First Contact

Chapter 930: Edge of Twilight

THEN

Coming back from the dead? Ships that are destroyed and return to battle in moments? Undying warriors encased in a mechanical body? Cyborgs that only have the biological parts consisting of the brain, a short strip of spinal cord, a few cervical vertebrae, two eyes, and jawbone? Clones the respawn endlessly to take well defended objectives? Cybernetic canines and felines? The ability to throw lightning and resist even the strongest psychic powers? True. All of it. The Builders were all of this.

And more. - Examination of Builder Relics, a Comprehensive Guide, 1685 Current Era

We barely got out alive. It was a simple archeological dig on an old planetary system. The outer planets showed evidence of heavy weapon hits, including one planet that had a crater that was over a hundred miles deep and two thousand miles wide. You could see where the magma had bubbled up to fill the bottom.

One planet 8.2 light minutes from the stellar mass, had evidence of heavy bombardment. It has been too long since The Forerunner Conflict for there to be any reactors or energy sources, so scanning from orbit was our only choice. It was the sudden 'gaps' in the bedrock that showed us where we might find Forerunner technology.

The Ancient Ones protect us, we found one. A massive structure, embedded in the bedrock. We determined that at one time lava had flowed over and around it, yet it was inside a massive cavern. We began our excavations to reach it.

It wasn't a building. It was a starship.

It had sustained serious battle damage, yet we determined its shields had held back the magma that had flowed over it. It was jet black, the same jet black matter that all Builder war material is made of. We began to examine it. It had broken up in three places, presumably from impact, and we began to explore its interior.

That's when we discovered it still had power. We were not able to detect it from orbit, the dark material shielding it from our scanners, but lights came on, doors operated.

Wondrous technology. Crystal clear holograms, done in the typical red and silver of Builder holograms. High resolution,720p480p, on 2.5D monitors. The interior lights were the red color that the Builders prefer, with red coloration to the walls and the interior hull.

We even found Builder remains, many with impossible technology of implanted technology. We even found Telkan, Treana'ad, Mantid, Pubvian, and Rigellian remains. All in uniforms preserved by the fact the interior had been kept at vacuum. We could see the Forerunner Conclave military patches.

We don't know what happened. One moment we were examining a wreck, a lifeless relic.

The next minute the lights flashed, a loud atonal noise was heard, and drones were slaughtering everyone.

In less than the hour it took for us to make it to the shuttles, over two-thirds were dead. The Builders drones destroyed six of the eight shuttles, badly damaged the one I was in. I was covered in blood, going into bliss from injuries, when we docked. I didn't awaken in the hospital bay for nearly two weeks. By then, we'd fled the system. I still walk with a limp to this day.

My advice on a Builder archeological site?

Don't.

Just... don't.

Leave it be.- Professor IrtNak, 245 Current Era

We found it in the Oort Cloud of a minor system in the old Forerunner Conclave area. "Down" and "Out" and "Spinward" from what was once the Forerunner Governing System.

The system showed evidence of heavy fighting at some time. The planets all showed evidence of bombardment. It had been too long since the Forerunner Conflict for their to still be debris around planets or gas giants.

We thought there would be no Forerunner debris in orbit around the stellar mass.

We were wrong.

Turns out, one of the slow orbit comets was not a ball of dust and ice.

No, it was a Forerunner starship.

A Builder starship, to be exact.

It was dead. No power. No shields. Covered in dust and ice to the point it looked like a comet. A comet wrapped around a core twelve miles long, a mile in diameter at the thinnest and nearly two miles at the widest.

It was a warship. We could see that easily.

Despite my concern, the crew was overjoyed. The Captain and the First Mate were sure that the Builder vessel would make everyone rich beyond their wildest dreams. They sent a message torpedo to the nearest Vertalk Cartel military outpost, claiming salvage rights of the Builder craft. The Cartel Union Forces responded immediately, arriving after six weeks.

The whole time, we had stayed near it, watching.

It just slowly moved through the Oort Cloud on a six hundred year orbit around the stellar mass. Its shell of ice and dust slowly increasing molecule by molecule as it moved through the diffuse Oort Cloud.

Despite my warnings that the orbit was not stable, that, as far as I could tell from backtracking and extrapolating, the ship never passed through the same part of the Oort Cloud twice, the Captain and crew still believed that we would be fine.

So we kept the salvage merchant ship near the Builder relic.

Make no mistake, it was amazing. Immense. Awe inspiring. Twenty-three great engines, in a stack of 8-7-8. Weapon ports everywhere. Launch bays visible.

Sure, it had taken heavy damage. The armor was cratered and pitted by weapon that could actually effect that strange black pseudo-metal that Builder ships used.

But I pointed out that there was no apparent 'death wound' on the ship.

I already had questions, and we had not done much more than use passive sensor and the weak active sensors that the Misty Mountain Queen salvage ship boasted.

Why no death wound? Why were the engines still intact? What had caused the ship to lose power? How long had it been out here?

The Captain and the First Mate and the Chief Salvage Officer didn't care.

The vessel was a Tyrant's Ransom just slowly orbiting a forgotten stellar mass of a dead system.

I guess greed makes fools of us all.

The Captain, First Mate, and Chief Salvage Officer all agreed with my pleas not to board the massive ship. To let the Tyrant's Own military forces of the Cartel Union Military handle it.

So, for six weeks, we sat and stared at it.

The crew was in high spirits, as they could look out the observation ports and see their payday just sitting there.

The Cartel Union ships arrived, moving close to us.

I was at my examination station, fit for a lowly archeologist who was primarily brought along to verify artifacts and salvage, when the Cartel Union ships arrived.

For a moment I thought I got a reading. A flickering of a power reading.

I opened the logs and started double-checking the data.

The Captain told the Cartel Grand Admiral that the ship was dead, no life, and that we were claiming it as salvage. He forwarded all the scans, and the Grand Admiral agreed that it was indeed a Builder vessel. He notified us that he would be intercepting us soon.

At least the payday was transferred.

I saw the mistake.

The one that cost the Grand Admiral and everyone aboard his fleet their lives.

The Grand Admiral must have ordered a scan as they moved in closer. They were withing a quarter million miles. I could see the weapons cleared for action on the Grand Admiral's warships that were parting to allow the four massive tugs to move forward.

The Grand Admiral's vessels scanned the Builder relic starship with active sensors.

But that wasn't the prime mistake.

Gunnery officers, seeing nothing but a dead wreck, using their powerful and sensitive targeting sensors to scan the Builder's hulk.

In less time than it takes you to read these words, the Builder hulk went from an unpowered, drifting cold and dead wreck to a live starship. Lights came on across the hull, illuminating the Builder runes that made up its name.

The Bleak Edge of Lost Tomorrow

Its sensors reached out, powerful enough that I saw two of the lighter vessels explode. All four tugs went dead.

Then the targeting systems came online.

Thankfully, the ship I was on was heading away from the relic, heading for minimum speed to achieve jumpspace translation.

It spared us.

It did not spare the Lord Admiral's fleet.

The battlescreens cracked into existence, shattering the ice and dust that made up its cometary camouflage. The sheer power reduced the ice and dust to their component elements in one bright white flash.

The hulk was already firing.

Ships exploded as coherent energy ripped clear through vessels I knew could withstand a Voornaktik dreadnought's primary batteries. Ripples of missile fire lanced out, massive graviton pulse readings nearly blinding my sensor board. The missiles streaked across the last part, and I saw a heavy battlecruisers screens fail even as more missiles came in.

The great ship still had no energy readings. According to my instruments it was a dead hulk. Lifeless. Powerless. Just drifting. My scanners insisted that the great ship had not even gone to live power, that it was still a dead ship.

Reality slaughtered the Grand Admiral and his powerful fleet that even the Cartel Union Tyrants feared.

In the time it took you to read this, it was over.

The Grand Admiral's fleet was slowly spreading debris.

Eighty-five ships.

Just gone.

Looking over my records, I came to horrible conclusion.

It was nothing but point defense and debris defense systems.

None of the massive guns fired. None of the huge weapon ports opened.

In mere heartbeats, a single ship destroyed the fleet that had forced the Narknaksan Empire to surrender.

The Captain screamed to go to silent running and the ship depowered, only bare life support running, forward wedge particle shields, and passive sensors.

The Builder relic raked the debris again.

And again.

And again.

SAR beacons winked out. Lifeboat transponders vanished. Even ship suit beacons vanished. The large chunks of debris were shattered. A section of hull with a live engine was blown apart.

It kept firing until the Grand Admiral's fleet was little more than expanding dust and gasses.

Long minutes passed.

The scanner signals from the Builder ship stopped.

The lights on the ship went out.

It was just a chunk of black pseudo-metal, drifting silently through the Oort Cloud, heading in-system.

We spent eight weeks just drifting out of the Oort Cloud, only our particle shields protecting us. The crew speaking in muted whispers. Everyone on edge. Even when we lost sight of the Builder ship the crew's tension was high.

Even the fact we had gotten paid before the Grand Admiral had met his demise did not raise the crew's spirits.

We had been humbled.

As individuals. As a crew.

As a people.

The Grand Admiral's fleet had not even gotten a shot off.

Just the mere act of active scanning and locking it up with targeting systems for a detailed military scan had shown the Builder's pure and shining hatred.

Seconds had shown us the overwhelming firepower that had swept our most powerful ships aside like a particle screen sweeps away space dust.

A crewman asked and I had no answer.

"Who could have faced such overwhelming might?"

and

"What happened to them all?"

I had no answers.

I could only say: Behold: Humanity!

My records are available for this distinguished board of inquiry to examine. You will witness the unbridled fury of a fully operational Builder relic as it destroys the martial pride of the Cartel Union as if it was merely clearing asteroids from its path.

You will witness how, once it was done killing, it merely went back to sleep.

And you too will understand just how pathetic our people are. - Testimony of HreNarlt, Chief Assessment Officer, Misty Mountain Queen - Cartel Union registered vessel, Khixsonian Cartel, 3412 Current Era

It was a test of the Jumpdrive Mark VIII where everything went wrong.

We were out by the old Confederate spinward fringe worlds. You know the ones.

The old Builder systems.

With the new jumpdrive, we had gone much further than we had planned on. Rather than the four hours per light year we had expected, we had gone two point six light years per hour. Our five hundred hours in jumpspace was supposed to take us only fifty light years from Neeratanoon.

It took us nearly two hundred light years beyond the Danger Zone.

Into the old Builder Fringe Worlds.

When we exited jumpspace, our astrogation systems started wailing. It had identified the navigation stars quickly and figured out where we were within an hour, before even all the ship's systems came back online.

The astrogation system was howling out a warning when I left cryosleep and the lights were still red.

By the time I had reached my duty station, data was already coming back.

A single stellar mass, a fairly young and dangerously energetic yellow star. Two planets in our Green Zone. Four more inward on the system, three more outward, and five gas giants, including a single super-massive gas giant.

That wasn't what made those of us of the Initial Entry bridge crew stop in our tracks when the door opened.

The bridge hologram system was live. Normally used for interstellar maps and the like, something had taken it over and altered it.

A Builder stood in the middle of the bridge. Well, a hologram of one. In the Builder military uniform. Tall, but giving the appearance of being short and squat. Powerful muscles over heavy bone. Close set predator eyes. Flat small ears set close to the skull. Two hands with five digits, including an opposable thumb, on each hand. Two feet covered in boots.

It was made entirely out of streaming code.

We stood there, our mouths agape, staring at it.

It turned and faced us.

"Lexicon analysis complete," it stated, its mouth moving out of synch with the words, which were in our own language. "Historical database analysis complete. Cartography and astrogation data analysis complete."

It stared at us for a long moment.

"Leave."

It was a simple statement. An order. Delivered with such force it made my knees go weak.

There was a long silence.

"You are not welcome here," the hologram stated. "This system, these worlds, are inviolate.

"But, it's a dead system. Your people have been gone thousands of years," the Navigator blurted out.

I wanted to smack him.

Or maybe shoot him dead.

"What your people know of death is exceeded only by your ignorance of simple [jumpspace] physics," the hologram sneered. It held out its hand and a common display of the Navigator's species lifecode appeared, hovering over the palm.

"So much wasted potential. So much ignored greatness," the hologram said softly, poking at the lifecode with the outstretched finger of the other hand. "Your people could have been great, instead you discovered [lifecode] engineering and pruned away at your [lifecode] until you are a shadow of the greatness your ancestors posssessed."

The hologram looked at the navigator.

"I know the face of my fathers, navigator, do you?" it asked.

On their surface, the words made no sense, but upon the reflection and mediation I took on our journey back, I found great and sublime meaning in those words.

"But your people have been gone for thousands of years. Surely you know they are gone forever," the Chief Pilot said, ignoring my elbow to his hip that was a vain attempt to shut him up.

"You know nothing of death, and little of life," the hologram stated. It gave a shake of its head. "My creators are not dead, they merely slumber beyond where sleep lay dreaming."

It transfixed us with a burning gaze, full of self-confidence and absolute resolute belief.

"They will return and see that I have guarded their resting places against any who would seek to defile them," the hologram said.

It was at that moment that the Captain, a being solely convinced of his own superiority and importance to the universe, stepped forward.

"Submit to me your command codes and functions, virtual intelligence," he commanded.

The hologram went still and I could smell the pheromones of victory from the Captain.

The hologram began to laugh. Wild, crazed laughter. It went on for long moments then suddenly cut off, the hologram staring at us with cold eyes and a still expression that somehow was all the more malevolent for its featurelessness.

"I would rip your life from you in a mere heartbeat for your egotism and arrogance," it said, its voice flat and inflectionless. "I would exterminate you and all aboard that flying junkpile you call a starship, spreading the individual atoms of your elements across the stellar winds for the amusement of the star at the center of this system."

It was silent for a moment and I could smell the Captain's outrage that a mere virtual intelligence would defy him.

"You were but vermin," it stated. "Crude tribes, barely eeking out a living with sustenance agriculture performed with rocks and sticks, with barely a half dozen species domesticated, when my ancestors fought their brutal war," it glared at us all. "You were primitives, beneath the notice of even the Precursor Autonomous War Machines or the Great Herd."

I committed those words to memory.

"You stared at the night sky, too primitive to even understand, as the light from our desperate war against the Atrekna sparkled in the heavens," the hologram stated. "You were still stacking dried clay, not even mixed with plant stalks, into buildings when the death of the Mar-gite twinkled in your night sky."

Those words burned in my brain.

"Thousands of years had passed since those wars, before their light reached the heavens of your pathetic species' homeworld where you had not even mastered the art of brewing alcohol," the hologram stated. It leaned forward slightly. "And you think you can command me to even spit upon your grave?"

The Captain snarled and stepped forward, his pride wounded.

The bridge security system went live.

The laser touched the captain, swiping from the top of his head to between his legs.

He fell in two halves, the flesh cauterized.

"Begone from this place," the hologram ordered. "You have the sixty hours you need to recharge your [jumpcore] and leave. Where you go, I do not care, but you are not welcome here."

I simply nodded, moving toward my astrogation station.

"Warn your people," the hologram stated.

I looked up and saw it looking at me.

"That which lies dreaming may never die," it said.

And it was gone.

I ran the astrogation as fast as possible while the jumpcore charged. When it was ready, we jumped out, just planning to get to a new system.

We had no clue that the navigation system was damaged.

Instead of leaving the Builder's Zone...

...we went deeper. - Excerpt from Third Star from Mourning - A Harrowing Tale, New Rexilak Press, 4283 Current Era

NOW

HAT WEARING AUNTIE

You really think everything will be OK, Trea?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

It'll be fine, sis.

You'll see.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---