NationStates Jolt Archive

A small fleet dropped into normal space with a bright purple/black flare. Sending a gravity pulse out on par with a small planet appearing.

The strike carrier Agamemnon was flanked by 4 ships of the line, six destroyers and a dozen frigates. Standing on the bridge of the Agamemnon was a woman dressed in the standard black combat suit, red trim accenting the armors edges and a katana at her hip. "Engage long range sensors and have our escorts enter stealth. Have all fighter wings on stand by. Tell the scout groups to fan out and begin charting the system telemetry."

The destroyers broke off, along with the frigates, seperating into groups of three, one destroyer for every two frigates. The six scout groups moved off in various directions. All ships save the carrier deploying decoy drones and engaging sensor stealth systems.

Idealy what would appear on sensors would be the carrier, and over two dozen gravity signatures moving in various directions and speeds.

The sleek black ships spreading out rapidly to scan the system for any habitation or signs of occupation. If none was found then mining operations would proceed as normal.

3002:12:08 [H: 2148]

The prowler Accra quietly slipped in at the edge of the system, folding back its faster-than-light bud into an ephemeral cloak and quietly packing it into the swept-back quantum nacelles on the hull. From here on in, protocol specified use of the superluminal drive only for jumps of ten million kilometres or more.

The pilot and commanding officer, Commander Caleb Moore, wasn't bothered by the stipulation. As far as he was concerned, any species that couldn't make decent time on Commonwealth-style antimatter engines was an insult to all sentience, considering the kind of fuel these things burnt. Silently ordering the AI to pull back the fore coilguns into the ship's smoothed nose, he flicked a finger carelessly down the throttle strip and swept into the system on full annihilation burn - after all, the point was to be obvious, given that this was a first-contact picket mission. Why else would they send someone to this worthless hellhole?

Worthless indeed it was - a single non-H-congruous rock world with no minerals of any value or significance whatsoever, plus an interslot asteroidal collection that looked to be the result of a collision between two dwarfs. Even the geeks probably wouldn't be able to find anything, but Caleb wasn't a betting--

What the hell? If he was reading right, a small planet had just appeared slotted in between the asteroid belt and the inner rockworld. The only faction Commonwealth Science knew of that could do that, the AI frantically informed him, was the Swarm Multiplicity, and the Swarm Multiplicity had kicked the ass of the last civilisation it had come across ... but no, the Swarm would have swept upon them by now. No, this seemed something much different, and Caleb - after getting a hold on himself and the frightened ship - burnt a course in towards it, shields down and weapon ports open but depowered and unloaded, deploying a tiny drone-rocket cloud as he went.

This seemed something much more intriguing.

The captain aboard the Agamemnon blinked as the nav officer reported a contact bearing in on their position. "Open a channel and transmit the following message, both video and audio. Begin." She paused slightly. "This is Fleet commander Shan-tre of the carrier Agamemnon. On behalf of the Red Talons Mercenary Republic. We are exploring this system for mineral value. State your purpose here."

The transmission ended. As it was sent, the scout groups that had started to fan out began to drift, powering their gravity cores down and switching to more conventional reactors.

The fleets weapons were powered down as far as anyone could tell. Though they ran of the same gravity cores as the ship, so it was difficult to tell.

Caleb switched over to a full perceptual environment, his dull grey ship-suit amplifying itself to a red great-coat over a formal shirt and trousers in the style of the Commonwealth War of Independence's commanders; at least, he'd always heard that they used to dress in the most obvious colours possible outside of combat to signify that they were cautious yet unafraid of the Terran oppressors. That was irrelevant right now, though - here he was, two hundred years after the war's end, exact to the day, bearing in on a swarm of contacts that weren't transmitting anything on any part of the ESUS communications band.

Intently watching the time-hack in the corner of his expanded vision, he pulled up the stabiliser options menu and, when the time was right, slammed the forward stabilisers to full in the same abrupt fashion he'd engaged the annihilation engines, forcing the dark-teal nigh-featureless scalene ellipsoid of the Accra to a sharp stop one tenth of a light-second out from the contact swarm.

It was then that Shelley, the ship's AI, picked up the message from the central contact, provisionally designated xenoc alpha, transmitted at the upper end of what Kostemetsian gear was calibrated to detect. After pulling out one of her xenodata decoders, she was able to pull up a good AV feed, manifesting it as a holographic panel floating serenely in the middle of the perceptual 'bridge' environment; the speaker appeared to be a female officer of some sort, fitting the xenostandard biped-felinoid-with-primate-limb-arrangement exterior biology pretty much exactly and speaking from what appeared to be the command centre of xenoc alpha. The only divergence from the known-galactic norm was that this particular officer appeared to be wearing a katana. Hello ... that's new. I don't think I've ever seen a spacefaring species with katanas before. Nice touch.

Caleb submitted his thoughtfeed to the AI, who collated and processed it, shunting the relevant bits into a first-contact-impressions file and looking with interest over his shoulder on the rest. <Take your time,> Shelley said. <Don't want to bugger up a decent first contact, do we?> Her programming included an East-End-of-London accent straight out of days gone by; some of the Terran expats in the services had taken jocular offense to that, saying she couldn't possibly have been born within earshot of the Bow Bells, given that the Bow Bells were several hundreds of lightyears off and that Shelley had never been born in the first place.

Caleb, though, wasn't particularly inclined to care at this point, given that they were the only two known-space sentients out here at the surprisingly-well-populated bum end of nowhere. No, right now all he cared about was making a decent first impression - after all, this was history. Squaring his shoulders in his unique, paradoxically weary manner, he stepped in front of the perceptual manifestation of a holofeed cam, knowing the recording and transmission would reflect the perceptual environment rather than the neuropod in which he lay.

"I am Commander Caleb Moore, and I have been allowed authority to speak for the defence forces, government and people of the Commonwealth and Territories of Kostemetsia, pursuant to the First Contact Code. My duty here is to collect, process and feed back detailed scans of possible alien life in the system designated Kalgoorlie-Boulder by the Commonwealth government; I would speculate that I have achieved that aim - to a degree." Here he cocked an eyebrow, trying to get across that despite the formal grammar the Commonwealth's strategy was friendly, not confrontational.

He just hoped it worked.

The com officer called back over the bridge to Shan-tre. "Captain, incomming signal. computer is decoding now."

The captain nodded. "Have all fighters on alert stand by. We dont know what this thing is up to. Tactical, i want scans of that ship." There was another short pause as the message was recieved and played back.

"Well then, looks like they're in first contact mode.... have the fighter wings drop alert status. Send a response." She paused again. "Greetings Commander Moore. On behalf of the Red Talons. We are here in this system as an advance team. Scouting for usable minerals and the like. If we are tresspassing on Commonwealth territory, we apologise, and would request a chart detailing your borders so that we know where we can safely mine."

She paused agaion as the message was sent. She hadnt done first contact before, though every captain was trained for it. "Com, send a message to the Pegasis informing them of our situation." There was a nod as the ships Ansible sent out the message notifying the rest of the fleet that they had made contact.