone was too fast, flitting from side to side at speed as he tried to get a good shot.

The door opened, or rather, it was shot off, blasted into fragments – it wasn’t combat rated, after all – and Tulcamboiel stepped through. The drone changed its velocity, and Ibrahim brought his foot up to kick it. He didn’t know why he did it, but as the intruder was distracted, it didn’t seem to be ready for it, its stasis-fields aimed at dealing with the new threat as she entered the little room.

He shot it, but the drone was a split-second faster than him. For a moment he thought he’d destroyed it though, as its surface flashed white, and it burst into a thousand streaks of light flying apart from its core. “Go!” he called into the comm.

---

The airlock exploded. Or rather, the bombs inside it did, buffeting and compressing the alien drone as it reappeared in its hiding place, explosions from both sides denting its shining carapace and tossing it – forcefully – into the thickly armoured ceiling of the ‘lock.

That wasn’t the only assault planned for the alien object. With a snap, the outer door was blasted away, a hand’s span thick piece of metal, with a window (one of relatively few in the ship) in it, tumbling through space, perhaps to be one day found and wondered at by a ship on a similar mission – so many of the alien artifacts found by any MIDF mission turned out to be emephera like that.

However, one thing that was not driven out of the airlock by the equalising pressure was the drone. Cherry red lines appeared In the inner door, and a jagged piece of metal fell from the doorway, blasted outwards. The wind howled and Pilincár scrabbled to keep her place.

The drone ploughed its way through the out-rushing air, and the elves opened fire, plasma beams smacking into the dense door material and sending showers of expanding plasma and shrapnel out, buffeting it as a force wall blocked off the hull breach. Several accurate shots were slowed, but no longer dodged so easily, and the device was slammed around by weapons fire blasting parts of its carapace apart. Pilincár brought her gun to her shoulder and sighted down the upper side, switching the weapon to high power, she hit the target again.

It exploded spectacularly, a ring of green fire ripping from its innards as it was blasted into a dozen chunks and scattered down the corridor. She breathed a sigh of relief, and slumped back to the deck. “And I always thought those rings just existed in bad films,” she murmured.

---

“You’ve got nothing to prove, you know,” Pilincár said, sitting by ibrahim’s sick-bay bed, where he was busily experimenting on one of the fragments of the drone. He looked up for a moment, momentarily confused. “You ought to be resting before they re-attach it.”

“Oh,” he said, “hell no, I’m just interested. There, I think I’ve got its programming centre,” with his remaining hand he slid a needle-like probe into a golden “computronium” block, and A shining holo-screen rolled with alien data in a complicated emulator program, and another displayed a translated text, run through an ‘adaptive translation matrix’ that refined itself as it iterated more text from an alien society. “Besides,” he said, “They say they’re waiting until this evening to get an expert in from the mother ship.”

The translated text was scattered with ‘[untranslatable]’ as it usually was, until a sufficiently large base for translation could be found, but Ibrahim read it with interest nonetheless. “This is… bizarre. Turns out that thing was meant to enforce moral standards or something…”

“I guess,” Pilincár said, leaning on the side of the bed, “we didn’t meet with its approval.”

“Neither did its homeworld,” he mused. “It turns out, this thing singlehandedly massacred an entire colony of forty thousand.”

“Wow,” she said, “that’s pretty terrifying…”

“Hello, I think I might be able to work out where it comes from,” he tapped a few translucent, holographic keys. “Apparently not. That memory block’s fried,” he said, casting her a glance of mock accusation.

Pilincár chuckled softly, “You’re incorrigible…”

“Oh yes, by the way, can you find out where Alcanén was about twenty years ago? I swear, I saw him when I was a kid. Just as he is now - It’s really bugging me…”

---

Elrandir Canta, Personal Transmission.
Second of Tuilë, 31871, Transmission 1426

---
Pilincár nos Fithurin, Elrandir Canta, Elrandir Deep Space Exploration Fleet, to Idhrindiel nos Fithurin, Menelmacari Arda, Greetings,

Well, it turns out that today was more interesting than I expected…

Wind whistled over the plain of smoothed down rocks, essentially, from where Pilincár stood, with her head over the edge of a channel cut into the rock, about six feet deep. She could hear a constant ‘rush’ of sand particles scuffing her helmet, driven by winds that rushed around the small planet (which felt normal to Pilincár only by the virtues of her suit’s in-built gravitic systems) to create a pitter-patter on the side of her helmet.

With a roar, the Warden dropship took off behind them, a very lightly armed variant of the drop ships used in standard exploratory work. They were with Wardens now, Pilincár looked at Alcanén, his shorter stature setting him in good stead to not be as irritated by the dust roaring overhead. “Oooh, exciting huh?” she joked.

“I don’t know,” Alcanén said, “it’s kind of exciting really. Alien planet, just look at these channels… They cover the entire surface. You wouldn’t find that too often in Sol, would you?”

Pilincár looked at the sharp side of the cutting, “They’re bizarre, yes. Almost machined…”

“Machined is what we thought on first examination,” one of the Wardens said. The Wardens were a small group of paramilitaries, uniforms, space craft – mostly ex-MIDF ships, older Glorfindel class frigates and Maedhros destroyers – and ranks, but they had a mission that was distinctly non-military. Their job was the continuous monitoring of life-bearing extra-solar planets. Nevertheless, they weren’t exactly a large organisation, particularly by MIDF standards, since their funding came out of Menelmacar’s Environmental Protection budget.

“But eventually, we found out that they were created by boring creatures. They cut them into almost perfect trenches like this, and that’s what makes the sand. They use the material to form heavy bricks, for hives.”

“Like wasps?” asked Pilincár, “I hate wasps,” she muttered quietly.

“More like termites,” he said, “though fond of rock. Natural builders, really quite fantastic, we thought it was,” he carefully stepped over broken rock, “a sapient race at first, but a three month analysis missed any kind of higher function, either individually or collectively.”

Pilincár looked up towards the spire in the distance, a high skyscraper that was, beyond awesome in its scope, given that it was seemingly constructed of stone. “How do they build that big without advanced technology?”

The Warden looked behind him, “What? Oh yes, we had a look, apparently they can actually manufacture, you’ll love this, it’s fascinating, steel structural frames.”

“They can do what?” she asked.

“We had a look, and it turns out that they’re oddly creative, but only when it comes to that kind of structural planning. A process of refinement that makes me wonder if they’re designed creatures, but the fossil record here’s complete enough to suggest that they’re just niche creatures.”

“Strange,” Pilincár said, clambering over the rocks.

“And wonderful,” Alcanén said, slinging his weapon. The two of them were escorting two Wardens through the maze of perfectly straight trenches in the rock that spread out from the alien tower like cracks in the earth under its monstrous weight.

“Indeed,” Pilincár said, “so, what’re we looking for, anyway?” she asked, nudging one of the Wardens on the shoulder.

“You honestly want to know? Well, we’ve found an excavation area from space that we think might be the foundation of a new hive, and we’ve been told to take a look at it from the ground?”

“I thought that sort of thing was what drones were for?” Alcanén asked.

“Yes,” the Warden said, “but we’ve got to earn our pay some of the time.”

“Oh,” he said, “good reason to drag us across the surface of some godforsaken rock.”

“Ah,” the other Warden said, seeming to be amused, “but aren’t you enjoying the fine weather?” As if to punctuate his point, a jagged arc of lightning shot from the clouds of sand and dust high overhead with a deafening thundercrack.

“So, when do we get there?” Pilincár asked.

The first Warden, a tall Noldo by the name of Elmalta, rounded a corner, “Now?” he said.

Pilincár followed, and the sight that followed was impressive in the extreme. It wasn’t because the excavation was the largest thing that Pilincár had ever seen, or anything like that. It was rather that it was impressive for the industriousness of the creatures carving it. Scuttling creatures between four and eight feet long were everywhere, with bullish heads and mandibles that somehow – Pilincár wasn’t certain of the ‘hows’ of the matter – were able to cut through the thick rock and ingest bits of it. Where the porous rock was freshly cut were traces of dark matter that, given the eagerness with which the aliens ingested it, Pilincár took to be micro-organisms of some sort, possibly a form of plant that subsisted in the layers of rock in order to avoid the terrible weather in the airs above.

There were hundreds, by her estimate, maybe thousands, each organised into gangs of workers that worked at the ‘faces’ of their excavation, or by moving the rocks that had been cut away up a sandy ramp where they were being assembled into walls, seemingly at random. “Fascinating,” the second Warden muttered, and tossed a thimble sized hovering drone into the air. Taking hold of a hand-held scanner device, she began doing something technical that Pilincár imagined was recording the activity.

“Aren’t they going to take any notice of us?” Pilincár wondered.

“Oh, they can see us,” he said, “they just don’t care. This world seems to have had no actual conflict between creatures in its evolutionary history.”

“You’re kidding?”

“No,” he said, “it’s quite remarkable. Personally, I think they’ve just been too busy surviving on this forsaken rock…”

The other Warden laughed tersely at this, evidently a proponent of a rival theory, but otherwise she remained quiet, after a glare from her superior.

“What’s the pressure to get this study done, anyway?” she asked, looking at the unoccupied Warden.

“What?” he asked, “oh, right. Well apparently there’s a group here from some corporation – Lantëanar or something – that have gotten permission to experiment in domestication, and we want to record this behavior before interference changes it.”

“Domestication?” Pilincár said, looking at what were essentially giant cockroaches as they moved large stone bricks this way and that to form ordered piles. “What for?”

“Apparently they’re convinced that someone, don’t ask me who, will eat these critters.”

---

“That sounds a little tenuous, but I don’t see what the major problem is,” Apairë said. They sat in the Canta’s open observation deck, around a wide circular table. They’d returned to the ship about half an h ago, but before that, Pilincár and Alcanén had been given the chance to see something rather eye-opening. “If they’re non-sapient,” the officer continued, “then it’s not really that much of a problem, surely. You eat meat, no?”

“The problem is, I’m not convinced they’re sub-sapient,” Pilincár said, “They go out of their way to bury their dead.”

“There’s been debate on the issue,” Tulcamboiel said, leaning on the table with both elbows, seeming to delight in breaking minor rules of etiquette as she munched on a lettuce leaf and played with a spike that skewered large slices of lemon and lime in some dark fizzy drink. She wasn’t exactly an elf of high tastes. “Apparently there’s already an appeal going through to have the inhabitants of E-274-Z classified as near-sapient and put on a protected list… This burial thing is a newly-discovered behavior though.”

“What’s the problem then?” asked Pilincár.

“Lantëanar has some really good lawyers that like to cling to points of minutiae. A tribunal might be convinced to take this as acceptable proof, but that’d still take days to get a decent hearing…”

“And they’re going to start their culling today?”

“Something like that. If I remember rightly,” Tulcamboiel munched on her lettuce again thoughtfully, “they’re starting trial ‘harvests’ today.”

“Well,” Alcanén said, “I think we’ve got to find a way to stop it.”

“How do you propose to do that Ehtyar?” Tulcamboiel said, frowning a little into her drink, “we can’t just go and blow our own people’s stuff up.”

“Why not?” he asked, “if what they’re doing on E-274-Z is immoral, blowing up their property doesn’t seem too bad.”

“It’s not practical,” she said, firmly.

“Maybe not,” said Ibrahim, “but sabotage seems fair game. If we go to ‘persuade’ them to hold off for a while – which might work, you never know – and just happen to do something that makes it hard for their business to operate…”

“You have something in mind?” asked Apairë.

“I have a few ideas, but they’re not exactly sure-fire guarantees, I’ll need to see what kind of set-up they’ve got there.”

“I might be able to help a little, too,” Pilincár said, “I think I know of someone with influence who might be interested in this…”

---

Elrandir Canta, Personal Transmission.
Second of Tuilë, 31871, Transmission 291
---
Pilincár nos Fithurin, Elrandir Deep Space Exploration Fleet, to Idhrindiel nos Fithurin, Menelmacari Arda, Greetings,

Hello dear aunt. I have a request to make of you, this will seem rather odd, but hear it out for me…

---

The squat form of an unfolded Vilyulairë gunship dominated the launch area of the Canta. Its optical camouflage was offline, leaving it with a generic pattern of green and sky-blue on its body, designed to visually break its image up somewhat. The rear compartment hung open, half of the modular rear removed to hold an FTL module capable of transporting the craft the twenty-three light years to E-274-Z.

“How’d you get permission to do this, anyway?” Tulcamboiel whispered to her commander, standing under the carefully constructed arch of one of the buttresses holding the bay’s walls in correct alignment with the ship’s main hull and keel above.

“Let’s just say the Ciryatári feels obliged to us for dealing with that drone, and isn’t quite aware of everything we’re planning.”

“Yay, mutiny.”

“Not if we can help it,” he said with concern.

Tulcamboiel laughed softly, and leaned forwards to look at Ibrahim, “Think you’ve got everything?” she said, as he hefted another large crate into the back of the ship.

“One more!” he said, and walked back to the cylindrical elevator shaft.

“You know you said we weren’t to blow anything up?”

“Yes?” Apairë replied.

“I don’t think he’s quite got it… I’ve seen less electronic warfare gear on destroyers…”

---

The ship required two pilots to operate effectively, leaving Pilincár and Alcanén in the rear compartment (though really, only Apairë was a qualified pilot) with Ibrahim as he fiddled with various heavily built pieces of equipment. He seemed to have no difficulty using the re-attached hand, which was rather exceptional, after a mere two days. “Ah…” he muttered around a small crystalline memory-stick device he was chewing absent-mindedly, “ahah… Damn.”

The ship shuddered a little, and Pilincár tried not to imagine the heat outside its thin hull, “What?” she asked.

He looked up. “Humm? Oh. There’s a slight interruption in signal now, but I think there’s three separate drone command signals here…”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means he’s unable to jam them…” Alcanén said.

“It means I’m unable to reliably jam them,” Ibrahim retorted, “I can probably figure something out.”

“Yeah. You’re a genius, I forgot.”

“Well, I am a genius.”

“A genius who chews memory sticks…”

He quickly spat the device out. “I happen to like the taste of the plastic.”

Pilincár smiled slightly, and Alcanén chuckled. Ibrahim shot them a glance that promised retaliation later, and stabbed up with his thumb at a button on the wall behind him, “Captain, could you circle a bit before landing?”

“Sure,” came the response through the communication system, “I’ll think of something to stall them… Any progress?”

“Some…”

---

The Vilyulairë landed on an illuminated pad, one of a few structures that poked up above the rocky surface of the sand-swept plain, near to a briny sea that trickled out from deeper canals that led from nearby hives, the water sourced, originally, from higher land springs. The talent of such supposedly unintelligent creatures was quite astonishing. Massive structures oriented along the planet’s magnetic axis. Three cylindrical tanks, supported on metallic struts, hung ominously in the air around the landing pad, and Ibrahim commented on the probability of the dishes on the roves of the tanks being the source of the control signal.

The pad descended jarringly, its mechanisms obviously new and not quite worn in.

Apairë smiled with as much charm as he could muster at the young looking elf who came to greet them. “We’ve come to talk to whoever’s in charge here,” he said, sounding as conciliatory as he could.

Ibrahim kept behind them, and sub-vocalised into a small throat-microphone. ‘This is going to be hard. I’ve not got the signal strength to do much from down here.’

Alcanén frowned, but the others managed to make no discernible reactions to the bad news.

---

It surprised Pilincár that there were so many Lantëanar people in the facility. It transpired that there were about thirty in all, including a contingent of twenty guards and as many hovering dagger-drones who were apparently there to protect some corporate bigwig who didn’t want to travel into the lonely wastes of space alone. Not that this was much of a surprise, many Eldar were still leery of venturing into wild space. Apairë, on the other hand, would contend that there was far more danger in Sol than anywhere outside it.

The bigwig in question was a tall smug looking Noldo who seemed to have come straight out of a book of clichés. He was one of those people who clearly loved the sound of his own voice. Apairë was doing his best to stick to the Menelmacari version of the ‘officer and a gentleman’ rule, but the temptation to roll his eyes and say ‘shut up’ was growing minute by minute.

“And further, this claim is completely out of the question. Spiritualism is a tertiary level criterion in the reckoning system provided in xeno-cultural assessment. Primary assessments of reasoning ability and lingual comprehension,” a major aspect of Menelmacari alien assessment involved higher communication. After all, Menelmacar had trees that were capable of speech and comprehension; it wasn’t surprising there should be an emphasis on such things. “as well as neural interlinking puts them somewhere at the level of chickens! I cannot believe you’re even thinking of saying there should be a problem with culling.”

“With respect,” Apairë started, “it may not be proof of advanced intelligence, but it is clear evidence that the most probable evolutionary line from here is toward sentience. These creatures should fall under Warden jurisdiction…”

“That’s totally unwarranted. We’ve seen life-forms that have been in evolutionary stasis despite having mid-level animism, and no true sapience nor abstract reasoning,” he frowned, “I don’t see why you’re so concerned about this…”

“Because your plans,” Apairë said, leaning forwards, jabbing out with his forefinger, causing one of the dagger drones, floating knife-form weapons bristling with potent micro-missiles, to zip forward threateningly, to the side of Apairë’s head, its tapering blade pointed at his ear. He restrained the urge to swat at it as though it were an oversized fly. That would probably be lethal, as all told, it probably packed almost as much firepower as he did. “are to basically turn aliens into food,” he grimaced.

“And we’ve domesticated alien fauna before and used foodstuffs from off-world. I really am not seeing the problem with using these particular non-sapient animals in the same way,” the Lantëanar executive snapped.

“Except these creatures may not be animals!” Tulcamboiel snarled, and one of the dagger drones levitated closer to her.

“And they might just be, as the assessment originally determined,” he said, “The authority that decides things here is me,” he sanpped, “We don’t have a brig here to lock you in, so you may stay and watch, or you can go back where you came from.”

Apairë was seething, he seemed as though he was barely restrained by his own armor, his head-straining forwards against his armor, a look of anger, killing anger, written on his face as on a statue of some warrior in defiant action. “We’ll… stay…”

---

Pilincár smiled as they were brought in to the control chamber, looking at the clock on the wall. Almost half an hour since she’d sent her letter. She had faith in her aunt, great faith, in fact.

The room was tall, two stories, with rugged, frontier-style computers everywhere, showing various views of the facility. The towers were in fact, drone-factories containing thousands of automated drones that would begin the process of operating a massive, automated factory built beneath ground.

Various alcoves of control units showed pieces of the factory as it moved towards operation. Lights soared across diagnostic screens as power filtered from deep-core vents and geothermal generators, coursing through wires and conduits, into factory chambers placed in a rough ring around the facility.

“We should be ready to begin in two minutes,” the leader of the operators said, and Alcanén tensed, looking behind him at Ibrahim. Ibrahim nodded, reaching under his arm and tapping through his sleeve, crossing his arms, holding them in front of him. One of the screens began flickering, and its operator called out a protest as the computers began failing, their screens shuddering like beheaded animals.

“Signal failure on towers two and three!” he said, looking alarmed.

The executive walked over on a railing, looking annoyed, “What?” he demanded, finding failure of any system, unsurprisingly, even on the frontier, to be almost unbelievable. “Jamming?” he demanded, glaring at his ‘guests.’

“Yes,” the operator said, “I think so… Locating…” he scooted his chair over to another panel and a diagram of the compound lit up with flashing tengwar script, displaying a point in the landing area.

The executive snarled, “I’m sure there’s laws against this. And I doubt you’re acting with the military dispensation you claim to be. You!” he snapped, pointing at one of the guards, “get up there and blow up whatever’s jamming us.”

The guard disappeared into a lift, a whine from which indicated that its not quite aligned motors were taking it upwards.

“I’m sure you people can be prosecuted for this,” he said jabbing his finger forwards.

“Jamming increasing,” the operator said. Ibrahim frowned, biting his lip in confusion. Pilincár gave a wry grin. “Authority, aren’t you…” she mused.

“I am the senior representative of Lantëanar here!” he snapped. The lights flickered and dimmed, and the room shook. The executive looked astonished, astounded even. On the screens, one of the drone towers was simply gone from the display. The room shook again, and Pilincár watched another tower disappear. Again, and the last was gone.

“How did you do that?” the executive demanded.

Apairë frowned, “I have no idea,” he said. The lift began whining again as it descended.

“You’re lying. Kill him…” the guards looked at each other in consternation, holding their weapons. He glared at one of the dagger drones. The lift door hissed open, “Kill him!” the executive repeated, and one of the tiny studs of a micro-missile head lashed out, a cylinder of shining metal hurtling towards Apairë’s head, riding a gravitic propulsion field quick to dodge, carrying a fraction of its eight megajoule maximum charge, accelerating centimeter by centimeter.

The micro-missile dropped slightly, and bounced off his chest as it succumbed to the planetoid’s weak gravity. It flicked off his chest, inert missile tumbling end over end and bouncing on the floor.

The drone paused for a moment, before assuming that the missile was a dud and launching another. The same fate met it, and the executive stared. More drones fired, and every little cylinder bounced off Apairë, as useless as the first, forming a little minefield around his feet of dead micro-missiles. The drones lashed out with masers that suddenly failed, and cutting fields that did little better.

“How…” the executive began…

“That would be my doing,” a deep voice said, and a black-clad Sindar stepped from the lift. He was statuesque, almost impossibly so in his bearing, and the trim of his robes was a shimmering bronze.

Both the elven guards and the drones spun to face the intruder, and at the barest nod from their owner, the cloud of drones began firing at him too, a few missiles flittering across the room before dropping from the air and bouncing with dull little sounds of metal upon burgundy carpet. He twitched a hand, and the drones dropped from the air onto the floor themselves with twenty thuds as they hit it from different heights. “Who are you?” the executive demanded.

“Perhaps an introduction is in order,” he said, “I am Asirnoth. I trust that I need no further introduction, and you are?”

He stammered in uncertainty. The C’tan deputy was indeed well known, but unlike his more popular brother, his name was spoken with myths and trepidation, not fear among the Menelmacari, but with rumor, his secrecy was such that news of him only came when disaster and war was afoot.

“I am Elheron Minyaluin,” he said, pausing in anticipation, “and you are trespassing…”

“On the contrary,” he said.

“This is a Lantëanar facility…”

“Yes, Lantëanar isn’t exactly a major conglomerate however…”

“You are still trespassing,” Elheron said.

“Quite the opposite. I’ve acquired Lantëanar… The buildings I just levelled topside were, and contained, my own property… And I believe I just witnessed you attempting to commit murder, or at least, something close…” he smiled, “I’ll see about dealing with that…”

He turned, nodding to Pilincár, and stepped into the lift again, “Oh, and the rest of you, begin shutting this facility down…”

---

Elrandir’s hallway was relaxing, and Pilincár smiled a little as she walked into the vast space of the city-sized ship’s enclosed forest, caressing the bark of one of the trees. “Ah,” Alcanén said, dressed in dark greens and other earthy colors, a bag slung over his shoulder, “There you are. I’ve been meaning to ask… How’d you arrange that?”

She smiled, “I have an aunt currently living with one of Asirnoth’s generals. I asked her to put a word through. I figured that, if half the rumors about Asirnoth are true, then he might want to do a few good deeds here and there. I figured he might just see things our way…”

“And he did.”

“Seems so. Maybe it was Mephet’ran instead,” she said, shrugging, “not very talkative, was he?”

“Nope… But Idhrindiel said there’d be a gift for me on the Canta when we’re restocked.”

“Oh?” he asked.

---

“Yeah, apparently that Lantëanar goon ruined our dropship, too…” Apairë said,

“on a barely authorised mission, ouch…” Tulcamboiel said.

“Apparently Pilincár’s paid for the replacement…”

“On her salary?”

The lift slid open to reveal the Canta’s landing bay, and a Vilyulairë dropship there.

It was like normal ones, but different. Its back section was coated in hexagonal plates, studded with projector units. Pilincár, sitting cross-legged on a wing, smiled, “Captain! Allow me to present Lustaulairë, our shiny new custom dropship. She comes complete with a sub-sapient autonomous operating core, optical camo and ECM so good that you could almost buzz the Canta without being noticed, two compact jump drives, her own mil-spec-displacer a… shroud of darkness, I believe it’s called, simultaneous launch capacity for ninety thousand Angstian anti-personnel micro-missiles, remote command interpretation and even direct flight… You name it, she’s got it…”

Apairë frowned, “When did you get this?”

She smiled, “About ten minutes ago. She’s a gift from the Dragon,” she said, and patted the surface of the wing, “apparently made by him personally no less. Uses bits and pieces of technology from more states than you can shake a stick at, totally unique, and, I’d guess, arguably the finest dropship ever made.”

“Okay,” Apairë said, letting out a low whistle, “That is nice…”

The inside of the new dropship was cramped, Pilincár felt, it only had space for the four of them in the rear compartment. That wasn’t actually true, it had space for almost ten normal marines, but the equipment her team tended to bring with it took up a lot of space. Apairë was up in the front section, in this vessel, connected by a small corridor so low that even Ibrahim, by far the shortest member of the group, had to stoop in order to get through it. To Pilincár it was… no fun.

Still, that was the price of all the various advanced gadgets attached to the vehicle, all things considered, it was amazing that Lustaulairë even worked at all, let alone had all the various redundancies it had. When she’d asked Ibrahim about its computer’s quality, all he had to say was that it was ‘are you kidding? This is the computer’ and that it alone was worth several normal dropships.

A thin band showed a false-image of the outside showed the stars change, and she could tell that the Lustaulairë had transited to its destination. The system cheerfully labelled ‘E two hundred and seventy nine.’ It was an interesting little backwater, at least to the keen astronomer in Pilincár, and she gave an instruction to her suit to feed her the forward optical view from the ship’s sensors. They were in a formation nebula, a spectacular cloud of gas that was part of a slowly dissipating stellar nursery. In the centre of her view, a brilliant star, white, it seemed, blazed, a hot young, ‘blue’ star. Its light was reflected and distorted in a thousand ways by the hydrogen gasses around it, and she let out an involuntary gasp. It was indeed beautiful.

The view alone, and knowing that she was one of the first people to be there was a thrill that sent tingles like icy spiders running down her spine. It made the, so far, violent, nature of her experience worthwhile.

Of course, war, it seemed, had penetrated into this unspoilt sample of paradise.

She called up the armor suit’s display inside her eyes, and overlaid it in black – black was high-contrast against a view from a space-craft, surely a rarity – lettering to re-read. They were a few astronomical units out, and it would take a few minutes to arrive, so she had to kill the time.

---

Elrandir Profile Catalogue: 232,949

Disclass: Public.

Schedule: Elrandir Canta System #279

Date Discovered:
Long Range Scan 31,870
Probe Scan: 31,871

Notes: System is part of the Elbereth Stellar Nursery. It consists of a single early main sequence star surrounded by an infalling nebula and several rings of asteroids in late developmental stages. Probe Scan discovered that belt #2 is seemingly inhabited by fractious life-forms. Mass-drivers have been observed in use to attack other asteroids, which themselves fire on others. It seems likely that some hostile force is present in the system. Further reconnaissance is advised in order to further our goals in the Elbereth Nursery.

---

That struck Pilincár as remarkably vague, and she had an idea why. It seemed that there had been, despite combat in the belt, no evidence of drive trails, or communications. In other circumstances, they would have written it off as indigenes but the Stellar Nursery was too young for such advanced activity. It was also known as one of the few Menelmacari pet projects in the far reaches of the galaxy, and a web of self-replicating probes that had spread out through the volume of the nebula and could find no trace of interlopers monitored FTL activity there. Of course, sensors had been fooled before – Pilincár had personal experience of that, they’d thought that drone had been dead, and that turned out to be very wrong, at the cost of lives.

So a visit from the Canta had been scheduled, to drop off a team to infiltrate one of the more major asteroids, which seemed to be highly machined. Though its composition was a nickel-iron asteroid, it read as almost entirely hollow. They’d instead decided to test out the Lustaulairë in its intended role as a more flexible extension of the reach of the Canta. Though all Menelmacari ships were fast, able to cross the galaxy in less time than it would take for her to reach the cockpit of the Lustaulairë, they couldn’t yet manage to be in two places at once, though if she knew her people, they were working on that too.

She took her helmet off and stood up, reaching up and leaning through the low doorway into the gunmetal corridor beyond, and put on a stereotypical kid’s voice; “Are we there yet?” she asked, and was rewarded with muffled titters from the rest of her team. Apairë turned and ducked down a little to look back into the corridor, “As a matter of fact,” he said, “yes. We’re one light minute away. I’m going to full stealth mode. I’d suit back up if I were you,” he added. “Unless you want to stay here, at least.”

She pouted, and reattached the suit’s helmet, reaching up for one of the more secure handholds.

---

The surface of the asteroid was like all asteroids, really, a rocky plain that seemed to peter off far too quickly. Pilincár had actually been on several asteroids, during an extreme-sports dalliance during her later youth, there’d been a time when there was something of a rage for going out to asteroids and belt objects for variations on popular sports, but she’d abandoned that trendy fashion for orbital skydiving after a few weeks. “You know,” Alcanén was whining off to her left, “we could just run scans, and teleport inside the damn thing…”

Tulcaamboiel, seeming refreshed to have her tall form outside at last, made a little disapproving tongue-cluck noise, “We choose to go not because it is easy…” she quipped, and Ibrahim sniggered at the reference.

“I’m just saying, wouldn’t it be nice to go with the labor-saving methods a little more often?”

“you don’t get the same feel for a place just zapping in than you do by going into it on foot.”

“Hey, this rock is probably pressurised, so we’re probably wasting our energy anyway.”

“That’s, believe it or not, not what the scan says. Thermal traces of life, but no pressure.”

“Suits?”

“Or,” Ibrahim said, “vacuum dwelling life forms.”

Tulcaamboiel laughed a little at that one, void-dwelling complex life forms were even rarer than intelligent, technological ones.

“Fifty credits says it’s exotic life forms.”

“You’re on!” she said, and Ibrahim chuckled knowingly.

Pilincár sent a tight-beam signal “What info have you got that the rest of us haven’t?”

He made as if to tap his nose through his transparent visor and grinned.


The twist field flickered dramatically, and took a large piece of rock from the asteroid, plonking it down with the same relative velocity a few feet away. Pilincár frowned slightly, and twisted through the gap, tiny motors on her armor pushing her along. The other side was a cavern, of a sort, with craterlike depressions on every surface. Legs tucked up beneath her, she hovered over to one side, holding a plasma rifle one-handed, there was nothing there, but the cavernous space was… strange.

Apairë blinked, stepping through on gravitic boots after her. “Weird,” he murmured.

“How so?”

“It’s a teardrop shape, and very regular. Looks like some kind of mining activity’s been done in here.”

“Consumption, obviously, by space monsters.” Ibrahim said.

“You and your space monsters,” Pilincár said, tutting mockingly.

“Well, whatever it is, something created it,” Apairë said, as the others came through, “The asteroid wouldn’t form with these regular depressions,” he said, twisting around in the enhanced darkness and pressing a button on his forearm, making the hole in the rock disappear entirely, the ‘twist field’ – a variation of displacer technology with a range of a few meters, that shunted a given volume to another area in space – putting it back exactly where it had come from. Another touch brought the device over to their side, and Pilincár caught it, attaching it in the null-gravity to her suit.

“You know, I think the most interesting stuff will be at the tip of the teardrop,” Tulcaamboiel said, looking around to one end.

“I agree,” Ibrahim says, “Looks like that’s the way in. Logical, at least.” A moment later, Pilincár was once again on ‘point,’ as they floated through the sizable chasm towards it apex, where the chasm lead off into a tunnel that was rifled, alarmingly like the barrel of a gun. Again, Pilincár’s rifle was held out In front of her, and she double checked the field-vision heads up display that showed active energy systems. When something notable triggered any of these ‘vision modes’ alerts were issued, but they were otherwise accessible, anyway.

“Gunbarrel effect,” she muttered.

“Humm. Weird, very smooth,” said Alcanén, “The rest could maybe be shot blasting, but at best, this is drilling. Maybe a chemical process from a wide bore nozzle of some sort.”

The elves couldn’t quite stand up in the passageway that had been bored through the rock, but Ibrahim could, and was first into the breach. Pilincár continued to float in the gravity-less environment, knees tucked up beneath her.


“I win,” Ibrahim said, and shuffled along to press himself against the side of the tunnel. Ahead was something that looked like a massive tuber, with fibrous hairs in two fringes along its ‘upper’ surface, leading into the rock. A sphincter at its rear end added to the pale creature’s worm-like look, and its exterior surface seemed to be scaled sharply.

On closer examination, these scales were protrusions from the creature’s body, in vertical rings around it.

“Okay, that looks like a reason to scan now,” Tulcaamboiel conceded, tapping a button on her wrist, “Seventeen meters long. Anchored to the rock… Strange creature.”

“Those scales?”

“Don’t seem to be. Wow, no muscle structure to speak of in any form, they’re something cartilaginous, controlled by fluid-filled rings – looks like it can move by pumping these; of course, in this gravity. No wonder it’s anchored to the rock, it probably only moves a foot per year or so…”

“How does it think?” Apairë asked.

“Slowly…” she replied, “There’s a brain structure but it’s spread throughout the body. Senses all seem to be up front… Oh wow… there is muscle, figured out how it dug that cavern.”

“Must’ve taken a while to do that at those speeds.”

“Quite a while, but not as much – it’s got annelid style muscled tails with their own sense organs, that should be able to whip crack around if they want to, past that fluid-sphincter. The nerves in these are separate, and should fire much faster. Near-separate circulatory systems with muscle-corded umbilical cords that make up most of the tail’s body, I think they’re actually capable of coming off it completely and re-attaching.”

“Might it be a good idea to get around and look at the other end?”

“I think so. Besides, I don’t really want one of those things hitting me. There’s a passage nine meters off to the left.”

“Err, we can’t cut through to that without damaging the critter.” Pilincár said.

“So, we’re going to actually be teleporting after all?” Alcanén inquired, his tone too polite.

“Looks like we are,” Apairë conceded, “Ship. Retrieve.”

“One second,” Tulcaamboiel said, wedging a holo-recorder into the wall, before they disappeared in a wave of darkness that wasn’t detectible in the absolutely black environment.

“What was that?”

“I thought I might catch a few nice shots of a whip-tail in action with that.”
“Resetting target,” Apairë said, “And, full scan, seven of our critters in there, and nothing else.”

“Seven? That’s odd,” Tulcaamboiel “They must be spread out.”

“Pretty much,” Apairë said.

“I mean the creatures themselves. That can’t be a stable population if it reproduces in a conventional sexual manner.”

“Fair point, widening scan to encompass point one two light seconds.”

Tulcaamboiel tapped a key on one of the small ship’s sceens, bringing up the results of the scan. “Wow. There are millions of them…”

Ibrahim hummed to himself, “I’ve got an idea on the ‘weapons discharges’

“Space travel?” Pilincár asked.

“I don’t think so. I think it’s part of the life cycle. Seen the size of the cavern we were in? If that’s excavated by one…”

---

“Would you look at that eye,” Pilincár said as they reappeared before the snout of the same creature.

The glossy black convex surface shone brightly. An iris began to slowly squeeze over it like a single circular eyelid, inch by inch.

“Lights off!” Apairë snapped, suddenly realising the discomfort a source of light that was simply the reflected glimmer of instruments on faces must bring to a creature that had never even seen a sun closer than two light years.

“Shit!” someone swore, as the lights went out completely.

“I hope you guys are seeing something,” Ibrahim said.

“Sort of,” Apairë said, in the dimly starlit darkness. The creature.

“I think you might be right…”

---

Elrandir alien-life survey, entry #233,949-1

Disclass: Public

Discovered: 31,872 (Elrandir Canta Contact Team 2 – Joint)

Name: For: Elberethin Asteroid Worm Inf: ‘Roid Worm Joc: Cat o’ Many Tails

Sapience: Complex, see below.

Description The Asteroid Worm is a large sedate creature that appears to operate on an anaerobic basis within asteroids in the Elbereth Stellar Nursery. It is between fifteen and twenty meters in length, and typically expands to fill whatever tunnel-space is available to it. Essentially fluid supported, it retains it to shape due to the low-pressure micro gravity environment it exists in, and moves by flexing its shape. It exists within water-rich asteroids, which it taps with 'root' structures that appear to grow in one location and be discarded when the creature moves. In older examples, these can fill the entire asteroid. The creature feeds away from its own environment by means of detachable and re-attachable appendages that could qualify as symbiotic life forms, but are genetically a part of their host. These mobile creatures are capable of consuming the semi-exotic carbonaceous chondrite asteroids they inhabit, excavating large caverns.

Life cycle: The asteroid worm appears to reproduce by means of its detachable appendages, which, when fertilised in encounters with those of other creatures, produce an offspring. These are hermaphroditic, and may be capable of self-reproduction. Detailed study will be required in this respect. As such, the Asteroid Worm may be unusual in that it is simultaneously capable of sexual and asexual reproduction using the same (inherently sexual) mechanism. When fertilised, eggs gestate within the creature for some time (estimated to be twelve solar years, a surprisingly round number [See ‘Culture’ below]) before being loaded into what is essentially a very high velocity yet purely chemical cannon estimated to be capable of one ‘shot’ every solar year. A hard shell of desiccated rock is formed (assembled?) around the embryonic asteroid worm, and the creature uses its wide, highly efficient eye, to target another asteroid and ejaculate the offspring towards it. By this means the genetic pool is kept solvent, as a large population spreads out despite lacking means to move beyond its own asteroids.

Genetic analysis suggests that the overall structure of the ‘Roid Worm is redundant and regenerative enough to prevent death by any causes save violence (not normative, as the ‘Roid Worms lack a metabolism fast enough to make violence against one another a serious possibility, and lack natural predators, appearing as they do to exist in complete isolation) meaning that natural death only occurs when the ‘Roid Worm has consumed all available food within its asteroid.

Culture: It seems highly likely that the Elberethin Asteroid Worm is a designer life form, as the environment it exists in is too hostile to develop life, and there is no evident trace of an evolutionary ancestry. It is possible that they may have existed in another environment and have been seeded intentionally or accidentally within this area. It has been speculated that the Asteroid Worm may be present in multiple systems, with its complex reproductive vector explaining its presence in this system, with an evolutionary ancestry elsewhere. However, the complexity of its feeding-reactions suggests that any designers would need to science advanced far beyond the galactic mode.

Contact and preservation tasks: The Asteroid Worm appears to be in a process of self-destruction due to the decreasing distances between asteroids within the system at present. This means that the offspring stand a drastically sub-optimal survival chance at present. Continued study is recommended to determine optimal conditions, and a star-system alteration project involving Elrandir or MIV Bragollach has been drafted for 31,873 to restore the system to optimal. However, it is not in gravitational equilibrium, and it seems that this re-arrangement may prove challenging. An analysis project to relocate the Asteroid Worm to a more congenial system is ongoing if this proves impossible.

Notes (Sapience): It is difficult to determine the Asteroid Worm’s sapience, as its slow metabolism prevents meaningful contact with elves. While it has the neural mass required for sapient thought, there is no evident communication between Asteroid Worms, or even means of communication, and the languid pace of neural transmission within the main body prevent easy analysis of intellectual capacity. The Asteroid Worm is tentatively rated at between 0.1 and 0.4 Human-Standard Intelligence, but further analysis is ongoing. It seems unlikely that its thought patterns would have any common ground with that of elves, save possibly an aesthetic appreciation of stars.

[Further Reading, Scan Results, Other Data]