The feeling of a foreign thought process, logical , cold yet ever evolving and in the end warm and embracing, began to fuse itself with the collection neurons that made up the brain of Captain Alfred Shelleac. His training and many hours practicing the art of interfacing rendered the event second nature. While This union of AI and biological sapience on was only now becoming available on a wide scale upon the vessels of The Terran Alliance. It was now just more faced involved in a transmission between machine , metal and mind ever weaving an exponentially more complex attach. This rendered Shelleac's mind just one more intricate cog in an ever winding machine, but this cog was intelligent and fully aware.
He was a middle aged man, with light brown skin and brown hair, his eyes were a common shade of brown and he was tall in stature. Shelleac had been involved with star command since his mid twenties, now sometime in his thirties after having made his way up the ranks to command a star ship he leads the crew of the GRV Enceladus SSC-17 in to that great unknown expanse known as the universe.
“So I see the finally sent us directed orders..”
Shelleac said in a mundane and dry tone, he sunk in to his chair slightly hands firmly upon the armrest and the fingers of his right hand clasping against interface grooves, those grooves formed depressions at the end of the black plastic like material that made up the rest. The AI of the GRV Enceladus , replied with a slightly nonchalant inflection his accent was clearly a mark of someone from an inner city.
“yes-well its more of an implied set of orders for a lead .. Captain, we might as well check it out; what else do we have in store aside from training drills?”
Shelleac considered the question, it took no time at all for him to come to the logical conclusions that they were wasting no time in diverting from their current “mission”.
“It beats system hopping any day.. Whats the deal with this thing then?”
Shellec replied his mood still less than enthused, weather they changed course or not they were moving from system to system chasing signals from “intelligent” life. Enceladus replied with a mild tone to her voice.
“A probe from the Orion detected some hot spot of activity, they think its a good lead. The Orion did have time to investigate. Something about a rendezvous several sectors back toward home “
Shelleac was not the only Terran interlinked in this fashion, his executive officer Samantha Ilon and various other officers. Samantha was younger but not by much, she had long lustrous blonde hair brown eyes and a lithe form. She sat there listening to the instant exchanges between Shelleac and Enceladus; chiming after a short time.
“I'm the last person to complain, but sitting here is bound to kill me due to lack of activity.”
Shelleac smiled.
“Right, so lets go toward that star system.”
The Enceladus, with its angular and sleek form oh so common with Terran ships, banked away from its current course. The warping of space and time pushed it to one side, all seven hundred and eighty or so meters came to a rest in an instant. Space and time in-fornt of the ships began to warp and distort; this signified the opening within a time frame so infinitesimally small as to be immeasurable of a wormhole, the flash of light accompanying the violent trashing and birth of this wormhole was so great that space itself in a sizable area around the even was in a state of complete white out. The mouth of this portal was agape it lead in to the infinite dimension of hyper space where matter, energy and the other fundamental forces of reality intersected. The ship and its grey plated hull, slipped in to this realm, a realm that some savage and pre-modern beings could find completely mystical like a concept of heaven and earth. The bridge to the normal universe closed behind the ship, and it was now awash in a cascade of color in an aura that trailed off behind its spatial fields and angled form in to the ethereal void of hyperspace.
Shelleac and the others sharing an expanded awareness in their interlinked state, could see through the perceptive sensors of the ship, the waves and tides of color and hyper space in every bit of the spectrum before their eyes, were projected as images and streams of information in their minds. Every nook and cranny, crevice and fold of space time, and this other space was emphasized, dissected for every micro byte of information and short of gods themselves fully perceived by both man and machine. Enceladus reported after a while within flight, the ship was nearing system D-918.. Delta sector.
“So far this doesn’t look like any kind of shadow or misinterpretation of data, there is an intelligent civilization there all-right. Long range scanners are sure as hell about that.”
Ilon replied with a snarky comment.
“Lets hope they're not your friendly neighborhood aberrations... Or worse..”
Shelleac blinked he sat back on his chair, switching with an instant in his mind between the visuals for everyone else, the outside of the ship and the continually updating datastreams from the long range scanners
(sarcastically )
“You're too negative.. Besides.. Whats the worst hat could happen out here eh? We get infested by Rehast?, what did a little patheogen ever do anyone. It'll be good for us!”
Ilon chuckled and shook h her head, she frowned a bit in a feign of displeasure. After a moment she said aloud and quite casually.
“I'm sure they'll love to have you, as for these people... Whom or what ever they are, lets hope they don't have a taste for exotic sapience.”
Shelleac shrugged, he crossed on leg over the other.
“If they were, they'd be disappointed in Commander Kerion and lieutenant Niloin. I'm not sure no offense to you two, that sohjinian skin as rubbery as it is and ixumanian scales as they are. Would be easy on the stomach, of course this is assuming they work on human conventions. Which in hindsight need not apply in a realistic fashion , so your screwed.”
Shelleack referenced the two officers, his chief engineer and scientific expert. It took a short time, b ut the strike cruiser burst in to the star system; well enough away from the inhabited worlds some ten in number along with their satellites, another intense flash of what uncivilized worlds would view as divine light the maw and wormhole from that infinite dimension with all its tidings and currents parted space and time. Out shot the Enceladus, it came to a crawl its form stopping several hundred meters from the wormhole that by now , died away as suddenly as it came about. The ship came to a crawl, the sensors of the ship focused and scanned reality and matter. The tendrils of Enceladus and her eyes reached out thus the fabric of any matter, space time and so forth was probed within a range and certain capacity by these omniscient and pervasive eyes.
