Kostemetsia
30-11-2008, 06:41
33 SQN Commonwealth Navy over HCW-64377, planet self-ident 'Kekehel' [unconfirmed]
13th February 3003, 1140 unit time
"Deorbit ... preliminary to commencing. We're going in to five kloms up, ladies and gentlemen; open deorbit thruster hatches and slave them to SQN-AI, which will compensate for the gravity - 'bout 1.05 Vanja. As usual, don't fire antimatter engines in an atmosphere, manoeuvring thrusters only, quite clear?" Rear Admiral Zhao Zhuang's voice slashes out across SQNCOM, his tone the one he adopts when accusing people of war crimes. "It's rather a bad first impression to detonate someone's atmosphere on entry."
Acknowledgements chatter from across the group and its perfectly-aligned strikecraft ring. Even Lang Wilson, the marine commander, acknowledges the directive in an all-business tone, in direct opposition to his usual relaxed manner.
"Thank you. Beginning full deorbit to target now - first to scene is going to be the Vanja no Ken, followed by remaining Commonwealth forces on contact establishment. We're booting translation protocols, so make damn sure the CNN embed ship doesn't deorbit until we're done having our first conversation. That footage is ours and ours alone." A chuckle runs through the Navy group cut in on the transmission.
"Maulers, form up and point me." A terse acknowledgement crackles over the channel from Geoffrey Bovill, leading the Eighty-second Maulers Strikecraft Squadron, and eighteen of the Shuriken strikecraft in the ring segment out to form a protective delta capping the big cruiser's nose. All descend into the atmosphere.
As the customary fiery cone forms around the squadron's merged shield, reentry manoeuvres proper begin. With a clang reverberating throughout its entire formidable frame, the Vanja no Ken's forward thruster bays are slammed into their open position, and begin to fire, slowing the entire squadron as they match its speed, and shooting miles-long trails of fire into the sky below the prow.
Three minutes and one second later, the squadron's trajectory terminates in a static hover five miles up off a fairly deserted area. A fairly human-looking city can be seen several tens of miles off to the south, and the cruiser's bridge staff carefully point the cruiser's gargantuan turrets north so as to make a crude sign of peace.
The AI flashes up a lifesign warning: a tall humanoid with an iron-based blood chemistry, apparently male, approximately five miles north down a light, largely paved slope that begins slightly south of the squadron. He's outside the danger zone, but the sensors are reading electronic activity from one of his hands, and a bunch of sensors instantly focus on him, scanning him front-to-back and top-to-bottom ... apparently the device is a pocket communication gadget of some sort, fairly similar to a PDA or Old Earth mobile. Tightening up the sensor resolution reveals the gadget bears a lens of some sort, and it's pointed right in their direction, but it's quickly discounted as a laser weapon - it's a camera, from what they can see. He doesn't appear to be military, which is reasonable enough.
---
Eichid'b'lhel Rise, several leagues off Seiaitiwai City, Esztiaitiei Province, Southmarch Republic, Kekehel
Twenty units to noon, spin thirteen, segment six, year 540 of the Second Calendar
Nineteen-year-old Chéhaueichen Oe'eni'oeeniszephhen (for obvious reasons, his nickname is Ché) makes his way with some effort up the light rise, singing along all the way to some old fusion music off his music belt. It cost him lots of sioeaienn, but damn, it's worth it.
Since completing the Second Path of Knowledge a bit less than a year back, Ché has been gainfully employed as a trainee astronomer; a good job, if regarded as somewhat elitist by most of his fellow Kekeheleieszei. A few spins back, he picked up a transfer taking him from the Lower March Initial Facility (a messy dump with a single telescope, somewhat akin to one of the more seedy longlink stay-houses) to the Upper March Deep-Field Station (a five-star city boarding-house by comparison).
Along the way, he's picked up a reasonably good knowledge of the sky, and spends most of his spare time improving it with a fanatical zeal instead of just sitting around watching the vidi and hearing the news anchors jabber about the Fourteenth Border Conflict up in the Northern Autocracy (such couch-plant activity decidedly doesn't pay the rates bills).
Reaching the top of the rise, he uses that knowledge of the sky in a most productive fashion to determine that the multiple ow-crap-hot-hot-hot-ow-heatwave (even from where he stands) specks of various sizes plummeting from the sky should not, in fact, be plummeting from the sky in what appears to be a controlled manoeuvre. Said determination, in turn, motivates him to fumble for his pocketcom, retrieve it after several attempts, fiddle through the menu interface at top speed and, with shaking hands and a decided lack of further ado, focus the inbuilt camera on the flaming formation.
After a few minutes, they're done flaming, and they flicker away into tiny specks of blackness and varying visibility, hovering in the sky about, ooh, perhaps one, two leagues up. Saving the block of video footage, Ché stares, still spellbound, for a second, then shakes himself out of it and starts legging it up the rise, heedless of the slope.
A few minutes of wheezing later, he's directly under the biggest speck, which resolved itself at about two miles distance as some sort of UFO. From below, it looks to be a massive slab made out of reasonably conventional metal painted in striking black and maroon, and is hovering, completely still and with no noise, just a bit less than two leagues up. The spark he saw discharged from its angular belly a minute back is hovering at about eye level - a weird sphere like the first space probes, lenses all over it. He approaches it cautiously, having a weird fear it might jump forward and zap him. Or something.
---
The Vanja no Ken's systems track the approximately-human alien as he makes his accelerated way up the path, adrenalin surging through his system. An order to fire upon him is mooted, but Zhao quickly quashes it - not a good first impression. If he turns out to be a threat, he can be eliminated.
As the young man covers the few hundred metres to the top, Zhao orders a contact probe launched, and said contact probe makes its rather leisurely way down to the hill, armed with loudspeakers, microphones, and a camera.
The CDISS agent squad implanted into this civilisation a few years back has made the popularisation of English one of its primary objectives - due to the similarity of the language to some Earth instances, it's been quite easy to pass off English as a kind of patois, and it's rapidly spread over the planetbound civilisation's internet-analogue (the ae'Niyteie, the agents claim it's called). However, only about a quarter of the planetary population are currently fluent in it, so Zhao opts for computer translation to standard Kekehelese. There'll be time to work English in later.
Finally, the sentient is eye-to-eye with the probe, and Zhao takes the mic. "Not to be too cliche, but we come in peace. I am Zhao Zhuang, and I speak for the Kostemetsian Commonwealth."
The young man flinches and takes a few steps back, but has courage enough to recover and come forward to the probe. Zhao studies his features intently - brown hair (short back and sides), blue eyes, surprisingly conventional rectangular glasses. He's rather paler than most Earthers, with quite pronounced cheekbones, but otherwise looks quite Terran.
While Zhao is studying the young man's features, his message is repeating through the probe's loudspeakers in these people's tongue-twisting language. It automatically stops after the second run-through, leaving the young man time to respond; he does so in a slightly shaky voice, which comes through the Vanja no Ken's bridge speakers translated with a slight accent to reflect his ethnicity. "I am, um, Chéhaueichen Oe'eni'oeeniszephhen, speaking on behalf of the, um, Southmarch Republic, and, um, all Kekeheleieszei, and I'd like to, um, welcome you to our world ..." it comes off in the slight questioning tone of one who's never done this before.
Zhao can't help but wince slightly. It's going to be very hard addressing this man ... "Mr Oe'eni'oeeniszephhen" indeed. Helpfully, Chéhaueichen adds, "Just Ché, if you want, it's an uncommonly long name ... oh Gods-mine, what am I saying? ..." He still appears to be in shock, but is calming himself remarkably well.
Zhao, meanwhile, is finding himself at somewhat of a loss as to what to say. "Not to be too quickly getting into the small talk, Ché, but what exactly is it you do?"
Ché looks startled by the question. "Um, I'm an, um, astronomer at the Upper Marches Deep-Field Station." Zhao can't help but chuckle slightly, and the young man quickly goes on the defensive. Even when talking to aliens there are some social customs. "Look, these are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others."
Zhao cuts off the microphone for a moment and doubles over laughing, getting a couple of chuckles from those in the know and puzzled looks from the rest of his staff. Here he is, floating above an alien world, and one of the aliens is quoting Groucho Marx at him.
Once he's back in control of himself, he reactivates the microphone. "Sorry ... it's just an amazing coincidence. A man whose job is to look at the stars meeting people who come from the stars." Changing the topic quickly, "Look, we hate to intrude, but we'd like to send a shuttle down, if it's not too much trouble."
Ché laughs shakily. "Sure! Go ahead, send a shuttle down! Why are you asking me?"
Zhao smiles, unseen. "Well, we do tend to be guests here and all."
"No, no. Make yourselves at home! Our planet is your planet." Che's natural sardonicism is recovering.
"Alright, then. We'll be there posthaste." Zhao cuts the link and starts assembling a security team. Lang Wilson and his deputy ... what was her name again? Commander Taylor ... someone Taylor ... Ryana Taylor, that's it. Jeez, don't want to forget that. Plus a couple of redshirts. The local area looks like a pleasant place to set a shuttle down - nice standard grass everywhere and a couple of trees.
---
Ché, meanwhile, stares up in numb puzzlement at the craft above. These ... Kostermessians, or whatever ... they seem to negotiate very fast. Maybe it's a species trait. Whatever the case, they seem pretty Kekeheleieszic otherwise. Physiology would be roughly the same, if the slight untranslated chatter he can hear in the aliens' language is any indication.
Soon enough, however, his attention is diverted as the sound of a group of motors cuts across the otherwise silent landscape. He turns, and almost immediately has reason to groan - a close-packed squad of Seiaitiwai militiamen are motoring up there in their oddly stubby vehicles. A minute later, they're almost there, just as what Ché assumes is their shuttle breaks from a panel in the belly and starts looping down in a wide trajectory. If he's counting rightly, it should be here in about two minutes.
He turns to the hovering probe, hoping he can still talk to the man on the other end. "Mister Zhao Zhuang, sir, sorry if I got your name wrong, but we may have a--"
A bullet hits the probe, dropping it, sparking, to the pavers. Ché squeals like a little girl, and one of the fat militia sergeants strides up to him as he stares, shocked, at the disabled probe. He recognises the man vaguely, but he can't think from where - perhaps he's one of the old schoolteachers that seem to be ubiquitous in the reserve forces. That might be it.
"Child! Give your name and occupation. You will be escorted to one of our vehicles after you do this, and you will explain why you were interacting with an alien device designed to compromise security." The chubby reservist doesn't seem at all fazed by the massive ship above. Perhaps they train for this.
However, Ché is imbued with some assertiveness. This is his victory, and it's the Commonwealth people's, and he's not going to let some fat NCO take it. "Firstly, Sergeant, I'm not a child. My name is Chéhaueichen Oe'eni'oeeniszephhen, and I'm an astronomer. Secondly, I would rather not be interrogated, thank you."
The man's fat face narrows into a dark frown, and he draws his sidearm. Ché is, however, in a particularly dangerous variant of 'gods-mine are on my side'. "Sergeant, you've not got a reason to point your sidearm at me. I haven't harmed you, and I don't intend to." The man is slipping into anger, and in a rather unwise act, prods the gun into Ché's stomach.
"Citizen, this is a Ministry of Defence operation. You will proceed to the vehicle designated, and you will return to the City. Otherwise, you will be penalised appropriately for refusing to follow the orders of military personnel in a martial law situation."
Ché looks resignedly up at the big slab above. They're aliens I've just met. It's probably quite right that the Ministry should take over ... meh, what the he-- His defeatist thoughts are suddenly cut off as a loud clang resounds.
The clang is the harbinger of an uncomfortably bright spotlight shining from the UFO's belly, placing the two in a pool of light. To add to the uncomfortableness, the spotlight is affixed to a very large gun barrel. Zhao's voice floats lazily down from a loudspeaker on the incoming shuttle. "Sergeant ... Zedeiahro-Essaixtidbljuoe, is that right? Sorry, it's hard to read your nametag from up here. By our first contact protocols, Ché is our authorised point of contact. We have precision enough to vapourise you while giving Ché nothing more than a slight haircut. Please step away from him, have your group return to your vehicles, and move back to five leagues' distance."
Ché closes his eyes in gratitude. He knows there'll be hell for this later, but the Commonwealth people have certainly been very nice to him for now.
13th February 3003, 1140 unit time
"Deorbit ... preliminary to commencing. We're going in to five kloms up, ladies and gentlemen; open deorbit thruster hatches and slave them to SQN-AI, which will compensate for the gravity - 'bout 1.05 Vanja. As usual, don't fire antimatter engines in an atmosphere, manoeuvring thrusters only, quite clear?" Rear Admiral Zhao Zhuang's voice slashes out across SQNCOM, his tone the one he adopts when accusing people of war crimes. "It's rather a bad first impression to detonate someone's atmosphere on entry."
Acknowledgements chatter from across the group and its perfectly-aligned strikecraft ring. Even Lang Wilson, the marine commander, acknowledges the directive in an all-business tone, in direct opposition to his usual relaxed manner.
"Thank you. Beginning full deorbit to target now - first to scene is going to be the Vanja no Ken, followed by remaining Commonwealth forces on contact establishment. We're booting translation protocols, so make damn sure the CNN embed ship doesn't deorbit until we're done having our first conversation. That footage is ours and ours alone." A chuckle runs through the Navy group cut in on the transmission.
"Maulers, form up and point me." A terse acknowledgement crackles over the channel from Geoffrey Bovill, leading the Eighty-second Maulers Strikecraft Squadron, and eighteen of the Shuriken strikecraft in the ring segment out to form a protective delta capping the big cruiser's nose. All descend into the atmosphere.
As the customary fiery cone forms around the squadron's merged shield, reentry manoeuvres proper begin. With a clang reverberating throughout its entire formidable frame, the Vanja no Ken's forward thruster bays are slammed into their open position, and begin to fire, slowing the entire squadron as they match its speed, and shooting miles-long trails of fire into the sky below the prow.
Three minutes and one second later, the squadron's trajectory terminates in a static hover five miles up off a fairly deserted area. A fairly human-looking city can be seen several tens of miles off to the south, and the cruiser's bridge staff carefully point the cruiser's gargantuan turrets north so as to make a crude sign of peace.
The AI flashes up a lifesign warning: a tall humanoid with an iron-based blood chemistry, apparently male, approximately five miles north down a light, largely paved slope that begins slightly south of the squadron. He's outside the danger zone, but the sensors are reading electronic activity from one of his hands, and a bunch of sensors instantly focus on him, scanning him front-to-back and top-to-bottom ... apparently the device is a pocket communication gadget of some sort, fairly similar to a PDA or Old Earth mobile. Tightening up the sensor resolution reveals the gadget bears a lens of some sort, and it's pointed right in their direction, but it's quickly discounted as a laser weapon - it's a camera, from what they can see. He doesn't appear to be military, which is reasonable enough.
---
Eichid'b'lhel Rise, several leagues off Seiaitiwai City, Esztiaitiei Province, Southmarch Republic, Kekehel
Twenty units to noon, spin thirteen, segment six, year 540 of the Second Calendar
Nineteen-year-old Chéhaueichen Oe'eni'oeeniszephhen (for obvious reasons, his nickname is Ché) makes his way with some effort up the light rise, singing along all the way to some old fusion music off his music belt. It cost him lots of sioeaienn, but damn, it's worth it.
Since completing the Second Path of Knowledge a bit less than a year back, Ché has been gainfully employed as a trainee astronomer; a good job, if regarded as somewhat elitist by most of his fellow Kekeheleieszei. A few spins back, he picked up a transfer taking him from the Lower March Initial Facility (a messy dump with a single telescope, somewhat akin to one of the more seedy longlink stay-houses) to the Upper March Deep-Field Station (a five-star city boarding-house by comparison).
Along the way, he's picked up a reasonably good knowledge of the sky, and spends most of his spare time improving it with a fanatical zeal instead of just sitting around watching the vidi and hearing the news anchors jabber about the Fourteenth Border Conflict up in the Northern Autocracy (such couch-plant activity decidedly doesn't pay the rates bills).
Reaching the top of the rise, he uses that knowledge of the sky in a most productive fashion to determine that the multiple ow-crap-hot-hot-hot-ow-heatwave (even from where he stands) specks of various sizes plummeting from the sky should not, in fact, be plummeting from the sky in what appears to be a controlled manoeuvre. Said determination, in turn, motivates him to fumble for his pocketcom, retrieve it after several attempts, fiddle through the menu interface at top speed and, with shaking hands and a decided lack of further ado, focus the inbuilt camera on the flaming formation.
After a few minutes, they're done flaming, and they flicker away into tiny specks of blackness and varying visibility, hovering in the sky about, ooh, perhaps one, two leagues up. Saving the block of video footage, Ché stares, still spellbound, for a second, then shakes himself out of it and starts legging it up the rise, heedless of the slope.
A few minutes of wheezing later, he's directly under the biggest speck, which resolved itself at about two miles distance as some sort of UFO. From below, it looks to be a massive slab made out of reasonably conventional metal painted in striking black and maroon, and is hovering, completely still and with no noise, just a bit less than two leagues up. The spark he saw discharged from its angular belly a minute back is hovering at about eye level - a weird sphere like the first space probes, lenses all over it. He approaches it cautiously, having a weird fear it might jump forward and zap him. Or something.
---
The Vanja no Ken's systems track the approximately-human alien as he makes his accelerated way up the path, adrenalin surging through his system. An order to fire upon him is mooted, but Zhao quickly quashes it - not a good first impression. If he turns out to be a threat, he can be eliminated.
As the young man covers the few hundred metres to the top, Zhao orders a contact probe launched, and said contact probe makes its rather leisurely way down to the hill, armed with loudspeakers, microphones, and a camera.
The CDISS agent squad implanted into this civilisation a few years back has made the popularisation of English one of its primary objectives - due to the similarity of the language to some Earth instances, it's been quite easy to pass off English as a kind of patois, and it's rapidly spread over the planetbound civilisation's internet-analogue (the ae'Niyteie, the agents claim it's called). However, only about a quarter of the planetary population are currently fluent in it, so Zhao opts for computer translation to standard Kekehelese. There'll be time to work English in later.
Finally, the sentient is eye-to-eye with the probe, and Zhao takes the mic. "Not to be too cliche, but we come in peace. I am Zhao Zhuang, and I speak for the Kostemetsian Commonwealth."
The young man flinches and takes a few steps back, but has courage enough to recover and come forward to the probe. Zhao studies his features intently - brown hair (short back and sides), blue eyes, surprisingly conventional rectangular glasses. He's rather paler than most Earthers, with quite pronounced cheekbones, but otherwise looks quite Terran.
While Zhao is studying the young man's features, his message is repeating through the probe's loudspeakers in these people's tongue-twisting language. It automatically stops after the second run-through, leaving the young man time to respond; he does so in a slightly shaky voice, which comes through the Vanja no Ken's bridge speakers translated with a slight accent to reflect his ethnicity. "I am, um, Chéhaueichen Oe'eni'oeeniszephhen, speaking on behalf of the, um, Southmarch Republic, and, um, all Kekeheleieszei, and I'd like to, um, welcome you to our world ..." it comes off in the slight questioning tone of one who's never done this before.
Zhao can't help but wince slightly. It's going to be very hard addressing this man ... "Mr Oe'eni'oeeniszephhen" indeed. Helpfully, Chéhaueichen adds, "Just Ché, if you want, it's an uncommonly long name ... oh Gods-mine, what am I saying? ..." He still appears to be in shock, but is calming himself remarkably well.
Zhao, meanwhile, is finding himself at somewhat of a loss as to what to say. "Not to be too quickly getting into the small talk, Ché, but what exactly is it you do?"
Ché looks startled by the question. "Um, I'm an, um, astronomer at the Upper Marches Deep-Field Station." Zhao can't help but chuckle slightly, and the young man quickly goes on the defensive. Even when talking to aliens there are some social customs. "Look, these are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others."
Zhao cuts off the microphone for a moment and doubles over laughing, getting a couple of chuckles from those in the know and puzzled looks from the rest of his staff. Here he is, floating above an alien world, and one of the aliens is quoting Groucho Marx at him.
Once he's back in control of himself, he reactivates the microphone. "Sorry ... it's just an amazing coincidence. A man whose job is to look at the stars meeting people who come from the stars." Changing the topic quickly, "Look, we hate to intrude, but we'd like to send a shuttle down, if it's not too much trouble."
Ché laughs shakily. "Sure! Go ahead, send a shuttle down! Why are you asking me?"
Zhao smiles, unseen. "Well, we do tend to be guests here and all."
"No, no. Make yourselves at home! Our planet is your planet." Che's natural sardonicism is recovering.
"Alright, then. We'll be there posthaste." Zhao cuts the link and starts assembling a security team. Lang Wilson and his deputy ... what was her name again? Commander Taylor ... someone Taylor ... Ryana Taylor, that's it. Jeez, don't want to forget that. Plus a couple of redshirts. The local area looks like a pleasant place to set a shuttle down - nice standard grass everywhere and a couple of trees.
---
Ché, meanwhile, stares up in numb puzzlement at the craft above. These ... Kostermessians, or whatever ... they seem to negotiate very fast. Maybe it's a species trait. Whatever the case, they seem pretty Kekeheleieszic otherwise. Physiology would be roughly the same, if the slight untranslated chatter he can hear in the aliens' language is any indication.
Soon enough, however, his attention is diverted as the sound of a group of motors cuts across the otherwise silent landscape. He turns, and almost immediately has reason to groan - a close-packed squad of Seiaitiwai militiamen are motoring up there in their oddly stubby vehicles. A minute later, they're almost there, just as what Ché assumes is their shuttle breaks from a panel in the belly and starts looping down in a wide trajectory. If he's counting rightly, it should be here in about two minutes.
He turns to the hovering probe, hoping he can still talk to the man on the other end. "Mister Zhao Zhuang, sir, sorry if I got your name wrong, but we may have a--"
A bullet hits the probe, dropping it, sparking, to the pavers. Ché squeals like a little girl, and one of the fat militia sergeants strides up to him as he stares, shocked, at the disabled probe. He recognises the man vaguely, but he can't think from where - perhaps he's one of the old schoolteachers that seem to be ubiquitous in the reserve forces. That might be it.
"Child! Give your name and occupation. You will be escorted to one of our vehicles after you do this, and you will explain why you were interacting with an alien device designed to compromise security." The chubby reservist doesn't seem at all fazed by the massive ship above. Perhaps they train for this.
However, Ché is imbued with some assertiveness. This is his victory, and it's the Commonwealth people's, and he's not going to let some fat NCO take it. "Firstly, Sergeant, I'm not a child. My name is Chéhaueichen Oe'eni'oeeniszephhen, and I'm an astronomer. Secondly, I would rather not be interrogated, thank you."
The man's fat face narrows into a dark frown, and he draws his sidearm. Ché is, however, in a particularly dangerous variant of 'gods-mine are on my side'. "Sergeant, you've not got a reason to point your sidearm at me. I haven't harmed you, and I don't intend to." The man is slipping into anger, and in a rather unwise act, prods the gun into Ché's stomach.
"Citizen, this is a Ministry of Defence operation. You will proceed to the vehicle designated, and you will return to the City. Otherwise, you will be penalised appropriately for refusing to follow the orders of military personnel in a martial law situation."
Ché looks resignedly up at the big slab above. They're aliens I've just met. It's probably quite right that the Ministry should take over ... meh, what the he-- His defeatist thoughts are suddenly cut off as a loud clang resounds.
The clang is the harbinger of an uncomfortably bright spotlight shining from the UFO's belly, placing the two in a pool of light. To add to the uncomfortableness, the spotlight is affixed to a very large gun barrel. Zhao's voice floats lazily down from a loudspeaker on the incoming shuttle. "Sergeant ... Zedeiahro-Essaixtidbljuoe, is that right? Sorry, it's hard to read your nametag from up here. By our first contact protocols, Ché is our authorised point of contact. We have precision enough to vapourise you while giving Ché nothing more than a slight haircut. Please step away from him, have your group return to your vehicles, and move back to five leagues' distance."
Ché closes his eyes in gratitude. He knows there'll be hell for this later, but the Commonwealth people have certainly been very nice to him for now.