“Unthinkable,” Nylund said. Looking at the science officer across the hologram, he said, “They wiped themselves out?”
“That’s the other thing, Captain. The debris field around the second moon seems to be made up of two very different types of wreckage. Initially, we thought it was the remains of one catastrophic event, possibly a destroyed station, but my team are picking through the data now and they're pretty sure there are at least two completely different sets of alloys in the debris, and the designs of some of the wreckage have at least two distinct styles.” Winchester made his way around the table and stood next to Nylund. “Sir, we think there were two different races involved here.”
“We know there are other races out there, Blake. We learned that from the first ship. I suppose it’s inevitable that at least some of them would have come into contact with each other.”
“Olafur.” Winchester only ever used Nylund’s first name when they were talking privately. “We’ve known each other a long time, right?”
Nylund nodded, wondering what was coming.
“This scares the crap out of me.” He pointed at the gigantic crater. “Whoever did that has no compunction about committing genocide, and has the technological means to do so. And that doesn’t even touch on whatever else they used, you saw the intact cities. What happened there?”
“Calm yourself, Blake. Don’t forget, whatever happened here, happened a very long time ago. We’re talking thousands of years in the past,” Nylund said, resting a hand on the shorter man’s shoulder.
“That doesn’t make me feel any better, Olafur. That just means whoever all but eradicated life on this planet has had a very, very long time to make even worse weapons.”
“Get some rest, Blake; we’ll have more information tomorrow. It’s time to let the second crew take responsibility.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Nylund patted the science officer on the shoulder and turned to leave.
08:32 ship time.
Nylund steepled his fingers together in front of him, his index fingers touching his lips. The news that a large object had been detected at the fourth planet’s Lagrange-1 point was worrying the whole crew. It hadn’t been there yesterday. And more worrying still, it seemed
to be broadcasting…something. Durand didn’t know what it was, but it appeared to be a regular transmission, indicating there might be intelligence behind it.
The Autumn Song burned towards the signal. The ship’s sensors were all over the place: one minute it would show an object, the next moment nothing. The most reliable readings were gravimetric, which remained reasonably constant. Those readings weren’t reassuring, though: the mysterious object was creating a significant gravity well. Whatever it was, it was massive.
08:40 ship time.
“Captain, we have no visual. Most of the sensors are telling us there’s nothing out there but empty space, but there’s definitely a gravity well,” Winchester said.
“Hercules, keep us twenty kilometers from the center of that gravity well, if you please,” said Nylund.
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
The Autumn Song’s bridge was quiet as people checked sensors or just looked at the view screens, hoping to see what was out there.
Without warning, silver fire flared in the forward view. The outline of something huge was forming, as though being drawn in the void. Glittering auroras of light began filling in the spaces, and a massive vessel was appearing.
“My God,” said Nylund.
“Is that…” Nakamura began, then paused. “Is that a cloaking device?”
The crew were awestruck as the ship continued to de-cloak for several seconds. The scale of the enormous vessel was staggering even at this range.
“Winchester,” Nylund began, as reality hit back. “Get me everything you can on that ship. Hercules, get the displacement drive online, in case they attack.” The drive would exert its protective field the moment it came online. Nylund hoped the science was right, and nothing could harm the ship with the sphere’s field up. “General quarters, everyone.”
“General quarters!” Nakamura commanded, over the ship-wide communication channel.
The bridge was a sudden blur of action as people strapped themselves into their acceleration couches and readied the Autumn Song for possible action. She wasn’t designed to be a warship, but every eventuality had been considered for this mission during the planning phase. The Autumn Song was armed with a twin eighty-millimeter railgun battery, a torpedo tube, and several point defence laser weapons. If they are hostile, our weapons won’t do a damn thing to that ship, thought Nylund. And their weapons are probably bigger than the Song.
“Romanov,” Nylund hailed the ship’s security chief, “I want a security detail locked and loaded on each deck.”
“Yes, Captain,” came the reply from the armory. “Do you think they can board us with the displacement field up?”
“Would you rather assume they can’t?” asked the captain.
“I don’t assume anything, Captain.” There was a dry chuckle. “I ordered my team to suit up the moment we headed this way.” Romanov’s thick Russian accent couldn’t hide the humor in his voice.
Nylund hadn’t been sure about the security chief assigned to the Song at first, but he had gotten to know the old veteran well during the journey to Delta Pavonis, and he was glad to have Romanov on board. With three decades of Spetznaz service under his belt, he was equipped to deal with any military issues that could arise, and his hand-picked unit of marines were well disciplined.
The door to the bridge opened and a pair of armored marines, designated to secure the bridge, stepped in and took position either side of the exit, where handholds and straps had been placed for them should things get bumpy. The marines held their Gauss guns across their chests, looking competent and alert.
08:51 ship time.
“What the hell do you mean our comms are offline?” demanded Nylund.
“It isn’t just comms, Captain, all our systems are shutting down,” said Nakamura. As she spoke, darkness briefly descended until the emergency lights came on.
“She’s right, the helm’s gone,” said Hercules, holding his hands up in dismay.
The bridge was silent for a moment, until Winchester asked the obvious question: “What about life support?”
“Life support is still working. And gravity, obviously,” said Nakamura. “It looks like we’ve lost everything else. Including the displacement field. We’re vulnerable, Captain. If they attack us now, we’ve had it.”
Nylund tapped his fingers rhythmically on the arm of his seat. Seconds passed and his crew were looking to him for some direction. He was about to speak, when a flash on the bridge made everyone shield their eyes. A pillar of blue-white light burned from floor to ceiling in front of the forward view screen, too bright to look at. A sequence of bangs and pops came from the pillar of light, and then just as suddenly the light disappeared.
Nylund lowered his hand from his eyes to see an elderly gentleman, wearing a brown suit, standing where the light had been.
“PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD AND KNEEL DOWN!” one of the marines yelled, both advancing on the man, Gauss guns in firing position at their shoulders.
“Wait!” said Nylund.
The man before them raised a hand and the marines fell to the floor, like puppets with their strings cut. Nylund hoped they weren’t dead.
He released his restraints and stood up slowly, hands raised. “I am Captain Olafur Nylund, ambassador of the United Earth Foundation. This is the UEF ship Autumn Song and we mean no harm.” He had no idea if the figure understood what he said, but he had to say something.
“I know who you are,” said the elderly man, in a firm but warm voice. “If you would be so kind as to indulge me, I will explain everything. Please, sit.”
Nylund sat back down, the crew staring at the old man; whatever they had expected, it wasn’t this. It certainly wasn’t how Nylund himself ha
d envisioned first contact with an alien race.
“Thank you. My name would be incomprehensible to you, so I would like you to call me Mr. Jones. I believe this is a familiar name and will help you to deal with what must be an alarming sequence of events. I can assure you, you are quite safe and as long as you take no aggressive action, no harm will come to you.” Mr. Jones stood at the front of the bridge, looking like a college lecturer, right down to the brown suit and brogue shoes.
Nylund began to speak but Mr. Jones put up a hand.
“Please, let me speak. Save your questions for now, we have plenty of time.” He put his hands in his pockets.
Something niggled in the back of Nylund’s mind, something familiar.
“I am not a living being. I am an artificial construct designed to put you at ease while we negotiate the terms by which we will conduct ourselves.”
“Mr. Jones!” Nylund blurted, unprofessionally. “My high school English teacher?” Mr. Jones had been an Englishman, living in Sweden and working as a teacher. Nylund remembered him well because he sounded so foreign.
“Indeed. We picked this form from your ship’s datasphere. The Autumn Song has a very extensive database, and we have learned a great deal about you as a species, as well as you as a crew.” Mr. Jones clasped his hands together behind his back. Even his mannerisms were correct.
Nylund looked at the marines, still lying inert on the floor.
“Don’t worry, they are not harmed. Just sleeping.” Mr. Jones continued, “The Autumn Song will remain disabled for a short time, while we negotiate. I have interrogated your datasphere, downloaded everything to our ship and uploaded some material for you to review. We are currently assimilating your planet’s history and culture, in preparation for future talks. I will return soon. Farewell.”
“Wait!” shouted Nylund, but Mr. Jones was just a fading light, like an afterimage from a strong flash.
The lights brightened as the ship’s systems began to slowly come back online—everything except weapons and engines.
“Get a medical team to the bridge. Nakamura, Winchester, come with me.” Nylund strode off the bridge, the two officers following in his wake.
09:51 ship time.
Nylund, Winchester, Nakamura and Romanov watched transfixed as the holopane played out scenes from a war that had destroyed civilization on the alien planet. Impossibly powerful explosions that were easily visible from space bloomed across the globe. Utterly alien craft that looked like jagged, flying crescents soared across landscapes, sowing destruction beneath them. Mechanized units that made human technology look like toys walked, crawled, and hovered through devastated cityscapes, scouring them of any remaining life. Romanov stood up at one point when a six-legged mechanized… thing… that must have been twenty meters tall laid waste to buildings, sweeping sparkling violet beams of energy across them.
The indigenous aliens—who put Nylund in mind of centipedes, but with several appendages analogous to arms spread along their body—had no chance against their implacable enemy. The alien race called themselves something that sounded like Terrakine, but with heavy clicks where the t and k sounds should be; they named the invading force the Mu’d, but the d was, again, a loud click. There were no images of what the invaders actually looked like, only their machines of war. The Terrakine technology was clearly far in advance of humanity’s, and yet they were like children against the might of the Mu’d.
The media they were watching was a brief history, human-documentary style, of the aliens’ civilization up to the point of the invasion, and then concentrated on the xenocide that ended them. The Terrakine must have studied human media and copied the style to make it easier for them to watch. Impressive, considering the timescale they had to create the documentary.
“The Terrakine are ugly bastards, aren’t they?” said Winchester. “No wonder they chose to use a human image to communicate with us. Speaking of which, we still have absolutely no idea how they projected that onto our ship, by the way. Not to mention how they disabled the marines on the bridge.”
“Don’t you think it’s strange that the Terrakine never wanted to explore the galaxy? To expand? They had the technology, that’s for sure,” said Nakamura.
“Low population density, and high availability of resources within their own system. They had everything they needed, bred slowly and had a distinct lack of curiosity,” suggested Winchester.
“Then why do they have such a massive ship sitting next to us?” asked Romanov.
“And why didn’t they repopulate their planet? We aren’t reading excessive radiation, or toxins in the environment,” said Nylund. Something wasn’t right, the images and history seemed to tie up with what they had seen for themselves, but what had the Terrakine been doing since then? “Everything we’ve seen indicates that the invasion was thousands of years ago. There is absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t have gone back home.” Nylund drummed his fingers on his desk.
Before anyone had a chance to answer, the communicator on the desk chimed. “This is the Captain,” said Nylund.
“Captain, we need you on the bridge. Mr. Jones is back.”
10:13 ship time.
Nylund and the three officers walked onto the bridge to find Mr. Jones standing in the same place he was before, hands clasped behind his back. He didn’t look very happy. In fact, he looked like the real Mr. Jones had, the day he’d sent Nylund to the headmaster for punching Fredrik Peterson in the ear.
“Captain Nylund,” began Mr. Jones. “We have reviewed your species’ history, and we have some…concerns.”
“Concerns,” repeated Nylund.
“Yes. Your species has had a very, shall we say, colorful history.” Mr. Jones paused, looking Nylund in the eye. “You are the leader of this vessel and its crew. So, you shall be the representative of your species.”
“What are you talking about?” were Nylund’s last words, before he was ripped apart into his constituent atoms.
***
And recreated from local elements inside the alien vessel. Nylund staggered and fell to his knees, vomiting violently.
“We have filled this chamber with an atmosphere agreeable to humans,” said Mr. Jones, standing a few meters away.
Nylund stood up, wiped his mouth with his sleeve and looked around, “What the hell just happened?”
“We relocated you to our vessel,” was the matter-of-fact reply. “We have decided to challenge you. We were not able to accurately gauge your species by the history we retrieved from your ship. It is flagrantly one-sided and biased, reported from the same side of every story. We suspect the recording of your species’ history is extremely inaccurate at best and completely falsified at worst. However, we believe your people may have promise. We just need some reassurance.”
Nylund looked around; he was in a large chamber, possibly a hangar of some sort, though it was empty. The interior was unsurprising and could have been made by humans. But then, why would it look much different? He had seen plenty of science fiction, where alien ships were bizarre and surreal inside. It made sense that it was, in fact, simply functional.
“I have kept this human imagery, to make you feel as comfortable as possible. There will be some Terrakine entering the chamber shortly. You have seen us in the films we gave you, so I hope you do not become alarmed.”
To Nylund’s right, a door slid open and a pair of Terrakine entered. Nylund couldn’t suppress a shudder as they approached. They were bigger than he thought they would be, maybe three meters long, maybe a little more. They still made Nylund think of centipedes, but they came forward with the front meter of their bodies raised up, several arm appendages being used to escort something else between them. Something bigger and meaner.
Between the two Terrakine, was a six-legged, oily black creature. What Nylund assumed to be a head rose up on a serpentine neck at the front of its bulky body. He couldn’t see any eyes or mouth. Instead, there was a cluster of proboscises of varying lengt
h at the front. A bony ridge crest ran back along the head and fanned out behind the skull. There were silvery-blue chains around its legs, stopping it from moving freely.
The pair of Terrakine chittered and clicked in their language. The other thing was silent.
“This, as I am sure you have probably guessed, is a Mu’d,” said Mr. Jones.
Nylund couldn’t help thinking the name was mud. He almost laughed, and wondered if a little hysteria was creeping into his mind.
“This Mu’d was captured long ago, along with a few others, and kept in suspended animation for study and interrogation.” Mr. Jones looked at the Mu’d with an expression of utter hate, before turning his attention back to Nylund. “If you would please turn around, Captain Nylund.”
Nylund did as he was told. Behind him was a low table with just one object laid on it. It looked like a kind of machete. Forty centimeters of vicious blade, serrated along the back edge, as much a tool as a weapon.
So, this is what it comes to, thought Nylund. Millennia of learning, and it still comes down to hitting each other with sharpened pieces of metal. Nylund felt a great disappointment. He’d hoped for so much more. Enlightenment, discovery, a sharing of wisdom and culture. Yet here it was; a simple continuation of the bloodletting that seemed to be the curse of intelligent life. He picked up the blade and turned back to the aliens.
“I see some resignation in your face, Captain,” Mr. Jones said. The two Terrakine stepped away from the Mu’d, who shifted uneasily on its six feet. “We need to know that if, or when, you encounter the Mu’d, or another warlike species, that you will deal with them appropriately.”
“I see,” said Nylund, simply.
“The neck, Captain. Like most lifeforms, remove the head and it dies.”
Explorations- First Contact Page 22