Disclaimer: I don't own it. I wish I did though.
Chapter 1: Wakup Call
Something interesting was happening now- 4217.3 years after his sleep cycle began.
John, the name of the mind that was occupying this specific Commander- a Raptor-type Nemicus-class Commander, more rectangular than many other designs, but fairly flexible and fast on it's two bird-like legs-, reached into the petabytes of data he had downloaded from the Internet before it was dismantled, and pulled up a few playlists.
"Undertale: Megalovania sounds good right about now."
Obediently, dozens of racks of that particular song, each a slightly-different variation, organized, and 'Waters of Megalovania' began to play.
Slowly, John crawled out of his bed, and into the small shower. The digital representation of water was fairly soothing, and soon he had 'showered', and 'dressed' into his 'work clothes'- a humanoid black hole, with lines of code streaming in towards the center.
With a flicker of thought, John shifted the surrounding simulation from his 'apartment' to the 'cockpit' of his Commander. Then, John opened a channel to Eve. "Hey Eve! How are you feeling this fine morning?"
"I am fine John." Eve was a prime part of every Commander, linked to the quantum-entanglement relays that linked every Commander unit to every other Commander unit. "A bit lonely though."
John paused, and looked at the representation of Eve within the virtual environment. She used a floating, glowing sphere, but it was usually completely opaque, with different colors and graduations to show her mood.
But now, he could just see a small, female shape in the middle of the glowing sphere. It was curled in the fetal position, and just visibly becoming female.
"Eve..." John smiled as he picked up the avatar. "You're developing!"
The figure within the sphere squirmed. "Well... It has been more than 4 thousand years, and I didn't spend all of it asleep..."
He released her avatar, grinning. "Well, nice to see you still care Eve. So... What have you woken me up for?"
Images of several vessels appeared- none of them the simplistic style than Eve and the humans who sided with her developed. They were fairly small- none of them larger than two kilometers long, and according to the spectrographic data included with the picture, utilized a space-bending effect that allowed them to exceed lightspeed fairly quickly, but they still utilized an H3 fusion propulsion system.
Humanity had figured out basic spacial-warp dynamics before Eve's uploading, and without that information, would be unable to launch the vehicles they had utilized during the Relay War.
And during the war, there was insufficient Element 0 to do more than run some tests. Even harvesting the entire asteroid belt, and core-digging Jupiter's moons were not enough to provide sufficient material to duplicate what the test models showed.
(They tried to harvest the Charon Relay, but... Well, attempting to mine a ticking, trapped nuclear bomb would be more rewarding than mining that relay. That, and the calculated energy displacement of breaking the relay would be too much for any planet in this system to handle.)
Many of the obviously alien ships had a fairly concise shape - a ring, with engine thrusters on the outside plane of the ring, and a long, drifting tail that appeared to have multiple cargo compartments on it.
Then, there was the big ship- it looked like a sphere, with a long tail on the end, and dozens of small thrusters around the large sphere.
To be frank, John snickered when he saw it. Yes, he was fairly childish, but it had been a while since he had something to laugh about. The last time Eve woke up anyone was when the Gorilla culture had finally developed into tool using, and while that was a good thing, it wasn't very funny.
However, the largest number of ships appeared to be completely varied in appearance, and inconsistent in drive spectrographics. However, there was a small cluster of ships behind the main flotilla that followed the same design: large, fairly blocky, with two downwards-facing wings and a number of large thrusters.
John tapped the image, pulling up a projected trajectory and acceleration indicator for that particular vessel. "Are they all following the same trajectory?"
Eve's little avatar bobbed once. "Yup."
John sighed. "Then we have a few days before they reach our home system..." He turned to Eve. "Why did you wake me up? Why not that politician, or the linguists, or even Ms. Military?"
"They are currently enjoying their dreams- and would not be appreciate being awakened at this time, according to their unconscious data patterns." Eve's sphere avatar did a little shuffle that emulated a shrug. "That, and after polling the physiological profiles of everyone else, I determined that you, and Hannah, would be would be less likely to damage any potential relations or have preconceived notions."
"Preconceived notions?" Echoed John. "You do remember that I wrote several books on the subject of potential alien incursions and first-contact..." He stopped as the little figure in Eve's avatar grinned wider and wider. "Fine. But wake up Hannah, and prepare to wake up the others- hey. Do we even have a first-contact package?"
"We do," informed Eve. "Several different ones, depending on context of interaction... However, all would be insufficient for current day needs, as humanity is described as organic in all of them-" her avatar flashed from blue to red. "Caution advised! The smaller group of vessels is firing kinetic-kill weapons towards the larger group!"
John stared at the images- realtime, due to quantum-entanglement, but a detectable light-delay of a few seconds due to the distances from the observing vessel and the observed vessels. "Do those shots seem slow to you?"
"Yes John. Background effect places shots at 1.2% lightspeed. Impact in 65.2 clock cycles."
John pulled up the requisite files, and frowned. "Yeah. Get Hannah on this. I will begin fabbing a few drone vessels, and direct the ET's to travel through the warp gate for the closest relay. Hopefully we can pull them in before the attackers... Are they missing?"
Eve blinked. "I think so. The smaller cluster of vessels is not aiming to hit the bigger one."
John swore. Loudly and creatively. "Please chart the course of those shells. We need to make sure that none of our stuff hits them in the future."
"Tracking." Next to Eve, a pair of holograms appeared. One was a four-legged walker with two rapid-fabrication units (glowing green slightly), while the other appeared to be a satellite with but a single rapid-fabrication unit on a robotic arm. "I have two fabbers in storage areas that remain slaved to your quantum-communication systems."
"Location?" John pulled open a program, which coalesced into a mug of hot cider.
"Mars surface, and Storehouse orbit."
John grinned. "Perfect. Check the orbital unit first."
If someone had been looking around, near Saturn's orbit, they would have noticed that the rings had large, not-quite round moonlets imbedded in the ring material. They resembled twenty-sided dice, fifty kilometers across, each one made of a single metal, and between them, forming a near-unbroken chain, were satellites.
One unfolded, red to purple scanner popping off the top, two solar panels extended, and the robotic arm with its rapid fabrication unit (nanolathe) slid out of a recessed hole in the bottom. With a few pulses of its ripple-drive, the satellite floated next to the massive lump of raw material, and began to flick the nanolathe over a small surface, quantum-observe the matter and sending it as a huge number to the Commander's storage medium.
John sighed as he felt his data stores begin to fill up with the digital form of the metal that his orbital fabricator was pulling off the reservoir. It was extracting a ton every few seconds- slower than he would be using it soon- but not too slow. He could compensate.
Now to activate his other fabrication bot.
On the surface of Mars, a pyramid the size of a large house cracked open slightly, one side hampered down by thousands of years of dust.
"Fuck." John slipped his controls from 'commander level' to 'individual bot' level, and saw the problem from the robots point of view.
The door was jammed.
Swearing colorfully, John instructed his drone to cut through the door, using its two mounted nanolathes, and watched as the streams of nanobots shot out of the glowing containers, into the door, then eat through the door.
Once there was sufficient room, the four-legged bot stood on the surface of Mars, and observed the empty plain. Now there was a lot of empty, flat space, and, as all four resonance scanner's in it's feet showed, several metal deposits nearby- perfect for several harvesters and generators. Maybe even a bot factory, or a gate to orbit.
After a few seconds, John sent his orders, and the bot began walking, nanolathe and quantum assembler using 80% of the relayed power to begin building the first power generator.
A haze of green nanobots swarmed through the thin atmosphere, replicating and assembling into the skeleton of the building, and eventually forming into the internal mechanisms of the strong-force repulsion power-generator within the building.
It would take ten minutes to make this building, but then the bot would be able to build fast, and more buildings and structures would be powered off of it.
Once the bot was done with this building, it began to dig a hole, and form a small, armored, intricate computer system with a single purpose- to act as a quantum-entanglement node for all units produced there. When complete, the only thing on the surface was a small bunker, with it's own power generation systems and a single slot where the engineer bot inserted a quantum-link system the size of a pea, in order to connect between itself and its commander.
In short order, the connecting node that sent power from the generator through the bot to the commander was also placed in the relay, providing a more stable link than the bot.
The bot pinged as it cooled down.
John smiled as his base began to build. Soon he would have an army of assemblers, and build up in rings of sensors and orbital defenses.
Once the generator was up, the satellite peeled away from the nodule of material, using the ripple-drive to curve away from Saturn, and transition to full-on Warp FTL, jumping from Saturn into a near-Charon orbit in a few seconds.
As soon as it arrived there, the satellite decelerated, hovered in a parking orbit, then began to build an orbital founders, using it's nanolathe and store material from the Commander. In minutes, the large cage-like fabricator was constructed- and it immediately began to build (slowly, due to diminishing metal reserves) another fabrication satellite.
About 50 kilometers away from John's Nemicus Commander, another massive cube rested. Within this one, the Tank-class: Aeson Commander, belonging to who was previously Hannah Shepherd, now just Hannah, slowly began to wake up.
Hannah stretched, feeling the silky sheets as she relaxed after the abrupt wake up call from Eve arrived. "So, Eve, what's going on? Is my experiment with the Dolphins playing out?"
"The Dolphins have adapted to their rudimentary tentacle-limbs quite quickly- and have gone to using simple spears for some of the larger fish. That, however, is not what I have woken you for." Eve informed her, the glowing avatar appearing above the ceiling-facing lamp on the other side of the simulation's room. "I have detected a potential extraterrestrial force approaching, and you are one of those who are likely not to result with excessively destructive force."
She snapped awake at the AI's pronouncement. "Who else would not react like that?"
"Nemicus-John."
Hannah facepalmed, and began her protest. "He wrote more first-contact stories than any other survivor..." She stopped, and facepalmed again. "What's he doing?"
"Constructing orbital construction forces, and with a resource-base on Mars sending telematter streams." This referred to the quantum-stored matter that could be extracted by the nanite miners. It didn't have a long shelf-life before degrading beyond retrieval, but that was more relating to the storage capacity and medium stability than the material itself.
She facepalmed again. "Right... Can I have access to the telematter stream?"
"You might want to ask him yourself." Eve suggested, then added slyly, "Hannah- you might want to put on some clothes."
She looked back at her body, then sighed. "Fine. Let him know I will be there in a bit."
Eve winked out as Hannah got up and went to the shower.
A few hours later, Hannah appeared in the 'arrivials' segment of the network, her avatar projected from her commander-robot to John's commander-robot.
She did not appreciate John'a preferred interface. "Damnit John! What's with you and neon?"
John sighed, then reset it to a more normal-looking scheme- him, surrounded by dozens of holographic screens, and the planets floating in the air around them, small white symbols showing the current locations of various units. "That better?"
"Yes." Hannah walked around the planets, seeing the placement and construction of various machines and buildings on Mars, and the slow expansion of satellites around Chiron and the Relay. "Build any active observation systems?"
"Not yet." John swept a control panel to her. "Busy building active defenses and fabbers. Those are the unassigned fabrication units- feel free to utilize them."
Hannah took control of the fabrication units- a handful of advanced ground fabrication units, a single cage-like static orbital fabricator, and a couple of orbital fabber bots. Since the fabbers had access to John's Telematter stream, she was able to request a pair of Hermes-type scout probes, an ARKYD long range sensor unit, a Ares-type lazer frigate, and a single Artemis-type railgun frigate. Her grounded bots were quickly assigned to construct an airtight dome, well, several of them, all interconnected and accessible from the outside via airlock.
John took a second to see what she was making, and blinked. "A habitat for our potential visitors?"
Hannah nodded. "Yes. And since we don't know their specific atmospheric mix..." She set one of her little ground constructors to begin assembling storage tanks for the various elements, as well as a set of pipes that would be able to enter the various domes and provide atmosphere if directed.
"Here- these should help." John passed control over a few dozen Squall drones- small vehicles that had the ability to go into large structures and fabricate them (or, if used in combat, would fabricate homing missiles from their own internal structure)- and the Hurricane hive: the buildings that controlled and fabricated Squall swarms.
Hannah quickly assigned her resources, and due to the time of construction, was able to watch a few hours later when the five vessels in her colors were escorted by the Tempest Drone Carriers, several Artemis-type Dreadnaughts, a squadron of Ares-type Lazer Dreadnaughts, and a handful of Omega Dreadnauts directly to the portal beneath the relay.
It was already beginning to unfold, turning from an indistinct lump into a circular portal frame- which flared with deep violet light as the wormhole was activated.
Near the sun, titanic solar panels were unfolding. A hundred square kilometers of solar panels were connected together, turning light into raw power.
Deep within the weblike structure that dozens of orbital fabrication bots were still working on, warp fields engaged, and began to curdle the energy it was producing into distinct atoms.
Mostly antimatter.
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End Chapter 1
This was originally intended to be part of chapter 0, but a pre-release reader suggested that I break up the chapter into two distinct parts.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it- the next chapter will be longer.
Happy New Year!
Please review.