Aster rolls his eyes, stow your gear in cabin four. It's the one with a four on the door. In the mess there's a terminal where you can access the data we have. It's filed under April 26-c. Do not! look in April 26-b.
Aster keeps his poker face while mentally grinning to himself.
Terra (a skinny 16 year-old girl) walks up to the marine, salutes him, and says in as deep a voice as she can manage "Sargent Ratcher! Permission to board the Styx granted! I'm sorry, sir, but there's no one in command here, it's total chaos!" and at that point she breaks out into a smile and a giggle and ends the salute.
When she finally notices Olivia, Terra will say "Hi, I'm Terra! I guess you're Jean's replacement? As far as I can tell, our current job here is to learn this new ship inside and out. There's training sessions every day, and books to read every night. Hope you like learning new stuff!"
Olivia smiles and thanks Aster. "Glad to meet you!"
Olivia smiles to Terra. "I love learning new stuff. That's why I'm so excited to be on this mission!"
She stows her gear in cabin four. She gets out her portable and attempts to hook into the computer's network, so that she can get the data without having to use the mess' terminal. She makes a note to hook up her microframe later.
If she can't get into the net, she'll head to the mess and log into the terminal there.
The first thing she does is look in file April 26-b.
Boomer looks at Terra with a staid look.
After a pause, he says, "I see."
After another pause. "To whom should I report?"
Consider yourself reporting. Aster figures until they hash out some semblance of order, he'll see how far he can run with this.
"April, can you give me a brief summary on our new crew mates?"
He figured she'd already acquired the dossiers.
The new recruits will report to Dr. Rix to begin double checking a long list of medical data that has surely been provided by the med staff prepping the crew but which Rix wants to be sure is correct. Dr. Rix ("Call me Rix," is a short woman of South Asian (Indian) feature, glasses, short black hair, kind eyes, and a pleasant manner.
She was on the ship that helped save many from the assault on the moon base although she says she was mostly just a passenger while others did the hard stuff. She is very excited to be among the first to explore deep space and perhaps one of the first humans to make contact with another intelligent species.
She explains to the newbies that she has conventional medical training but also psychic healing abilities (she also has the standard patch on all her lab coats and jumpsuits identifying her as a psychic). She is just learning to do basic telepathic communications.
When not looking after the health of the crew, she also is one of the space navigators. She also plays the violin.
As for who the commander of the mission is, Rix says, "When we have a medical emergency, I am the commander. When we have a technical problem, April or Olivia is the commander, although Olivia should be the primary person to give orders as April, bless her circuits, is not always a good judge of what to say or do. If we are in a fight, you, sergeant, are the commander. All other decisions get made by everyone. We're a civilian operation, not a military one."
Boomer nods thoughtfully. "Understood. I am glad that you do have an understanding as to the hierarchy in the event of an emergency or a problem. I will do my best to adapt to the operations otherwise."
Aster glares at Rix for spoiling the fun. hey!? when am I in charge?
Well, if we need a captain, I'd nominate you. You are a good leader and you are knowledgeable about most aspects of the operation and maintenance of the ship, Rix says with a sincere smile.
So, the training continues, then finishes, and there's a big media frenzy over the launch. The President shows up to shake each of your hands, and pose for video shots. The President makes a speech about intrepid explorers, and venturing into the vast unknown, blah blah blah.
Finally, after each shaking hands with a dozen or so of the most important people in EarthGov, you're driven to the Styx. The media is there too, to record your getting into the ship and its blasting off.
Finally, you're on your own! You have 2 months to kill, if you want to roleplay something, I'll give you a couple of days (IRL) to post it. Otherwise, next stop - your destination!
Dr Rix makes it a project to watch all the series from early television and whatever media has replaced television since the 21st century that involve humans exploring space. She is particularly amused by a very early television series called Space 1999, in which the moon is somehow blasted from the solar system without being blown to smithereens after which it encounteres planets and aliens with alarming regularity for a planetoid that has no propulsion system, merely drifting at sub-light speed through deep space.
She asks the new-comers to tell the stories of their lives to get better acquainted.
When it is Rix' turn to tell her story, she says, "I was born Rohana Ingólfsdóttir-Xióng. That was such a mouthful that everyone took to calling me Rix. I was born in Indiana. My great-grandparents emigrated there from various places: India, Sweden, China, and Vietnam. That's why people have such trouble placing me ethnically. Fortunately there are lots of people with mixed race backgrounds now, so no one really asks me where I'm from anymore." She speaks with a slight American accent, although her time working all over the world has introduced new elements, making her sound British at times, Indian at others.
"I was always interested in science and what is beyond our own place in the cosmos. But my parents insisted I learn something I could use as a career in case my dreams of going out into space could not be realized, so I studied medicine. This was partly a practical choice, since doctors are always in demand and I figured they would be needed in space too. But my pursuit of medicine also was influenced by the fact that early on I demonstrated an ability to do psychic healing. This meant I had two ways to treat patients."
"I went to Purdue University for my basic education, Cambridge University in England for my MD, and I did post-doctorate work in Cairo, Sao Paulo, Neo Delhi, and in the Space Station III. Then I worked Di-Lin-Johnson Genetic Engineering Enterprises while I put in applications for any job that required my skills in space. That is where I met the love of my life, well so far, anyway." She reaches down and strokes the fur of a cat that iss sitting near her. It is not a normal domesticated pussycat, but rather a small version of a sabre-tooth tiger, about the size of a lynx or bobcat, with long canine teeth that give the cat its name, a daggertooth tiger. "This is Trixy. If you touch her fur and think in sentences, she can understand you and talk to you too! Try it."
"Finally, I got a position on a space salvage vessel, called The Turing and served for about six months as the medical staff. That was when we ended up near the moon and got caught up in the assault on the moon colony. But I'm sure you've read about that event. We hid on the asteroid colony Ceres, met some interesting characters, and then we learned the Martians had defeated the baron who had instigated the attacks, so we came back to a heroes' welcome. That opened up the opportunity to go on this mission. I'm every so excited to be out here in deep space, where anything might happen."
So, the two months pass without incident.
As you come out of warp, you're presented with an unexpected view - that of a small globular cluster of stars! At first glance, there's about 30 or so stars all within a light-year or two of each other.
The hyperwave radio starts to chatter, and as you turn it back and forth, you locate a star close to your edge of the system that seems to be emitting a large amount of radio energy. Unfortunately, these transmissions seem to be encrypted, as the translator remains silent.
What do you do?
Aster turns the ship around and points the nose about 30 degrees off from earth, then shuts down as much emissions as possible.
Holy @!#$. How the hell is this even possible? It's gotta be artificial. No way this could be a stable system with planets!
Boardman! Do your sciency stuff. Please. but keep it passive.
Anyone got an Astronomy skill? Make a roll! :)
Aster, what kind of "sciency stuff" are you thinking of? A passive sensor scan? That would be basically the entire electromagnetic spectrum...
Oliva steps forward to the controls of the ships sensors. She looks at the signal coming from the star in the outer parts of the cluster.
She scans all of the light coming from the star. What class of star is it? Is there anything anomalous about its readings? She'll run her +1 Software Tools for Astronomy on her own small computer, and any fancier software available on the ship's computer.
"A complicated signal," she says. "It seems to have structure, not just be random. Let's see..."
She'll look for any evidence of language in the signal. Networking to the personal computer back in her cabin, she'll use the +2 Linguistics Software Tools she has (again in addition to anything fancy on the ship's computer).
She'll also analyze the signal to see what she can learn about the nature of the code. (She doesn't have Cryptography trained, so she won't be able to crack the code. But, she can default Mathematics (Cryptology) from Mathematics (Applied) at -5.)
It's a class G star, similar to Sol. I'm assuming you came out of warp far enough away to see the whole cluster, so you're too far away to make out individual planets. However, scanning that star in the radio part of the EM spectrum reveals lots of ordinary "intelligent" radio signals as well as the hyperwave signals.
With your Astronomy training you'd know that "open clusters" are common thruout the Milky Way, and several are known to have as few stars as this one. So this system is nothing out of the ordinary. The other stars in the cluster range from white (about twice as hot as Sol) to red (about half as hot as Sol).
You can tell that the encryption is fairly sophisticated, on par with the RSA encryption still used in the solar system today (just with *very* long keys to offset the continually increasing computer power). But you're not even sure if it uses prime numbers or some other kind of base for its encryption, so there's no way to crack it.
Olivia will relay this information to the others. "Communication from more than one source. Hyperdrive signature. We've definitely got some intelligent species here!"
She can barely contain the excitement in her voice.
"I fear there's not much I can do with the encryption here. I'll collect and start recording it, just in case our computers will be able to detect some pattern in it once we have enough data. But, for now, we won't be able to know what they're saying."
"We should be careful not to reveal ourselves to them before we know more," Boomer says. "Maybe they will be friendly, but maybe they will be hostile. Maybe they have not seen evidence of intelligent life other than themselves before, and will view us as attacking invaders. We're in their home system, and are just one small ship. We need to gather more intel before exposing ourself to danger."
Rix has no expertise to contribute to the mystery of the radio signals. She watches with bright eyes and appreciates the attempts at analysis the others attempted.
"I'd suggest we approach slowly, keeping our own EM signature as faint as possible and watch for other indications of advanced technology, such as space travel or radio sources from multiple planets."
"It seems strange that signals are encrypted unless the senders are concerned that no one can understand their transmissions. This suggests they are concerned about revealing too much about themselves. Could be a war-time situation, a repressive dictatorship, or maybe even a trap to attract curious space travelers like ourselves."
Eventually Rix gets an idea. "I'm a doctor, not a cryptographer, but it occurs to me that even if we can't decrypt the signals, the fact of the signal is itself information. Perhaps if we observe the signals over a few days we can detect patterns in the transmissions, like a rise and fall in the number of signals per hour, perhaps indicating a cycle of days and nights. Also, are we getting signals on only one frequency or is it like the radio and microwave bandwidths on earth, with different kinds of communications going in different ranges of frequencies. That might tell us something about who we are dealing with."
There does seem to be some lowering of signal chatter for about 6 hours, every 18 hours. But it's a slight lowering, so there's obviously round-the-clock work going on.
Focusing on other stars, you do detect radio waves from many of them. But for some reason, the translator can't translate them.
You're still far enough away from the cluster that you'll have to use the warp drive to get pretty close to the target star, seeing as if you stop 100 AU out (about twice as far as Pluto is from Sol), it'll take you *six* more weeks to approach using the sub-light drive. So you'll have to hope that they can't detect warp-drive signatures.
Just tell me how many weeks or days of sub-light drive you want to have to use to get to within the habitable zone of the star...
"We want to make contact," Olivia says. "Let's not try to be too stealthy. We shouldn't jump right to the center, as we don't want to look aggressive, but we want to jump close enough that we know they'll see us and recognize that we aren't hostile."
"Are you crazy?" Boomer asks. "If we just assume they aren't hostile, and they are, we'd be left as sitting ducks. We need to collect as much intel as we can before we jump closer. Jump to the outside of the system and hide, and observe what we can to see if we can learn anything from space traffic, etc. For all we know, they have an interplanetary war ongoing, and we don't want to jump into the middle of that."
I'm with Boomer. If we are undetected, we aren't hurting anyone with a little caution. If nothing else, we might be able to arrive knowing how to speak the language.
Aster looks around at the others, we also have a duty, if they are hostile, to not lead them back to Earth. We should take precautions to erase any data in our systems that might indicate Earth's location. Star charts, solar system data, navigation charts, anything you can think of. Electronic, paper, any media.
Aster suddenly sits, now that we're here, it's not quite as adventurous as I was thinking, dear god, we screw this up we could be responsible for the eradication of humanity.
Aster turns to a console and starts creating a list of search strings. We should consider breaking the return coordinates up into pieces. Each of us keeps one piece. Have two copies of each piece.
Boomer nods. "Yes, these are good thoughts. Hopefully it will turn out that none of it was necessary. But if it is... we will be grateful that we took these precautions."
"Perhaps we can locate a system near the edge of the cluster, perhaps one not generating as intense a stream of signals, maybe an outpost or new colony or smaller world. If they do turn out to be hostile and if we don't want to lead them back to earth, we should also have a planned escape route that would get us well away from the cluster to another place where we might find temporary refuge, hole up until we determine they are not following us. Then we could signal earth safely and eventually get back by another route, if we have the resources."
"I suspect we will eventually have to just be bold and get as close to a system as we can, kind of like just jumping into a cold lake, and see what happens. It may be risky, but we knew the job was dangerous when we took it." Rix cracks a sly smile, wondering if anyone got an old pop culture reference.
"Well, if we insist upon being paranoid," Olivia says, "even though this is a cluster, stars are pretty far apart. If we think we can manage it, hiding near a big Pluto-like iceball in their Kuiper belt would be better. It might get us close enough to see something."
So the general consensus is to warp into the outer edges of a system, and study it at length for a while before going in.
But the question is : this system that's generating a lot of radio chatter, or another system that's not producing as much?
"I say we find a system where the hyperwave communications aren't encrypted, so we can understand what they're saying, and listen in for a while. I hope I didn't study their language for two months for nothing!"
Olivia nods. "Yes, let's do that. Something with a bit less traffic. We're less likely to be seen going in that way. And, hopefully, less likely to be seen as a threat."
(Are there unencrypted communications? I was under the impression that they were all encrypted.)
Apparently all of the hyperwave communications from the planet closest to you are encrypted, but unencrypted hyperwave comms received by EarthGov are what brought you to this place...
After turning the hyperwave antenna towards about a dozen of the stars in the cluster, you find one that's broadcasting, and "in the clear". The chatter seems to be mostly about trade - so many this's for so many that's.
Pointing towards the star, you turn on the warp drive, and in about a day you're at the outer edges of the star's solar system. You locate the farthest most large planet, a gas giant, and take up orbit around it.
Scanning the inner planets, you locate the fourth one from the sun as the source of hyperwave transmissions. There's also radio wave transmissions, but the translator can't translate them for some reason.
What specifically do you want to do or look for while you're here?
Rix is interested in any transmissions that give some clues as to the biology of the species. She's also generally curious if the trade communications are about trade from one star system to another or local transactions (on the same planet).
Aster is using the ship's telescopes to look for space traffic or structures, satellites, etc.
Olivia will perform a spectral analysis of the radio waves, looking for structure in them. Does it appear to be communications? Or could it be spillover from some other process (say, beamed microwave power or some such)? Can she figure anything out about it?
Use whichever of these rolls are relevant:
The transmissions give no clue as to the biology of the planet's race.
The trade communications appear to be between star systems.
There are a few ships in orbit around the planet, but mostly once a ship approaches the planet, it lands fairly quickly. Likewise for takeoffs.
There appear to be no satellites, but they could just be too small to see at this distance.
The radio waves do appear to be communications, but the translator can't translate them - if you had to guess, you'd say they're probably in another language.
What do you want to do now?
Olivia looks to Terra. "It seems we have a second language on these radio signals. Do you want to work with me on seeing if we can figure this one out?"
To the others, she says, "How long are we going to lurk out here? If we want to learn the language on the regular radio signals, it's going to take quite some time, and that's even if we're able to crack it without too much struggle."
"Well we don't have to worry about spooking the natives, since they obviously are used to space travel among the stars. Perhaps all these worlds are colonies of the same home world, and perhaps they have not made contact with an new intelligent species, but they will have considered it likely that others such as themselves exist. If we don't see any evidence of warfare, I say let's approach, hail them, and go into orbit and see what they do."
"Once I get relatively close to them, I can attempt to communicate mind-to-mind. That might be the only way we can communicate with them, if our translation programs don't work on their language."
Translation can indeed take a long time, it took EarthGov almost a year to produce the hyperwave translator.
Video is notoriously difficult to "translate", as there are so many ways the video signal can be encoded.
The ship's hull has a "stealth" coating which makes it hard to see electronically (-8 to sensor rolls to detect it), but not visually.
So, fly to the planet and announce yourselves?
"Since we know *someone* down there speaks the hyperwave language, let's hail them using that language, with both hyperwave and regular radio - someone ought to be able to respond, don't you think?"
What kind of propulsion are those spaceships using?
Is this interstellar or intrastellar shipping?
What kind of stealth does our ship have?
Do we have drones? Are they stealthed?
--------
Aster shakes his head, lets see what else we can figure out. I wouldn't mind setting up a relay for the first contact as well. No need to advertise our exact location.
The ships appear to warp in and out of the system.
The Styx's stealth is vs. electronic sensors.
Sorry, no drones.
After it becomes obvious that the group has learned what it can from the radio signals without spending a year in a translation effort, Dr. Rix agrees that we may as well announce ourselves, although perhaps keeping our distance initially and just seeing what a radio transmission produces. If they send ships out that look hostile, we should have time to try to get away.
"Let's take a moment and appreciate this moment," Rix announces solemnly, although with obvious excitement. "We are making our first baby step into the galactic community. Let's make a tridio for posterity when we send the signal and receive the reply."
Boomer says, "I hope we don't regret this. If you don't mind, give me a few more minutes."
Boomer uses his portable computer to connect with the AI mounted in his battlesuit. "Crate," he says, addressing the non-volitional AI. "Perform an analysis of the traffic patterns, coupled with the communications that we've intercepted. Is the traffic consistent with a civilian population at peace-- commerce and the like-- or is there evidence of insurgency, or military activity? Do they appear to be on an actively defensive footing?"
The AI analysis the data on ship movements and communications that we have:
"With the data available to me, it appears that the civilian population is at peace, and is merely engaging in commerce."
So, you move the ship in closer, hiding behind the shadow of the fifth planet, peeking out behind it to send your radio and hyperwave messages, and waiting for a reply.
What do you say?
Rix offers the following idea for a message: "We have discovered your signals, endeavored to understand what you are saying, and traveled far to learn more about your civilization. We come in peace, hoping to learn and grow. On our world, evolution has taught us to be cautious about trusting strangers, so we would like to meet with a small number of your people to learn how we may communicate. We also know that you may be equally cautious about trusting us. Please send representatives to orbit planet [insert description of planet] so we may initiate contact. We look forward to meeting you. The crew of the [insert name of our ship]."
Any other suggestions/additions/changes?
So, Rix's message is transmitted, and a couple of hours later you receive a response "Spaceship Styx, this is planet Simba replying. You say that you have 'traveled far' to reach us - are you from outside the cluster? If so, we are eager to meet you. We will dispatch a diplomatic vessel to the fifth planet immediately, it should be there in 3 planetary revolutions."
Do you want to talk about this any amongst yourselves, or should I move forward 3 days to the rendezvous?