NationStates Jolt Archive

A primitive ship (http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/buckRogers06.jpg) fluttered in the Qent system, spouting streams of steam. They had only recently colonized only two planet of their system. It drifted close to the edge of the system, on guard. Inside, strange insect like fungi (http://www.nightserpent.com/lovecraft/migo.jpg) were having an argument. They had discovered their governments plan for contact with aliens...complete eradication of the other race. And now too, they had discovered races just outside their doorstep.

"Alien," muttered Ryly, and coughed rackingly, unpleasant in the confined space. "The Colony - Migo, that was different, but - Bellamy, hey, hold on. Think a minute. So what you say's true - couldn't the Controllers still be right? I mean, these're aliens, man! Better we'd never contacted them, but now they've found us - hell, we can't trust them! We can't be sure! It's the Migo race at stake."

"Ye're sayin' that genocide - worse than that, even - that ye like the idea?" clicked Huanhex.

"Hell, no, think I'm Xoxtash or somethin'? Like I said - better we'd laid low, shut up, kept to ourselves, safe, Yuggoth and the Colony both. But these things, we can't afford to take a risk with them! Better a missile cleans the mistake off the slate, things quiet down an' we're safe again. I don't like it, I hate it - but then I'm not so wild about some of the things you feel you were justified in doin' either..."

"...Ryly, you're no fool, but you're bloody well talking like one. That missile can be tracked, man! With the mass it'll have by the time it connects it'll leave a wake of gravitational disturbance - on interstellar radiation, for a start - pointing right back this way. That's why it's a one-shot weapon - no second chances! Safe? What's safe? As if we could somehow hide away from the rest of the universe. Not as long as we use any kind of broadcast communication, we can't Think of it! Just round here, in our own little neighborhood, three planets inhabited, two with intelligent life, two with roughly the same kind of life! There must be millions of inhabited worlds out there, whatever the experts spout. Some like us, some not. Sooner or later one of them's bound to track back our communications overspill and find us. What then? Under the bed?"

"If that missile hits the target," said Huanhex venomously, "we'll have tae hide. Shrink back into our own wee system, never make a noise, never stir outside it. What if any other race ever found out what we'd done? Then we'd never be safe. They'd never trust us. Not for an instant. There's bound to be some of them who think like you, Ryly. We'd be giving them grand evidence, wouldn't we? They'd wipe us out like plague germs and feel good about it!"

Ryly's own imagination was striking sparks off Huanhex's and kindling an evil flame. "Unless..." Ryly began, and actually had trouble shaping the thought. "Unless we got them first. At once, on first contact. A pre-emptive strike, before they could possibly have a chance to find out about us. Hellfire, isn't that a glorious future history for us! A race of paranoid killers, skulking in our own backwater system when we might have had the stars! Clamping down on exploration, communications, anything that might lead someone else to us and make us stain our hands again with the same old crime... Carrying that weight down the generations. What would that make of us?"

"Predators," breathed Huanhex, "Carrion-eaters - no, worse, ghouls, vampires, killing just tae carry on our own worthless shadow-lives."

The Dank (http://mateengreenway.com/steampunk/VenusTransit.jpg) drifted towards the border between the system. Inside Ottaboq, of the military caste, directed his ship towards the elder ship.
"Adohikai, please inform our bretheren they are being relieved of their command."
"Si, Ottaboq."
**********
OOC: Cmon! Bump! Lets see some posts!

There are ships. Interstellar Exploration Units. They're big, they're fast (If lacking accuracy), and they're rare.

Most certainly, there weren't any in the volume of space where one more microdrama was playing itself out.

Then, there is their offspring, Interstellar Exploration Drones. Smaller than the units, certainly. About as fast, though, and rather less rare.

One of them had been in this general volume of space, a fair while ago. However, it had also left, again, a fair while ago.

And then there were smaller drones, and dustclouds.

They were there, left by the last visitor, who had been curious as of how the local civilisation would develop. It had conducted a minimal-observability entry, black body configuration, minimal acceleration, billions of kilometres away from any possible settlement, significant parts of its gravitic emissions conversed into electromagnetic emissions and then directed into its heat sinks.

And then it had deployed its drones.

Nothing but little things, hidden in comets and asteorids, sensordust orbiting their microscopic worlds, watching the local civilisation. No particular purpose - They were simply curious, registering incoming radiations - Communications, drive fields- and exhausts, solar activity, there was plenty to watch.

And sometimes, interesting things could be seen.

Radiations, emission profiles fitting relatively primitive - Though still capable - design parameters. The distinctly complex, but most certainly not random, if impossible to analyse without some background knowledge, humming of communications. Gravitational structures, and other, sometimes rather exotic things.

Apparently, the locals were exploring their system in greater detail.

The drones are, of course, dumb. Technically capable of holding a sapient mind, certainly, but not usually doing so - It'd be exceedingly boring. They don't get excited, or start communications on their own - They simply transmit the information they've received to the next available IED, whose mindstate-abstract transmits it again, to its mother-IEU (The Xenophile, at that time occupied with discussing the virtues of self-replicating killer machines with itself - Being a xenophile didn't mean that it lacked some morbid strains, as was obvious from the literature it kept in its databanks), which transmits the message again, this time to a closer nearby IEU - One that isn't entangled with the IED in question, but still closer to the general volume of space the action is taking place in than the mother IEU (Needless to say, organisation is something the explorers still need to work on).

ETAs are calculated, schedules are drawn up, and commands are relayed down the sapience-chain.

In the region in question, a so far silent and near-undetectable drone extends the volume its orbiting cloud of sensordust is occupying, and starts beeping through the EM spectrum - Now, it's exceedingly noticeable, if rather impolite.

OOC: This is taking place withen my system, but we'll just say your drones are right outside my system.

IC: The Dank radioed the other ship, the Exocuto. It was made clear that The Dank was taking over the position, and the Exocuto drifted back towards Yuggoth. As soon as the Exocuto left The Dank would took over the watch.

If they saw anything, it would be quickly destroyed.

oocness: Well, damned. I shall edit above post, then. How they got there is another question, though - I suppose they're far out in the comet cloud, where low-observability entries are vaguely feasible

While the Reasonable Demand - The IEU closest to the volume in question - shifted, connecting with the probable currents of the between, climbing logarithmic pseudo-relativistic energy states and slowly accelerating to a terminal velocity of rather less than a hundred kiloc relativistic space equivalent, moving in the general direction of its 'target' (Accuracy was a problem with this form of travel, but it'd end up within about seven lightyears of the target, from where a more accurate low-velocity approach would be perfectly manageable), the drone, in all its glorious non-sapientness, got frustrated. There it was pinging, but nobody listened.

It pinged through the EM spectrum, again. Louder - That is, with an order of magnitude more energy -, this time.