Chapter 5: Diplomats, Scientists, and an Engineer


Day 24 of Year 6935
Central Government Complex Level 42, Dalet City, Hivehom
High Council Chamber

"The alien ship has been directed to a parking orbit around Dashaar, which they complied with immediately. The Rylix has been towed to the shipyard and the crew taken to a secure location for interview. Initial investigations on the ship show that the drive suffered a catastrophic desynchronization event, which is a known theoretical flaw with that model of drive unit. No previous case is on record of the flaw leading to the damage noted, but it's possible that at least one previous ship disappearance was the result of a similar event based on the event logs of earlier trips. We're recommending that all third generation drive units be taken out of service and replaced with the fourth generation version as rapidly as feasible."

The speaker looked at his audience, which was comprised of most of the senior governmental and military members on Hivehom, along with three equivalents from Willow-Wane who had been on the homeworld for a meeting.

"What information do we currently have on the aliens?" Kinzortifen, the current High Councilor, ultimate leader of the government, asked. She tilted her head curiously, her antennae showing interest and caution in equal amounts. "Clearly, based on their startling arrival and actions towards the Rylix, they are both possessed of very high technological levels and at least a certain amount of altruism."

Menjeflikon, the Councilor for Science, who had been making the report, waved a foot-hand in a gesture of slight uncertainty. "Their technological level is, at a minimum, equal to ours, but we are certain that at least in interstellar drive techniques they are far ahead of us. We also believe they are extremely advanced in synthetic intelligence methods and other computing fields. They have real time translation facilities that are completely fluent in Low Thranx, and use computer-generated avatars to provide gesture equivalence and recognition as their own language does not appear to make the same use of such things as ours do."

He checked something on his implant, glanced at the screen of the infoterminal he was holding in a true-hand, then went on, "The meeting with the Rylix was largely accidental, we believe. It appears that they have been aware of us for some considerable time and have been carefully monitoring our systems, most likely watching ship movements and tapping the public Hivenet and other broadcasts. This implies significant abilities in long range sensing, or possibly low-observable craft and probes, most likely FTL communications, and in all probability a much faster drive method than our posigravity drive. They definitely do not make use of a similar system, their ship designs are completely different, but they are also utilizing WIMP technology based on the gravitic readings our scans of their craft have detected."

"Why were they monitoring us?" another Councilor asked, making a gesture of suspicion.

"They claim to be curious and non hostile, and so far their actions show both traits," Menjeflikon replied with a twitch of his antennae. "We believe they have been systematically exploring outwards from their home world, which lies fairly close to Hivehom in stellar terms. The likelihood is that they simply discovered us in the process and have been watching to gain information and decide whether we should be contacted. In a preliminary interview with Captain Siltuzixta of the Rylix, he said that he felt that they were genuinely friendly and had gone out of their way to help him and his crew, purely because it was the right thing to do. He was impressed with their captain, having met her face to face and talked for some time. He was also at pains to point out that they could just as easily ignored the Rylix and continued with their mission as it was originally intended, which would have left him and his people in a very precarious position."

His antennae showed amusement for a moment. "They made a number of friends in the process. Several of the crew were very intrigued by them, and one engineer is already asking if he can be on the first contact team." He paused, then added in dry tones and with a resigned gesture, "He's Ryuzenzuzex's grandson."

"Ah," High Councilor Kinzortifen said with a knowing tilt to her own antennae. "That is, I suppose, both in character and unsurprising..."

"Indeed," Menjeflikon said with a whistling sigh. "That family is… odd."

"But they have produced many of our greatest pioneers and scientists over the centuries, so clearly something is working," she chuckled.

"If you call what they do working," someone else mumbled, "that entire hive is warped at best," which provoked a general wave of clicks of amusement and flicking antennae.

When it subsided, Menjeflikon carried on, "Their captain said that their ship was in fact intended as a first contact vessel to begin with and was actually on its way here when they detected the Rylix having difficulties while waiting for another ship to rendezvous with them. Without that delay, it's possible they would have missed the drive failure and we would currently be wondering what happened to another vessel."

"What prompted them to introduce themselves at this particular point in time?" she asked with a slight gesture of curiosity. "If they've been observing us for years, they must have had some reason to pick now to open contact."

"We're not yet sure," he replied. "That is a matter we need to discuss with them. So far we've merely made sure their ship is somewhere we can keep an eye on it while keeping the public from getting involved, and dealt with the Rylix and her crew. Beyond that will require some form of ambassadorial party of our own, we feel. The Science Council recommendation is that we appoint Academician Ziljinrytix as our scientific liaison, with a team of his choosing. An ambassador and other required political individuals is outside our field of expertise and we leave it to the High Council to decide what the next step should be."

He made a gesture of respect to the High Councilor and her staff with all four hands, then retook his seat. Kinzortifen looked around the chamber. "You have all heard the Councilor for Science's report. Are there any objections to opening formal first contact protocols with the alien species?"

One by one, each member of the government and military present signified assent with the motion and no objections to continuing. "Very well. We will proceed with selecting an Ambassador of our own, put together a research team based on the Science Council's recommendations, and begin talks with our new neighbors. The Great Mother willing, we have made some interesting friends."

The next two days were more active in political terms than the previous ten years, and caused considerable confusion and conversation among both the government and the public. In the end, though, everyone came to consensus and suitable people were picked for the job, a move that in every case would be the highlight of their careers.

After all, history was watching very closely indeed to see what happened next.


January 2116
Orbit of Dashaar, sixth planet of Hivehom System
Onboard IS First Contact Group ship
We Come In Peace

#Jupiter is better.#

"Well, yes, I'd have to say it is, but that's still a nice gas giant," Captain Bertels chuckled. "As they go. Be polite, we're guests."

#Oh, all right. I just think Jupiter is better, that's all.# Gort snickered a little in her head, as they watched the Thranx shuttlecraft, a ship about a third the size of their own, approach. It was carrying the hastily assembled diplomatic and scientific teams the aliens had put together in just over six days, which was fairly impressive in her view. Her counterpart on the Rylix, Captain Siltuzixta, had told her that the Thranx didn't have a standing alien affairs department and would have to create one from scratch, which might take some time. Clearly they'd pulled out all the stops to get it done this quickly.

She assumed there would also be military and intelligence assets in the nearing group, which they'd expected and planned for. They didn't have all that much to hide right now and the plan had always been to be honest and as open as possible, and there was nothing on the ship which could cause problems that the Thranx could actually get at if it all went bad. If nothing else, they could blink home at will with no warning, and there was no effective method to prevent that.

All in all they were about as safe as they could be. Having spoken to Siltuzixta, Jacolien was of the opinion that the Thranx were very unlikely to cause any trouble without severe provocation, which was backed up by their own data from years of remote study.

The insect-like aliens weren't prone to hasty decisions. They appeared to think things over rather more thoroughly than humans had tended to in the past, which had clearly let them avoid a number of the nastier problems her own species had inflicted on itself and its home world. Even now, close to a century after global sanity was restored, they were still paying the price of everything that had happened and would be for a long time. Without the revolution in basically everything due to the n-link, strong AI, fusion technology, and a number of other breakthroughs that had happened in the nick of time, the prevailing opinion was that by now humanity might have ended up extinct.

An own goal to end all own goals, she mused. One she was profoundly grateful they'd managed to avoid.

It was still going to take many decades to get the Earth back to what it should be. But with the Blink drive and all the other things that had come out of WIMP research, along with vastly improved medical technology as well as, again, AI, the species was already spread out enough in the nascent colonies around half a dozen stars that even if the worst happened someone could rebuild. Given another fifty years at the outside, there would be more humans on other planets than had ever lived on Earth even at its peak population eighty years ago.

Not that anyone wanted to risk having to rebuild. Which was why so much effort had been put into methods to deal with problems that could take them back to the bad old days before they started. So far, it seemed to be working, and as time went on, it would become steadily more effective.

Human nature was difficult to change, but not impossible, given the right knowledge and impetus. Nearly wiping out the planet in a nuclear war that was only barely aborted on top of massive and undesirable environmental change was definitely the right impetus, and the knowledge had come with time and vast effort.

An ongoing project, but one that people were hopeful about.

Adding a sapient alien species to it was going to produce some interesting results, though, she was fairly sure of that…

Watching through her mindscape as the Thranx vessel gently drifted closer, the pilot very careful and skillful, she nodded a little as it stopped ten meters from their lower airlock. The matching one on the other ship was triangular, which seemed to be a Thranx thing, she assumed due to them evolving as a tunneling species and still tending to design their buildings and ships with considerably less headroom than most humans would normally prefer. Their species was built quite close to the ground as well, which would influence this sort of aspect of their engineering.

It was a little surprising, given the very significant differences between their two species, how similar they were mentally. She'd read all the information available on the Thranx and even watched some of their entertainment broadcasts and, allowing for the species difference, found them perfectly understandable. And a couple of them very funny.

Having a similar sense of humor, she thought with amusement, probably boded well for future relations.

The Thranx ship very carefully closed on theirs, coming to a final stop under two meters away. #They're maintaining position with a gravitic beam,# Gort reported. #Solid positional lock. I'm deploying the docking tube.# They'd designed a system to connect a standard human airlock to a standard Thranx one months ago, but this would be only the second time it was employed. While she watched the tube extended from around the lower lock, then shifted shape at the far end to match the triangular alien airlock. The tube neatly slipped into the relevant connector on the other ship, proving their design was correct, and latched in place. She saw a blue light come on next to the Thranx airlock, which was their equivalent of a human green one, presumably signifying that their ship was happy with the connection too.

#Positive lock, handshake with Thranx system received and acknowledged. Both our systems are synced. I'm matching the pressure in our ship to their standard.# She felt her ears pop a little as their air pressure rose very slightly, but it was barely noticeable and well within human tolerance. #Just to be polite,# he added with a laugh.

"Good idea," she smiled. "Well, let's go and meet our welcoming party." She turned and headed out of the bridge, nodding to the crew on duty as the first officer took over, and walked towards the elevator to the lower deck. A moment later, a door to the side opened and Gort's human-form avatar stepped out to join her. The ship AI didn't bother with it most of the time, being one of those who preferred to remain disembodied, but he had it available for formal events where an entire star-ship turning up would cause problems at the punch bowl.

She glanced at him, then said, "I like the hair color."

"Thank you," he replied, patting his deep blue hair with a grin. "I thought I'd try something new."

"It suits you."

The pair kept going, descending four decks, then walking along another corridor for a hundred meters, finally arriving at the staging area with the lower airlock at the far end. Already present were Lieutenant Takamatsu, and the ship security officer Sergeant Mitch Gregson.

Once, such a small delegation welcoming an unknown party aboard a ship would have been considered unwise. These days it was entirely reasonable, and if anything overkill. Even leaving Gort out of it, any of the other three could via their n-link connection to the ship systems bring to bear any number of self-defense measures, from concealed stun weapons through closing or opening any door or bulkhead in the ship to if necessary engaging the drive to simply run for it. They weren't a warship, after all, and retreat was always an option. Unless their visitors decided on an all out assault, which seemed extremely unlikely for a number of reason, they were perfectly safe.

Even if that did happen the attackers would be fairly shocked to find themselves moments later sitting in a security area in a system thousands of light-years away with quite a large number of heavily armed and entirely unamused security people, both organic and AI, glaring at them.

"Captain." Takamatsu nodded respectfully, while the sergeant saluted. "The diplomatic party is ready to board, awaiting your go ahead."

"Tell them we're ready, please, Lieutenant," Jacolien replied as she stopped next to the other woman. Gort moved to the side, all of them watching through the external and internal cameras as their outer airlock door opened. Moments later the Thranx shuttle door also did the same, to reveal six of the insectoids, who peered into the docking tunnel with what looked like curiosity and possibly slight apprehension. Everyone on this mission had been fully briefed on the Thranx language and were running translator modules on their n-links, allowing them to read a surprisingly large amount of the alien body language.

The Thranx made a considerably larger use of gestures and other body motions while speaking, and had more limbs to do that with, so replicating it exactly for a human would be almost impossible. However, the synthetic avatar method to produce the same result seemed to work well, certainly according to the crew of the Rylix who had been quite impressed, and the overall feeling was that longer contact with the aliens could eventually produce a short-hand variant of their language. They were perfectly capable of communicating with only audio, but the gestural additions seemed important in much the same way humans valued eye contact and being able to see each other's faces. And, of course, humanity was very familiar with gestures while speaking, one only had to watch a native Italian-speaker being excited about something to see that, but they didn't formalize it to the extent the Thranx had.

While Jacolien idly pondered linguistical issues, she kept watching the Thranx diplomatic party, who had after a brief and quiet conversation, started along the short tunnel. The lead figure was obviously someone of fairly advanced age by the color of their exoskeleton which had darkened to a deep shade of indigo, although the alien seemed to move with the same ease as their younger colleagues. Immediately behind this person was another one who seemed to also be getting on in years based on the data they had on the species, and was slightly smaller than the lead one. The remainder of the party were clearly considerably younger, two of them males who moved with a certain air about them that made it clear to her that they were combat trained, although she wasn't entirely sure why she immediately came to that conclusion.

The remaining pair were a male and a female, the male one she was fairly certain she recognized. She had a good eye for detail and even though the Thranx were fairly alien to look at, they were familiar enough after both many hours of careful research and briefings, and personal contact. While they hadn't met face to face, there had been quite a lot of communication with the stricken ship during the initial meeting. "I think that's Leyzenzuzex, one of the engineers from the Rylix," she commented, dropping a marker over the relevant person in their shared mindscape. The Thranx was looking around with apparent enormous interest, if his flicking antennae and quick motions were anything to go by.

"He did seem very taken by us," Gort commented with a chuckle. "I think you're right. They may have decided that they needed an engineer to ask engineering questions, and wanted someone who was already known to be familiar with the weird aliens."

"Or they got tired of him badgering them about meeting us and just let him come because it was easier," Lieutenant Takamatsu said with a wry grin. The slightly excitable insectoid had made an impression on them all…

"Maybe. We can ask, I suppose."

"They're in the lock, closing exterior door," Takamatsu said a moment later. A few seconds after that, just long enough for them all to take their positions, the inner door opened.

"Welcome to the We Come In Peace," Jacolien said, bowing slightly to the six Thranx. "I am Captain Jacolien Bertels. It's an honor to meet you all. It is our deepest wish that out of this initial meeting a long and fruitful relationship between friends will grow." She made a gesture that approximated one of respect between two Thranx hives meeting for the first time, hoping she got it close enough despite the lack of two more arms for them to understand without feeling insulted.

The elder Thranx in the lead paused for a moment, looked at the small stylized holographic avatar of one his species that was being projected next to her head via the ship systems, then returned something that was a pretty good attempt at a bow before correctly making the return gesture of respect. "Thank you for your kind words and the aid you gave to our people, Captain," he replied. "Your grasp of our language is impressive, although you lack the necessary limb count to do it full justice." There was a slightly amused air to the tone of his words and the motion of his antennae, which made her feel they'd probably get on all right.

"I am Santhotuzex. I have the pleasure of having been appointed Ambassador between our two species." He made a clicking sound that was a type of Thranx laughter. "It was something of a surprise, to be honest. My career goals never really included meeting a sapient alien species. My hope is that I can fulfill my role adequately, but I feel I must point out that we do not have experience of such situations and apologize in advance for any inadvertent insult I and my staff may cause while we get to know each other."

Jacolien smiled at him, a gesture he appeared to get the concept of based on his body language according to her n-link. The avatar undoubtedly helped, of course. "We will take no offense, Ambassador. We're not practiced in this either, as you are the first alien species we have met. I expect we'll learn the rules together."

Santhotuzex made a gesture of acceptance. "As you say. Allow me to introduce my companions. While there are more people involved in this process than just the six of us, it was felt that we should keep the initial meeting fairly small to minimize confusion and delay." He turned a little, the fairly rigid Thranx body not really allowing him the flexibility a human would have, and indicated the other elder with him, who had been listening intently and with obvious great interest. "Academician Ziljinrytix will be our primary scientific liaison during this initial period. He represents the Academy of Sciences on Hivehom, the most advanced research institute our species currently has, with a history spanning over fifteen hundred years since it was originally begun. He holds multiple qualifications in physics, superluminal travel mathematics, biology, and chemistry."

"An impressive range indeed," Jacolien said, entirely truthfully. There were few humans who would have similar qualifications, which she surmised would be the equivalent of a Ph.D at least.

"It is my honor to meet you and your people, Captain," Ziljinrytix said with a complex gesture suggesting calm excitement and deep interest combined with respect. "I have dreamed of a moment like this my entire life, unlike Ambassador Santhotuzex. Although I will admit to also being somewhat surprised that it actually came to be."

The ambassador motioned to the two younger Thranx, both of whom were staring at the humans with what in their own species would probably have been wide-eyed wonder. Considering the enormous and oddly beautiful compound eyes, wide eyes was pretty much the default, but the wonder was definitely there, Jacolien thought with inner amusement. "You may remember Leyzenzuzex from the Rylix."

"I do indeed," she replied. "Hello again, Leyzenzuzex."

The young engineer, after a pause during which his companion discreetly nudged him, quickly replied "I am very excited to be allowed to be here, Captain." His antennae, which definitely gave some interesting insights into the mood of a Thranx, were flicking around like he was only barely restraining himself from asking all the questions.

"Leyzenzuzex was… enthusiastic… about the opportunity to learn more about your species," Santhotuzex said with a certain wry tilt to his head. "We needed someone with practical knowledge of star-ship engineering, it was decided, and despite his youth he is one of our best." He looked at the much younger Thranx. "Hopefully that youth will not lead him astray."

Suppressing a smile at the noticeably mildly embarrassed tilt to the antennae of the young engineer, and the clear amusement from his female companion, Jacolien replied, "If my understanding of Thranx naming is correct, he would be a distant relation of yours?"

"Indeed. The Zex hive has produced a statistically unlikely proportion of our most talented engineers, scientists, and mathematicians," the ambassador confirmed. "Young Leyzenzuzex comes from a long line of people who have changed our society in one way or another. One of his immediate ancestors, in fact, was the first superluminal drive test pilot. The positive gravity drive was also invented and developed mostly by the Zex hive. Alas, I have no such talents myself and merely became involved in politics and civic duty." He motioned with a pair of hands in a modest manner. "Hardly the pinnacle of intelligence but work that needs to be done."

"I doubt you'd be here if your people didn't think you were up to the job," Jacolien commented, causing him to make a small whistle of amusement.

"Hopefully they're correct. Moving on, next to him is Fensoltulin, my aide. And finally our security detail, Subcommander Zimdibnotix and Sergeant Kaltinzinel." Both the security Thranx made a quick gesture with one of their upper hands, what the species referred to as 'true-hands,' which seemed to be the equivalent of a salute. Jacolien nodded to them. "They are armed with stun weapons only. Is this acceptable?"

"Certainly," she replied. It seemed likely that the pair probably didn't actually need to be armed to be dangerous. She hadn't missed how they'd assessed the entire place the moment they'd come through the airlock, giving the same impression to her that some soldiers she knew did. "It's unlikely in the extreme that they'll need them, I hope, but our own protocols allow them to be carried for your protection."

Turning to her own companions, she said, "This is Lieutenant Sayana Takamatsu, one of our science officers, Sergeant Mitch Gregson, our chief of security, and Gort, the ship mind."

All six of the Thranx, who had been looking at each human in turn as she said their names, stared at Gort, who smiled back. #They seem surprised,# he said privately over the link.

"You are… a synthetic intelligence?" Ziljinrytix slowly said, his antennae moving around in a way Jacolien hadn't seen yet. At Gort's nod, he added, "Fascinating. Truly fascinating. Your species can produce genuinely sapient machine intelligences. This is something that has eluded us for more than four hundred years of research."

"We don't really think of them as synthetic, these days," Lieutenant Takamatsu said, shrugged a little. "They're just people to most of us."

"Extraordinary." The scientist keep looking at Gort for a little longer, then made a gesture of respect. "I can see we have much to talk about."

"With that in mind, shall we go and meet our own ambassadorial team, sir?" Jacolien said with a wave to the door. "The ambassadors and their staff are waiting in the conference room a short distance from here. We felt it was best not to overwhelm you with numbers until you'd had a chance to come to terms with us."

"We appreciate the courtesy, Captain," Santhotuzex replied. "Lead on, by all means. We are eager to learn more about you and what brought you to our home."

"If you'll follow me, then, I'll take you to them." She turned and headed for the door, Gort next to her, with the six Thranx following. The two security people were looking around alertly, but seemed fairly relaxed considering what they must have found very unusual circumstances. It spoke well of their adaptability and training, she thought. Leyzenzuzex was also looking around constantly, his demeanor that of someone who was trying to see absolutely everything at once. Academician Ziljinrytix was hiding it a lot better but she could see through the internal cameras that he was taking careful note of his surroundings. The aide, Fensoltulin, seemed slightly overwhelmed if Jacolien was interpreting her movements correctly, but dealing with it admirably.

In the middle of them, the ambassador was strolling along like he had seen it all before, in a calm demonstration of his ability to stay focused.

"This is a surprisingly small ship, Captain," he commented after a couple of seconds. "Most of our interstellar vessels are considerably larger, and we thought it likely that such was probably a requirement for the task. Clearly we were mistaken."

"The We Come In Peace isn't particularly large, no, sir," she agreed. "Just shy of one hundred and fifty meters long, a little under half the length of the Rylix. But then that ship is a cargo vessel as I understand it, and would be expected to be fairly substantial. Our drive system is also much more compact than your posigravity drive is, and doesn't require the focusing dish."

"It's still based on WIMP theory, though, isn't it?" Leyzenzuzex said from behind the ambassador, sounding a little tentative. "We detected WIMP emissions when you initially arrived next to us. Does it use gravitics?"

"Not as such, directly," Gort replied, glancing back. "We do make use of gravitic systems of course, although not to the level your people have taken them to, but the TBT drive utilizes a rather different approach to superluminal travel than your system does." He paused, then added, "We're still very impressed with the posigravity drive. We were aware of the possibility of such a thing but never managed to make it work for superluminal travel."

Before the young engineer could start asking the questions she just knew he wanted to, Jacolien interrupted, pointing at a door a few meters from them. "Here we are." The door opened as they arrived, she and Gort going through and stepping to the side. All six aliens followed them in, stopping to regard the people in the room. She knew that all of them had been following the arrival of the Thranx since they'd docked, so everyone knew who they were, but she followed protocol. The Thranx didn't know who the humans were, after all.

"Ambassador Santhotuzex, may I present Ambassador David Bowman, and his colleague Attaché Rachel Shepard."

Bowman, a tall man in his late sixties, who gave the impression of urbane intelligence, bowed to the Thranx party. "A pleasure," he said with a faint Australian accent.

"Thank you for meeting us so quickly," Shepard added, with a small bow of her own. She was a compact but very lithe woman in her mid thirties with piercing blue eyes, who carried herself in an oddly similar manner to the pair of Thranx military people. Jacolien knew this was due to her former career in the CCF.

Santhotuzex made gestures of respect to both of them. "We could hardly do otherwise," he replied. "This is, after all, the most important event in our history."

"In ours as well," Bowman smiled. He turned slightly to indicate the other people present. "Our scientific advisers are Doctor Taysir Almasi, physicist, Professor Katrine Lassen, biologist, Professor Alena Komrsková, historian, and Professor Rafael Melo, linguistics." All four scientists were inspecting the Thranx visitors with great interest, but each made the human approximation of the gesture of respect, which the Ambassador returned. Jacolien got the impression he was enjoying himself.

"Then we have over here Sub-Lieutenant Adriano Palermo, our drive systems expert. You have already met Lieutenant Takamatsu, of course."

Once the introductions had been performed and everyone has happy that all the protocols had been met as best they could be bearing in mind this was something of a unique situation, Bowman gestured to the set of chairs they'd fabricated to Thranx specifications, pulled from their public Hivenet. "Please, sit. I expect you have a lot of questions and we may as well be comfortable."

Ambassador Santhotuzex took a seat without hesitation, his abdomen and four legs fitting the odd-looking chair nicely. "Very good work," he said with a motion of approval. "You have indeed done your research. Might I ask how you managed to do that?" He indicated to the rest of his party to also sit, which they did with the exception of the security detail who took obviously practiced stances positioned behind him on either side. Jacolien and the others also sat down to one side, listening with interest and ready to answer any questions they were required to.

"As you've probably assumed, we've been aware of your people for a while now," Bowman replied. "We stumbled across the Hivehom system while surveying local stars as part of the IS mission, which has been tasked with a systematic cataloging of every star system we come across. It was essentially an accident that it happened when it did, as the survey team had gone somewhat further out than they'd been instructed to, purely on their own reasoning that this star was one that might be interesting from the standpoint of having possible life bearing planets." He smiled a little. "They were more right than they expected."

Several of their visitors showed signs of amusement.

"I expect it was something of a surprise," Ziljinrytix commented wisely.

"Yes. That particular team does have an unusually high rate of interesting discoveries. We're more than a little curious to see what they do next." Bowman grinned briefly. "Knowing them, it could be almost anything. However, leaving that aside for the moment, once we found that we had stumbled across another space going species that was almost next door, we began discreetly studying you, basically out of pure interest. We've had stories about meeting intelligent aliens for most of our written history, and probably before that, and we knew that sooner or later it was overwhelmingly likely to happen once we left the planet, but it was still somewhat startling. So we wanted to learn about you before officially meeting you."

"Tapping your Hivenet wasn't particularly difficult," Shepard added. "It's logically designed and elegantly implemented. We arranged to discreetly position probes in your system for that purpose, and tracked your ships to Willow-wane and the other systems you've colonized. We were hoping that we could become friends, but if not, we wanted to be sure we could avoid your space."

The Thranx ambassador made a gesture of understanding. "This is entirely reasonable. I expect we may well have done the same had the situation been reversed."

"It could easily have been the other way around, as you've had functional superluminal travel for longer than we have and we're not that far away as such things go," Jacolien commented. "It was pure chance as far as we can tell that you went in more or less the exact opposite direction."

"Ah. Interesting." Ziljinrytix tilted his head. "How far away is your home world?"

"Approximately a hundred light years," Bowman replied. "Your drive has been good enough to reach it easily for close to a century."

"An opportunity missed," the scientist said, sounding amused. "But in the end it seems to have come to the same result."

"It would appear so," Santhotuzex remarked. "I'm glad I lived to see it however it happened." He looked around at them all. "With any luck, our two species may well find this day to be one we remember forever."

Bowman nodded. "That's our hope. So, with that in mind, shall we learn about each other?"

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure," the Thranx ambassador replied with a gesture of acceptance.

Very soon, everyone present was discussing human and Thranx history, science, politics, and any number of other subjects. Later, Jacolien would reflect on how strangely quickly both sides seemed to decide they had more in common than otherwise, relax, and talk to each other like they'd known one another for years.


Day 29 of Year 6935
Orbit of Dashaar, sixth planet of Hivehom System
Onboard human ship
We Come In Peace

Leyzenzuzex couldn't stop looking around with a sensation of awed near-disbelief running through him. He was on an alien ship! Even though he'd been sure for most of his life that it was inevitable that there was intelligent life out there somewhere, he hadn't honestly expected to ever meet it.

And now he was standing in a room on an alien star-ship made by a species that had evolved a hundred light years away on a completely different world, a species that had only days earlier rescued him and his shipmates from at best a very long trip and at worst an unpleasant death. With the full backing of his own government, albeit with the comment "Please try to restrain your enthusiasm. We would prefer to give the humans a good impression of us," which had been delivered in a sort of resigned manner by the Councilor for Science himself. Someone who appeared to have met his grandfather based on his mutterings as he left the room.

Grandfather was going to love this, Leyzen thought to himself. He'd sent a message but his relative was away from his home on Willow-Wane at the moment with no one sure where he was.

He listened to the several conversations going on around him, doing his best to restrain his burning curiosity and not ask the hundreds of questions he had. He wanted to find out how their drive worked, and where they got their power from, and how fast the ship was, and what the maximum range was, and…

Taking a slow breath, his spiracles whistling faintly as his lungs expanded in his thorax, he tried to calm down. There was plenty of time. It wasn't like the humans were suddenly going to vanish. From what he could see, they were in it for the long haul, and being very careful to ensure that this first official meeting went as well as could be arranged. Santhotuzex, and the government, were working on the same basis, he knew. With the new species being so close, practically next door neighbors, it was vital that they get along, everyone agreed on that. While the human drive was clearly vastly faster than their own system, even the current posigravity drive was easily able to cover the distance in a matter of days, so both species could travel between each other's homes without any true problems. Bearing that in mind, good relations were very important.

He remembered the time on the Rylix immediately following the shock of their initial contact with the human ship, right when they were trying to work out how to salvage a very serious problem. By the time that Captain Siltuzixta had finished talking to his counterpart on the other ship, and they'd run all the diagnostics they could to make sure there was no immediate risk to safety from something going wrong, the crew had mostly recovered from the shock of suddenly finding out for sure that they weren't alone in the universe.

Poor Hyltrorizex had spent quite a lot of that time wandering around looking stunned, Leyzen thought with inner amusement. He'd taken several opportunities to look as smug as possible, which had been hilarious.

It was nice to be proven right, especially so spectacularly…

When the oddly but appropriately named We Come In Peace had moved very close to the Rylix, in preparation to giving the Thranx ship a ride back to Hivehom, no one had really known what to expect. It was clear that there wouldn't be anything like the normal entrance to warped space, as their drive worked on different principles. The two ships had locked onto each other with gravitic beams, that part at least being fairly expected and normal, then…

He still couldn't believe it.

The outside view had flickered and they were looking at the familiar sight of Hivehom at a distance of a couple of dozen planetary diameters, the space elevator clearly visible and identifiable. The entire trip had happened essentially instantly, like magic. There had been an odd sensation that he recognized as a WIMP flux interacting with a living mind, but it was very muted compared to the moment of superluminal warp entry when a posigravity drive crossed the threshold. Almost unnoticeable in all honesty, only his long experience of space travel letting him identify it. Other than that, it had just been a matter of suddenly being somewhere else.

Leyzenzuzex could understand exactly why they called it a Blink drive.

But it left him with more questions that he could even list. How far could it do whatever it was that it had done? They'd covered just over nine light years in a moment too short to be meaningful. Could it go further? All the way between the human world and Hivehom in one jump, perhaps?

Further?

He had no idea, but the more he thought about it the more excited he got. There were so many possibilities it made him dizzy.

Again, he forced himself to relax before he exploded from tension. It took considerable effort.

Turning his head, he once more studied the room they'd been in for quite a few time periods now, and the people in it. Ambassador Santhotuzex was deep in discussion with the human Ambassador, both their historian and biologist, and Captain Bertels. The AI Gort was also involved in their talk. Leyzen watched for a while, still stunned by the existence of a truly sapient machine intelligence, which was something they had a lot of fiction about but had never really come close to achieving. It was obvious that the humans were very, very good with computers.

And star-ship drives.

He wondered what else they were very very good with.

Looking past the main participants in the discussion, he saw that Fensoltulin was carefully listening to it, while operating a data terminal on which she was making notes both with her implant and manually. The female was very quick and precise, he saw, and was able to answer the questions Santhotuzex asked every now and them with almost no delay.

Academician Ziljinrytix was talking to the human physicist while their linguist and the other human diplomat, the female called Shepard, listened and occasionally interjected a point. The rest of the human contingent were scattered around the table transferring their attention to each conversation in turn, apparently easily able to keep up with all of them as he'd noticed that if anyone asked them something, they had an answer ready. He was impressed with their multi-tasking ability.

Both the Ambassador's security detail were still positioned behind him, not having moved at all in a slightly worrying demonstration of military discipline, but were clearly listening carefully as well. He could tell just from the small motions of their antennae every now and then.

Leyzen thought that Subcommander Zimdibnotix was probably rather more than a simple bodyguard. He was of a higher rank than one would expect for that role, and it seemed more likely that he was doing more than one job. It was quite possible, if not certain, that he was also an intelligence officer. That would certainly fit with how Leyzen understood this sort of thing to work.

Glancing again at the humans, he pondered if they were aware of that. Probably. They didn't strike him as being in any way slow on the uptake. But they were polite enough not to mention it if so, and were obviously going out of their way to be open and honest, which he thought was good. The Thranx prized honesty and it was a positive thing to see that apparently the humans did too.

He really wanted this to work out for everyone. Whatever 'this' ultimately ended up being.

Slightly lost in ideas of some future where multiple species worked together like in 'Stellar Exploration Team,' he almost missed his name being said.

"Leyzenzuzex, I'm sure, would be more than interested in learning about your superluminal drive system," the Ambassador commented, looking over to where the engineer had been doing his best to be quiet and respectful while the people who knew what they were doing talked.

"Yes," he managed to say as all the humans looked at him with their strange single-lensed eyes, which were oddly fascinating while being at the same time a little disconcerting. "I would love to find out more about it. I have..." He managed to catch himself in time. "…many questions," he finished a little lamely.

"I'm not surprised," the human Ambassador said with a facial expression that the clever little Thranx holographic avatar near his head showed was meant to be reassuring. A 'smile' they called it. Leyzen was becoming used to how the humans used their ridiculously flexible faces to convey what his species used gestures for, although he was also surprised by how much of their own speech was accompanied by hand motions. It seemed to vary by individual rather than being a distinct part of the language, though. "We seem to have been leaving Mr Leyzenzuzex out of the conversation. My apologies."

Leyzen dipped his head and made a motion of respectful acknowledgment with his antenna. "No apologies are required, sir," he replied. "I am not really important enough to be involved in your negotiations. I'm here to provide my insight if it's needed."

"That's understood, but we don't want to leave anyone out," the human said, sounding amused. His little avatar flicked its synthetic antenna. "I think we've covered the main points we wanted to as far as the politics of the immediate situation are concerned for this first meeting. Obviously you'll all have a lot of questions for us about… basically everything, I expect, and we also want to learn more directly from the source, so to speak. There's no hurry. We're tasked to be here as long as it takes, and as long as you'll have us." He looked around at his people, and Leyzen's. "We are certainly hoping that this is only the first part of a long and fruitful relationship between our two peoples."

"I believe we would also desire that," Santhotuzex commented with a motion of good natured agreement. "We have learned much, but it barely uncovers the first layer, I suspect. There is much digging to go before we finish."

"Indeed."

The human Ambassador glanced at Captain Bertels, his colleague, then Gort. Leyzen got the impression that they'd somehow had a silent conversation, and wondered what their equivalent of an implant was and whether they all had one. "There is an important matter that we need to discuss with you now that we've broken ground as it were. A matter that could save a lot of lives."

Santhotuzex looked at him with a quizzical tilt to his antenna and head, while both security people appeared to suddenly be giving the human their full attention. "Oh? I am intrigued. Please continue."

"Gort?" Bowman turned to look at the synthetic intelligence, who nodded.

A hologram appeared above the middle of the table, one of the best ones Leyzen had ever seen. The colors were a little muted, which might point to the humans not having the same color sensitivity that his species did, but the resolution was superb. He was impressed all over again.

A rotating image of something that looked like a glowing blue mineral floated there as they inspected it. "This is a material we dubbed Planium based on the first location we found it in," Gort said. "It is, in simple terms, a dark matter clathrate equivalent, which binds a huge amount of dark matter into a matrix of normal matter."

Leyzen stared in amazement. That wasn't something he'd have thought was even possible. Ziljinrytix was also looking at the image with his antenna sticking straight up in surprise. "Dark matter in normal space?" the academician muttered in shock. "Extraordinary."

"And hideously dangerous," Gort said, shaking his head. "The energy equivalent bound up in that material is many orders of magnitude higher than even a matter-antimatter annihilation reaction can produce. Our research has pegged it at just over three point five exajoules per gram if it is fully destabilized."

There was a moment of silence, then Leyzen felt his antenna drop limply to the sides. He could see that Ziljinrytix had the same reaction. Interestingly, so did both security people.

"...How much?" Ziljinrytix finally asked somewhat hoarsely, his body entirely still.

"Three point five exajoules per gram. Approximately." Gort wasn't smiling at all. "There's no high energy electromagnetic radiation release, thankfully, but there is a vast amount of thermal output combined with a massive beta radiation spike, along with enormous gravitational distortions. If enough of this material is destabilized at the same time it produces a gravitational field large enough to create a singularity."

No one said anything for some time.

"I sense that this is not a theoretical observation." Ziljinrytix looked at the AI.

"No. We found out the hard way, and were exceptionally lucky to have avoided any real damage," Gort replied.

"How does one destabilize this substance?" Ambassador Santhotuzex slowly asked, staring at the hologram. "And why are you mentioning it to us in the first place?"

Gort glanced at him, then back at the hologram as it changed to show the image of an orange-beige planet, taken from some distance. "It can, unfortunately, be destabilized rather easily by a sufficiently large WIMP flux," he replied, which made Leyzenzuzex stop breathing for a moment. "Such as that emitted by our first, experimental, superluminal drive."

"Or our posigravity drive," Leyzen said, very quietly.

"Yes."

Captain Bertels indicated the hologram. "This is a recording of our first ever test flight of the drive system we designed, thirty one years ago," she said. "It was a short hop from Earth, our homeworld, to Mars, the next planet from our primary. We had at the time several small research outposts there, as well as one fairly large one, and a station in orbit. The station recorded this."

Everyone watched as a pinpoint of blue-white light suddenly appeared on the surface of the planet, then expanded at a ferocious rate into a truly enormous roiling blue fireball that for a moment appeared to be on course to eat the entire thing. It reached far out into space, the view of the surface wavering around it in a way that suggested some serious spatial distortions were happening, reminding Leyzen of the visual effect of watching a ship go superluminal. The fireball expanded and expanded, until it finally paused, dimmed slightly, and began to recede, eventually dissipating into nothingness.

What was left behind was a monstrous glowing crater on the surface which was almost white in the middle, it was so hot, and dimmed to orange near the edges. Little flashes started to happen all over the place surrounding it, moving further and further away, presumably from ejected material plunging back to the surface. He assumed that quite a lot of what hadn't been vaporized immediately had probably reached escape velocity and beyond, leaving the vicinity permanently and turning into a navigational hazard rather than planetary surface.

"The detonation released as much energy as a large asteroid impact," Gort said into the appalled silence. "Luckily our outposts were all shielded by the planet, but there was damage from the shock-waves, and two satellites were destroyed in the explosion. The Pathfinder, our test ship, barely managed to escape, when the computer detected the initial stages of the blast and went to full power conventional drive before the pilot could react."

"We were worried it was the drive itself that had caused the problem," Shepard remarked, all the Thranx looking at her now. "After a lot of research, though, we finally found out what really did it. We discovered trace amounts of planium all over the planet, fallout from the initial blast, and cautious experiments let us figure it out. It took years even so. We put a large amount of effort into long range scanning systems to locate the material so we could remove it. In the process we discovered this."

The hologram changed again.

By the time the humans had finished explaining their research into the ancient alien base they'd found on their fourth planet, left behind by the Promethians as they'd dubbed the mysterious species, the discovery of an absolutely appalling amount of the ghastly planium substance hidden inside a moon on the outskirts of their system, the extremely cautious removal of the entire moon to a position safely outside that system, its subsequent detonation…

It would be safe to say that the Thranx party would have disturbed sleep for some time.

'They destroyed a whole moon. Oh, Great Mother, these people are insane,' Leyzen thought with a weird mix of horror and admiration. 'And definitely don't take half measures...'

He studied the detailed hologram of the huge machine that was slowly rotating in space above the table. "Unbelievable," he whispered, making a gesture to ward off bad luck without conscious thought. "Whoever made those things must have been suicidal." The humans had gone through their initial thoughts that the devices were weapons, a conclusion he thought entirely plausible based on their first encounter with the hellish substance that half-wrecked a planet with no warning, and all the way up to their current research showing they were actually part of some galaxy-spanning and impossibly ancient transportation network made by someone or something that was still unknown. And apparently left active, and simple enough that almost anyone who stumbled across it could use it.

The entire thing sounded like the plot of one of the less plausible computer games he'd played as a young child, he thought numbly. But it was real, unless this was the single most elaborate hoax he'd ever even considered.

He couldn't see any reason at all that the humans would bother with a hoax. What would be the point? So it was almost certainly true, and they had just done his people a massive favor by warning them of something that would, sooner or later, have caused immense damage with no warning at all. The posigravity drive would definitely cross the threshold of WIMP flux density sufficient to make this horrible stuff go off at a significant range, and based on their data, there was at least one of these… gates… in a system that wasn't very far from where their scout missions were exploring.

It was entirely inevitable that in the end, Thranxkind would encounter one of the devices. And that this encounter would be disastrous.

"We tend to agree, Leyzenzuzex," Captain Bertels nodded. "Opinion is still divided on whether the device builders did in fact use planium as a weapon, or didn't realize how dangerous it really is and just stuck to using it for transportation. Hopefully they only used it in these terminals, although we've determined that it could be used to produce a superluminal drive of fairly underwhelming performance. Undoubtedly there are a large number of other uses one could apply it to if you weren't bothered with the risk. Leaving aside the hazard of destabilization, which would make it totally incompatible with any technology based on WIMP theory without enormous and excessive care, it's also highly biologically toxic as far as we have so far determined."

"None of our people would want to be anywhere near a ship that used it," Shepard remarked, shaking her head. "And the thought of having it on a planetary surface gives me cold chills."

"I would agree," Ziljinrytix said, finally breaking the appalled silence he'd been in since they'd started explaining about the planium danger. "And I must express my enormous thanks on behalf of the Science Council for you bringing this to our attention before we discovered the danger ourselves. You have undoubtedly saved lives. At considerable risk to your own people, as researching this material is not what I would call particularly safe."

"We did it at extreme range," Gort remarked, expressing mild amusement. "Trust me, not even an AI wants to be anywhere near that stuff if we can avoid it. We may be synthetic in origin but we value our lives as much as any organic being does."

"Understandable," Ziljinrytix replied with a gesture of acceptance. "You are prepared to pass on your research on this matter?"

"Yes. That was one of the driving reasons for us contacting you at this point in time to begin with," Ambassador Bowman said. "We knew that you were heading in a direction that led to one of the planium devices and would run across it in the end. There is also the problem that we have no reason to assume that the larger network isn't in use by someone, somewhere out there. If it is, and either one of us happened across them, and it turned out that they did use planium in their ships, for example..." He made a gesture of his own that made it clear what he thought of the likely result of that potential encounter.

Leyzen pictured it for himself, then tried to forget what he imagined the results could be.

"That would be unfortunate," Santhotuzex noted.

"At a minimum," Bowman agreed. "So we've been very carefully working on removing any inactive gate devices that would lead into a large section of space, which both our species lives in. Luckily we've determined that the network is sparse in this section of the galaxy for unknown reasons, and there are a limited number of connections from the local sub network into the wider one. We've identified two definite links and one more likely one, and suspect there may be a fourth based on partial data so far downloaded from the devices we've disassembled. As we download their databases, we're building a hopefully complete map of the network, but our estimates are that we're still missing about thirty percent of them at the moment."

"We devised a functional shielding method for WIMP flux that allows our drive to coexist with planium, and even transport it on board, although that's always done remotely," Sub-Lieutenant Palermo commented, causing Ziljinrytix to turn his attention to him. "It allowed us to move the devices with much less effort than the Charon one, although our researchers suspect that if one of the devices was actually active, it would still interact… badly."

With an internal sensation of worry, Leyzen thought that was a massive understatement.

"Where are you moving them to?" he asked curiously, after a look at Santhotuzex, who motioned for him to continue.

"We've established a hazardous research zone well outside the galactic disk for this work," the Sub-Lieutenant replied.

Leyzen felt his brain freeze.

"Outside… the galaxy?" he managed to say, after a wheeze of shock. It took him a couple of attempts to get the words out, and his antenna were flipping around like he'd touched a live wire. "Your drive can do that?!"

Ziljinrytix turned to Santhotuzex. "I believe we probably need to talk to the High Council at this point," he said, sounding calm but obviously suppressing a lot of emotions based on his twitching foot-hands. "Our new friends have given us far more information than I personally expected, and I think we need more expertise on hand before we continue, especially if we're going to have any more of these somewhat startling revelations."

Ambassador Santhotuzex looked at the hologram, which was now showing a very nice view of the galaxy, taken from far further outside it than seemed likely, with a ship clearly identifiable as a human one floating in the foreground. "I believe you may well be right," he finally replied.

"Too much, too soon?" Shepard asked, her own avatar emoting amusement and apology.

Santhotuzex waved a true-hand. "We find ourselves more than a little disconcerted, I'll admit," he said with aplomb. "But that is to be expected under the circumstances, I suspect. This was never going to be a routine matter, was it?"

The human female chuckled. "No, that's true enough."

"Your openness with us has been most welcome," Santhotuzex added. "It speaks well of you. I will need to confer with my superiors before we continue, and as Ziljinrytix says, we will need more of our team to discuss the various subjects that have come up." He indicated the hologram with one hand. "Especially in light of that. I may be wrong, but I believe that it would benefit both our peoples if we were to combine forces on dealing with this problem."

"We are working on a similar basis," Ambassador Bowman agreed. "If nothing else, we think our shielding technology is something we have an ethical duty to give to you, to allow you to make your own ships safe in the vicinity of planium. We are also prepared to arrange a transfer of data on our planium detection methods. We consider both of these a matter of public safety, in a sense." He appeared entirely forthright about the whole thing, which Leyzen was amazed by, but also very impressed at.

"In that case, we should return to our ship and make some calls," Santhotuzex said, getting off the chair and standing up. Leyzen hastily jumped to his feet as well, while the remaining Thranx did the same. "Once again, thank you for your hospitality, Captain, and your honesty, Ambassador. I expect we will be speaking again very soon." He made a gesture of respect to the room at large, as did the others. "This has been informative and helpful. May the Great Mother bring us all good fortune in our future meetings."

"I'll take you back to the airlock, Ambassador," Captain Bertels said as she and Gort stood and walked over to the door. Leyzen fell into place next to Fensoltulin and followed as the diplomatic party headed back to the tunnel to the shuttle, his mind whirling.

He could hardly wait to see what happened next, and he had one hell of a story for his grandfather when the older Thranx finally popped up again.


February 2116
International Governmental Cooperation Committee Building
Extrasystem Control Group

#Initial contact with the Thranx has gone far better than we could have hoped for,# Athena said to a silent room, humans and other AIs alike all listening carefully. #Our diplomatic mission has had great success in opening a dialog with them. While it took a little while for them to put together an equivalent committee, not having had the requirement for such a thing until we arrived, they rallied rapidly and remarkably professionally. Their Ambassador, Santhotuzex, is an exceptionally good diplomat and has been instrumental in the entire process, as have their scientific people. Our divulging of the planium problem definitely impressed them, as did our offer to share our shielding and detection technology. There has been a certain amount of mild suspicion from some quarters of their society as to why we would be so generous, but for the main part they are inherently more cautious than humans are, so that's to be expected.#

She looked around at the assembled representatives, then continued when there was no interruption, #Overall our people have impressed them, and been impressed by them. As we expected, we were asked to provide proof of our data, which was easily done by taking a group of their politicians and scientists to the research area, showing them the work we're doing on the planium devices, and also demonstrating the end result of a WIMP flux interaction with a small amount of planium.# She looked somewhat amused. #Completely destroying a large asteroid with half a kilogram of the material apparently made an impression.#

There was a wave of laughter, then she went on, #We have had an unofficial request from the Thranx Science Council for cooperation on the planium device situation. It was delivered by Academician Ziljinrytix directly, bypassing their government, but appears to have the support of their own ambassador. Ambassador Bowman has requested that we debate the matter, and if we reach consensus, work on an official treaty we can offer them on merging our resources to deal with the remaining devices, and any other planium deposits either of our species encounters.#

"Considering how recently we began talking to them, isn't that rushing things rather a lot?" Premier Clarke asked quizzically. "I was under the impression that the Thranx tended to be somewhat slower in this sort of thing."

#In general, yes, that's entirely correct,# Athena nodded. #They are definitely acting a little uncharacteristically in some ways based on our research. That said, we do know that when they decide to do something, they tend to put in the effort to do it correctly and efficiently. This particular revelation unnerved them a lot, and I suspect that they're worried that they might run into planium without realizing the danger until it's too late, so they're taking immediate precautions. We do know that the accident onboard the Rylix caused them to pull that entire drive series from active use within days, which is certainly working on an abundance of caution. We've likely triggered the same thing with what we told them.#

"I can't see that there's a downside in agreeing to that, since we were going to give them the relevant technological knowledge anyway," the EPA director of technology commented. "They could undoubtedly work it out for themselves in the end anyway, since all the data we have shows that they're fairly close to us in WIMP theory, and very intelligent too. Yes, the shielding isn't an obvious application, but we worked it out, and I wouldn't want to assume we could do something they couldn't."

"Is there any risk this information could be used against us?" one of the representatives from the Democratic Republic of West America asked, sounding worried and a little paranoid. It wasn't unusual from that part of the world bearing in mind their history. "Are we giving potential opponents some advantage we'll come to regret?"

Athena turned to him. #Our projections show that the Thranx are extremely unlikely to initiate any form of conflict with us, as they're by and large quite peaceful. Yes, their history amply indicates that they can and have had internecine wars, but nothing on the scale of what our species did, and nowhere near the insanity of the Mad Years. Such a thing to them would be anathema. They are not a particularly expansionist people and have more than enough resources to satisfy their likely needs for the foreseeable future, even in the absence of the blink drive. And in our case, of course, our current society has passed the point where we're likely to ever seriously be in competition with them for the same reasons. Compared to a century ago we simply don't have any practical limits on either resources or space, which are the two overwhelmingly important drivers of conflict between two groups.#

She glanced at the others, many of whom were nodding thoughtfully, or looking like they were thinking over her words. #In my opinion, cooperation with the Thranx is far more sensible than contemplating some vastly unlikely sequence that might bring us into opposition, or even ignoring them. We have more in common than we do otherwise, remarkably enough, and they may well have decided the same. I would advise that we continue down the path we're on and see where it takes us. I'm not saying we shouldn't have plans just in case something goes wrong, nor am I suggesting that we'll never run into a hostile species with which we can't come to an agreement, but I am saying that all the evidence so far is that we have been extraordinarily lucky with our first First Contact. It would be best to seize the opportunity it presents.#

There was a moment or two of silence, almost everyone in the room seeming to feel she had a point.

"Thank you, Athena," the DRWA representative said politely. "You make some good points, as usual. I withdraw my question."

#My pleasure, sir,# she replied with a smile.

"Are there any other objections to the report and advice Athena has given us?" Premier Clarke asked, looking around. He sighed inaudibly as the delegate from the Empire of Texas, a short man who had been described fairly accurately as 'A ten gallon hat with a five gallon man trying to hide in it,' hopped to his feet. "The chamber recognizes Lord Alamo. You have an objection, sir?"

"I do! Why are we wasting time talking to a bunch of insects? There are more important things we should be doing."

#More important than the first intelligent alien species in humanity's history?# Minerva, the IS AI, commented acidly and somewhat incredulously. #May I ask what you had in mind?#

"We should be establishing more colonies," Lord Alamo said loudly. "What if something happens again? We don't have enough people out there yet to be safe. The Empire of Texas once again demands our own fleet of ships, and a suitable planet to establish a colony to preserve our culture in case of a repeat of the Quick War."

"I trust you remember what actually happened back then and who was responsible?" Premier Clarke asked mildly. The other man looked slightly embarrassed, but didn't back down.

"We're well aware of the truth of the matter," he said.

Athena was looking a little dubiously at him, which seemed to make him more embarrassed, but she didn't say anything.

"We've been over this a number of times, Lord Alamo. The Empire of Texas has not yet satisfied the IGCC that it's quite at the point where it would be… entirely practical… to simply hand over TBT drives to it. Considering certain events in the last decades… it could be politically slightly problematic," Premier Clarke responded, picking his words carefully. Everyone present knew exactly what he was talking about, and no one was keen on giving the crazy EoTs star-ships. "However, you do have a point about more colonies. If your government would like to draw up a proposal to be placed in front of the full council at a later date, you have my word we will consider it carefully. But right now we're mostly concerned with the ongoing Thranx situation and should probably stick to our agenda."

Lord Alamo appeared ready to say something else, but a severe look from Athena made him pale a little and sit down again. "That is acceptable," he replied, making some notes on the archaic paper pad he carried around as part of his carefully cultivated image.

"Excellent. Anyone else?" Clarke looked around. No one responded. "In that case, I propose that we discuss how we proceed along the lines Athena suggested, vote on it, then break for a recess before hearing the latest results from the PDST."

There was mass agreement, and the next couple of hours were filled with a lively but good natured debate. And for once, the Empire of Texas delegate didn't lose his temper, but sat there and joined in, even coming up with some actual sensible suggestions for the first time in memory.


GS year 2402.5
Quarian Migrant Fleet Exploration Ship
Tralket
Captain's Office

"Captain?"

Rael'Zorah turned to look at the person who'd spoken, putting his back to the reinforced porthole though which a vast expanse of stars could be seen, the edge-on view of the Core glittering with points of light and spectacular dust clouds illuminated from within. He'd been staring at it for nearly half an hour, lost in his thoughts about recent discoveries that had suddenly changed almost everything in ways he still couldn't quite pinpoint.

"Report."

"Our last probe came back a few minutes ago." His aide paused, then went on, "There is no sign of the Relay. We're definitely in the correct system, and it was equally definitely here the last time someone looked approximately twenty-three years ago. There's no trace of debris, either, or any eezo emissions anywhere we can scan."

The captain looked at his aide for a few seconds, trying to work out what this meant.

"An entire Mass Relay, just… gone," he finally said softly, feeling worried. "I would have said it was impossible, but there it is. Or, rather, isn't."

He prodded his omnitool and brought up a stellar map, then entered a long series of digits. His aide handed him an encrypted data unit, which he quickly downloaded the contents of, the effect being the symbol representing the Relay that should have been in this system changed color from yellow to red. Some more work made the projection zoom out to show the galaxy from above, with known Relays shown in violet if active and yellow if dormant. Colored planes separated the projection into the various spheres of influence of the relevant galactic powers, and those in turn from the much larger amount of space that was currently entirely unknown.

There were a few distant Relays that had small volumes of space around them in various shades showing where expeditions had explored, but the bulk of the illuminated area covered only about half the galaxy at most, with large intrusions where there was no known route through the Relay network for access. He knew that although the supposedly explored amount of space was enormous, the actual number of systems in it that had ever been reached by any Council species, or non aligned one for that matter, was a small fraction of the total. People in general didn't travel more than a perhaps hundred light years or so from a Relay unless they were desperate, or on some form of well-funded mission, normally military. Or, on rare occasions, incurably nosy.

Which, he thought with dark humor, meant either his own species, the Turians throwing their weight around, or the Salarians being Salarians.

The Asari didn't generally bother with exploration for its own sake, at least in recent centuries, although a long time ago they'd engaged in that a lot, which was of course how they'd discovered the Citadel. These days they seemed more or less content to play their political games with the current system. The Turians would explore but generally only if they saw some military advantage from the activity, which again tended to mean relatively short missions since otherwise the supply lines became prohibitively long and the costs excessive.

The Salarians would, if they thought there was something that would be useful to find, go to considerable effort to extend their range, but even they would balk at a trip of more than a couple of months in real space. If nothing else it took a lot of resources and time to run a ship using normal FTL for that long, and that far, requiring frequent stops to discharge the drive cores. That required access to the right sort of star system, and while they were not uncommon it still took time and effort to locate one when you were in unexplored space, which was yet another limitation on long range missions. It could be done, of course, and Quarians were more aware of what was involved than probably anyone, but it was still a lot of effort for what could easily turn out to be very little gain.

The Relay network was much more practical to use, suffered from none of these issues, and was vastly faster. He sometimes thought that once a species started to use it the inevitable end result would be a diminishing of the spirit of exploring for its own sake, which seemed in a sense a pity, but there was no denying it was a lot easier than doing it the hard way.

Now, looking at the stellar map, he was wondering who was out there that was capable of moving, or possibly destroying, Relays. And why they were doing it.

There was no way it was an accident. He could easily see that the missing one neatly isolated an enormous section of the galaxy from easy access through the network. The only known other Relay assumed to lead to that sector was well over four thousand light years away from their current position. It seemed likely that this was in fact the point, answering the question of 'why,' but of course without the answer to 'who' and 'how' there was no way to be certain this was true. He just couldn't think of any other reason to engage in that sort of activity.

"It looks to me like someone doesn't want visitors," his aide commented, causing him to nod slowly.

"That's certainly the most obvious interpretation of this," he agreed. "I would be fascinated to know why."

"Perhaps they're just very private?" the other man suggested.

He snorted with laughter. "That is an enormous amount of effort to go to for privacy," he replied. "Although I can't say it's impossible." Zooming the projection to only show the inaccessible section of the galaxy, he slowly rotated it, peering at the stars that moved past. The database had enough information to show a vast number of them, but he was certain that there were at least as many more not visible. Stellar mapping over those distances, even from different viewpoints, was not trivial, and there would certainly be a lot of data missing.

"Hundreds of thousands if not millions of cubic light years of space, hundreds of millions of stars, uncountable numbers of planets… close to ten percent of the entire galaxy, with no Relay route into it we know of, aside from this one, and another one all the way over here. What's lurking in that space?" he said quietly. "And who..."

Both of them were silent for a moment, watching the projection slowly turn. "I'm not sure I want to know," his companion eventually said. He sounded disturbed. "Considering what's popped out of dormant Relays in the past..."

"Indeed. It's possible that those Relays disappearing is a good thing." Rael'Zorah shivered for a moment, remembering the stories of the Rachni wars.

"Possibly we're jumping to conclusions. It may be that there's an innocent explanation. Perhaps this Relay never existed and the catalog entry is mistaken, or located it in the wrong place," he said after a moment. "We'll check the two adjacent systems once we've discharged the drive core."

"And if we still don't find it? What then?"

He sighed. "I don't know. We'll report it to the Admirals and let them worry about it. We also will not mention it to anyone else, or we'll end up starting rumors that will cause no end of trouble. If the Asari, Turians, or worse the Salarians, hear about this, they'll undoubtedly start poking around, and if someone genuinely is capable of moving the damn things, I for one don't want to see what else they can do." Pointing at another symbol a considerable distance from the one marking the Relay they couldn't find, he added, "The point to get really worried is if that one vanishes as well. There would be no other explanation then besides someone inside this volume not wanting visitors."

"If it does get removed, however that is done, they'd pretty much get what they wanted," the other man noted. "That area is far too large to explore with conventional FTL. It would take centuries."

"Yes," he agreed, nodding slowly. "It also makes me wonder where they moved the Relays to. And whether they moved ones inside that zone..." After a while, he shrugged. "We may never know, and we certainly won't figure it out here and now. Wipe the probes, make sure everyone knows to keep their mouths shut, and head for the gas giant. We'll discharge the core and set a course for the next system. We have to report back to the Fleet in eight days and we have a lot of work to do."

"Sir," his aide nodded, then turned and left the cabin, leaving Rael'Zorah to contemplate the holo projection for a few minutes, before he turned it off and walked back to the porthole. Staring out of it he went back to his private thoughts.