The Expansion Box Set, page 27
part #1 of The Expansion Series
“It may be just that,” Dassiova replied, “but my first duty is to the people of this fleet.”
32
Proxima b surface
“Specter, take point,” Brandt said.
The tail ramp of the Tanto hit the moist surface and sank into the dark, almost purple moss that grew there. After they had landed, the team spread out in all-around defense.
“Roger,” Specter said. “Moving, bearing twenty-eight degrees north.”
The rest of the four-man team fell in, following the lead of their cybernetic warrior. He set a pace far faster than any of the rest of his wholly human team could match, even in their armor. Their suits had assessed the atmosphere in a few seconds, and found it breathable with a slightly reduced oxygen content than they were used to. Breathing on this planet would be similar to breathing at high altitude on Earth. Brandt reassured herself that it would just be like her experience training at higher altitude. Specter didn’t have most of a body to provide the precious oxygen to; instead he had an almost infinite onboard power source that could keep him alive even in an unbreathable atmosphere for a time.
“Jake! Jesus, slow down!” Brandt called into the squad comm after half a mile. She cursed herself for calling him by the name he had once gone by.
“Sorry,” he said. “I sometimes forget when I’m working with… with humans.”
“Dude,” Brandt countered, “you are human, just seriously upgraded. Give the rest of us non-augmented types a chance?”
“I apologize, Commander,” he said over the comm. “I’m… I’m just excited, I think…”
“It’s okay,” she told him. “We’re all excited, only we can’t maintain the pace you’re setting. Slow it down.”
“Affirmative,” Specter said. “Approaching target coordinates in one point seven clicks.” “Roger that. Half pace and go carefully.”
Specter acknowledged her orders and slowed his pace to one that the mere humans could match. Though slowed, he still pressed on, diligently through the curiously dark foliage that none of them had ever seen before. Far behind them, spread out to guard their invaluable shuttlecraft, were four other members of the team under the command of the sniper she had known a lifetime ago.
“Zero, Grip,” she said into the mic.
“Go,” he responded.
“Status report?”
“All good in the hood,” he said.
The skin around Brandt’s eyes tightened as she sucked in a sharp breath through her nose. Zero knew non-standard comm language always annoyed her, and he knew that she knew he did it deliberately.
“Push out to one-fifty; keep our bird safe,” she said.
“Affirmative,” he replied in a cold, low tone that meant business. “Moving.”
They pushed onward, Specter dictating the distance and bearing to target from his own HUD. He moved in silence, a feat made easier by the plush and moist moss that covered the ground, though it occasionally made for treacherous footing. A hidden dip in the bizarre landscape was too easily obscured by the groundcover.
The team had landed only a few kilometers away from the signal’s point of origin, but the way that this dark, muted planet supported and nurtured life was fascinating, distracting and slowed their short walk. A band of habitable ground only twenty miles wide was hedged by scorched deserts on the inside and frozen glaciers on the other, and they found themselves having to avoid what looked like a well-worn path running along the center of that livable land.
As he moved, Specter found himself experiencing things he had not felt for years. Feelings that he didn’t associate with Specter, but that had belonged to Jake Santana before him. He felt excitement, he knew that, but he also felt a nervous trepidation about their approach. As he was trying to understand this, his enhanced eyes detected something through the visor. He froze and gave the hand signal for the others to do the same before he sent them scampering for cover. The HUD could detect nothing in the low light, but his eyes did, even if he couldn’t be sure what he was detecting.
Then he saw it. Long, slender limbs and a large head. Dark, almost black elliptical eyes shining with the smallest of reflections until the almost imperceptible flash of tiny movement gave them away.
A blink; gone almost immediately, but something had definitely been there.
“Specter,” Brandt called softly to him. “What’s the deal?”
“There’s something here, Commander,” he said. “It isn’t registering on the HUD, but there is something nearby. Something alive.”
“How do you know?” Eze asked.
“Because I think I’m looking at it … and I think it’s looking straight at me.”
With those words, the thing he couldn’t quite make out blinked again, confirming its existence. The others behind tried to adjust the optical feeds on their suits to improve their vision. Specter didn’t need to do that; he could now make the creature out clearly as it shifted position. It seemed to stare right at him—right through him—and he felt a sense of hope and relief wash over him. He knew, or he was fairly certain, that these feelings came from the alien and not himself. Those feelings changed to fear in a heartbeat when Brandt readied her weapon instinctively as soon as she saw it.
Ignoring what was being said behind him, Specter lowered his own gun and stepped out to approach slowly with his hands held open. “It’s alright,” he said aloud.
“Specter,” Brandt hissed, “stand down!”
“It’s okay, Commander,” he told her. “It doesn’t want to hurt us.”
“He’s right,” Eze said curiously. “It needs our help.”
Allowing herself to take in the scene, Brandt suddenly felt it too: the wave of emotion lapping at her consciousness.
The creature, tall and renowned among the remnant of its people, wore no armor and carried no weapons. It stood to its full height, taller than the aliens approaching, and stepped away from the cover of the tree it had been partly hiding behind. Facing the one walking toward it, the creature bent down slightly to meet the visor at what it guessed was eye-level. Making a long and formal introduction, it radiated a sense of welcome and genuine hope that these aliens from another system possessed the technology to save their race. The words made no sense to the visitors, but it hoped that they could sense the feeling and emotion it tried to convey.
For these visitors, these aliens, to have no sense of empathy could be catastrophic for the creature’s race but there were no choices left. No options available.
They needed help, or they would perish.
Overwhelmed by the emotions he felt, Specter raised his right hand and held it out toward the alien. He couldn’t have said why. He felt that a touch, a physical connection, would solidify their peaceful greeting. Slowly, tentatively, the slender fingers of the alien reached out to touch the tips against his own artificial hand.
“Captain Torres,” said the suited UNID member on the screen. “We’ve analyzed the document you sent and believe we may actually be able to help you. The cra…” She paused, narrowing her eyes at Torres. “Captain, confirm that you are confidential your end? There are no crew members who don’t have classified clearance with you?”
“Just me,” Torres responded flatly.
“Very well. The craft we recovered on Earth back in the twenty-second century provided a lot of the hieroglyphs you received, and people working on that have had some time to translate them. They started with the easy stuff like figuring out what the switch or component was on the crashed vessel and matching it up with that ‘glyph to start making a kind of alphabet.” She paused, waiting to see if Torres was still following her.
“Go on,” he said, a hint of annoyance in his words.
“Well, their language doesn’t use an alphabet like ours. Our best guess is that each ‘glyph is a phrase, or a terminology as opposed to using their ABCs.”
Torres fought down the urge to facepalm and let out a loud groan of exasperation. All those years of study and the only thing they could say for sure was that they didn’t know. It wasn’t like the ancient Egyptians had an alphabetized system that English speakers could understand, but they seemed to work that out easily enough without supercomputers. He hoped that the story had a better outcome than where her tone was leading him.
“So, can you decipher it or not?” he snapped, more harshly than he intended.
“Yes, and no,” she said unhelpfully. “The best we can do is actually marry it up to old hieroglyphs found on Earth and use that as a reference.”
Interesting, he thought.
“We have a beta program able to run those simulations and have deciphered some of what you received. Transmitting that and the program to you now.”
Torres glanced at the edge of his data terminal and saw the blinking icon showing an incoming file transfer. He activated it and watched the progress bar fill up rapidly.
“Got it,” he said. “Anything else?”
“Negative, Captain.”
“Good, Torres out.”
He killed the link, bringing up the file and looking at the partly translated phrases in between the alien symbols.
Strangers ... home. We are termed … primary astral body … bordering red sun … provide aid … plead and supplicate … provide aid.
“Well…” he said with wide eyes, “if that’s to be believed, Mister Sarvanto, then I think these guys might need our help.”
Sarvanto stepped forward from where he had been standing behind the viewscreen on Torres’s orders. He didn’t hold the same level of clearance as the captain, but that wasn’t to say that the captain didn’t trust in the opinions of the officers he commanded. The Scandinavian leaned over the desk beside Torres as he took in the partial translation and hmmm’d pensively.
“I think you are right, sir,” he said. “We should probably let the ground team know as a matter of urgency?”
Torres tapped the screen to open a secure link to Brandt. Since she was in command on the ground, it would be for her to decide how best to inform the rest of her team. Torres hated that part; having to sit in orbit and send people down into potential danger. His instincts told him he should be taking point on those maneuvers himself.
“Brandt, go ahead.” Her breathless voice sprang from the speakers.
“It’s Torres. Sitrep?”
“We… we’ve established, or at least I think we’ve established, first contact with a sentient, extra-terrestrial species.”
33
Deep space beyond Earth’s solar system
“Admiral, we have Earth on subspace ahead of schedule,” the comm officer announced.
Hearing the words, Dassiova rose and walked toward his cabins with a nod of acknowledgment to the officer. Dassiova sat, waiting for the call to be linked to his terminal and worrying about what could have happened for them to be calling back ahead of schedule. It was a risk making the call, as the emitters would doubtless give off a signal that other territories could detect.
“Dassiova here,” he said as he hit the icon to connect the subspace call.
“Admiral,” the same commander said in a bullish tone, “you are ordered to proceed to Proxima Centauri b with all haste. Take as many of the Ninth Fleet’s resources as you are able to bring. You are specifically ordered not to leave an escort frigate behind to guard the Cortez and offload as many of their fighting reserves as possible. Further orders will be transmitted when you report in from the Centauri system.”
“What’s changed?” he asked her.
“Admiral, I’m not at liberty to divulge anything other than that the crew of the Bōken sha Ichi are reporting first contact with an alien race. Proceed with caution and prepare for battle stations. Earth out.”
“Cold bitch,” Dassiova said again. He leaned back and tried to comprehend the gravity of the information and the orders he had been given. He could not disobey those orders, but neither was he willing to abandon a stranded crew of around four thousand souls. They were so far from any habitable planet that they would all die of old age or starvation without a working Fold Drive. He decided to leave them with their full complement and called the captain of one of their frigate escorts, the Norton, to advise him that the Norton required immediate diagnostic work to be logged on their own Fold Drive.
“I’m sure a power surge was recorded during your last jump, wasn’t it?” He enquired innocently, glad that the shrewd man grasped the fact quickly.
“Indeed, Admiral,” he said with a smirk. “In fact I’m certain I logged the issue with you shortly after you arrived here. At least that’s what my comm logs will show, I’m sure.”
“Good man,” Dassiova said before terminating the call. He told Massey what he wanted, organizing for the Hammer to jump ahead of them by only thirty seconds, but for their target co-ordinates to be spread further apart so that there couldn’t be a repeat of the near-disaster of their last jump.
“How is it,” Massey, his flight officer mused, “that our comm links through subspace are pinpoint accurate, yet our ships can’t jump to the precise locations we want them to?”
“Something to do with the size of the hole punched through space-time, apparently,” Dassiova told her. “That’s what they told me when I asked the exact same question.”
“So, the smaller the ship, the more accurate the jump?”
“No idea. Prepare us for jump.”
She nodded and left, leaving him scratching his chin apprehensively. They were about to make the biggest faster-than-light jump in the history of humanity.
Captain Wright acknowledged his orders, expressing his gratitude for the escort being left behind despite the orders to the contrary.
“Nothing to do with me, Captain,” Dassiova said. “The Norton has to be thorough and investigate that power surge they experienced. It would be reckless of them to jump without running a diagnostic that should take, oh, say eighteen hours?”
“A touch of fate, Admiral,” Wright agreed with a smirk, before signing off and wishing them good luck.
Dassiova sat in his chair and caught the eye of a comm officer. “Inform the captain of the Hammer that I’m making an announcement, and then get me a ship-wide channel for us and the Hammer.”
He gave the admiral an aye, aye and hit the icons on his screen. Once the other ship had been reached, he turned back and nodded. Dassiova hit the transmit button.
“Crews of the Venture and the Hammer, this is Admiral Dassiova,” he began, with and strength and resolve in his tone. “We have been informed that the recon crew of the Bōken sha Ichi have made first contact with intelligent alien lifeforms. I’ll repeat that, because I think it warrants being repeated. Humanity has made first contact with an alien race. We have been requested to proceed with all haste to support the recon crew, which is what we are doing now. God speed and see you all on the other side. Dassiova out.”
“Course plotted, sir,” his helmsman called out.
“Signal the Hammer to jump,” he said. He looked down at the three-dimensional display and watched as the symbol for one of their identical frigates simply vanished from the readout. He took his seat and looked dead ahead.
“Initiate jump.”
Proxima b Surface
“Captain,” Brandt whispered inside her helmet, “tell me you’re seeing this?”
“Affirmative,” Torres answered, his eyes glued to the screen in his quarters as he watched the live link to his ground commander’s suit system.
He had no words as he watched in awe. The creature, the alien being, crouched beside a round plinth in a dimly lit room that didn’t have a single straight edge. It invited the shadowy figure opposite it, Specter, to crouch similarly. The creature waved slender fingers over the plinth to make it erupt into life and show their ship represented with tiny holographic pixels. He tapped at it; his fingers seemed to hit only air but the interface responded and their message replayed through hidden speakers.
We are the crew of the Bōken Sha. We are from Earth, a planet in the nearest solar system. We mean no harm, we come in peace.
Torres’s voice came back to him via the suit link, and the alien first pointed to the display, then pointed to Specter.
“That’s us,” he said, pointing at the display of their ship. “We sent it from this, up there…” He pointed upward, through the earthen ceiling and the thousand kilometers of low light into the space above them.
It made rattling noises in its throat, croaking like an Earth amphibian.
“Commander,” Torres said, “I’m uploading a translation program to your suits now. It’s geared for their hieroglyphic alphabet, but the translation software should be able to start learning.”
Brandt acknowledged him. The existence of a translation program was news to her, but not unexpected. Perhaps the beings they were talking to now were of the same race as the ones who had crash-landed on Earth thousands of years ago. That assimilation of facts nagged at her with questions, but the scene before her claimed her attention. With a live subject to work with, their translation software should start to recognize the sounds it made and associate them with words in English.
Her suit registered the upload and she opened the program. She pushed it to the background of her display, as she was still mesmerized watching the alien and the cyborg pointing at things and saying their names.
The alien pointed to itself and made a recognizable sound which it repeated a few times. The suit translation software, running minimized in the lower left quadrant of Brandt’s field of vision, came up with two syllables written phonetically.
“Kul-dar.”
Specter saw it too. “Kuldar? Your name is Kuldar?”
