"Uhm. They sound veguely humen, but I'm not sure ..." Cat comments over the comms.
"You think so Iven? I usuelly heve my pents on ..." Cat chuckles
He then grins atCathrineYnja and points to the still image of the 'cyborg' and says "'ey, that one looks kind of like you, don't you think??"
she looks hard at the image,
"Is that real, if is they have Cybernetics way in advance of ours, yet by the looks of it now Jump ships, could it be a lost colony, or it could all be made up entertainment like on our worlds"
Ivan grins at Cathrine and quips back "Vell, maybe this is a good opportunity to learn from others then."
Without missing a beat he turns towards Ynja and continues "And vhile I vould expect that theus is just entertainment, vho knows, it could be an old trans-mission or 'ave a kernel of truth."
They had a long meeting the feeling was the same, they needed to head into the system, going in passive would give them a good chance to recky out close to the jump point.
"So a vote, we head in in my ship, Me Cathrine and Ivan, with cap heading up the feel if we get a good look."
Ynja's ship departs to the warp point, with the exploration ship and Cat's parasite craft still onboard. The exploration ship waits on this side of the warp point, while Ynja's ship pops through.
On the other side, they begin to get very attenuated radio and tv signals, but nothing the limited computer of the parasite ship can process. But it can record it to be sent to the exploration ship for enhancement and decoding later.
No gravitic drives show up on passive sensors.
"Ok we drop the drone her as out beacon back if we hit trouble, we will also have it record alone with us. We are all passive, I need to know where the TV and radio singles are coming from, one we move off triangulate. Then we will head that way under as much stealth as we can. Any other suggestions and if we all agree that's what we will do. O while we head in try and work out what this culture is like."
The small ship begins scooting sideways, zooming out with passive sensors, trying to triangulate the signals.
After a three days of travel sideways at low speeds (to cut down on being noticed), the ship has three major point sources for transmissions.
The first is a point near the yellow sun, in the inner orbits, and is by far the strongest, near the area usually designated 'orbit 3'.
The second is on the other side of the star system, in either Orbit 5, 6, or 7. There is a lot of backscatter on the broadcasts, and it makes it hard to pinpoint. Most likely the point sources are a gas giant of some sort.
The third point source is actually several hundred point sources, all in the same orbital slot. The far distant orbit (orbit 20), nearly a light hour out from the central star has several hundred point sources scattered around it, indicating a high likelyhood of orbital habitats. Long range visuals have picked up a healthy and large asteroid field in that area, so they are likely asteroid mining facilities.
At on ship meeting
"Ok so looking at the data, we have a number of sites, Orbit three looks to be main planet, then what I would thing is a refinery out past the sun around orbits 5, 6 and 7. Then lots of mining sites out at orbit 20. No signs of jump capable ships yet. So now we have a new problem, IF they have lost that tach, then this ship become a prize. Soon as any one with a brain see it they will try and get the know how about our jump drive. So 1st contact is going to be hard. any thoughts?"
At the meeting,
"I think we can make a call for the main ship to come into system, we need to wait around and see if any one shows up, and we need their computer system and techs to work out just what is going on in this system."
"If they don't heve enything jump-cepeble, they probebly won't heve much thet could cetch us enyhow..." Cat adds.
Looking at Cathrine and Ynja, Ivan frowns and replies "I vill be 'onest, I vould love nothing more than to spend sever-al days getting to intimately know two of the mooost beautiful dual ion thrusters I 'ave ever seen on a ship, but it doesn't make sense to send three pohssible pilots on a ship that needs at most two. I mean, if the Captain thinks it a good idea, I'm more than 'appy to play along, but othervise it might be safer to the mission four me to stay."
she send the signal for the probe to take what they have and go back get mother.
Ynja's ship transmits a tight beam for the probe to take back the information it has so far.
A day later, the probe returns with information from the main ship, they are processing the recordings and decrypting and reconstructing what they can, nothing currently (note it took several days to get the still shots originally).
About 10 hours later, the probe at the warp point reports picking up an energy source closing on it at high speeds. However, it's estimate of closing time keeps changing. At first it records a probe level energy source closing with an estimated closing time of 12 hours. Then the energy rating keeps increasing, but so does the time to intercept. Within an hour, it's up to the size of a shuttle with 14 hours to intercept.
Says to Cathrine,
"Well looks like the jump point was spotted, so we may have a systems boat heading to the jump probe, well mother is not coming, we can send a tight beam to say head back, tell mother and then go silent here and passive observer, or we head back all jump out or we go make 1st contact' if this is a faithful system that could be bad, but the jump point was no guarded, which makes me think they do not have jump, and so we then could say hi and have the ship taken off us. But it would be good to meet them and see of they are friendly or not. This is a call that could cost 1000s of live and give as a new pals here. Its about no I would have liked a telepath like the captain with us but we are alone. So what do you think Cath, for the record and so on"
"Ok I did some calculations we are not going to get to the jump point before them, so Tight beam to prob, message to say what's going on, have it jump, back to mother with a warring asap. Then we go silent, drift and hope we are not spotted. See what they do next. We have stores and can wait out a while. If they look to be coming our way we head talk or fun its up to us."
"Hmm. Could we not bounce the comms vie the probe? Meke contect without reveeling ourselves I think" She grins and instinctively starts thinking about numbers, before realizing and stopping herself. "But the psychic Ceptein would be good to heve. You think he would work over a commlink?"
"If you can do it Cath. Then do, it would really help, running out of options here. I worry this ship will be taken."
"I cen't..." Cat grimached. "Not my brend of tech wizerdy!"
She nods and leans back, pulling out a link cable and slotting it in behind her neck.
"I best do it then, hold on"
Sends message to mother v probe tight beam, one about the intercepting shuttle and all data relevant.
"Meybe we could use some older code, like simple pulses of morse? Or ..." Cat shines up and grins: "We could cut up their messeges and repley them, like en eudio screp-book!"
Ynja sends a tight beam microwave to the probe, which vanishes through the warp point. Then another probe appears, a minute later. Once it's through, Ynja can send a tight beam communication to the probe, which relays it toward the shuttle.
Except the shuttle is still reading 14 hours away, but now it's reading as a light cruiser. The probe's readings are losing accuracy all the time, it's confidence rating in it's scans dropping from 95% to 85%, and now as it upgrades the System Boat to a Light Cruiser, it's confidence rating drops to 73%.
Ynja's ship still isn't picking up anything in the area....
Over the next day and a half, the probe (which moves back a few hundred thousand klicks) continues to tightbeam readings. The sensor track grows from a light cruiser, to a heavy cruiser (53%), to a battleship (37%), to a dreadnought (8%), to UNKOWN (0%).
27 hours later, an active radar/lidar/sensor ping washes over the probe. Automatics kick in, and the probe does an active scan of the approaching vessel. It begins transmitting data to Ynja's ship.
Visual (sans fighters blowing up, and only 1)
Ship Class : UNKNOWN (0%)
Ship Mass : 850,000 MT (92%)
Drive Units : 22,000 (75%)
Sensor Power : ERROR (0%)
Propulsion Type : ERROR (0%)
Power Plants : 100,000 (8%)
Power Plant Type : Fission (53%)
Armor : 10 (88%)
Ordinance : 1200 Laser Cannons (18%), 800 Missile Bays (83%), 3000 Accelerator Cannons (43%)
As the crew is reading the results of the probe's pulse, the Mylthani comm tech lets out a high pitched chirp. "Communications pulse! Very powerful! Engaging filters! Origination point target ship!"
The Mylthani's paws fly over the keys of the console. "Broad spectrum broadcast, multiple frequencies and protocols. Protocol Identified! Pre-Imperial codec! Processing..."
The screen lights up, and a woman sitting in a central command chair appears on the screen. She's wearing a leather long coat, leather boots, and has obvious weapons in holsters. Her right arm is an obvious cybernetic replacement. A hat hangs from her chair on a hook off the side. "Attention ya'll, we been watchin you lot stooge around in our system for a couple of weeks now. Not vera neighborly to sneak around and hide. Ya'll jest come on out now or we'll have ta blow you all to Cinder and back, jest you see if we don't."
"Cap, got the little bugger we were trackin', no weapons. Should I pop it? Be like shootin a Skitter on a Stump!" A man calls out, dressed similarly and sitting back behind her looking at an obvious tactical plot.
"Not yet, Damnit Albner, I'm talkin to the idgits!"
The transmission cuts out.
The probe is transmitting that it's being lased by targeting systems, over 300 individual systems. It's confidence level is (3%) however, so it's likely more than 300.
Powers up the ship, she puts on her Scout Uniform, then sits at the flight deck, with a camera on her. Then on wide beam to the other ship she sands this massage.
"I hope I am addressing the Commander of the Ship that just addressed us. We are a peaceful exploration craft seeking 1st contact. I am Captain Ragnavold of the SEC "Inquisitive Look". Our intent has been to see if you where alien or hostile to such contact or both. We ask that you hold any hostility's until we have had time for diplomatic discussion."
The feed comes back 28 minutes later, indicating almost no time spent listening to the feed, meaning the other ship was holding broadcast until they received something.
The captain appears on the screen again, and her eyes widen as she apparently sees the bridge of Ynja's ship.
"Holy crap! They damn Koh-Mee Cyborgs! Female ones at that!" Someone in the background says loudly.
"Cap! Permission to launch a hundred missiles at the Koh-Mee ship!" Someone else says, her hands flying over the controls at her station.
Another person in the background (there seems to be a lot more people in the background than there was earlier) squints at the screen. "Dayum! They got cats operating their ship!"
"Koh-Mee Cats?!"
"That ain't no Cat, it's got too many legs!"
"Is too a cat! Must be a gene-splice! Be damned, Koh-Mee's violated the Deneb accords and spliced animals brain genes!"
"Two hundred missiles Cap?"
"SHUT UP YOU IDIOTS!" The woman roars, and fires off a round from her pistol over her head. The entire group goes silent, and then her hand returns the gun to her holster. "You Koh-Mee's want to come in peace? Can't say I like your method of knockin' on the door. But I guess since you're the first group to come around in 14 centuries or more, Ah can't rightly say we should shoot you sight, even if you are damn Koh-Mee's. Alright, you can meet us 1,000,000 Klicks from where we are now, on a straight reciprocal on the path we are on now. I'm gonna leave some people to guard this here warp point though, so if yer Koh-Mee pals come warpin in to shoot up the place, we'll fill 'em so full of lasers they glow like a nova." There's a general agreement of hoops and hollers from the assembled crew, and then the display cuts off.
The probe feeds an incredible image of the massive ship suddenly disintegrating into thousands of pieces... but then the pieces begin moving on their own, reassembling themselves into 100,000 ton fortresses, scattered around the warp point at 1 light second each. At least, 7 of them do. The 8th begins to blast off at 5G accel toward the rendezvous point.
Looking back at the crew,
"Will someone for the love of the stars please look in the Sol records and fine out what a koh-Mee is, your going to have to go back, 14 centuries or more. Star above, if they have been here that long they slowboated here."
She plots a flight path,
"Sorry sir, but the scout's data banks don't have any old terran records that aren't ship and protocol related. The Stargazer's computers have a historical data bank, but until we can query it, I'm afraid we don't have any data." Responds one of the Mylthani crew regretfully.
"Fourteen centuries is *elot*! But they know whet e werp-point is ... So they must heve been cut off long before us, but I didn't know there wes enother celemity before ours ... Hmm."
Cat speculates. She has a nagging feeling that they ought to fetch the psychic Captain, whom might be able to speed things up considerably. But then, first they needed to convince these people that they weren't 'Com-hes'. And she wasn't even sure what that was ...
Has an Idea,
"lets just ask them"
Opens a comms link to the ship heading to the meeting pont.
"Local systems vessel, I have a quarry, we have been interrogating our knowledge base and can find not refinance to 'koh-Mee's' We wish to know are they Aliens, We ourselves are Solomarni of sol system ancestry. You seem well armed at ready for war. Are they alien and a clear and present danger?"
Just shy of an hour later, the ship responds. Again, it activated as if they activated the screen as soon as they started receiving the response.
The group on the screen (less than before) has some mixed muttering, and a few bits of laughter. The captain turns and glares at several people, then looks at the screen. "No idea what this damn Solomani is. We're Humans, From Sol III, Earth, or Terra, depending on which name ya want to use. Koh-Mee's is Communistas. Like the damn Ruskies and Chinas. You're a damn Ruskie if I ever heard one, same with that other one."
Someone in the background pipes up. "You think the Cats are Koh'Mees? Never heard of a Ruskie cat?"
The captain ignores the woman commenting. "You better bet your ass we're ready for war. Ain't never met no Aliens so far, but if they shows up, we'll blow 'em to Cinder and back. And then blow 'em up again for another round trip."
Looks at her crew,
"I know my earth History, My family name is from the north of earth, that was the tail I was told. Sol prime was the Earth's sun, the Earth is sol three. Where in the stars are theses locals from on earth, 1400 years hold on I still have."
She going into her own room and after looking in her locker gets her old PDA and home schooling digital books she used as a girl, coming back she plugged them into the ships computer.
"Children's books but you never know"
she started looking up Solomani history in her child's books,
"Computer scan study books, search for.."
As the feed cuts off again, Ynja feels the other people are somehow insulted, but she's not sure why. They way they are looking at the screen is about what one would expect on her world if one showed up for a formal meeting wearing a pair of stained underwear and holding a beer can. Or, what one would expect to receive if one were spraying ones words and had food on one's lips while talking to the boss of the company.
The only one you find anything on at all is 'Ruskie' which seems to be another name for 'Russian', mildly derogatory by context. Ynja would know her colony had a lot of what were once the country of the United Russian Democracy, or URD. But beyond that, she's not sure.
"Well they seem to think we are dirt, and from United Russian Democracy, or URD, That is some old history stuff. I have a bad feeling we just wound up in a crazy house. But they don't seem to be the religious type, like the faithful, there more Xenophobic."
Unless Cath wants to talk to them, they will carry on until they get to the meeting point.
Ynja's ship waits on station as the much larger ship comes closer and closer, it looks more and more like a jigsaw puzzle.. at least until it begins breaking apart!
As it does, sensor warnings begin going off, indicating the ship is being hit by no less than 40 sensor probes.
Pieces shed from the main unit, blasting sideways, and then begin to reform into various smaller craft, most 3 to 10 times the size of Ynja's ship, although there are some fighter sized craft that seem to be launching from inside larger chunks that broke off. Those chunks begin decellerating harder than the rest, keeping back.
Once all the ships come to a complete stop (the closer 'ring') at 150,000 kilometers, the comm systems pings again.
"Alright, we can talk in person now, or you can stay there and hide behind your comm system if you prefer..." The captains voice says, an obvious attitude now on her lips, and her tone indicating she fully expects the response to be to communicate via comms only.
Ynja looks at the others,
"Well we are scouts and as such we have been trained for this, looking at there ships they seem to have resources why beyond our own. So how about we invite the Captain over and see what she says."
If no one objects.
She hits the comes.
"I would very much like to meet you commander, would you prefer coming here or ma and my 1st officer coming there? We have docking capability's. So witch will it be?"