ElectronX
24-12-2006, 08:13
"What is it?" Ortin Moarse asked hoarsely in response to a faint tapping on his door. He sat behind his thin gun-metal desk in a room obscured by smoke and light hidden behind titanium shutters with a flood of papers in front of men and an ink pen in hand; a totally worthless habit in an age when such work can be done in moments by a machine.
"Reports from Suspect Diamond have just come in, sir." The young dark-haired assistant Guy Thortan said as he walked in the smoke clogged room with a serious but decidedly indifferent expression broken across his rigid face.
"Really now? What's the news then?" Ortin said, rising from his chair with a grunt to open the shutters, something else that required only a basic command through his n-relays.
Thortan closed the door behind him and walked into the center of the modest office room, waiting for Ortin to get done with his needless task clutching a black folder in hands made more for hard labor than corporate pencil pushing.
"Sorry about that, need some light when something like this comes up; helps me think." He said with a chuckle that sounded like two bricks being scraped together by Thor himself.
The office was flooded by the pale green-red twilight from Iiathum's dancing suns. Mufeuers was still barely visible over the horizon, scattering its light through A-ring's shimmering forcefield and into Ortin's one-way pane-glass window. Kleiauge's body had vanished over the skyline, but its deep red light still danced through the heavens, assaulting the sky like a tidal wave of glimmering blood. Staining everything in a December chroma.
"Sit down man. Can't discuss things of importance if you're going to be standing around all awkward like." Ortin said as he sat back down after a brief struggle with his chair; he was a big man, most of it anything but muscle. This in sharp contrast with Guy Thortan; who was built like a light pole no matter how you looked at him.
Thortan sat down in one of the two leather office chairs in front of Ortin's desk, looking briefly out the window with little interest in a bustling world awash in solar color scattered by a multitude of high level forcefields. Reflecting off the thick armored plating that shielded each sky scrapper and parking garage; off everyone E-car as it danced through the sky at daemonic speeds, and every freighter as it fell slowly through the sky onto any number of landing platforms ready to accept its cargo. It was home in the most basic of sense, and it never changed.
"Alright Thortan, out with it: what's up on that rock that's been pretty much useless since we landed on it?" Ortin said with a small chuckle as he reclined back into his over-sized chair. Today hadn't been busy, the whole week hadn't been busy, so he was used to relaxing back in a chair in an office made for work lately, not that he really worked much when the occasion called for it, anyway.
"Well, the anomaly pumps out more psi energy than we initially expected. It also does so in a predictable pattern at extremely high frequencies; so high we're surprised we were even able to detect anything." Thortan turned another page within the folder he was so laxingly holding in his hand, "Something that's rather interesting, when we translated the single into sound waves, it sounds almost like that one-hundred k stuff ravers listen to. Not remarkable on its own, but it had a noticeable affect on those in the vicinity." Thortan's light lilac eyes met Ortin's, awaiting the inevitable question.
"Well, what the hell is it? Something the size of one of the buildings out there, putting out a signal so faint that it took mil grade sensors to detect it, ain't just some sort of decoration whoever built it decided to put up." Ortin said with a degree of agitation: he was never much for things that so defied understanding no matter what context you placed the object in.
"We have no idea. Only that the pirate cartels in the region have an interest in it, and might be the impetus behind the lack of evolution beyond small mammalian and avian species despite existing unmolested by extinction level events for the past billion or so years. But other than that, it's all we know. Could be an ancient messaging device, reactor from a long-dead civilization, or as you said, a stellar decoration; it's anyone's guess." Guy leaned back slightly, placing the folder in front of his boss who had been eying it from time to time throughout their exchange. "It's all here, what little there is."
Ortin turned his chair around to face the outside world that had dimmed significantly as the pair of over-sized stars disappeared over a horizon broken by hyper-industrialization and capitalism. He eyed through the contents of the ebon folder: several pieces of paper, a third of which explaining the possible penalties for letting the information fall into someone else's hands. The rest was charts and graphs only useful to engineers and mathematicians, with little blurbs underneath doing their best to explain in layman's terms what it all meant, which all amounted to nothing.
Suspect Diamond had been scouted nearly five years ago, at the time no more than a rock ripe for basic colonization. It wasn't special in any case; it had an abundance of water, green continents, mountain ranges, and a menagerie of forests: nothing horribly special in a galaxy of over two-hundred billion stars. It was put down as a future project worthy of consideration once other worlds before it had been colonized by various clients. At the time it was just world #C4591, a plain designation for a plain world. Then one day, things got interesting.
The system was surveyed by the military after reports of increased pirate activity in the region. Nothing special was found initially; only after extensive analysis of the reports by various super-computers did the 'anomaly' make itself known. It was a wave of psionic energy that oscillated at extremely high frequencies almost beyond the latest military-grade sensor's detection capabilities. Also interesting was its range: the wave permeated the various levels of space at a maximum of one-thousand five-hundred lightyears away from its eminence. There was as well the affect the wave had on creatures with highly developed mental faculties: the wave stimulated every neuron in some almost infinitesimal way, but it was enough to create a basic chemical desire to get closer to #C4591. Whatever was on that rock broadcasting that signal, it was no doubt highly advanced, and apparently very much in need of company.
"So what do you recommend, Thortan?" Ortin asked suddenly with his golden eyes slamming into the young manager's lilac spheres with the force of a freight train. Ortin was serious right now; his face was hard as stone and his breath was heavy and steady; this was a side of Ortin people rarely saw. A side Thortan secretly thanked was revealing itself; he too had no time for games right now.
"As you can see from the report; the pirate cartels have taken an inordinate amount of interest in the area, and the amount of energy that has been flowing through that wave has increased. There is definitely something there even if we have no idea what that something is. Not only do we owe it to ourselves to find out what's going on, but we owe it to the potential buyers and/or settlers of that world to make sure it isn't hazardous." Thortan stood up ready to go back to his own office world, doing what PioneerCo. Inc had tasked him with since his promotion only seven months ago.
"I recommend sir that one of our security divisions setup a well-fortified base around the signals point of origin, and one of our science teams be sent in to give a more in-depth investigation of the strange phenomenae. If it's nothing, then we disable the device or destroy it, and end the beckoning affect it is having on the regional pirate populations. If it is something more than just meaningless noise, then we'll go from there. Either we'll profit off it, or destroy it due to the danger it may possibly represent." He swifted focus beyond the wide window-pane, trying to fathom all that industrialization and capitalism, both ancient and new, had done to bring Iiathum to its current state. "No matter what it is, we cannot sit around and do nothing."
"I'll take it under advisement, Thortan. Now get back to work before the company goes bankrupt from your laziness." Ortin said with half a smirk, handing the indifferent manager the nearly useless folder.
Guy Thortan left without a word, just a smile that wasn't totally obligatory in the face of his boss's rather 'old' jape. They never truly got along if truth be told; save for situations such as this Ortin did not usually have business in mind; it was usually some plot or plan to work less and enjoy life more from his secluded little office. Whereas Guy had gotten as high as he had through a work ethic most found insane, and a mind so focused on how to further corporate interests that most of the companies veteran CEOs and attorneys were impressed if not mildly concerned; the degree of his dedication couldn't possible be healthy after all. In any case, Ortin didn't have time to think about that. He had some calls to make.
"Hello? General? ... Yes, this is Ortin Moarse, General Project Leader. Better get the boys ready; got something fun in store for 'em." He said into his n-relays, connecting to the corporate commSphere to the waiting gun totters somewhere in Pioneer's corporate bowels.
"Reports from Suspect Diamond have just come in, sir." The young dark-haired assistant Guy Thortan said as he walked in the smoke clogged room with a serious but decidedly indifferent expression broken across his rigid face.
"Really now? What's the news then?" Ortin said, rising from his chair with a grunt to open the shutters, something else that required only a basic command through his n-relays.
Thortan closed the door behind him and walked into the center of the modest office room, waiting for Ortin to get done with his needless task clutching a black folder in hands made more for hard labor than corporate pencil pushing.
"Sorry about that, need some light when something like this comes up; helps me think." He said with a chuckle that sounded like two bricks being scraped together by Thor himself.
The office was flooded by the pale green-red twilight from Iiathum's dancing suns. Mufeuers was still barely visible over the horizon, scattering its light through A-ring's shimmering forcefield and into Ortin's one-way pane-glass window. Kleiauge's body had vanished over the skyline, but its deep red light still danced through the heavens, assaulting the sky like a tidal wave of glimmering blood. Staining everything in a December chroma.
"Sit down man. Can't discuss things of importance if you're going to be standing around all awkward like." Ortin said as he sat back down after a brief struggle with his chair; he was a big man, most of it anything but muscle. This in sharp contrast with Guy Thortan; who was built like a light pole no matter how you looked at him.
Thortan sat down in one of the two leather office chairs in front of Ortin's desk, looking briefly out the window with little interest in a bustling world awash in solar color scattered by a multitude of high level forcefields. Reflecting off the thick armored plating that shielded each sky scrapper and parking garage; off everyone E-car as it danced through the sky at daemonic speeds, and every freighter as it fell slowly through the sky onto any number of landing platforms ready to accept its cargo. It was home in the most basic of sense, and it never changed.
"Alright Thortan, out with it: what's up on that rock that's been pretty much useless since we landed on it?" Ortin said with a small chuckle as he reclined back into his over-sized chair. Today hadn't been busy, the whole week hadn't been busy, so he was used to relaxing back in a chair in an office made for work lately, not that he really worked much when the occasion called for it, anyway.
"Well, the anomaly pumps out more psi energy than we initially expected. It also does so in a predictable pattern at extremely high frequencies; so high we're surprised we were even able to detect anything." Thortan turned another page within the folder he was so laxingly holding in his hand, "Something that's rather interesting, when we translated the single into sound waves, it sounds almost like that one-hundred k stuff ravers listen to. Not remarkable on its own, but it had a noticeable affect on those in the vicinity." Thortan's light lilac eyes met Ortin's, awaiting the inevitable question.
"Well, what the hell is it? Something the size of one of the buildings out there, putting out a signal so faint that it took mil grade sensors to detect it, ain't just some sort of decoration whoever built it decided to put up." Ortin said with a degree of agitation: he was never much for things that so defied understanding no matter what context you placed the object in.
"We have no idea. Only that the pirate cartels in the region have an interest in it, and might be the impetus behind the lack of evolution beyond small mammalian and avian species despite existing unmolested by extinction level events for the past billion or so years. But other than that, it's all we know. Could be an ancient messaging device, reactor from a long-dead civilization, or as you said, a stellar decoration; it's anyone's guess." Guy leaned back slightly, placing the folder in front of his boss who had been eying it from time to time throughout their exchange. "It's all here, what little there is."
Ortin turned his chair around to face the outside world that had dimmed significantly as the pair of over-sized stars disappeared over a horizon broken by hyper-industrialization and capitalism. He eyed through the contents of the ebon folder: several pieces of paper, a third of which explaining the possible penalties for letting the information fall into someone else's hands. The rest was charts and graphs only useful to engineers and mathematicians, with little blurbs underneath doing their best to explain in layman's terms what it all meant, which all amounted to nothing.
Suspect Diamond had been scouted nearly five years ago, at the time no more than a rock ripe for basic colonization. It wasn't special in any case; it had an abundance of water, green continents, mountain ranges, and a menagerie of forests: nothing horribly special in a galaxy of over two-hundred billion stars. It was put down as a future project worthy of consideration once other worlds before it had been colonized by various clients. At the time it was just world #C4591, a plain designation for a plain world. Then one day, things got interesting.
The system was surveyed by the military after reports of increased pirate activity in the region. Nothing special was found initially; only after extensive analysis of the reports by various super-computers did the 'anomaly' make itself known. It was a wave of psionic energy that oscillated at extremely high frequencies almost beyond the latest military-grade sensor's detection capabilities. Also interesting was its range: the wave permeated the various levels of space at a maximum of one-thousand five-hundred lightyears away from its eminence. There was as well the affect the wave had on creatures with highly developed mental faculties: the wave stimulated every neuron in some almost infinitesimal way, but it was enough to create a basic chemical desire to get closer to #C4591. Whatever was on that rock broadcasting that signal, it was no doubt highly advanced, and apparently very much in need of company.
"So what do you recommend, Thortan?" Ortin asked suddenly with his golden eyes slamming into the young manager's lilac spheres with the force of a freight train. Ortin was serious right now; his face was hard as stone and his breath was heavy and steady; this was a side of Ortin people rarely saw. A side Thortan secretly thanked was revealing itself; he too had no time for games right now.
"As you can see from the report; the pirate cartels have taken an inordinate amount of interest in the area, and the amount of energy that has been flowing through that wave has increased. There is definitely something there even if we have no idea what that something is. Not only do we owe it to ourselves to find out what's going on, but we owe it to the potential buyers and/or settlers of that world to make sure it isn't hazardous." Thortan stood up ready to go back to his own office world, doing what PioneerCo. Inc had tasked him with since his promotion only seven months ago.
"I recommend sir that one of our security divisions setup a well-fortified base around the signals point of origin, and one of our science teams be sent in to give a more in-depth investigation of the strange phenomenae. If it's nothing, then we disable the device or destroy it, and end the beckoning affect it is having on the regional pirate populations. If it is something more than just meaningless noise, then we'll go from there. Either we'll profit off it, or destroy it due to the danger it may possibly represent." He swifted focus beyond the wide window-pane, trying to fathom all that industrialization and capitalism, both ancient and new, had done to bring Iiathum to its current state. "No matter what it is, we cannot sit around and do nothing."
"I'll take it under advisement, Thortan. Now get back to work before the company goes bankrupt from your laziness." Ortin said with half a smirk, handing the indifferent manager the nearly useless folder.
Guy Thortan left without a word, just a smile that wasn't totally obligatory in the face of his boss's rather 'old' jape. They never truly got along if truth be told; save for situations such as this Ortin did not usually have business in mind; it was usually some plot or plan to work less and enjoy life more from his secluded little office. Whereas Guy had gotten as high as he had through a work ethic most found insane, and a mind so focused on how to further corporate interests that most of the companies veteran CEOs and attorneys were impressed if not mildly concerned; the degree of his dedication couldn't possible be healthy after all. In any case, Ortin didn't have time to think about that. He had some calls to make.
"Hello? General? ... Yes, this is Ortin Moarse, General Project Leader. Better get the boys ready; got something fun in store for 'em." He said into his n-relays, connecting to the corporate commSphere to the waiting gun totters somewhere in Pioneer's corporate bowels.