Dreams We'd Weave [FT] [IC: Invite Only]

[The NeoSindar]

“While the spiritual health of Eru’s younger children may depend on their knowledge only of fundamental truth, it is essential that as their shepherds we examine the world as it appears to be.” — Empress Sanae Mireth Nendendi Saewa, the fourteenth Empress Sanae

Apparent Truth

Lindeila Saewa was not her grandmother’s most ardent venerator. How could she be? All of her children loved to listen to the other mothers talk of work, but the most she could say was that she studied the Outside. She had to make sure to use the privacy room, working without companionship or support. Windows subtly darker, door closed shut. No sound of happy feet or laughter, no sound of daily lessons.

A small table with strawberry creams, a cup, and her favorite tea in a pot under a nice embroidered cozy was not the same as being waited on either. Not even the help, rather, especially not the help could be allowed to see what she was doing. See what she saw.

She rather wished she didn’t see. Didn’t know the terrible apparent truth, the horror she had to keep from her family, shared only with the several others of her classified profession, scattered about the citadel here in Tarendeminas.

It was all too obvious, if you knew where to look. If you read the reserved literature and thought it through. If you listened on the right frequencies, in the most plausible directions, and had some rudimentary signal studying algorithms run. Only Varanda, blind as she was to anything unconventional, disbelieved.

They, the old homeworld, and its other colonies… were not alone.

And soon not even Varanda would be able to deny it.

Borders of the Sky

Over three hundred sixty times farther from New Eden's star than Lindeila has ever been, a strange instrument she was however entirely familiar with drifts through space. A straight line from here would pass over the blazing surface of New Eden’s sun and go… nowhere in particular really.

But of course light passing so close to a star, even a relatively middling one like New Eden’s G3, does not travel in straight lines. It is lensed, gravitationally.

The light (and other electromagnetic signals) the instrument perceives, the light not blocked as New Eden’s by its exactly positioned shield, comes from thousands of light-years away. Much farther than the homeworld. Much farther than any artificial waves had any business coming from, if the dogma of Eru’s only children were… apparently true.

A great jumble of data is pinged back in-system. Carefully encrypted to a special key, though entirely unintelligible even in the clear to all but that secret coven of specialized astronomers, it is retransmitted and relayed to Lindeila Saewa’s virtual cluster, simulated on an array of computers deep beneath the Imperial Palace.

Task completed, for the time being, the instrument returns to taking part in a ceaseless vigil of thousands upon thousands of others, most not quite so far out or sophisticated. Meticulously checking for the characteristic high-energy emissions of a significant mass being accelerated to relativistic speeds, scrupulously inspecting the nearer volumes of space for any thermal or other emissions matching a rapidly moving object, and above all ceaselessly checking for anything of this nature coming from the homeworld, these are the watch posts of the Empire’s border.

The guards themselves remain silent. The laser installations half buried in ice, the missiles drifting silent and cold through deep space, remain cold and dark. The repurposable power transmission satellites crowding New Eden’s sun continue their work. This minute, too, will not see a frenetic struggle to stop a Relativistic Kinetic Kill Vehicle.

A Tale of Salt and Smoke

It was nighttime, of course, when the data came in. No thunderstorm, or even rain, of course. The Universe was not that into melodrama, perhaps.

Lindeila sipped her lukewarm tea as her program ran. It was fortunate, perhaps, to work at night. She wasn’t missing anything: the children, everyone was sleeping. The processing nodes, too, were more available and easier on her budget.

It would be another few minutes. On impulse, she looked at the window to kill a few seconds.

She definitely looked eerie, lit as she was mostly by the display. Her black hair so dark as to be invisible compared to the metropolis outside. Her cheekbones thrown into sharp relief, lit from below. Her green eyes rendered grey in the synthetic light. Her ears, receding sharply into an abyss of black hair. Her nose bizarre and somehow pointier.

The screen changed, drawing the return of her attention. She had it.

A terrestrial planet, much like her own, orbiting a star. Its atmosphere, more nitrogen than argon but with healthy levels of oxygen. Some interesting evidence of less natural molecules and particulates, however. Strange salts, uncommon in volcanic sources or windswept surface erosion. Traces of common industrial processes. Complex molecules of a variety that could almost only be synthetic.

The space around it had interesting thermal signatures, too. Sources of heat much warmer than any asteroid or comet had any right to be, moving quite quickly about the main gas giant and between it and the terrestrial world. Hah! She’d even caught one in a burst of acceleration, warmer still than its brothers and visibly changing orbit.

It really was a shame no one but her little coven, and perhaps the Imperial Family, would ever know how very, very wrong Varanda was.

[The NeoSindar]

[Reserved for indexing or OOC explanations].

1. Apparent Truth; Borders of the Sky; A Tale of Salt and Smoke (TheNeoSindar) [Lindeila Saewa]
2. The eye that never wavers (Zeppelin Manufacturers) [Probe 58D]
3. Promethean Efforts; Emergence Emergency; Three Symbols And More (The NeoSindar) [Indis Telperiani]
4. [Bahamut's Judgement] (Zeppelin Manufacturers) [Captain Nathan Sikorski]
5. Dangerously Novel; Backward Engineering; Superliminal Response (The NeoSindar) [Lindeila Saewa, Indis Telperiani, Lindeila Saewa]
6. [Falkin Building]; [Bahamut's Judgement] (Zeppelin Manufacturers) [Admiral Wenclease Thursday, Captain Nathan Sikorski]

Thank you to Zeppelin Manufacturers, Kostemetsia, and TheGrimReaper for reading my drafts and supplying constructive criticism and advice.
Thank you to Kyrusia and the rest of the #NSLegion crowd for being an available and interesting community to RP with.
Thank you to Gulliver for continuing to help with linguistics.

[Zepplin Manufacturers]

The Long Patrol could not be everywhere people who answered to its judgement existed. It certainly couldn't be everywhere they may go much less everywhere a threat to them may come from. With the cornucopia of the various crimes a single trading ship manned by an unscrupulous individual could achieve or a true criminal much less a hostile non aligned government could wreak the Patrol was however duty bound to try.

Automation. Snap. Lenses and arrays expand as the flower opens then close as it plunges back into the fire of a corona. The O type star had nothing but a catalog number. Forty nine years ago a trading combine courier had stopped for a day for repairs in it. It is now therefore of interest. No unpredictable changes. Heat and pressure build as is gravity and radiation. All are twisted. Time to leave.

Discontinuity.

Snap. Once more it opens. Gav’s Rest. Outpost. Population 45. K class star surrounded by a planetless wasteland of cosmic junk. Germanium miners. Standard updates, drunkenness and minor brawling. No unpredictable stellar body changes. Update the courier bank and ..

Discontinuity.

Snap. K type again with nothing but a catalog number. The probes predecessor had detected possible artificial cherenkov radiation here 150 years ago on the third moon of an outer gas giant. No ...changes? Stellar occlusion at a nearby star. Again nothing but a catalog number. Non natural and far too regular in outline as grav lenses stretch and pull to get a better view before the decision trees needs are met. Drives engage and the 48 meter long spire of arrays processes downward into fire again.

The probe had only the number 58D hastily stenciled upon its side along with half a dozen barcodes, warnings and long scratches upon its launch and recovery skids. It was in the end no more “intelligent” than an average hamster. None the less unlike a simple not truly adaptive system the gimlet of machine intelligence that drove the mind was now more than curious.

Discontinuity.

Snap. A piece of G type star twists and turns a violent warped rainbow as the probe unfolds its inquiring arrays outwards. It was passive at first then aggressively data mining as active sensors burn away at their operational lifetimes. Its fate already decided by code 58D does not feel anything, it really is only a machine. An hour later its drives push it out of the safety of the glare of the stellar corona. 58D unfolds array after array of sensors from its central column. Many of them producing powerful omni directional pings as lenses drink in everything they can. Then time runs out. A third of its mass is converted to slag in the backlash as its entire entropic decay reactor mass is used, fuel for a decade of operation burned in a moment to power one single clear interstellar message.

58D then begins to tumble, a single vastly geometrically complex mechanical flower slowly beginning to fall into fire.

[The NeoSindar]

“Between taking the role of Eru’s elder children and taking fire from Varda’s gift, one hopes we are indeed His trusted servants, and not the epitome of hubris.” — From the sealed diary of Empress Sanae Mireth Nendendi Saewa, the fourteenth Empress Sanae
Promethean Efforts

Indis was uncomfortable warm.

Over the centuries, the Empire’s leal subjects and their industries had grown in number and size many times over. They had long surpassed the needs satisfiable on the capital planet without rendering the vibrant emerald-sapphire sterile and grim. The solution had been simple - the star.

New Eden’s sun was not a very bright one, as suns go. And yet, its total strength could be measured at 519 yottawatts. That is to say, 519 million million million megawatts. Even one ten-thousandth of that output being captured, even inefficiently with most lost to heat reradiated out into space, the network of solar power generation and transmission satellites closely orbiting it provided plenty.

Building and maintaining this network could not be done with living hands. Instead, generation upon generation of utility robots plied those hot spaceways, positioning, aligning, and on occasion repairing the satellites. But where one saw robots, one saw their overseers.


A Varda-61 utility robot [graphics to be improved]

Indis was in a tin can thirty seven million kilometers from the nearest Star. Thirty seven million meters from the scariest thing around. Two minutes from incineration, should a particularly large flare flash below.

Whenever a bot in her purview cropped a warning, or rather whenever she got notice, be it immediate or a couple minutes later, Indis would feel a bit warm. It was exhilarating and terrifying to triage the problem. So far she had never needed to patch. She had written a few, and they were equivalent to the patches later pushed from Tarendeminas, though.

Indis kept close watch over the ordinary communications too. Her picture of stellar activity, of rings of plasma hot enough to evaporate her, of darker surface spots bigger than planets, and of the dance of workbots moving satellites out of the way of anticipated flares was the closest to current in the system.

Indis kept her capsule at a chilly 18 degrees Centigrade. She was not comfortable warm.


“Good workmanship is the distinguishing virtue of an engineer. To build a tool that remains useful when aged or in unexpected circumstances is to be righteous and seek Eru’s mercy in the hereafter.” — Mattir Vardamir Telperiari Belaedari, Professor of materials science and electrochemical engineering, University of Annu-Annu; Master in Spacecraft
Emergence Emergency
The first anything in New Eden knew the shape of the universe had changed was when 36 Varda-61 utility robots observed a violent and colorful stellar eruption completely unlike a flare emerge in entirely the wrong place and time for one.

Indis found out a minute later. By that time, her monitor helpfully provided, 18 bots have decelerated to fall toward the anomaly on the surface of the star for a closer look. Nothing about the incoming data made any sense. Stellar features did not blast out coherent waves of radiation in rapidly sweeping beams.

No errors, no warnings, and yet Indis felt like an incautious sunbather on a summer beach. She turned hab temperature controls down to 15 Centigrade.

Endless seconds passed. Waves of uninformative information passed before Indis’ eyes. She shivered.

Useless chatter, from other operators. She asked, coolly, for dutiful professionalism to control excitement.

Pointless questions, from Tarendeminas. She answered, politely, that she hadn’t the slightest idea, honored matron.

Yes, the signal did not look natural. No, that did not make it necessarily artificial, nor did it rule it out. Yes, the source was extremely powerful. No, it was not more powerful than the star, the star just did not emit concentrated and coherent beams, nor indeed much at all at these frequencies.

And then, an infinite eternities later (or sixty two minutes, by the clock), everything changed. A machine, a metallic construct, was emerging from the atomic fire, escaping the all encompassing glare of the stellar corona. Impossibly, this 40 meter blip was clearly the source for the still-roving beams. The workbots, now mere tens of thousands of kilometers away but moving far too fast to get up close for long, reported following further contingencies.

Indis recognized her own work from decades ago, tested in simulation countless times since but never before in action, as the falling workbots changed intentions once again. Almost unthinking, Indis confirmed that yes, this machine was an object of interest, as the bots began to vent thrust at maximum to slow down.

In a state of eerie calm, Indis quickly examined the device, its unnaturally dim reflected light could yet be processed, long-range perspectives of a cacophony of instruments being united by her tin can’s computers into an uncertain model. A cylinder, tapering to a point. Gunmetal grey, apparently, in the star’s blazing white light. Dozens upon dozens of components unfolding from its body into various balls, parabolas, and rods. To say it was clearly artificial would be the understatement of Indis’ lifetime, surely.

Within minutes, her workbots would be able to intercept the device. The question to consider (and not the questions her star-shepherd neighbors continued to cacophonously ask, she was sure, into her now muted channel) was: would it be safe to do so? Indis swiftly navigated to the relevant decision heuristic function. The bots were not programmed, in this impossible contingency, to consider their own safety. Only if the object of interest was observed to destroy a workbot that approached it, or if override instructions came, would the bots abort interception. There was no time for full first contact protocols prior to interception, at this point.

Blessed be Eru, the unmutable channel to Tarendeminas remained silent. Of course, her honored matron could simply watch her every move, see the same code she inspected. One could hope it was all self-explanatory.

Indis checked if anything new had come out of the pattern analysis system regarding the signals that had come out of the anomalous device. No, no obvious message of the kind one would send to introduce oneself. No suspiciously clear warnings against approaching or touching the device, either. A pattern matching an active sensor sweep, and nothing else.

Indis pulled up a countdown clock to interception, another to when she'd hear if it worked fifty eight seconds later, and returned to watching what was happening a minute below.

When the first clock had twelve seconds left, the carnival of emissions coming from the device stopped. So did whatever had been holding it up above the blazing star. Unless the bots caught it, it would be lost within... twenty one seconds, it appeared. The clocks were going up... and counting down again...

Unless something had gone wrong, the first step to examining the mystery machine had begun. Indis would know in fifty five more seconds. Indis turned the temperature down to thirteen.

Clearly the machine was some kind of scout; equally clearly, it's job was done, whatever it'd seen had somehow been communicated to its unseen masters. With but fifty two seconds left before she would know if the scout was lost or caught, Indis considered what it could have seen.

Whatever unknown means it may have used to appear, or report its results, the scout had used understandable means of active detection. This meant that there were pretty clear parameters for what it saw: nothing on the other side of the star, objects that would reflect the beams it started with out to a distance of about 70 light-minutes, and objects that would reflect the later additional signals out to a distance of about 5 light-minutes. That would mean out to the distance of Elwind and just past Éarendar, respectively.

Whoever was behind this scout, they likely had seen a good fraction of the power satellites, the industries and habitats on Éarendar, and the space elevator… Ulmo. Arethnor, Lutenda, and Elwind were all on the other side of the star… Maethros and Maglor and their ice sieves and laser installations were too far for the active locators to have pinged them, but would perhaps be visible passively… Whoever it was now had some idea of what the Empire’s industrial and energy capacities were, and would probably have seen some of the freighters going to and from Arethnor, Ulmo, and the other planets.

A chime. The result of the interception was coming in.

The first bot had connected. It had run out of fuel accelerating it and the device both, pulling them up out of a descending trajectory. By now, the workbot was broken up and destroyed in the corona. The next bot, not having slowed as much, had more reserves. It was on a trajectory, with the device, to be interceptable without further losses by workbots further on in high orbit. No surprises. A job well done.


“Kill the messenger. If you can’t, kill the message.” — Apocryphally attributed to Madame Ousi, before transit.
Three Symbols And More

“Honored Matron, when can I call my family?”

The beautiful Sindar face across the desk from her remained impassive. “We don’t know yet.”

Indis looked away, glaring through the polarized porthole at the far more subdued star than she had become accustomed to.

“Honored Matron, where am I?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

Presumably she was somewhere it would be hard to make an unauthorized call from. “Honored Matron, what will I be doing?”

“What would you like to work on?”

“I really would like to take a look at that device, Honored Matron.” Indis smiled bitterly. She already know about it, and was sure they didn’t want to add too many more to that pool. This was almost certainly the expected response to the question.

“You may assist me in examining the device.”

Indeed.

“Tell me, first, what you expect to see.”

Great. A matron that wants to know everything she’s thinking. “Honored Matron, the imaging I got from range told me it was at base a pointed cylinder 40 meters long, with a variety of dishes, antennae, and other instruments unfolded from its sides.” Indis considered what else to say. “I would expect the dishes to be parabolic, and to learn something of their instrumentation from their focal length and any emitter or detector attached to them. I would expect to find some computational equipment connected to the instruments by electrical or optical lines, which would probably be slagged but we might be able to at least get an understanding of what they make their computers from. I would not expect to find any life on the device, but if we find any microbes they could tell us more about its makers. If it’s painted, we may get some idea of what spectrum they can see.”

“If painted, what would you expect to be painted on the device’s hull?”

“Honored Matron, I would be surprised by little. Could be patterns, could be a symbol or several of some kind…” She wouldn’t ask that for no reason. “Honored Matron, are there symbols on it?”

“Yes. Three.” The Sindar snapped her fingers, and the clear desk became a picture of three symbols stenciled on a partly melted hull.

“Are... “ Oops. “Honored Matron, are those Ozian letters?”

“Not quite. It’s refreshing to hear another see the resemblance however.”

Could it be from the Homeworld?

“It’s entirely possible it is. We haven’t been able to decipher their broadcasts in centuries. We wouldn’t know if they’d invented a new language or writing system.”

“But, Honored Matron, you’re not sure.”

“Verily.”

Indis was not sure what to say.

“If you are to assist me, Indis, it would be best if I told you my name. It would not do for you to lose so much time addressing me formally.”

That was different. “Honored Matron, I am honored.”

“My name is Lindeila Sanaewiel Elwindien Saewa. You may call me Lindeila, Indis.”

[Zepplin Manufacturers]

ZMSF DD548 Bahamut's Judgement “Even a dragon must answer justice”
Night Shift 03:00 Universal Galactic Fleet Time

It had occurred during the weekly soccer match down on logistics deck G while he was off watch. Captain of the peace Nathan Sikorski was a squat pug faced Martian, presently rather than in captains regalia in a lurid neon green sports top, a cool can of insta carrot and a deep fried breakfast kale bar (remember it’s not food if its not happy!) in hand while perched on a hull foam fabbed deck chair. He had been grinning as the engineering crew tried for the fourth time in vain to equalize with sensor ops the memory of the laughter still in the air.

While he had been somewhat covertly watching the pert rear of his first officer in sheer soccer shorts and trying to think of the coolness of the drinks can when augmented reality had interrupted his posterior based musings. Huge red warnings spawn as half a dozen priority messages ripped into his view and Bahamut’s smiling googly eyed avatar kindly asked all crew to watch positions for a priority one response.

His can had hit the floor hard and Carla’s face had been sheet white as she turned mid stride towards him, the football uncared for rolling into the cavernous distance of the hastily laid out yoga mat covered pitch. His mind was flooded with the memories of bug ships screaming across his deep search. The moment of horror when the battlecruiser Dancing Doormouse (where he had served as fire control director) bucked and rolled in torment as the enemy’s incoming DEW fire had slashed into her core. Memory was a hard thing to fight but training to the point of near automatic response was any spacer’s friend.

The case omega war warning was missing from the messages. It took a moment and before shock caused him to fall out of his chair he had recovered at least his stance, looked Carla full in the face and then turned to run towards the nearest hatch to the command center at full tilt.

A hastily shocked crew operating by rote and training rather than thought had slowly got their minds around the P1 that wasn't a probable death sentence for a destroyer crew and just a possible one.

Two weeks later...

The memory of the scent of coffee and the waft of vat grown meat and mustard that had been slowly propelled by the ducts above the watch standers posts in a dull miasma just about defeated the filters in Nathan’s helmet and his butterfly filled constitution. Captains, much less Captains of the peace, were meant to be unflappable foundations on a crew’s confidence and outwardly at least he appeared so, not least helped by the bright orange outline of a hard suit and a bridge full of impact gel, the normal cocoon chairs folded away as the dull hazard line shock frames clamped into the suits mounting points keeping him semi rigidly in position. “Assume the position” in the Long Patrol had a very different meaning in a possibly hostile transit as areas of the ship not pumped down were filled with energy retardant ablative Newtonian gel.

Inwardly first contact was another matter entirely to run of the mill patrol or enforcement. Oh he had extensive known xeno diplomatic and legal training like any Long Patrol officer, but first contact protocol was a sketchy memory of a months worth of training course a decade ago.

Bahamut while not happily puttering around with signal interpretation in its growlingly draconic voice had hastily run everyone through the refresher. The grim lines of “mandatory training” had entered inboxes of anybody not on direct system watch as they dove again and again across the spectrum towards 58D’s reported last position. The dull counter in the corner of everyone’s AR environment slowly turning more opaque as the final transit to real space grew ever closer.

The heavy industry presented in the brief overview alone if co-opted even slightly into a fresh friendly trade expansion sphere would be a massive windfall. ComCen standing orders made that entirely clear and so they had to appear “friendly”. Information control had become the name of the game.

Outwardly the Bahamut’s single metal monohull had changed from spec, her turrets obscured by quick spray damage control ceramic foam into less threatening ovoids and her hatches carefully covered by the same hull shade matching goop applied by her scutters. Still in her Long Patrol grey and orange tiger stripes Bahamut’s transit drive dumps out an emergence event four hundred times greater than the ill-fated 58D’s. As she appears in New Eden a cascade of spectral distortion and grav lensing effects roil around her hull before echoing outward, her location a random walk away but within line of sight to the probes last reported position.

Scanning is at first entirely passive as she heads out system at a steady 15 gravities. A lot by pre compensator standards but matching the probe’s drive performance while her hull holographics surround her in a cascade of dancing semi transparent lettering and vectors. Slowly scanning builds up as her masts extend.

15 seconds later her hull already cool and her sensor masts at full Bahamut begins transmitting on half a dozen wavelengths and standards in the roughest pidgin local.

What had been intended was something upon the lines of “This is a ship of peaceful intent, we wish to open a dialogue with you of lawfull interaction with your government and culture.”

What was actually transmitted in the clear was more upon the lines of “This ship! She plans to be peaceful. We’re starting to want to begin to discuss with ourselves the lawful relations about with your governance and traditions.”

[The NeoSindar]

“No authority is comfortable with change, lest its authority change.” — Nerdanel Wolendi, before transit
Dangerously Novel

Lindeila Saewa had the most important job in the Empire, not excepting the Emperor. Every instruction, every inquiry, every introduction making its way to her desk from Tarendeminas was very clear in how it most definitely did not say this. Not outright. Nor did her modest and windowless quarters.

She’d had to requisition the station commander’s assistant to handle the correspondence for her. Last she’d heard, said assistant had requisitioned a few more using her suddenly meaningful name.

Her grandmother would tell her to celebrate this new status, to see it as a sign of accomplishment and a great future. Her mother would say the same and even keep a straight face, but Lindeila knew her heart wouldn’t be in it.

Despite all the help, some missives, of a more delicate nature, still managed to filter their way up to her own inbox and distract her from said important work. An offer, subtly worded, of remarriage; putatively from the emperor’s nephew Monir Pelendur Refeiro Dorthoni, but Lindeila knew her forms well enough to catch the subtext’s subtext that this was the emperor’s second son Methendir Pelendur Refeiro Eneibari, testing the waters through his loyal cousin. A cryptic instruction from her half-aunt, the emperor’s aunt, to be mindful of the “essential limits on the normative application of apparent and unvarnished truth,” -- translation: your work may be interesting and important but if you let it threaten the proper order of things you will not like the consequences. An inquiry into how Indis was, cloaked as a report from Indis’ household’s patron on their activities. A thinly-veiled threat from princess Golwen Galadwen Eneibasi Gelleni not to requisition any more of her equipment, or face the disfavor of her family. The princess probably wasn’t judged as needing to know about this task.

A polite refusal (Lindeila couldn’t imagine leaving the kids, and besides her mother would never forgive her a divorce, no matter the change in status) phrased as the inability to attend the putatively mooted festival. A carefully worded reminder that without her work they could have no control over what would come. A neutrally worded acknowledgement of receipt of report (really, a polite refusal to answer).

Answering the princess would be harder. If the princess wasn’t in the loop, Lindeila couldn’t very well explain the paramount importance of her current work. A promise not to requisition more equipment would be… imprudent. It was a fool’s game to predict what instruments she and Indis would next need, after all.

How did one tell a daughter of the supreme steward of existence on Eru’s behalf that her laboratory equipment was not going to be returned, and more might indeed get requisitioned for one’s use, without explaining what that use was and how it was of paramount urgency?

Extremely politely, of course, but that alone would not really work. At all. Could Lindeila suggest that the princess speak with someone in the Court who would know? Perhaps someone of the same last name… Yes, that would have to do. And then Lindeila could return to her real work. Meticulously managing a small pack of engineers and scientists let loose on the most fascinating find in centuries.


“The first target is the comms. Radio is Shesgur’s nervous system, we must paralyze it to kill it.” — Hurin Beior Vuduidari Tar-Eneibari, founder of the Empire
Backward Engineering

Indis appreciated having elbow room. Wherever this station was, it certainly had more pressurized volume than her old tin can, even shared with almost a whole family’s worth of adults.

Materials Scientists. Optic and electric engineers. Information theorists. Several experts of even more specialized disciplines Indis had never even heard of. All Dunedain or Sindar. Their support staff, a very quiet sort of Edain.

Indis was a little worried about all the strangers. She’d gotten used to knowing exactly what she could get away with saying. This station just reeked of close attention from above. Her Edain assistants were almost certainly reporting on each other and on her. They smelled of informants. It was obvious that the easiest way out of here would be in a coffin.

Not that the work wasn’t fascinating. In particular the module they’d tentatively labeled ‘Omega’ for the well-supported hypothesis that its use had burned out most of the device. The layout of its connections clearly told Indis this was a communications module, but it was no radio. At its heart, an anomalous bit of slag consisting of presumably synthetic superheavy elements. Could this be how the device had communicated results ‘home’?

“Is that it?”

Indis held on to her composure. Lindeila, the boss, liked to butt in. At least she was no idiot.

“I think so, ah, Lindeila. Are you aware of any theories suggesting anomalous, superliminal interactions with structures of this composition?” Indis didn’t have to laboriously explain her analysis, she was used to Lindeila’s suspiciously good understanding of all her work.

“There was an, ah, apparent abstract on electrostatic spacetime distortions a couple decades ago. You think this is an ansible?”

“Could it be anything else?”

Indis eyed Lindeila’s neutral, perhaps aloof, expression.

“It does not appear it could,” Lindeila told her carefully. “I will help you write your report. This is a quite delicate matter.”

Indis noticed her assistants had left the room. Had the boss sent them away? “Delicate?”

“It’s too useful to be ignored, but this will be seen as a dangerous technology,” Lindeila answered, “Particularly if it’s invisible to us, currently.”

“What, they’ll think people can hatch plots with the Homeworld with this thing?”

Lindeila didn’t look amused. Of course, she rarely did. “Among other ways to disturb equilibrium.”


“It cannot be enough that Eru gives me the strategy. I must give the orders, they must be heard, they must be understood, and they must be obeyed. ” — Hurin Aerin Saewund Pelagund, On Warfare, before transit
Superluminal Response

It was surprisingly satisfying to deal with obstreperous military officers while in posession of a writ of Imperial authority. Idris Gloredhel Menel Refeiro, Senior Sessith for Elwind Space Defense, was one such whose tone had changed completely after Lindeila presented it. Nevertheless, they were dragging their feet about hooking their weapons into the new control network. Something to take care of personally, with an audio-video conversation.

“You must understand, these sorts of, ah, certainly protocol necessary changes take time-” Idris held a neutral, if pinched, expression, her shoulders set.

“Do you need assistance, Sessith?”

Agreement, or perhaps surrender, was no guarantee of itself that the system defenses would in fact be linked together using the new ansible network. Inevitably there had been problems. Big problems, small problems, technical problems, personnel problems… all solvable, with this authority. So far.

“I need time to understand these changes…”

“Understanding is not required.”

“… Of course.”

The conversation was over.

Lindeila’s reviewing her files for the next problem to address was interrupted by the particular chirp of an urgent priority message. It was Indis, two words: “They’re back.”

Lindeila had hardly entered the keys to reply with an audio and visual call faster ever before.

“What do you have?”

“A splash of the same odd readings, but 360 times brighter. About the same spot. We have targeting solutions from near satellites and Maethros and Maglor…” Indis paused. “It’s emitting even brighter than the device did… There’s a message!”

“What does it say?”

Indis appeared nonplussed. A moment later, a copy of the message was in front of Lindeila. “This ship! She plans to be peaceful. We’re starting to want to begin to discuss with ourselves the lawful relations about with your governance and traditions,” in perfectly horrible Eruvite.

“Either they do not have perfect computation or they want us to think they don’t,” Lindeila slowly said, with uncharacteristic hesitance.

“Enough to start a conversation?”

“Certainly,” Lindeila said, recovering. “Tell them their message was received, but somewhat garbled, but our best guess is that they mean to seek peaceful contact and diplomatic relations, and we would be interested.”

From one of many solar satellites hooked in to their new ansible network -- a sizeable hulk mostly consisting of heat radiators behind a shield doubling as energy collectors, topped by a large mostly-hollow sphere which, like several others, was tracking the foreign object’s progress with the slight pinhole at one pole -- came the reply.

“Your garbled message is received. It seems you may be seeking peaceful contact and diplomatic relations. We would be open to this.”

[Zepplin Manufacturers]

Luytens star, Perdition City, Falkin building.

The dull white rock half a mile overhead was lost in a haze of flashing advertisements and baby blue fake sky illumination panels. All of that was crisscrossed with tube car paths, utility gantries, lifts to the surface ports and infrastructure piping making it almost feel as if the sky was a slightly blue circuit board. To the long patrol tech and admin staff spread out in the grass covered security field surrounded park space in the building's rear, serviced by half a dozen food kiosks, it was, however, just another lunch break.

To Admiral of the peace Wenclease Thursday it was barely visible beyond the bulk of the Happy Happy foods megadog, now with three types of hot sauce and a layer of sautéed puréeed onion, chilli, and semi molten cheese. Banished for a time were the intruding messages, the reports, and the endless priority authorizations. Now only the rising aroma of processed, spiced perfectly mimicking processed meat like refined chon reached him over the smell of freshly cut grass and the feeling of the perfectly mimicked artificial sunlight of the ever present pleasant summer's day.

Just as he was about to bite down on the morass however...

“You know those things are going to kill you, if Anna found out you were on them again ...”

Appetite fading the mass of the megadog was delicately set down on the park bench he was sitting on as he took in the slim figure in special command chevrons leaning on the left side of the bench. Richard bloody Sykes. He slowly turned and took in the pose and the uniform from top to bottom.

“It’s once a month and she already knows. Couldn’t you go find some other poor admiral to bother on their break Richard? Don’t you have unsuspecting drug smugglers to honey trap, or mad men bent on crimes against sanity to apprehend, some other sort of daring do that means I daring don’t have to think about it, or you?”

“Now, now, I don’t mean to interrupt, you just go right ahead with that thing, we all know how you get with low blood sugar.”

Wenclease sighed, the sound of one long put upon by improper forces.

“Fine, out with it, but I’m eating while you jabber.”

“We have an opportunity, first contact out in the G route, your patch, high estimated industrial output, Nathan Sikorski commanding.”

A somewhat muffled response before..

“I am vaguely aware of my own command’s movements Richard, what of it?”

“Well we all know what’s moving along G route, or rather maybe is and a heavily industrialized system with that much capacity and no access to faster than light ...well if they learned of its existence it would be the most marvellous little mousetrap..”

“Isn’t this a bit quick even for your crowd Richard? Don’t play coy with me, you’re no more Long Patrol spec ops any more than old Philips was back in ninety four. Oh don’t be surprised. I may be prim and proper but I’m still an admiral of the peace. Whatever Int-Sec deviltry you and director Jameson want to play you will have to go through the front office. They haven’t even reported back if it’s a damn H or not..”

“Just keep it in mind Wenclease. Nothing official yet. I just saw you and, well, I’m always one to take an opportunity. It would after all make for the most easy form of disposal. We could be decades chasing the last of them out of sector otherwise..”

With that he straightened and walked away, once again the pose of a perfect officer.

Wenclease sighed again then picked up the megadog. It just wasn’t as appetising after that, and after all he could hardly curse the Sarians more than he could Int-Sec.

Bahamuts Judgement

Nathan reared back as much as he could in the restraints as the system mapping displays illuminated outward in ever finer detail. Resonance mass and gravity mapping was at play in addition to raw EM wave bands, the ship’s own emergence used as the primary ping rather than powering up the main power hungry and probably very visible prow array. Motion. The system was filled with codes for moving artificial objects, vector changes and possible emission matches from 58D’s sensors now lining up with Bahamut’s vastly more capable always on systems. Muttering erupted between the operations sections.

“Message is away” came from the communications pit in the dull tones of someone brought up on Gastin’s world.

Nathan’s eyes roved, the display for the transit drive recharge now reading twenty minutes.

“Get us to stable orbit Carla and no faster than charge curve, I want us to maintain jump envelope for as long as possible, Bahamut... give me system wide view for fast transits, standard tac overlay.”

Comms section quietly started building a picture of the byzantine communications hierarchy even as the linguistics algorithms feeding Bahamut greedily sucked down raw data. Then...

“Inbound clear ansible! Backtracking origin! prepping halo.”

If he had coffee he would have covered his console. “Hold halo! Hold it, nothing leaves ten meters of the hull.”

Bahamuts voice again as a not entirely coherent message filled Nathans eye line.

“First pass translation captain, estimating twenty till parsing is real time and true, I have only so much computronium to go around.”

“Well at least they’re not answering with ordinance.. tell me when we can talk in clear”

A few minutes later, certainly longer than it would have taken had the Bahamut dispensed the half dozen multipurpose drones that made up her recon halo, the communications pit, manned by the Gastin’s worlder spoke up again.

“Backtracked.”

“Okay let’s see it.”

Carla’s voice came over his headset, private message notes ringing out.

“A bodge.”

“Yes but a working one, they were either close or we just pushed them over the edge... oh hell this complicates things, gods know who will pick them up if they start hammering away on that thing, look at the size of it.”

Bahamut interjected, the crazy eyed pastel colored avatar bouncing into line of vision like a carelessly thrown child’s toy.

“Probability and projection indicate it is actually only marginally more capable than the probe communications core, and readings indicate it may be using some of the probes lenses, or refined copies. While materials appear plentiful there is a strict upper limit to visible synthetics complexity. None the less system industrial capacity was if anything underestimated, gross power transfer load from the solar harvesting mechanisms is in excess of projections by a full seventy percent and raw materials movement is equivalent with a major core system.”

“Lovely...”

Planetary images now as interpretations came up on screen.

Bahamuts voice was now public. As he spoke images of surface bound buildings and orbital facilities snapped over head with indicators and graphs flowering beside them.

“Either this system has been reclaimed after disaster or war by a single survival point or vector or it is a colony, probably settled by slow craft or crash survivors, the former is more likely by sixteen percent given agricultural and logistical routing visible. Coherent single economic unity if not governmental unity exceptionally likely. The uniformness of design ethic is ...almost complete.”
“Well at least that makes life slightly easier. Okay reply with ..”

“Suggested point of meeting for discussion? Define relative to our point in units of ship length?”

[The NeoSindar]

“Diplomacy is the most effective approach to War.” — Hurin Aerin Saewund Pelagund, On Warfare, before transit

Indeterminate Pretenses

“This thing represents the greatest threat to the State I have ever seen. Let us destroy it. Now.”

Lindeila stared at the pale figure in a corner of the screen, her face grim. “You are right that it represents the greatest threat. It is not itself that greatest threat. That greatest threat is far, far away, and the most effective way to learn to deal with it is to communicate.” The pale woman on the screen did not appear convinced. “Hold your fire.”

“Yes, honored matron.”

Nodding in acknowledgement, Lindeila turned to the woman by her side in the control room. “No need to be stupid, Indis, choose a point beyond our sun’s horizon from Arethnor, and from our station too.”

Indis saw no need to talk. Lindeila could just as easily see what she was doing on the screen, throwing together arithmetic and trigonometry to translate Lindeila’s instruction into a vector from the arrival in terms of its observed length -- a sizable quarter kilometer.

“It appears they intend to meet in person,” Lindeila remarked in the silence.

“Enforcement drones. We don’t give them any hostages.”

“You don’t think they’d object to being taken hostage themselves?” Lindeila asked, an eyebrow raised.

“They came to us. If they don’t expect to be at our mercy, they are too arrogant to be concerned with,” the pale woman responded, heatedly.

Lindeila was momentarily pensive, then replied, “Make it happen.”


“A truly autonomous drone is the ideal enforcer of order and laws. There is no room for human error, whether prejudice or sympathy.” — Hurin Beior Vuduidari Tar-Eneibari, founder of the Empire

A Tool Box

Millions of kilometers away, far enough to be unseen to the naked eye but close enough that light took but a few seconds to pass, one of a multitude of scattered capsules orbiting the star was seized by a robot and slowed in its path. Falling, now, the pair would pass by the agreed meeting place and into the corona within an hour. Unless that robot changed its course again, of course.

From the outside, the capsule’s protective skin sparkled in the stellar wind. A deeper inspection would reveal 30 torso-sized drones arrayed in racks at one end of the pressurized inner compartment.

Infalling at a respectable speed, a few seconds before the capsule and hauler robot would splash into the stellar corona the robot ignited its thrusters again to decelerate. A plasma of exciting proton-antiproton annihilation byproducts flared toward the star. The robot’s unfolding radiators glowed red, then yellow, then a slightly bluish white.

And then, the linked pair of objects matched velocities with the alien craft a couple hundred meters away. Far less exciting thrusters flared on the robot as it turned about, turning the capsule’s far end and hatch toward the arranged destination.

[Zepplin Manufacturers]

Bahamut

Nathan stared at the capsules details hovering in-front of him on a half dozen displays.

"snap ready?"

"screen is at full pre charge, ready to snap deploy, infinite repeater bank six is in aspect."

"scan, push the halo out to half a light second standard and confirm readings and push on board output up another ten percent"

"aff and stet confirmed sub kiloton level individual AM storage on board, passive imaging is getting a pretty clean look with that amount of residuals without going to focus"

The image becomes clearer, transparent definition building by the moment. Nathan begins by almost murmuring to himself before rising to a command addressed to the air.

" a demi cadre of drones... Bahamut threat estimate?"

"Low, they could do considerable soft on deck system damage if screens were kept down and our responsive merely passive but are not up to milspec and with available materials and seen technological base have limited thermal capacity. In the simplest case we could simply out run them."

"Eng Comparison to EV gear?"

"Our heavy hull scutters are probably more than equal to them going up in there faces skipper, but I wouldn't want to risk them and we only have the four. Halo elements are probably outright invisible to them and could dance around them but could do little to nothing to them, the whole suite of standard crew work suits even the hazard rated are right out, have to be the parashock gear if we want to send someone out even then if they go the full Reliant there not going to be a lot to sweep up if there within oh thirty to fifty meters. "

"Alright eng ... get me the tactical smart dust display, and a K probe relay, Carla you're going for a walk in the tanks."

Safe wireless direct neural interfaces were by definition an oxymoron and their abuses possible and proved vile and ending in the specter of the neural stripper, the very definition of a death ray. While some limited civilian use was apparent, soft augmented reality was about as far as suited military service. Hard DNI however, in direct contact was possible, generally far harder to abuse and of far more use was in wide spread service especially for true immersion.

Most people dislike getting into a thick gelatinous looking tank of midnight black just colder than body temperature goo, especially when naked. They dislike it less when the feeling of goo simply disappears and they are somewhere else.

In Carla's case it was the aft port hanger deck, cell six apparently in a respectable standard powered hard shell suit, electron compression storage cells dully socketing into it by scutter as she stood. The bulky forms of long range probes, flat packed shuttles, and other equipment neatly racked in the compact space around her along with a now descending array of maneuvering packs, the dull cones of inertics drives visible at there hearts. The suit was quite real and she gently followed the heads up display markings to walk it back into the rack before the maneuvering pack clipped on. The smart dust body she was presently piloting however certainly was not "real", though it certainly felt, looked it to anything but a moly level scanner even to surface cellular detail. Expensive did not quite define the cost of high quality smart dust coupled to the highly shrouded electron compression cells powering it but when one absolutely had to be there but not...

Of course there were limits. Lag for one thing. But the human body is surprisingly slow in non reactionary responses which a good local buffer could mimic and the K probe should assist with that, its bulky cantilevered form rising out of a deck from behind her, nothing more than a flying short range in system ansible relay of usually very singular purpose and in anything but the short term entirely reliant on beamed power.

Her voice over was slightly less pitched than it would have been if she had actually been there. The experience however was entirely immersive..

"Approaching hatch.. detaching ..kicking off. Inertics drive is green."

As she exited, Bahamuts hull ahead of her was a horizon of orange and grey shaded metals and ceramics. The capsule however a clearly visible static moon-let, her breathing her main companion.

"Following way points to fifty, halo elements feeding fine"

Behind her the K probe neatly ejected from the bay before it slid shut.

The single hard shell suit headed forward, its progress not marked by the edgy bursts of thrust of a reaction drive but by a smooth perfect path.