<Eridani Landing: 9 years 3 months 1 days>
“What other data set do you want? I’m not going to be able to communicate with you on that ship. The weapon is leaking enough radiation to interfere with all high bandwidth communication.” Said Arik as the shuttle Toronto detached from the Canada and began to traverse the distance between the human and alien ship.
“I want the translation package, other than that anything that you think will be useful,” said Young.
“Roger that,” Arik’s form flickered away and Young turned away from the pilot to face the back section of the shuttle.
“We’re going into enemy territory, we already have the upper hand so we are not going to be going in guns blazing. I want these fuckers to pay as much as anyone else, but we are not going to be thugs. You do not fire your weapon unless you are in immediate threat of death. We are here to collect information, nothing more.”
“Yes sir!” said Diana along with everyone else in the Toronto.
Young looked at everyone for another moment and then nodding turned back around to the pilot to watch the alien ship as they approached.
“How’s the armory?” asked Diana as she checked her rifle.
Bruno smiled, “Great! We’ve had harder drills than that little skirmish but the atmosphere was completely different. It was tense as hell during everything but afterwards well everyone was kind punch drunk.” Said Bruno.
“That good?”
Bruno nodded, Diana had felt something similar. Up to this point no one under the age of twenty five had even been in what the old timers from the Earth Mars war would call a skirmish. They had been drilled constantly in simulations, but as still everyone knew they were a simulation.
“Can’t wait to kill more of the bastards,” said Bruno.
“Yeah,” said Diana.
Minerva pursed her lips, “I don’t think these are the same guys who attacked us, they hid the gun in what looks like a cargo train, and they didn’t really have what I would call military discipline, If these guys had attacked Earth we would have destroyed them in an instant.”
“The energy signatures for everything were a lot lower, and like you said even with those energy shields we were able to punch right through with the big guns.” Said Diana.
“So something like space pirates then?” asked Bruno.
Minerva shrugged, “maybe, point is human governments were never monolithic enough to have everyone under their control so I doubt you could do that on a galactic level. For all we know there are a hundred alien factions out here all fighting one another, all with different agendas. They can’t all be evil, and as the saying goes the enemy of my enemy,” she trailed off.
Diana sighed, “True, but still I’m ready kick some alien ass!”
Further conversation was put on hold the sound of the strong magnets in the back of the shuttle activated. They latched onto the hull of the alien ship over the smallest airlock on the side of the alien craft. The shuttle featured a collar that was built to interface with the alien tech in mind, instead of locking with it correctly the collar simply went around the airlock and once attached to the hull dispensed a form of quick sealant foam to create a seal.
It wasn’t something that would stand up to any amount of punishment, but it would hold the atmosphere in well enough if need be.
“We’ve got a good seal!” said the pilot.
“Good, keep on your toes,” Said Young.
The man nodded and turned back to his consol.
Bruno held out a rifle to the Commander, he looked at it for a moment and shook his head.
“No, we’re here to talk with these people. Not look like we are raiding them. I need you to carry that for me though,” said Young pointing at a small black duffle.
Bruno nodded and lifting the pack put it around his shoulder.
“They’ve got some sort of artificial gravity!” said Diana from where she floated near the airlock, her link out taking in as much data as she could with the small device.
“What g?” asked Young.
“About 90 percent of standard. Everything’s going to recalibrate when we step into the airlock,” said Diana.
The Commander nodded, “Let’s get this show on the road then.”
He pushed forward and hit the lever on the outside of the airlock opening the outer door, Young grunted as he entered the gravitational field and landed roughly on the floor.
Diana, Minerva, and Bruno all stepped in line behind the Commander, another three combat specialists behind them giving them a total of seven for their little boarding party. The airlock door behind them closed and Diana felt the air pressure around them slowly filtering back in. Looking through the small porthole on the other side Diana spotted several red alien faces looking back at them.
She had expected the people greeting them to be a group of marine equivalents at the very least, but the people looking in at them were very visibly concerned. Nothing at all like the intimidating group they represented, leading credence to Bruno’s space pirate theory.
The inner door opened, none of the aliens raised a weapon although like them most were armed their hands only an inch away from drawing.
A smaller alien, a young female if human standards were anything to go by stepped forwards and began to speak.
Young glanced down at his translator and then shook his head.
“Diana, up front.”
Diana carefully stepped around him. Out of everyone on the ship she was considered to be one of the most fluent with the alien language, a somewhat dubious skillset given the very rough translation program humanity had to work with.
“We mean no harm,” said Diana slowly in the alien language.
The woman turned to look at her, “Frnin ja lutng understand?”
Diana winced trying to interrupt the words, it seemed she had accent to go along with her words.
“Small words.”
“You,” the woman pointed at Diana, “understand?”
“Some,” said Diana, “We want to see Captain.”
The woman frowned but she motioned for them to follow. The men holding guns at the ready slowly stepped away and fell in line with them keeping between them and anyone else they passed in the halls.
Diana looked around as they began to walk the length of the ship, it was not what she had expected to say the least. When she thought about the aliens who had attacked Earth she had pictured them as a united front of evil, a conglomerate which only obliterated and destroyed, a regimented society somewhat like ancient Sparta in its mentality.
At least that was what she had hoped, given how easily they had forced humanity to abandon its cradle. They had to be powerful.
This alien ship was anything but. Everything was held together by what looked like several generations of technology, all of which had been extracted from a trash compactor. The welds holding everything together were solid, but numerous.
Looking down at her feet Diana couldn’t see a square meter of deck plates that didn’t have some sort of repair done to it. The welding in some places was so old that the little lips of metal from repairs had been worn down to lay flat with the rest of the plate.
This alien ship was barely flying, and she was old. Looking around Diana couldn’t help but get the feeling that this little ship was older than humanities entire time in space.
The people who looked at them as they walked past were hardened, but not cruel. They had red skin but otherwise looked human. Children, small cute little things running around in rags matching the patchwork quality of the ship quickly retreated into the safety of their Mothers arms as the humans passed them weapons at the ready.
The gravity and actual windows on the ship were odd enough, in a few places Diana even spotted cracks in the transparent material. The natural light was nice enough but still in her mind not worth the risk. Another deviation in technological progression it seemed.
The woman paused at a large door and turned to look up at a small globe in the wall, a camera by the looks of it.
The large door slowly slid open and she turned back to Diana.
“No weapons, please?” she said without much force behind her tone. It was plain that she and none of the men were going to be able to enforce anything.
Diana quickly translated.
Young considered the woman for a moment but nodded and waved his hand.
Bruno and Minerva lowered their weapons, as did the marines behind them.
The Captain was behind a computer console when they stepped onto the bridge, the center chair was empty a box of what looked like scraps and components sitting in it.
The man looked up as they entered, said something to the man working at the console next to him and he strode forwards.
Young and the man looked at one another, the same grim expression on both faces. “You attacked us, why?” asked Young in English.
Diana’s eyes widened but she stepped forwards and spoke, translating the words for the conversation.
“We need strange matter, to trade for food and supplies on the Class B worlds. The pay we get for shipping the Empire’s goods is not nearly enough to feed everyone on this ship. You are on the outskirts as well, you have done the same.”
Young shook his head, “We have not.”
The Captain raised an eyebrow plainly not believing him, “Then how have you survived? This area of space was claimed by the Empire only two hundred vran ago.”
Diana frowned, and spoke up for the first time on her own.
“How many generations is that, time is difficult to translate.”
The alien Captain turned to look at her, “I was curious about that as well, why do you not speak Dorvakian? Your Imperial detachment should have made it mandatory.”
“I get the impression that much of what we have to tell you will not be standard, but to be clear you attacked because you need something to trade?” asked Young.
“We have only enough food for another three kran. Without our weapons we won’t be able to defend ourselves, and the mercenaries we hired will most likely try and take what little we have left.”
Diana shrugged when Young looked at her, “I’m guessing that’s weeks.”
He nodded, “Those other ships, the smaller ones were mercenaries?” he asked.
“We have a mutual agreement, we hide their weapons and they attack shipments. They take seventy percent of the spoils and leave us with thirty to try and get by with.” Said the Captain.
“What’s your name Captain?” asked Young.
“I am [Hollen]. My family has run the [Sun Skipper] for nearly eight generations.”
“Well [Hollen] we have some questions, things you’re probably going to think very odd. In repayment for answering them though we’ll give you this.”
Young held out his hand and Bruno pulled off the bag he had been given and pulled out the small container inside it.
Young took it and held it out to [Hollen], sliding away the shield exposing the solid coiling mass of strange matter inside the containment unit.
[Hollen]’s eyes widened, “That, that is!” he appeared breathless.
“We attacked you!” he said, “Why would you repay us with this? I had thought you were boarding my ship to take what we have!”
Young nodded in agreement, “You attacked us yes, but you came out of the fight far worse off than us. Like I said we have some questions. Answer as much as you know and you’ll have earned this,” said Young as he snapped the container closed.
[Hollen] took a step backwards, and fell backwards into his chair as if to sit in it, and then yelped quickly standing back up as the components still sitting in it poked him.
Rubbing his butt he looked around the room at his crew, who all looked similarly stunned by the turn of events.
“Very well, if you agree to leave us in peace I will answer as many questions as you ask.”
“We’re going to have a lot of them,” said Young.
[Hollen] nodded, “That’s fine.”
“Right, then. Explain what you mean by Class B, we were attacked by aliens nearly a decade ago who called us a Class C species.”
“You’re Class C?” shouted [Hollen]. He back peddled away from Diana and Young, the men around the room twitched towards their weapons, but the marines already had their own weapons raised pointed at the bigger aliens in the room.
“We believe so. Yes,” said Young.
[Hollen] swallowed, “how? What? How are you alive?”
Ben copied Megan’s earlier gesture and put his hand out to the small creatures. They slowly approached him and put their small grippers to his hand as well, not completely jerking away as he did the same.
“So they’re intelligent.”
“Unless you want to try and explain all of that away?” asked Megan.
Ben slowly shook his head, “No, I’m fairly convinced. Issue is that this really doesn’t help us very much.”
Megan frowned, “You don’t think so?” she asked.
“Not unless they can help us signal the search and rescue ships,” said Ben.
“What makes you think they can’t?” asked Megan.
“How do we communicate to them that we need help? All we’ve done is confirm they know math!”
Ben shrugged, “I would think it’s fairly obvious that we need help,” he waved his hands around the damaged shuttle.
“That’s assuming they have a sense of urgency or morality like we do, for all we know they don’t care about living or dying,” said Megan.
“Well, let’s see what they do when we start working to get out.”
Ben careful to move slowly began to crawl back up to the side hatch he had managed to bash open, the opening was only just large enough for him to put his head through. Picking up his jury rigged saw Ben began to saw away again at the locks holding it in place.
The small creatures jumped slightly when the tool activated but otherwise did not react.
Reaching into the bag next to her Megan broke off a small chunk of the survival rations and held it out to the small things. She had no idea if they could eat it, but she figured most life forms wouldn’t eat something poisonous to them.
The small creature, the first one that had reached out to touch her which Megan decided to call Alpha reached out to the food first. The feelers on the creatures head smelled the food first much like an Earth insect, then moving just as slowly as Megan took the food, the large eyes looking up at her curiously.
Alpha tasted the food, and let out a deeper squeak than anything Megan had yet heard from the creatures. Alpha turned and set the small piece of food down on the ground, where instead of pouncing on it the small creatures carefully divided and consumed it, the food quickly disappearing into their small mandible like mouths.
Megan reached back into her kit and drew out a full cube of survival rations and carefully set it down in front of Alpha.
Alpha looked at the food for a moment, his eyes widening, almost flattening out in what she was interpreting as astonishment. The small creatures were strangely expressive.
Alpha, definable from the other creatures by the small white spots on his leathery skin picked up the block of food, which looked to be a good tenth of his mass and handed it off to another creature.
Holding the food in its small claws the alien quickly crawled back up the wall, and reaching the hatch let out a loud squeak. Ben paused for a moment to look at the creature, and it shot out of the hatch back outside the ship carrying the food away with it.
“We holding a dinner party?” asked Ben as he started to work again.
“I didn’t expect them to go all gaga over it. They must be hungry,” said Megan.
“So long as they don’t see us as food,” grunted Ben.
Megan rolled her eyes and reached over pulling out a small transparent computer tablet which she set on the deck plate in front of her.
When it flashed on the creatures looked at it for a moment, Megan began to show Alpha different pictures, swiping through images of Earth, Mars, Bellona, human ships and everything else she had stored on it.
The creatures were all quite as the different images flashed by, and after several moment when Megan was apparently not changing the image quickly enough Alpha reached forward and touched the tablet changing the image.
Megan retreated from them leaving the piece of technology in the creatures little hands. They had either encountered something like this before or were extremely quick learners.
They continued going through the images for several minutes, and the wrecked shuttle was silent save for the sound of Ben working to remove more of the hatch, until with a bang Ben finished, the final latch falling to rest next to Megan.
“Toss me the mask!” said Ben.
“You got through?” asked Megan.
“Yep, I’ll get that fucking beacon higher up, hopefully get a signal out.”
Megan, pulling herself along the ground and ignoring the dull throb from what was left of her legs grabbed the oxygen mask and small canister of oxygen and tossed them up to Ben. He slipped the mask on and stuffing the beacon into his jacket threw his weight against the shuttle hatch.
The metal screeched in protest but quickly gave, and Ben put his head out to look around.
“I know why we’ve not been rescued. We’re completely buried, we’re also not fallen completely down the crevice from what I can tell. We’re jammed between the walls,” said Ben as he slowly pulled himself back in and pulled a sheet of plastic over the hatch.
“Fuck,” said Megan.
“Yeah.”
Ben, now aware of the fact that shuttle was wedged over a precipice came down to sit next to Megan and their alien friends who were still quickly paging through the tablet’s pictures.
“Now what?” asked Ben.
“We could boost the signal on the beacon, try and punch through whatever is above us.”
“We have no idea how much there is, and I already looked at doing that, we don’t have anything to amplify the signal with.”
Megan sighed and threw herself back onto the suits she had been using a pillow, letting out a groan.
“So we get to freeze to death, or suffocate to death. You have a preference?” asked Megan.
“We’ll figure something else out.” Said Ben.
The small aliens all suddenly twitched, and Alpha moved away from the tablet.
“They’re up to something,” said Megan.
The creatures moved up to the hatch, and they quickly pulled away the piece of plastic Ben had put in place to stop the outside atmosphere from filtering in. There was a screech and a thump on the side of the shuttle.
“They’re going to eat us,” said Ben.
The hatch was suddenly filled with the creatures, all of them waving the little feelers on their heads, all of them with their eyes wide stared down at them. Megan nearly lost view of Alpha inside the sudden sea of creatures.
For several moments the humans and aliens looked at one another.
A low hum began to build up, and the creatures began to hum a tune. It was slow and steady, almost a sad tune, but interwoven inside of it was a hint of hope. For several minutes Ben and Megan listened, dumbfounded by the alien choir performing in front of them. The song was alien, its tempo and beat odd to human ears but it retained an exotic beauty.
“Wow,” said Ben when the aliens wound down.
“Wow.” Repeated Alpha.
Ben looked down at him, “can you understand us?” he asked.
“Can you understand us?” asked the Alpha with the same inflection, he was parroting Ben. Something he hadn’t done yet.
“Well that was too much to ask,” Megan said, and reaching into her pouch she drew out an entire survival ration packet and opened it.
“We’re going to feed them that?” asked Ben.
The Alpha once again repeated him.
“We’re goanna die from lack of oxygen long before we run out of food, might as well try and be friendly,” said Megan.
“No I mean those are the shitty chocolate flavored ones, if you’re going to give our food away give them the shitty chicken flavored ones.”
She held the large block of food out to the Alpha ignoring Ben.
He took it and quickly streaked up to the other aliens, where again the food was equally distributed.
Ben climbed up the wall to look through the hatch, where he saw even more of the aliens, sitting inside a small cavern dug into the ice and rock that had not been outside the hatch several minutes ago. His heart skipped a beat.
“Megan,”
“Yeah?” she asked.
“Our little friends here might be able to help us.”
[Charles] looked out across the plain, it had been a long time since he had commanded an operation like this. Ground wars were something that were usually left to the Lieutenants and other lower ranked officers. Commanders and above were usually directing combat from high in orbit.
Not that any ground force had offered any significant amount of resistance, certainly nothing that would threaten the Imperial forces, but when things became too difficult an orbital assault was preferable. In this situation however such an attack was impossible, due to the importance of the technology that the class C species was hiding away he was stuck on the ground directing troops.
The battle on the ground was more evenly matched than [Charles] wanted to admit, the class C species were using some form of mechanized armor. In the few instances where troops had encountered them and lived they reported that the mechanized terrors could tear a man cleanly in half and punch straight through armor bypassing the protection of shielding.
The C’s had also been taking sniping shots at them from almost all directions, hiding in landscape of the desolate red world. When they found the small sniper teams the C’s never surrendered, instead as vain as the action might be they continued to fight.
Several squads had been lost to the insane species already, and [Charles] had the grim feeling they were going to lose many more.
The other Captains had even reported that organized resistance was taking place as they combed through what remained of the smaller pitiful settlements around the surface of the red world. Thankfully they could perform orbital assaults on those locations without fearing the loss of the FTL technology so only cleanup had to be performed.
“Sir!” said [Tom].
[Charles] looked up, “yes?” he asked.
“We’re getting another communication from the bunker,”
“The infiltration team?” asked [Charles] interrupting the man.
Tom hesitated shaking his head, “No sir. It’s the Humans.”
“They are species C1764, call them what they are and put them on,” growled [Charles].
[Tom] nodded and [Charles] turned to the main communication hub that had been set up in the base camp main building.
The old specimen from before, the General appeared on the screen. A grim smile was on the alien’s face, a small amount of what looked like blood and ichor splattered across his disheveled uniform. Behind him were several members of the infiltration team chained up to the wall, most of them bleeding and dripping onto the floor.
[Charles] grimaced, these aliens were brutal.
“Nice try, that team sneaking in managed to make it quite far. I got to finally shoot one of you, so I’m a little happy about that. You did kill more humans though, but at this point I don’t think another few are going to matter to you.”
“Give me the data on the FTL design and we can end this pointless skirmish.”
“Why? Can I ask that? Why did you do this? My home world is gone, the cities of everyone I ever knew and loved are now ash, and I’ve had to bury more friends in the past few days than I ever ought too. What did we ever do to you? Why did you feel the need to dismantle our entire civilization?”
[Charles] looked at the alien for a moment, tears were beginning to fall down its malformed cheeks and he had to suppress his own instincts. They were a Class C species.
“You are genetically inferior, a waste of resources, you’re world is better utilized as a part of the Empire. The only thing of consequence you’re species may contribute to history are those FTL designs. Give them to me and I will ensure you are remembered.”
The General stared at him for a moment and slowly shook his head, “You’re nothing but thugs, and my species will be remembered longer than your own. You remember how hard it was for you to take this little red rock from us, because in ten, a hundred, or maybe even a thousand years humanity will get it’s revenge. Those few ships that escaped your pointless war will be our legacy and it will come back to haunt you!”
[Charles] sighed, “Fine, we’ll remember you. Now I want my men returned.”
The General’s eyes widened, “You want your men back? Do you have any prisoners to trade?”
[Charles] frowned, “We do not, you will return those men as is common decency.”
“Common decency? Common fucking decency!?”
The General spun around and drew his side arm, the few other Class C species in the room with him quickly dove out of the way. The General let loose three shots, hitting the nearest man chained to the wall three times in the head, splitting open and exposing the man’s brains.
[Charles] winced.
“Savage.”
“This is your doing Captain.” The General turned around to look at him, “Back a human into the corner and they’ll only become your worst nightmare.”