First Contact

Chapter 956: The Setting Sun

Dealing with Terrans, I soon learned to just stop saying 'It doesn't work like that', because for a Terran it does. It is scientifically possible to replicate their technology in Terran systems or with Terran engineers, easily reproduced in their presence. Get away from them, and you cannot replicate the result no matter what you try to do. Is it psychic powers? Or something more? I wonder, at times, if there is something about a Terran that just warps reality around them.

Additionally, attempts at having the Engineer Servitor Caste replicate Terran technology outside of Terran influence repeatedly ends in failure. The Servitor Caste overseers are at a loss to explain the reasons for this difficulty. Something as simple and pervasive as a basic universal living standard device such as a nutri-forge, which is found everywhere in Terran space, is technology that the Engineer Servitor Caste seems unable to replicate outside of Terran dominated space.

As to their war fighting technology, things become even more confusing. It must be stressed that the Terrans are not one monolithic society. They are competing nation-states that compete for resources, population, and territory, to include armed conflict if necessary. It is estimated that more Terrans have died at the hands of other Terrans during wars in the last century than anything else. If the "Extinction Agenda Attack" is viewed as a terrorist attack, a type of warfare, then that fact is undeniable.

Each nation-state has their own variants of weapons, vehicles, armor. While the Third Republic has a uniform and standardized military equipment table, individual nation-states do not put forth their best war material for the Third Republic militaries. Nations like [The Hamburger Kingdom], the [Vodkatrog Empire], the [Anansi Weavers], and [Bongistan], all hold back their cutting edge military technology in order to defend themselves from one another.

Nation State loyalty can be as strong as Hive Queen loyalty, even on a colony outside of Terra-Sol. Twice military actions took place to stop one nation-state's colony from attacking other nation-state's colonists on the same or nearby worlds.

From aerospace assets to armored vehicles to power armor to missile systems, the Third Republic appears to lag at least two generations of technology behind the individual nation states.

I will not take the time to explain the Terran concept of Warfare Generation, as it would take too long and does not make sense, not even to Military Servitor Caste agents.

At its core, Terran weaponry is based on more than just the accepted energy weapons, but also relies heavily on kinetic weapons, which have outlier performance profiles in the hands of Terrans. Terran armor systems, while depending on Substance-W, also involved laminate systems and deflection angles.

Normally, a species concentrates on one technology branch, as the others reach dead-ends rather quickly. However, having witnessed Terran activities in warfare, it appears that Terrans devise weapons to overcome the weaknesses in other areas and to capitalize on scenarios or enemy defensive systems.

Finally, it is the opinion of this intelligence agent that there may be an intelligence failure at high levels, possibly Speaker or Arch-Speaker levels. Terrans have been described as timid and weak by intelligence reports. However, personal observation during the Artificial Sentience War points in an entirely different direction.

Speaker and Arch-Speaker intelligence reports also states that Terran are addicted to creature comforts and perceived safety, making it easy to break the species will by applying warfare induced suffering on the common people.

It is the opinion of this agent that this assumption is flawed.

In closing, it is the opinion of this agent that the T'krikakrik Empire may be on the edge of a catastrophic intelligence failure from multiple sources.

Due to the above listed factors, at this time, I cannot confirm Terran tech levels via replication studies. I suggest caution in regards to Terran technology, specifically their war fighting capability. While my report may counter that of Speaker Intelligence Services, I would like to reiterate that my report follows twenty-two Terran years of direct observation of Terrans and Terra itself. - Mantid Intelligence Officer Report, Pre-Glassing

The holotank beeped twice, ran a test pattern, then reboot. After a moment there was the twinkling of the hologram lasers running a self-test. After a second a Terran male materialized. Lean, bald, and dressed in a shipboard jumpsuit, the hologram looked around.

"Welcome back," Nakteti said from where she was sitting the Captain's chair. Magnus had gone down to the computer control systems in order to lock Chuck's shielded datacore into the system. Surscee had pleaded fatigue and told Nakteti that she would be in her bunk with a strange smile.

"Good to be back," Digital Sentience Watchful Code 993149 AKA "Chuck" said. He looked around again., "Where are we?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. Listen to the tight-beam broadcast we're getting," she said.

Chuck closed his eyes, then opened them, his eyes going wide. "Third Republic? The Glassing Third Republic?"

"Do you know of any other that would be speaking that language? We needed a language codex just to understand it, the linguistic drift is so bad," Nakteti said.

"It's real, not someone replicating it. Lots of Romantic Language in it as well as Ring of Fire words," he shook his head. "It used to be called Esperanto Redux, but nobody's really used it since the First Terran-Mantid War," he closed his eyes again. "The EM freq it's being broadcast on isn't used for much nowadays, mainly personal emergency beacons," he shook his head again. "It's not a computer voice, it's a recording of a Terran female, approximately 30 to 33 years of age, Mecha-Krautland origin," he opened his eyes. "Fascinating, Captain."

Nakteti nodded. "How's the rest of the sensors look to you?"

"Let me look through the logs of while I was asleep real quick," he said.

Nakteti nodded, turning her attention back to the viewscreen's clone on her personal screen.

THe ball of energy that the Sweet had exited still pulsed and burned in the center, between the shell around it. The Sweet was sitting at approximately sixty-five million miles from the two million mile diameter blazing orb of energy, which put her ship roughly thirty million miles from the outer shell.

There were huge black squares slowly moving through space in the area. So far her ship's path had not intersected any of the massive black squares, or the thick cables that either attached them to other squares or trailed behind t hem, but she still had the computer tracking them all.

She watched as a black square bounced off the interior of the shell, the edge flexing and crumpling.

"Captain?" Chuck asked, pulling Nakteti's attention away from the square slowly rebounding.

"Yes?" Nakteti asked.

"Some of the logs are badly damaged. In particular, there's one log that looks like it was overwritten repeatedly. The logs are recorded at the picosecond level, yet there is what looks like trillions of overwrites at a single picosecond timestamp," Chuck said.

"Things were... confusing... in some universes," Nakteti said. "Any references in that log entry?"

"Just the word 'red' repeats," Chuck said.

"The log is like that because it was recorded all at the same time," Nakteti said. She shivered, tightening and loosening her hold on her gripping stick. "We were there for an unknown amount of time, in the same picosecond."

"Temporal stabilizers should have prevented you from reliving the same moment repeatedly," Chuck protested.

"It wasn't the same moment. There was just no past or future or present, only that single fractured instant," Nakteti said.

"I'll skip that then," Chuck said. He closed his eyes again. "Entries that just repeat gibberish over and over. An argument between the stellar collapsar matrix drive and the violet shift drive about whether or not metric or english is superior," he opened his eyes. "I think I'll attempt to review the logs later, with a mental and intellectual firewall up."

"I'd double-up," Nakteti said, smiling. "We encountered, strange stuff on our journeys."

Chuck nodded.

"Can you give me your opinion at what I'm looking at?" Nakteti said, motioning at the screen.

Chuck turned to look at it, even though Nakteti knew he was using the ship's sensors and didn't have to turn and look at something that the computers were busy translating into something understandable and putting up on a network connected viewscreen.

"Radiation emission is strange. I don't recognize a lot of..." Chuck went silent and closed his eyes again. "Checking astrophysics databanks," he said. He was quiet for a moment then jerked. He turned and looked at Nakteti.

"That's Big Bang energy. Cosmic microwave background radiation!" he closed his eyes for a moment. "The external vacuum temperature is at 22 Kelvin! That's... that's..."

"A Big Bang," Nakteti said slowly, staring at the pulsing energy.

"According to my sensors, the object exploded only a few centuries ago," Chuck said. He looked at the shell, then at the slowly moving squares. "Could it have created those?"

Nakteti shook her head. "If it detonated a few centuries ago, and the transmission profile is from nine thousand years ago, logic simply says that it detonated after the shell and the squares."

Chuck frowned again. "What are those squares?" He closed his eyes. "Examining xeno-artifact database," he held still.

Nakteti watched two of the squares slowly collide. Another had come close the burning object, but something forced it to reverse direction nearly a half million miles from the surface.

"I have a tentative match, but nothing that size," Chuck said.

The door opened and Magnus walked in, bouncing an orange in his hand and heading for the DCC console.

"Might as well tell me," Nakteti said.

"Niven-Ring shadow squares. Used to simulate day and night on a Niven-Ring," Chuck said. He frowned. "There's too many though."

Magnus looked at the screen, then at Chuck. "If they overlapped slightly, would they be big enough to cover the stellar mass in a shell?" he asked.

Chuck nodded, his eyes closed. "With 20% redundancy," he said. His frown deepened. "Some of them have odd gravity patterns on them. Almost like a lattice system extending several thousand miles from one side of the shadow-square."

"Maybe it does more than one thing?" Nakteti suggested.

Chuck nodded, opening his eyes. "I could," he motioned at the shell on the viewscreen. "But why a second shell? I can tell it's Niven-Ring material, but that's it," he shook his head. "I'm careful with what scans I use, I'm not sure what the automated system might consider an aggressive action when it's just a scan."

Nakteti nodded.

"Scans are either badly blurred or don't come back at all," Chuck complained. "The scans from when we first exited the energy mass are strange. It looks like theoretical 'inflation radiation', but that's impossible."

"Why?" Nakteti asked.

"Inflation radiation is what caused the universe to double in size roughly a hundred times before the Big Bang happened," Chuck said. "Terrans claim to have proven it, well, my people claim to have proved it existed, before the Glassing, but the data was lost and it's widely accepted that the claim was false."

"And with those readings?" Magnus asked.

"They fit across the board for the theorized radiation," Chuck said. He sounded confused, like a boxer that had taken one too many punches. "The expansion radiation falls off in layers around the energy mass, which, to be honest, is a lot hotter than it looks," he looked at the viewscreen again. "That thing is hot enough that I doubt even warsteel could hold up."

"How hot?" Nakteti asked.

Chuck turned and looked at her. "An impossible temperature," he said. Before Nakteti could ask again he spoke. "1.2E10^15. One point two quadrillion degrees Celsius. Two hundred and fifty times the temperatures at the center of a star."

"Too hot for marshmallows then," Magnus said.

Nakteti smiled.

"It drops off rapidly. It's also too hot to get a reading further in. There's no way we came from inside that mass," Chuck said. He sighed. "But the logs say we did, like there was something bleeding off the head of our transit through the mass."

Nakteti just nodded.

"Wherever, whenever we are, it isn't like anything anyone's ever heard of," Chuck said.

"Behold: Humanity!" Nakteti said softly.

Magnus looked up from his board. "Tenders should be here soon," he said.

"Go wake up your sister, get in your hardsuits," Nakteti said.

Magnus nodded.

"I want you in a disaster frame," Nakteti told Chuck, heaving herself to her feet. "I'm going to follow my own advice."

Chuck just nodded, vanishing from the tank.

On the screen, the failed Big Bang just burned brightly.

-----

The tenders grabbed the Sweet with careful tractor/pressor beams, slowly moving it into position. The docking station extended out nearly five hundred miles from a huge facility that Chuck stated was at least a thousand miles from the surface of the shell.

At two thousand miles, the sensor's passive systems started picking up more impossibilities.

Rivers. Lakes. Huge oceans. Continents. Mountain ranges.

The entire surface of the shell was layered with what Chuck insisted was every single planet in the old Third Republic and thousands more.

There were no energy readings, no light, no nothing from the dark shell.

The Sweet was docked, then the tenders moved away, moving back to their berths.

Magnus was next to the primary airlock, waiting even after an umbilical connected the Sweet to the small docking station at the end of the spire that extended from the facility.

"Construction materials appear to be standard with mega-structure construction techniques," Chuck said from where he was sitting in the Science Officer's chair, wearing a disaster frame that looked like an older Terran with salt and pepper hair, opalescent eyes, and ruddy skin. "Older stuff too. Stuff from the Niven-Rings, obviously reverse engineered."

Nakteti just nodded.

There was a ping and Chuck looked up.

"Station's requesting a full bandwidth data connection with access to holo-projectors," he said. "They're requesting full color hard light if possible."

"Tell them that we accept only red and silver coloration and standard photon light," Nakteti said.

Chuck closed his eyes for a moment then opened them. "I told them it was security and safety protocols as enforced by our captain. Sounds like they accepted it."

"Grant their request," Nakteti said.

Chuck closed his eyes then opened them. "Done, Captain."

There was silence for a moment before the metallic clink of the intercom broke the silence.

"We've got a visitor," Magnus said. His voice, normally calm and unruffled, sounded on edge.

That got Nakteti to perk up. If it worried Magnus, it worried her.

"They're requesting permission to board and that I escort them to the bridge," Magnus said.

"Permission granted. Bring them up here, Magnus," Nakteti said.

Nakteti found herself plucking at her hard suit, twisting both sets of hands on her gripping stick, and generally feeling full of anxiety in the long minutes until the lift pinged.

Magnus came out first, looking a bit wild-eyed.

What came out next made Nakteti stand up.

The figure was a gold skinned Terran male, Terran features, harsh, aristocratic features. Its face held an implacable feeling, despite the gentle expression. It held a flaming sword in one hand and a lamb in the other.

The figure turned to Nakteti.

"Greeting, Captain Nakteti. I am the Arch-Angel Michael, and I will be your guide in the Afterlife."