Here we are another chapter! Also I love reading your guys reviews. So I'll answer some of them below! All of them at once in fact!
Archivest Grim: Indeed! Automation is a factor, but remember that any computer systems HAS to have manual backups, lest in the worse case a computer virus or error may cause the destruction of a ship. As such, all the systems are redundant, and the maximum crew complement includes enough crewmen to operate the ship entirely manual, and in the case of larger ships, has double or even triple the crew to ensure round-the-clock rotations.
udkudk: Happy to deliver my friend!
TOGDESTROYER: Thank you kindly! And I am hoping to continue!
Blaze1992: No bases. I've developed all the tech myself. The plasma lances are of my own imagination for a unique humanity, same goes for the weaponry and doctrines. The only thing that is remotely recognizable are the jump drives, which come from battlestar galactic, as do the fighter styles. Though I've gone a bit larger.
I wrote this chapter listening to Bella Ciao
Quarian Migrant Fleet Scout Vessel Noreh, Patrol Fleet
Immediately following his somewhat brash decision to interact with the entirely too-tempting button, a new noise started up, and some sort of musical melody started playing, a large holoscreen appeared, about the same height and width as the drone, before a badge appeared. It was two lines of some sort of plant, surrounding a set of stars. A bar covered the stars scrawled with mysterious text, and the symbol was deep crimson and a star-like orange.
A voice punctuated the music. Kar'Danna couldn't understand the words, but they sounded…. Familiar. The voices were not synthesized in any way, and were smooth and almost musical. On-screen the camera was some sort of spacecraft, flying across a dark void of space, it passed a yellow star, before zooming towards a blue-looking planet. It had beautiful green and orange continents, with vast oceans and clouds across the skies. The space gave way to blue, and across the continents, it zoomed across a city. A concrete jungle of metal and might that pierced the heavens. He could see figures moving, but not make out any specifics. They flew past a spaceport of some sort, ships going and coming, before passing through a long field of green. The trees were majestic, stretching out with boughs unlimited by the hull of a ship. It made him nostalgic for a planet he had never known.
After passing through the forest, it zoomed over a field of dry grass and short stubby trees, a windswept sandy desert, a magnificent mesa canyon of red and orange, an icy but beautiful tundra and taiga forest, and an enormous mountain range, before passing into a field of lightly colored grains. Walking through the grains, he got his first virtual look at the new arrivals. They were slightly taller than Quarians, similar in build with the female of the species slightly shorter and with large glands on her chest. They looked physically fit, likely for hunting and gathering, which indicated a normal planetary upbringing (along with what he had made of what was assumed to be their homeworld). Both had hair, which was interesting. Hair was a uniquely quarian-feature. No other species grew it in any way. That made 2 species now, which was certainly interesting, they had five-fingered hands and he couldn't see the feet. They were truly unnerving because they looked a bit like an Asari crossed with a Quarian.
"Human". Both individuals of their species raised their hands, before saying something in their language. The camera lifted as an explosion happened onscreen, a primitive-looking rocket accelerating upward, before reaching a vast space station, and from there, a spaceship just like the one they'd encountered (though a little older looking) accelerated away. It was clearly a short video, but now a few options had appeared onscreen. None of them actually legible, but at least it was some sort of codex. He passed the datapad along. "Get that to Engineering. See if they can engineer something to interpret our communications systems properly. As the messenger grabbed the datapad, the tap-tap of running interrupted their thoughts, as Lia'Vael returned.
Ahh good, right on time. "Lieutenant! You have something?"
She doubled over, gasping for breath. "Y… Yes sir. We were about to record something when we checked the backup computer systems. You remember when we did the wipe after the battle for the eezo asteroid? just in case we got captured, well we thought we had wiped our secondary backups, but thanks to a security abnormality, the primary stop order came into effect and-".
"Slow down Lieutenant, just tell me what you found?"
She held up a tablet. "We never got rid of our first contact protocols from the council. And since last year when the conclave began considering expansion, the council vid got replaced by a quarian vid from the conclave and the fleet. With some footage of Rannoch and-".
Before the obviously overexcited young girl could give herself a heart attack he placed a hand on her shoulder. "Relax Lieutenant. You did well, let me just-". He took the pad, tapped the screen, and was satisfied that the video would play. It was just as basic as the human one. Just some vids of the fleet, the conclave saying hello, all under masks of course, and then some footage from the geth rebellion.
Placing the delicate computer back into the place it had come from, he looked up towards the control tower, just a set of windows sticking out from the back wall of the hangar. "Control! Place this thing back outside, give it a push towards the aliens, and we'll wait for them to reply. If we need to… launch our auxiliary shuttle and have it tow the drone"
"Yes sir. Releasing clamps, you might want to stand back". The clamps from the ceiling dropped, this time managing to pick up the cylinder with no trouble or damage at all, before dragging it to the exit. The arms let go, but the drone only moved slightly. So the ship oriented slightly, before the arm gave a hefty push, sending the drone towards the distant enemy fleet which sparkled in the sunlight. "Drone is away, the…. Wait…. Alien ships are launching a shuttle of some sort. Captain come look at this thing!"
Hurrying back up to the bridge, he was immediately passed a datapad with the strange vessel. It was squat, barely a few meters high, with a quite vicious-looking kinetic weapon of some sort on the roof, a set of smaller automatic guns on the corners, a set of clamps on the underside alongside some powerful-looking thrusters. RCS controls that were primitive by the galaxies standards marred the immaculate surface, and several inconspicuous tubes that could be countermeasures pods or missile launchers sat on board.
"Looks like their shuttle. Damn, that thing looks powerful. A damn lot more than our UT-47s". The UT47 was a council shuttle, an ugly flying lunchbox with a pair of light accelerators, other than that, it was all utility, relying on thrusters and mass effect cores that weren't individually big enough to lift the shuttle, but complemented each other. At least it was efficient and fast. And some even had door-mounted heavy autocannons.
The minutes ticked by, and the shuttle came to a stop, before firing something from the doorway, it latched onto the drone, before beginning to reel it in, similar to the boarding charges on standard ships. Before long it had recovered the entire 1 kilometer of cable, and the drone was affixed to the back of the shuttle, which returned to the docking port. Rather ingeniously, the Aliens had a dual-purpose hangar, which was partially self-sealed and contained, but also partially a docking port. From the outside, when docked it just looked like another portion of the ship. Meaning that it could benefit from a quick release, but also benefit from internal resupply. The drone was maneuvered in front of a pair of sliding doors, which opened steadily, allowing a small team of humanoid heat signatures to recover the drone.
"Interesting, Captain I'm not reading any interference from the barriers they have on a vacuum, it seems as though their barriers either aren't sensitive enough to stop air, or they choose not to use them. The vessel has depressurized its hangar bay". Odd, almost all Citadel ships used pressurized hangars, with high-sensitivity lightweight kinetic barriers to prevent atmospheric decompression. They weren't too strong, and couldn't even stop light gunfire, but could re-activate in an instant and prevent catastrophic depressurization.
This new group truly were the oddest aliens so far.
Star Cruiser Group 75, Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard
"Admiral under the circumstance are you aware of First Contact protocols and their entirety? Because-".
"I am aware Commissar. You are dismissed. Ensure that the 1st Marine Contingent is ready for operation and available for visitation. I think it important we visit them on their ship. Judging by that video we received, they place a lot of emphasis on their vessels, and I want all the cards close to our chest, considering how close we came to a collision". The Alliance Commissar saluted, before marching off to cause trouble in the bowels of the cruiser. She shook her head annoyedly, the Alliance had introduced the political commissars after the insurrection, mainly because the Alliance Navy kept running into problems of partisans onboard ships, particularly larger ones. As such, the commissars were separate from the Navy, under the Alliance Intelligence Service, and could arrest officers they felt were causing trouble. Higher-level officers required the approval of at least half of the crew under them to remove from service until an investigative board could be put together.
"Communications, where is Dr Shek? She should have been here a half hour ago. Before we got this thing?". She took another look over the tablet. It was a funny little thing, a grey metal frame and a translucent screen that made it verging on annoying to use, but it was more lightweight than their tablets, and probably just as durable given how banged up the thing looked. The aliens reflected this. Their featureless strange suits (or exoskeletons, she hadn't ruled out a mechanical race yet) had made them difficult to read, but the eyes under the opaque masks glowed brightly, and their mannerisms were almost human in how they spoke.
They had also shown some old-looking battles of them fighting defensively against some sort of synthetic enemy. Was it a mechanical race in combat with another robotic race? Was it the real-life equivalent of terminator? Was it-. "Sir. You asked for me?".
She was interrupted from her ruminations by a soft silken voice and turned to see the woman she was looking for. "Dr Shek. What are your findings so far on the unknowns?".
The short Chinese woman smirked, her tanned skin giving her a glow in the deep cyan lights. "Well, they're most likely biological, three-fingered with flexible digits and bipedal, though their legs are bowed backward, indicating a planet that may be smaller than ours. They're on average slightly shorter than humans are, if you're wondering how we worked out the height, they used something similar to the old earth messages, with the radiation length of a hydrogen atoms electron orbital, thus allowing us to coordinate our measurement systems. They're an inch or two smaller than we are, we also ran some tests on the trace DNA on the tablet...".
She retrieved her own tablet, "The DNA showed signs of being constructed from dextro and levo-proteins, but the chemical alignments were almost a carbon-opposite of human DNA, so I'd say they have an amino-acid chirality opposing humanity, making them the first dextro-race we have found". She tapped her device several times, frowning, then scowling at it. "Your... Chief Engineer has made his own comments regarding that vessel. It's aging, a few decades old at least. The primary weapon seems to be a pair of spinal mass accelerators of some sort, small width so likely armor piercing, the mass is also completely off for a vessel of that size, judging by the way it arrived, I'd say it's possible we may be looking at the creators of these forks, though unlikely".
Her heart ran cold at the mere prospect of running into a race so advanced. These things were era's ahead of what humanity had in the works. "What about the ship itself?".
She shook her head, "Well Ma'am, that's where I disagreed with your Chief Engineer. The artifact is producing several factors of 10 more power per cubic meter than the ship, and judging by the arrangement and construction materials being incredibly different, these aliens may just be using the technology".
Now that was a disturbing thought. If they didn't use the tuning forks... Then who did?
Codex Entry: BA-29 L-Type Dropship
Designed and constructed by the Feniks aircraft foundries, and first developed 30 years ago, the L-type is a reliable and sturdy dropship design, finding it's main purpose as a brute-force landing craft for orbital marines and special forces, as well as carrying heavy boarding parties to carry out proper actions. The craft is fairly large, able to take a full complement of almost 24 marines in powered exosuits, or 32 marines/special forces in lighter armor. The craft is heavily armored being the only non-FTL and non-Patrol craft equipped with ablative armor, and being heavily armed as well. A single 40-millimeter heavy autocannon on the roof can provide brutal covering fire, while a set of 4 50 caliber machine guns provide suppressing fire, all automatic or manual controlled. The craft can mount a set of 4 standard light-pattern missiles and can carry flares, chaff, power decoys, and a small missile detection and interception suite.
The craft is pressurized, and has a crew of three, with a heavy focus on resilience as it is designed to infiltrate close to an enemy ship, then use a vacuum sealed chamber and advanced laser cutting tools to bore through a hull. Typical doctrine for this craft is to carry them in berths specifically designed for them, before dropping them as close to the enemy craft as possible. However, the craft contains enough food and supplies for up to 2 months away from the ships at maximum rationing and being power careful. The vessels are able to make planetfall and able to return to low-orbit once, before exhausting reaction mass, and are quite expensive.
I knowwwwww... Not much today, but I'm not going to suddenly jump straight into combat, I want plenty of buildup to give you an idea of what this humanity looks like...