<Eridani Landing: 9 years 3 months 8 days>
Looking around the city Diana couldn’t help but be a little overwhelmed. The colony of Bellona although hastily put together still has some amount of forethought put into it. This place was an insane amalgamation of what looked like hundreds of years of almost organic growth on a destroyed city to begin with.
They had faced no resistance or any type of guard as they had approached the city, and despite the number of people around them none had really looked at them.
Diana looking around couldn’t help but feel as if she were in an ancient science fiction movie, she was standing among aliens yet they were all almost human in appearance. The skin color varied quite a bit, from colors she was used to seeing like her own pale skin and the blacks that were common enough in the Bellona population, to the more exotic from her perspective.
Most of the aliens seemed to be favored towards a more red coloration, although mixed throughout the crowd were some with green and others with nearly translucent skin displaying the veins and musculature structure beneath. Still others had stripes and spots, impossible variations and colorations in the human population.
Other small differences were abound, impossible hair colors, oddly shaped limbs and hands, weird body proportions, among many other small things. Looking up at a man as he charged past Diana spotted ears that were pointed like a mythical elf, and next to him a woman who had sharp fangs coming out of her mouth.
A hundred different variations of the basic humanoid form were in front of her, looking around Diana quickly spotted what was perhaps the oddest thing about Humans, the five fingered hand and pale skin seemed to be what set them apart. Most of the humanoids here had three or four fingers from what she could see.
The clothing that the aliens were wearing were as different and varied as anything else, but again at the same time similar. No one here was dressed for ceremony or pomp and circumstance and instead of efficiency and utility. Dark greys and blacks, browns were the predominant color among a few who were sporting bright day glow adornments.
Diana had been afraid they would stick out in the crowd, but looking around she was suddenly afraid she was going to lose track of the rest of her group. Everyone looked human at first glance, but were just different enough that the animal part of her brain responsible for picking faces out of a crowd was going crazy saying everything was just a little off.
“Wow,” said Arik, Diana noticed that she was speaking in the alien’s language now. No doubt so Diana wouldn’t have to do the mental gymnastics of switching back and forth on top of everything else.
“I know,” said Diana and looking around she glanced into one of the many buildings as they walked past, the only way that Diana knew how to describe it was as a bar. A setting that she was more familiar with in her childhood, her real mother the ruler of the Martian space Station had spent most of her time commanding it from behind the counter. Small enough to fit through the ventilation ducts of the place Diana had listened in on many of the meetings her mother had, learning.
Looking back on it now she was fairly certain her behemoth of a mother had known exactly what she was doing when she snuck off from school lessons.
Shaking her head Diana looked back around, Minerva and Bruno were both edging through the crowd behind her, plainly not at ease and trying to hide it. As much training as everyone had the Bellona colony was small enough that they had nothing like this to compare to.
“Alright, everyone spread out. Just mingle and get the lay of the land. If you can’t talk don’t we’re not trying to attract attention here,” said Young over the links.
There were collective affirmations from everyone and the small groups slowly drifted apart.
“We need to figure out what this is worth,” said Minerva patting the small vial of strange matter that she was carrying, divided out from the supply that Cmdr. Young had brought to facilitate trade.
“And what the cash around here is yeah,” said Diana.
She hadn’t seen anything like coins or credits, although like most everyone on Bellona the aliens were all carrying links or something similar.
“Arik, the alien’s monetary system. Can you interface our links with their terminals so we can make transactions?”
Their was a pause, “Yes, although I can’t generate any money. They are utilizing a form of credit based on fairly complex encryption algorithms. Give me about 45 seconds and your links will be able to interface.”
“That’s solved,” Said Diana and pulling out her link she looked at it as Arik began to reconfigure the screen.
“What’s that?”
Diana glanced up, a thin man who had to be at least two meters tall was leaning over to look at the link as she used it.
“I’ve never seen a com like that one, where did you get it?” asked the man leaning further over Diana but keeping a respectful distance.
Bruno was looking between him and Diana, not understanding what the alien was asking his hands was slowly moving towards the weapon concealed under his shirt.
Diana flashed the alien a smile and held up the link, “I built this.”
The man looked over at Diana and reaching into his own pocket pulled out a small device, his com or link by the looks of it.
“Really? I modified mine from an old Solarix model. I can’t tell what yours is based on though.”
Diana nodded, the alien was a geek.
“I haven’t seen one modified like that, here want to look at mine?” asked Diana offering the alien the device. If he went running off with it Arik would be able to wipe and then remotely fry the circuits.
“Sure,” the alien offered up his device, and trying to appear as nonchalant as possible Diana took it and quickly turned it over, looking at the device studying it ensuring the camera got a good look at it.
Finding a small latch Diana was able to open the device, and examine its internals.
It took Diana a moment to get a grasp on the technology, but identifying components she was able to infer the function of quite a bit of the device, compared to her own military standard link this thing was almost fifty years out of date even if it did have a few hardware components alien to her.
“Interesting, what’s with the antenna array?” asked Diana as she held the link back up to the alien.
He handed her own back, “Yeah I was going to ask about yours, why don’t you have a standard emergency band in their?”
Diana shrugged, “Never thought I would need it. Any recommendation on where I could pick one up?”
The alien nodded, “yeah, the component vendors are over that way,” He pointed deeper into the city the direct opposite of where Diana and the other humans had entered.
“You new here?” he asked.
“Does it show?” asked Diana.
The alien smiled, “A little. Well, good luck with the antenna array!” He glanced over Diana and within moments was reabsorbed into the crowd.
Diana breathed a sigh of relief.
“What did he want?” asked Bruno.
“To geek out. Come on we’re shopping for new links,” said Diana.
“Why?” asked Bruno.
“So we don’t have every alien techie asking to look at ours, plus we need to examine alien technology more in depth. We really need to get our hands on a tachyon communication system too.”
Opening his eyes [Charles] coughed and groaned, something in his chest felt off. “You broke a few ribs. Your anatomy is similar enough that we were able to set the bones, although you seem to have an extra pair of ribs.”
The voice was coming from the mechanical out of his helmet as well as from the actual speaker in the alien tongue next to him.
[Charles] slowly turned his head to see a small class C, who looked only barely old enough to be called a woman sitting in a chair next to his bed.
Blanching Charles jerked towards his helmet sitting on a small table next to her, the only identifiable piece of technology in the room. It was hardly a weapon but he would take anything at the moment.
“Argh!” [Charles] grunted as his arms remained resolutely by his sides, a pain in his wrists joining that of the pain in his chest.
“We had to use some anti-inflammatory medication as well to reduce the swelling. We weren’t sure what painkillers we could use on you so you’re going to have to suffer through the pain,” said the woman continuing to speak her voice being translated by the helmet.
“What happened?” demanded [Charles].
The woman listed to the helmet for a moment as it translated his words into her primitive language.
“You fell into our trap, and we captured you,” said the woman with a shrug.
“How did I end up here?” growled [Charles] shaking the restraints.
The woman produced a thin smile, “We are better then you.”
“Oh? You’re nothing but malformed creatures that need to be put out of their misery. You were killing each other in droves before we showed up, and without our intervention a garden world would have been destroyed due to the failings of your species.”
“Yet even with your intervention that garden world, our home is now a nuclear wasteland,” said the woman almost as if she were proud of the fact they had destroyed it.
“That is because I underestimated how truly barbaric you are,” spat [Charles].
The woman sighed and raised a small vial, “I took a pledge, something called the Hippocratic Oath. I pledged to never willingly harm another sentient being. I am a doctor, a healer of sorts. For the first time though I have to wonder if taking your life would be worth breaking that oath. As far as we can tell you are the Captain of the ship whom launched the attack on Earth. Meaning you ordered the death of nearly ten billion human beings. In the past year you have wiped out those of us whom remained. Do you really think it wise to be insulting me?”
The woman lowered the vial so that the primitive needle was hovering in front of [Charles] eyes.
He continued to glare at her, not breaking eye contact.
The door to the room he was in banged open, and jumping again causing the braces or whatever was on his chest to once again burn and twinge in pain [Charles] looked over at the entrance. Men inside of the mechanical suits the species favored were standing in the doorway, their helmets were removed and they were holding only small handguns not the larger weapons [Charles] had seen them use.
“I wasn’t actually going to do anything.” Said the woman, she held the vial up.
“This is saline anyway. If I really wanted to hurt him I’d use the nano-machines.”
“Emily, you were supposed to inform us when he woke up. We left the room because you didn’t want him to panic.”
The young woman stood up, “I’m fine, and we were having a nice chat. Like you wouldn’t do the same?”
The man didn’t respond but instead gestured at the door.
[Charles] watched with a certain amount of detached interest as the woman collected a small bag that had been underneath the bed he was in and walked out of the room.
The men in the suits glared at him for a moment but said nothing else, instead closing the door behind them leaving [Charles] alone in the room chained to the bed.
He sighed and glanced over at his helmet, it was in pieces. The Class C species had taken most of it apart, leaving only the basic computer unit and the translation equipment. All of the hardware for the more advanced features like communication and emergency beacons was gone.
Even if he could manage to get out of the restraints he doubted he was unobserved. There had to be monitoring devices of some sort watching him.
He was doomed though, the Humans had killed everyone they had captured. The only reason he was still alive was because they wanted information. As much as he hated to admit it they were not stupid, deformed certainly genetic abominations but not stupid.
He had value, they simply didn’t know how much yet. Once it was discovered that he could not be traded or held hostage to halt any further action by the Empire he would be killed.
[Charles] leaned back into his bed. Now all he had to do was wait.
“Information?” asked Alpha.
Ben glanced over at the panel of biologists.
“We’re curious about you. You’ve been able to learn quite a bit about us from what you’ve read, we want the same experience.”
“We have no media to provide, why do you want to know?” Asked Night, another Squeak collective that had joined Alpha in talking with humanity.
Able to observe them more closely Ben was able to discern more differences between the creatures now. The individual creatures that made up Night were smaller and had darker leathery skin with small white hairs. Alpha had no hair on any of his bodies.
What the physical differences meant Ben had no idea.
And while Alpha was composed of at least a dozen bodies Night had only six. The personality differences also had Ben appreciating that he had up until this point been able to interact with Alpha.
“Curiosity, if we’re going to be living side by side with one another we need to know about the differences between each other,” said Ben.
“Or weaknesses we have,” said Night.
The translators were still working on communicating tone, but Ben was fairly certain that had been said in the more rude tones.
A single Alpha body all of which were contentedly sitting next to Ben got up and shot across the floor towards Knight, letting out a quick series of squeaks that did not translate and of which Ben was sure only a little bit of the actual conversation.
“Alpha?” asked Ben.
“Forgiveness, Night it young. Does not remember anything but war.”
Ben nodded, “That might be a place to start. You know about the aliens who attacked us, I’m assuming they did much the same to you?”
Alpha approximating human gestures now nodded, an action whereby the body in front of Ben very quickly tilted up and down.
“What happened?”
“Much has been lost. One we had records, now only words,” said Alpha.
“That’s fine. We lost a lot when they attacked as well.”
The many bodies of Alpha stilled, and hunkered down next to one another. Ben had to think this was his method of thinking over a problem, all of the smaller sections of himself as close as possible reducing latency or the volume needed to communicate, then again that might have been his interpretation based on technological experience and not any knowledge of the Squeaks anatomy.
“We were explorers. We encountered the Dorvakian’s, the Empire as they called themselves when they first left their home world. They had just started exploring space, and we were overjoyed to meet another sentient species so we initiated contact with them.”
“When you say they had just started exploring space, this was without FTL or with it?”
“Without, they had just managed to launch satellites into orbit when we made contact.”
“Then the tachyon beacons, and FTL technology. That is your invention then?” asked Ben surprised.
“It was my species invention yes, we had beacons in only three systems but we were slowly expanding. Unlike you and the Dorvakian’s we can sleep for a very long time. The distances between stars without FTL is long but manageable for us.”
Ben leaned back in his chair and looked back at the other scientists in the room, they were all quickly jotting down notes despite the fact everything was being recorded.
“What happened? I’m assuming you didn’t bury yourself under the ice of Bellona just for fun.”
“We were betrayed. With the Dorvakian’s we had peace, we were not friends they did not like our forms but they were amicable to trading. We did not understand their motives, and they took advantage. We only wanted to learn about them, their culture and the differences between us. They only asked for technology. They never asked to read our literature, our stories or epics. We did not realize they might be deceitful, a trait that is rare in our society simply because we communicate so much with one another.”
“They took the technology and used it against you.” Said Ben.
“After nearly one hundred revolutions of their planet around their star. They launched an attack on our home world. They used biological, chemical, nuclear and energy weapons against us. Within the span of a single rotation of our world they obliterated us. They hunted down our exploratory vessels, which we had never thought to hide from them and destroyed them.”
“So your ship?” asked Ben.
“I am leader, the Captain I think you called it?”
“Yeah.”
“I was Captain, we were attacked and damaged I ordered a random tachyon jump. It was the only avenue of escape left.”
Ben let out a low whistle, “That was dangerous.”
“We materialized within the atmosphere of the large gas giant this moon orbits, the hull unable to handle the pressure in many locations buckled killing the majority of my crew. Only those whom could get to the forward escape pods managed to escape.”
Ben blinked, “How large was your ship?”
If the number of Squeaks he had seen on the plateau and those now housed inside the spare facilities of the Colony he had thought that would have been an entire ship compliment.
“Nearly three times the mass of the orbital station you have,” said Alpha.
“Wow, that’s bigger than any ships we’ve constructed.”
“It was a smaller exploratory vessel.”
Night let out a disgruntled rattling squawk, the most guttural sound that Ben had heard from one of the squeaks yet, “Stop giving them information!”
“We’re not going to hurt you,” said Ben trying to calm the creature.
“We heard many of the same pledges from the Dorvakian,” said Alpha.
Ben glanced over at the creature, “Then why do you trust us?”
Alpha nervously shifted side to side, “We have common enemy, and my race will never rebuild without assistance. I for the moment trust you engineer Ben. We have no recourse but to place ourselves at the mercy of Humanity. So I will not cause discord when it will only be detrimental towards relations. Neither will I silence objections from the others however.”
Ben shook his head, “We wouldn’t ask you to, and quite a few humans don’t want to trust you either.”
“Then we will have to earn the trust of the other.”
“We will,” said Ben agreeing.
Looking out over the table [Vann] picked up his glass and swirling the wine around took a measured sip.
“You were right, a good vintage,” said [Vann].
Across the table from him [Marcus] graciously smiled, “It was believe it or not a bad year for the rest of agriculture, but for some reason the fruits for wines did well.”
“Odd,” said [Vann].
The two continued to eat, the silence of the room was now something that was more common than anything else between the two.
Growing up [Marcus] had used these weekly dinners to explain politics and the more clandestine side of it to [Vann]. As a young child [Vann] had hated them, but he had learned from them. Recently however the dinners had become quite.
Both of them had some idea of what the other was up to, both of them were only having the dinners and small talk to falsely try and lull the other into a sense of safety, despite the fact that neither f them would be budged by any of the platitudes from the other.
“You’ve spent an inordinate amount of time at your retreat the past few days,” said [Marcus] as he cut off another piece of the meat in front of him.
“I’ve been working on something.”
“Oh? What is it?” asked [Marcus] his tone neutral.
“[Syn’s] social status reports have pointed out several flaws in my public image that could do with remedying.”
[Marcus] shot him a look as if asking that he was seriously going to stick with that particular story.
“A young Emperor like you sir? Already you have half of the woman in the Capital wanting to jump into bed with you. What public image issues could you have?”
“I still need to improve on my dancing, the images from my coronation are still circulating,” said [Vann] referencing the incident where he had upended an entire desert assembly tripping over his feet as he had danced. His prowess with a weapon was well known, but the ability to dance with a weapon had not translated into the more traditional forms.
[Marcus] put his utensils down and took a sip of the wine.
“Ah, well I feel I must remind you that although your public image is important the decisions you make in regards to the senate and other legislative matters is far more important.”
“Of course they are [Marcus], but you seem to be handling them so well in my stead. You have a few more years yet before it’s appropriate to retire.”
A look of annoyance briefly flashed across the Consul’s face, something that [Vann] was only able to pick up on because of his experience reading the man. To most everyone else the mask of calm political responsibility didn’t even have any cracks in it.
[Marcus] laughed, “Indeed, although I might be around to help you for quite a bit longer. I’m afraid retirement will simply drive me insane I like to be involved.”
[Vann] nodded, “I can see that, you’ve been serving the Empire since you were about my age right?”
“Your Father and I went into it together, back when we were as idealistic as you are now. I do miss him,” said [Marcus] as he took another bite of his food.
“Well, I think I need to tell you I’m planning on doing another patrol of the outer colonies,” said [Vann].
“Oh?”
“Another part of my image problem. I’m well liked with the Class A citizens, making sure that I am similarly liked with the Class B demographic certainly helps, especially with the more liberal policies I want to bring forward eventually.”
“As I did at your age,” said [Marcus]. He leaned back in his seat, “A full patrol? So a [month] long tour?”
“Yes, can you handle the politics here in my absence?”
Both of them knew what [Marcus] was going to say, and both of them perhaps knew why [Vann] was suddenly eager to take a tour of the outer reaches of the Empire. It would allow him breathing room to continue his investigation. [Marcus] had to know by this point that [Charles] was at the retreat, and for the moment out of his reach.
The situation was not stable though, and giving them both room would allow their separate agendas to play out and test whom had planned further ahead, and who had made the correct predictions about the other.
“I’m sure I can manage,” said [Marcus].
[Vann] smiled and raised his glass, “To the Empire.”
[Marcus] raised his own, a thin smile on his lips.
“The Empire.”