NationStates Jolt Archive

United States System Designation IH-33567
Popular reference - 'Arcadia' System
5 Lightyears Anti-Spinward of the Lincoln System

The tearing of dimensional planes is an awesome sight. Mankind's greatest achievement in technological travel is the ability to master the ability to rip apart space-time simply on the whim of faster travel. Like many of mankind's inventions, it is also violent to behold.

The void of space erupted in a fireball of colour, suggesting the void itself had caught fire and was spreading outwards; a patch of oil caught by a match at its centre. This fireball stretched, contorting and reshaping wildly with silent suffering, and expelled an object from the centre. Then, as quickly as it began, the void repaired itself, and the long night was peaceful once more.

The object took several moments to reorientate itself after being expelled from Hyperspace at an bizzare angle. Once finding the Galactic Standard Horizon once again, the object then slowed to a relative halt from the coordinates of the Hyperspace jump. A peculiar vessel, the craft bore a slightly insectoid look to its design, with a short, narrow neck and wide head attached to rectangular body and a pair of protruding wings. The craft was small, with only four visible weapons on the head of the ship, and was clearly designed for scouting. The title plates upon the bow and the ID Beacon registered in English the craft as the 'USS Pendragon Scout'.

The five-man crew onboard the Pendragon Scout visibly relaxed after the jump. Taking a few moments to compose himself, Captain Morris Tullivan rubbed his stubble habitually and leant back in his Command Chair. "Report in, all systems."

The two Navigators ahead of the Captain's position took a moment to check with eachother as to the state of all systems. Presently, Lieutenant-Commander Donald Macintosh, the senior Navigator, turned to Tullivan and smiled in relief. "Jump was completely successful, sir."

Tullivan smiled, taking a sigh of relief. The Pendragon Scout was one of four vessels recently constructed and sent out on a mission of exploration in the local area around Lincoln Prime. United States Supreme Command had been reluctant to send any of the Destroyers or Cruisers from the Home Picket, so the Scout Class vessels had been designed to facilitate this purpose.

Tullivan glanced at his console, studying for a minute. "Okay people, we have a job to do," he said. "Helm, set course for the nearest planet and-"

The Proximity Alarms wailed, causing the five men on the Command Deck to jump. Sensor Officer Lieutenant Greg Taylor checked his console. "Scanner Contact, Captain," he called. "Object on intercept course."

Tullivan snapped straight in his chair. "Condition Two Alert!" he said calmly. "Lock Weapons to Power, but do not Arm. Communications, send the message."

Outside the craft, small antenna arrays transmitted a message from the Pendragon Scout.

"This is the USS Pendragon Scout of the United States of Lincoln Prime. Please identify yourselves."

OOC :
Nice into , Tagged for an IC reply .

I'm not completely certain where you want to go with this - armed conflict, random contact, accidentally hitting on local residents, or something completely different -, so this one's pretty provisional. If it isn't quite what you want - going with 'Random Contact', as I 1. lack significant colonies and 2. a real 'Colony' wouldn't be missed when it's just a handful of lightyears off. Same goes for the other way around -, just ignore this post.

The exploration drone was a fairly dumb thing, not containing sapience - that it could contain one was another thing - and more-or-less occupied with itself, repairing itself after having shifted right in front of a smallish asteroid, which had eventually wasted maybe ten percent of the drone's capabilities.

It wasn't exactly blind, but it wouldn't have minded a pair of glasses. It wasn't exactly crippled, but it wouldn't have minded a ride.

As of now, however, it was pretty alone, and the Interstellar Exploration Unit it belonged to - the Stargazer - was about three systems to the galactic east, and busy cataloguing a number of primitive microbes it'd discovered on the moons of a temperate gas giant, which left the drone alone in its quest of repairing itself.

Not that it was hard to do. Having assessed the damage done to it, its first action had been to catch the offending asteroid with its fields, ripping a sizeable fraction off its mass from it, and splitting the same into its base components. The system it was in being boring, it had then decided to run its usual search routines at 10% max., and concentrated its resources on turning this base components into usable materials for its hull, optronics, drive systems, sensors... The usual.

It was what it was doing right now, ripping atomic nuclei apart and recombining them to fit its purpose, and then recombining said atoms to create larger, more notable (Not to mention useful) structures.

And then there was a flash, and the visible spectrum of the EM band got flooded with static.

An explosion of sorts.

The drone checked. The event had happened relatively close by - about a lightsecond off -, which was worrying. The event also included the production of the sort of relativity-raping nonsense typically associated with FTL drives - this wasn't worrying, but interesting.

It rammed its sensors up to 50% max., and launched itself at the event, flinging EM radiations and fields about, and casually disrupting space on the attometer scale, just to correct its course all so slightly when it finally noticed the craft that'd arrived.

A number of seconds later, it received the message, and spent a moment translating it. Upon finding that they used a surprisingly-if-inexplicably-common language, it replied accordingly.

EM-CCOM@1E1; SL0; Tightbeam
From: Exploration Subcraft ES 14
To: USS Pendragon Scout
Subject: Identification

ES 14; Subcraft of the Interstellar Exploration Unit Stargazer; Affiliated with the Hypocrisy; Presently surveying this system and engaging in self-repair measures after unfortunate collision with a minor object belonging to this system.

If you're interested in contacting a sapient entity, please inform me of this desire, so the Stargazer may transfer an instance of its mindstate into myself.