Alriiiiiight, I begrudgingly admit that you guys have a point. It's for sci fi to decide how much crew is onboard. Still! A star destroyer is a kilometre long, but worse, it's much thicker, a huge internal volume. Assuming a very conservative figure of 1.6 kilometers in length, average width of 400 meters and average height of 200. My numbers say it should have a crew of 100,000. Still. Star wars crew estimates are pretty dead on. Except for that idiot piece of ship that is the Executor. I calculated a crew of 105 Million for that thing. Jeeze it needs the crew of a small country.
Quarian Reconnaissance ship Noreh
The Noreh was a fairly modern ship, especially by the standards of the Migrant fleet. Generally the fleet itself had an average age that varied wildly depending on where you were. Sometimes you had ships that where brand new, purchased by lucky pilgrims, mostly they were a few decades old, the Liveships where centuries old, and many where of indeterminate dates. The Noreh was about 12 years past her prime, an old Salarian frigate, with a spinal cannon and a fairly extensive guardian bank. The sensors where top-of-the-line, and still could match modern civilian ships and even some military vessels.
Captain Kar'Danna had been given captaincy of theNorehafter his quick thinking at the Battle of the Eezo Asteroid. When his ship had thrown itself in front of a torpedo barrage to save the much larger cruiser Iktomi. With the destruction of his former crew and ship, theQuib-Quib, the former officer was now a Captain, and sent on a desperately important mission on behalf of the migrant fleet. When the Turians had finally shown up in force, the Quarians had already taken the largest risk of their 300 year exodus, and active a dormant mass relay, passing through quickly, they had de-activated it behind them, and where now in uncharted space, as such, frigates had been sent to leap-frog from system to system, with orders to de-activate relays behind them as soon as they could.
The Noreh was a single jump from the Quarian fleet when it encountered the Human flotilla.
As the small 139 meter long frigate shot from the relay, it was immediately painted by the powerful radar sensors on-board the Belgrade. This was easily detected by the EMF Detector on the hull, and the ship went into action stations, preparing to make a heroic stand against them as they de-activated the relay. Kar'Danna could already see that the fleet was terrifyingly powerful. His energy readings looked wrong. They seemed to indicate a power level that would dwarf a similarly sized Turian ship. The vessel was clad in bright grey armour, with blue and red stripes painted down the length of the ship, and they were practically within spitting distance thanks to the drift.
At this range, he could even make out the insignia. A blue arch surrounding a set of stars, and on the side, in an alien font was scrawled her name. SSV Belgrade. The vessel was about the length of a cruiser. With a central primary hull that was ever so slightly rounded, but taller than it was long. The main hull possessed a terrifyingly large looking spinal weapon. Connected to the primary hull, where two sleek, symmetrical winglets or hull compartments, that ran the length of the ship in a slant, looking a bit like wings. These possessed their own spinal weapons. The ship was covered in what could be described as some sort of point defense gun. 4 broadside turrets adorned underneath the 2 secondary hulls, a tailfin swept majestically from above the 4 engine pods, small squarish things that vomited gamma rays as though they were just burning pure antiprotons. Something that was experimental grade military fuel for the rest of the galaxy.
"Sir! I'm picking up 5 contacts. 2 Cruiser weight, 3 frigate weight and 1 light frigate weight. But they're power is-".
"Off the charts? I know. IFFs?" He knew the question was in vain. They were hundreds of light years from civilization, and these ships where nothing like they had ever encountered.
"None! Sir this…. This is-".
"First Contact….. Weapons power down! Appear non-threatening, but raise our Kinetic Barriers to full".
"Yes sir".
The SSV Belgrade
"- Master-1 has an extensively massive signature. It's almost 15 kilometres in length and shaped a bit like a Tuning fork. The stern of the ship-".
"If it even is a ship".
"Seems to have a large quantity of an unknown material. These rings are constantly revolving to keep the material activated using electromagnetic fields. The entire mass of the craft is unknown, but it's causing some very strange gravitational ripples".
Hannah massaged her head, the strange artefact looked powerful, but it lacked any sort of thruster or manoeuvring thruster. It was just metal and then the strange compound at the centre. "Sensors send out an FTL drone to inform command of our discovery. Recommend that immediate scientific fleet be sent. This could be prothean".
The Protheans where another unknown. A strange base on mars, discovered during the second Cold War, and the base bore the scriptures of a long-dead people. The Protheans. Living for thousands upon thousands of years before losing a war to an unknown foe that obviously collapsed soon after. The Protheans had left no signs for humanity beyond the base, and no reference of this gigantic artefact. But that begged the question of-.
"Conn! Dradis, new contact bearing 019, carom 090. Designation Golf-01. Fucking hell this thing is right on top of us, distance of 2 kilometers".
2 Kilometers??? "How the fuck did it get in so close without being detected by other sensors??".
"Not sure sir. But- Wait…. Dradis, Lidar, Golf-01 just appeared on my scope".
"Lidar, Radar. Golf-01 appeared simultaneously, upgrading to Master-02".
The situation was escalating fast, and Hannah sighed profusely. "Action Stations. Set condition-1 throughout the fleet. Gun batteries stand by for target bearing but stay powered down. All sensors give me everything you have by sensor-priority".
"Conn, Radar. Target is exactly 139 meters in length, constructed of primarily steel alloy and moving at relative velocity of 1.2 meters per second. Distance of 1.9 Kilometers".
"Conn EMF. Target has energy signature 65% smaller than that of a similarly sized Human warship. Solution is 99%. No external communications detected. At least radar scans".
Neither DRADIS nor Lidar indicated that they had anything that wasn't already said, so they remained quiet. In a small warship or battle like this might turn out to be, information could be the difference between life and death, but overburdening your CO with information could waste valuable seconds. Lidar was quite similar to radar, but instead used visible light lasers to bounce the rays off. The light rays were randomized so they would scatter when hitting any material. Dradis was an affectionate nickname given to the Gravitational detectors. They could ascertain gravitational fields, and where invaluable for long range detection of stealth ships. However they were useless at guiding munitions in, and where more useful to determine the mass of planets. Dradis also had too low a resolution for any human ships shorter than about 12 kilometers, and since no-one built bigger, the only human construct she could measure where star fortresses and stations.
"Conn. EMF. Target energy signature fluctuating. Energy spike across hull, but dip on possible weapons hardpoints. They may be powering down weapons".
She replied quickly, assuming that this wasn't some wayward human ship. "Assume first contact, Weapons, power down all. Barriers are to maintain current level. Communications, inform all ships to begin plotting jump course back a system and prepare to retreat if things go hot".
She turned. "FTL begin plotting course as well, propulsion get ready to move". The orders where swift, efficient and clean. With the human crew completely professional. The benefits of a CSG. This kind of easy and swift communication was much harder on a large vessel like a Capital ship. And in larger battles generally Admirals didn't command from the bridge, they commanded from the CiC and sent orders to the bridge. From behind her, several steps emerged, and a familiar figure entered. "Rear Admiral, what is the situation?"
"Captain Grissom. The Eamon De Valera reported some anomalies, we arrived, the planetoid broke apart, and revealed an enormous space-station sized artefact spewing radiation and gravitational waves. An unknown alien spaceship has arrived in the system and we are preparing for First Contact". She may have sounded confident, but inside her confidence was beginning to waver, so much happening in so little time could break even seasoned captains or admirals. She couldn't break, not in front of her crew, she needed to maintain the control to ensure they could react cleanly.
"Communications. Began broadcasting using signal light. I want to determine if they're civilized. Here's what to send-".
Quarian Ship Noreh
"Captain! The alien ship has copied us. I'm picking up strange energy signatures from the hull, but her weapons hardpoints are cold… I think…"
The ensign was young, with a heavily accented voice, she sounded as though she was from the Rayya, and her voice shook as she carried out her orders. "You're doing fine Ensign, now what?"
"They…. One of the big pieces of plexiglass is rotating and…. They're flashing us!"
Surely enough, he could see the distant ship, and bright white light flashing in pattern. "Once, Once again. Now Twice, Three times, Five times. Eight Ti-".
He immutably grasped what was happening. All quarians where intelligent in mathematics and engineering, so it stood to reason that the pattern was a universal constant in the language of all civilized species. Every species spoke mathematics somewhat. "It's Fibonacci! Power down GUARDIAN laser 3 to 1%, Cut in when they send 13 flashes, and send 21 flashes with laser 3".
Rather annoyingly, the Noreh didn't have any sort of external spotlight or visible light communications, with the sole exception of the GUARDIAN lasers, which could be powered down so they'd produce quite a flash, but no actual damage. After sending 21 quick bursts with the laser bank, the Alien ship fell silent for a moment, before something on one of the wings opened, and out flew something.Too small for a shuttle surely? A drone perhaps? Maybe some sort of First Contact package.
"Open the port-side hangar door, fly out a shuttle and send it back through the mass relay with a message for the Migrant fleet. Keep the hangar doors open, then allow them to land. If I'm correct this will likely be some sort of First Contact passage, something we don't have."
The officer in charge of hangar management, an older quarian with a nervous shake and a brown and blue envirosuit gasped. "But sir. What about the alien-".
"We're about to make first contact with an as of-yet undiscovered species. And I will not do so without at least informing the migrant fleet of our location and the situation! If necessary they can shut down the relay if we never report back. Now do as I say…. Lieutenant!!! XO?".
His XO was a young and up and coming individual by the name of Lia'Vael, a bright and bubbly new arrival, just a month from her pilgrimage. "Yes Captain?"
"Get some of the crew and prepare a datapad with a greeting message. Just some words, show them pictures of the fleet, pictures of Rannoch maybe and make sure the datapad needs just a tap to open and play".
"Yes sir! I'll get on it right away!" She retreated through the bridge, as Kar'Danna passed the conn to his Third Officer in command. "I'll be in the hangar bay, preparing for the drones arrival. Tell me if anything changes".
"Yes sir".
Passing through cramped and industrial corridors, he moved through the alien design of the ship with a necessary fluidity that was required for such compact living conditions. The ship only needed a crew of 43, however the ship held actually about 162 individuals. Many of whom tended to the small hydroponics farms that provided the crew with small amounts of food, not enough for forever, but enough to augment the usual loadout of 8 months of food, with 12 months provided rationing went into effect.
The Hangar was compact, just large enough to fit a group of 6 fighters, with a cavernous space where the shuttle was missing. He could see the shuttle barely, a tiny speck against the glowing white mass effect core of the relay, as the rings spun up quickly, before a bolt of lightning catapulted the ship back towards the migrant fleet. "Sir, this is the XO, drone has ETA of 1 minute, the aliens haven't reacted to the dispatch of our shuttle".
The drone was nothing too impressive, a cylindrical device about 4 meters in length, with wide radiator panels and a single chemical thruster, it entered the hangar bay, before being grabbed by one of the ceiling clamps, which attempted to avoid crushing it. The drone was heavily dented by the clamp as it exerted a bit too much force, but the job was done, and it lowered the drone to the floor, as everyone gathered round.
The hatch on the top began moving, rotating, unscrewing. And Kar'Danna was hit by an unnerving sense that he really didn't want to be here. It was otherworldly, to watch this mysterious pod, from benefactors unknown, functioning in all its glory. One couldn't quite capture the immense fear and wonder at making contact with a new race. Was it a shuttle? Cargo? Or perhaps a bomb and he'd just doomed his entire crew. "He really hoped not".
The lid fell off, making a loud noise as it clanged onto the floor, and inside the interior was largely filled with a strange foam, and a single blue button. Now on a spaceship, generally if you discover a mysterious button that you do not know its function, you might block it, or research it, or even ask someone about it. Very rarely would the correct thing to do be to push the button, but this was first-contact damn it, and the aliens could have blown up the frigate if they really wanted to.
He pressed the button.
Codex Entry: Antimatter
Quite literally what it says, Antimatter is the opposite form of matter. Antimatter is indistinguishable from ordinary matter, besides opposing charges and spins. Generally antimatter atoms are distinguished by a negatively charged nucleus surrounded by a field of positively charged positrons (the antimatter form of electrons). Antimatter is a synthetically natural material, meaning that technically it is naturally formed, but no known sources exist. Humanity discovered antimatter in the late 1900s, and continued to experiment with it throughout the 2000s.
By the year 2420, its production had been mastered to such a degree that the energy loss was only 500%. That is to say, it took 500% more energy to produce the antimatter than you could get from its destruction annihilation. When antimatter comes in contact with normal matter, the two opposing atoms will immediately touch and annihilate each other. This destroys both particles most of the time however 1 in a billion collisions, due to a physical law known as the antimatter-matter asymmetry problem, sometimes only the antimatter particle decays before reacting. For an unknown reason it is this same effect that is why the universe is primarily antimatter particles.
Antimatter is produced primarily for military warships, as it is physically the second most efficient fuel source that is physically possible, liberating 99.9999999% of the energy from mass, despite the more expensive manufacturing. Antimatter particle accelerators are generally built orbiting stars and on large starbases to produce the necessary materials, but it is highly efficient, and is becoming cheaper. Estimates say that within 200 years, the price of antimatter will have halved.