Homeworld [IC/Closed]

[Excidium Planetis]

The unknown, in this case for the crew of the New Paradise, was precisely the space on the other side of the ring. Power seemed to crackle as the ship passed the ring, and the lightening intensified briefly, but nothing untoward appeared to happen to the mothership aside from a bit of three-dimensional space transit. Behind them the ring still spun slowly, blue crystals glowing, with the hyperdrive and the strange organic object right next to it.

Excelsior Bridge

"Well, New Paradise seems to have survived contact," Chief Security Officer Espenson, who had been called up to the Bridge in case of conflict, remarked to the Commander. "It doesn't seem hostile either."

"Send a transport over to the ring to investigate closer." Commander Wade ordered.

Hangar Bay

"Why do they always send me on the dangerous missions?" First Sergeant Withers lamented to no one in particular. He climbed into his lucky transport, and flew off towards the unknown...

[The Grim Reaper]

Having arrived at the Hyperdrive by the end of the 20th day, the Naechtlich has observed the New Paradise's....interesting antics regarding the foreign object.

Also observing the New Paradise launching a transport to investigate the object, the Naechtlich does the same, sending a transport with a Crew Unit of its gene engineers to investigate the biological material.

[Bell Keepers]

Writing lexicon,
Auto tuning gibberish,
Applying phlebotonium,
Parsing expletives,
Calculating thermal runaway,
Compiling compilations,
Sorting indexes,
Defragmenting RNG,
...
Compressing files,... . . . . . Complete.
Uploading!

They used to say back in the day, long before the universe was apparently being eaten by a giant space anomaly like a drain in a pond, that the idea that we were alone in the universe was naive, and that we could never truly comprehend the truly alien worlds beyond our own narrow perspective. Well, they were half right. Something's do tend to stay within reasonable boundaries. There's only so "alien" something g can get before it becomes an absurdity and still falls just short of disobeying reality's more reasonable rules,... Let alone the sometimes outlandish ramblings of many a hypocritical "theorists" or the garish and just plain childish portrayals of uncreative fiction. After all,... If one were to ever encounter intelligent life, but had no common ground, no way to weigh and measure, no means of even understanding their very existence, would you even know you had encountered them?

Mutual curiosity was a good one, actually.

Bait a hook, dangle it in the open, wait, and see who comes and pokes it with a stick.
It's not particularly hard to run the test. And it's not hard to tell when a mere animal comes for the bait instead on an intelligent creature. For instance, the difference between a space manatee just gnawing on the hyperdrive, and say a giant space whale trying to be sneaky while poking the hyperdrive with a stick to see what it does. Having about a half dozen large ships suddenly explode into reality just a stone's throw away from where you parked your ship to camp for a while is understandably a rather terrifying experience. Though that turns to bemusement when absolutely none of them notice you staring at them and spying on all their emails and dirty photos. It gives one time to think, chill out, come up with an idea of what to do next. And if it may or may not involve doing glorious science, all the better.
Initial scans of the organic monstrosity were garbage for the most part, with little info available other than a few simple facts that could be observed with the eye and deduced with a little thinking without the use of more sophisticated equipment. For sure though, a few interesting details showed themselves. For one, the computers were screaming to mine the ship's hull,... There was the usual carbon and hydrogen, with traces of other light elements like silicon unsurprisingly, but the majority of the ship appeared to be made out of metals with the inclusion of several shocking results like traces of arsenic and mountains of lithium, and especially gold. There was an interesting biology at work here that might yield promising results sometime in the future with a little investment, but for now the ship would remain an enigmatic anomaly that seemed to give no fucks and doesn't afraid of anything.
Either it was blissfully oblivious to the reactions of the rest of a fleet already teetering on the edge -which given the amount of radiation bouncing between it and the hard drive that was quite likely. Or it was supremely confident that it could shrug off anything thrown at it before it could escape. Given that its dimensions measured several times over those of any operational mother ship and its mass likely was measured in the millions of tones, that was probably a safe assumption. It dwarfed even the Noah class; perhaps god had decided that a newer, larger ark would be needed in the face of this latest apocalyptic calamity? For an ark it was, no doubt, a work of the finest perfection evolution could produce. Though rocky as an asteroid and littered with glittering crystal chunks from the size of a thumb to the size of larger ships, its skin was curiously marbled and striated like wood grain, with scales of tough bark. It seemed to be a form of flora fauna, with scores of massive branches standing out like masts and strung with small sails and solar panels amongst various instrumentations.

Thankfully the titan seemed to be of the gentle giant variety, its crane claw with the previously noted stick on its bow evidence enough of that as it took great care not to probe terrible places like a pervy alien poke the hyperdrive too hard, and the entirety of its mass moved with a breathtaking grace. Indeed, all that was missing from the moment was a little dramatic music a-la Jurrasic Park in the background and some ambient whale song to complete the mood.

It was a lovely sight indeed,... Sad to think magnificent monstrosities like this might be dying out left and right, never to be seen by another eye in all their glory ever again.

...

Oh, and did I mention it was broadcasting?
Because it is.
No? Oops.
A low power torrent of data, omnidirectional on all known channels it seems. It was too minute to detect passively, but it was there, slowly building up as collected sensor data. And I do hope you didn't update your antivirus software, because it immediately disappeared when it finally grew large enough to notice, a masterfully crafted modular program fully autonomous and with one purpose it performed in about the time it took to figure out it was even there. RexRekt(SelfEXE).hax was the file name for whatever reason, a joke, a prank, pulled to try and lighten the tense mood with (admittedly juvenile) humor in good faith; besides, "Language Patch" isn't an interesting name or even just "Ambassador" executable.
It couldn't get very far though, since most of the power is being used to support the enormous bandwidth which means only the Naechtlich's transport is able to really receive. And boy does it receive, the people aboard learn first hand why so little effort was made to broadcast the malware since the poor little box of bolts and squishy scientist types nearly overloads under the strain of bridging human and alien operating systems.
But it holds out, and amidst the roar of cooling units threatening to just explode out of spite the first ever communication with a NOT murderous alien kind graces the ears of the remnants of humanity.

Subject: Formalities_
To: Meat bag crate #012 and friends_
From: Undefined_

0:00 Bonjour! Top o' the morn'n to ya ladys! Ladies? Laddles?_
0:00 On behalf [ERROR_File not found. No analogous match found in dictionary, please define.] [ERROR_Syntax] with open arms and good will. We hope at this time to enter into social contract of much symbiotic exchange. For the mutual benefit of science we are to cooperate with jovial emotion in doing so. Failure to comply will result in inefficient rates of social bonding._
0:03 To this end we extend to you our great pride and joy, apple to our eyes and song of our souls. The Ambassador serves as our mouth phone, speaking in our stead through the translation module. Our will synchronizes in harmony! It is gift great and honorable, for there is only one being amongst our many._
0:03 We hope someday for multiplication. Or exponentiation! Until then we treat it as dearly as pet._
0:04 We hope as well for much more exchange. Through knowledge and trade we may both grow tall and spread our branches far though our grove be small and barren. A Brotherhood of Buddies you will become as one of us. And together we shall bloom in fruitful [ERROR_File not found.]
0:05 Live long and prosper!_

Daaaw, poor little aliens. They're so friendly but all they can do is broken English. It's such a shame that the language of violence is universal, and not say the language of song and dance.