Volume XI – Nuevo Edo

  Prologue – Trade Chat

  (NERV Game Site – Official DAtS Offline Forums)

  Number5Alive, Golddigger, BurtBacharach, CrazyCelt, Blaze, DoYouEvenLyft?, MarcoPolo, MightMakesRight, l33tpally, Bennie, SEA-TAC_Sweetie, Requiesce-in-Pace, MacD, HaveGunsWillTravel, Guardian, GunKitty, Chummer, Inquisitor, SemiSolidSnake, ElfMama, Not_the_Face!, Anonymous3, Anonymous4, Anonymous9, AggregatorOfSorrows, WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot, Dolcett, Backlog, DarkAvariel, Knocker, Hullu_Kapteeni, GrimDark, BloodForTheBloodGod, Queen’s_Bitch, BackDat@55Up, DoYouEvenDPS?, MajorTom, Parca, and DarkAngel are in the chat.

  GrimDark: *sigh*

  Knocker: What’s wrong, Grim?

  GrimDark: Just sad that the war is over already. No one else seems to be gearing up, and the Imperials are too busy recovering.

  WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot: Well, I wouldn’t say everything is peaceful. Confederates are shifting resources to try and deal with Imperial refugees, and increased raiding activity all across their space.

  MarcoPolo: I can tell you that the Gauz Consortium is up to all kinds of tricks, just not the kinds you want, Grim. Looks like most of the crafting-focused players went to the Consortium, and they got inspired by the Black Star fleet. There’s been a lot of interesting developments out here. A lot of explosions too.

  ElfMama: Explosions?

  MarcoPolo: Sometimes great advances in science only come after great setbacks. Like having your lab turned into a smoking crater after you learn that some substances REALLY don’t react well to certain conditions.

  Backlog: LMFAO!

  DoYouEvenDPS?: There’s a couple guilds… sorry, companies out here in the Free Worlds Alliance that have started putting together a merchant fleet. Well, they each have only a couple ships, but they’re hoping to grow.

  SEA-TAC_Sweetie: Trying to take the spot of top earning company from Black Star?

  DoYouEvenDPS?: Maybe eventually. That bastard just got too big a head start, having his first ship come to him free.

  M.Mollen: If you want to be technical, with the rest of the money my ‘friend’ earned in that card game, Lord_Kickass basically paid her to give his ship to me.

  BurtBacharach: You’ve been damn lucky.

  M.Mollen: Some luck. But most of it was cheating. Oh, not hacking the game or anything like that. But reading minds is very useful in card games, or when you’re trying to make an arena fight look good.

  M.Mollen: The rest was just taking advantage of the opportunities I made for myself. Finding Shadowdancer was the big break, since her capabilities make her ideal for a quick strike force.

  BackDat@55Up: So, what is this I hear about your company going on some kind of expedition?

  ElfMama: Ooh, yes! That expedition has been the talk of Dimiya ever since you started building up for it!

  GrimDark: Is there another war on that I don’t know about?

  M.Mollen: Well, no war just yet. We’ll see about the future, but yes, I can confirm that most of my fleet has left Dimiya, and Confederation space altogether.

  GoldDigger: Where did you go?

  DoYouEvenLyft?: He was tracked as far as the Desolace System, but that is deep in Confederate space, and he hasn’t been spotted at any of the gateways since.

  M.Mollen: Any of the KNOWN Gateways.

  l33tpally: What the actual fuck? There aren’t any unknown gates!

  MarcoPolo: Actually, there are. There have to be. The X’thari wouldn’t be able to do their hit and run attacks if there wasn’t at least one Gate we didn’t have an address for.

  l33tpally: Then why haven’t we tried random numbers to find them?

  GoldDigger: Because you can’t just dial up and ask if the X’thari can come out and play. There’s literally millions of potential addresses.

  M.Mollen: 127,512,000 potential addresses. 16 of which are in Known Space.

  GoldDigger: Right, so you can’t just dial the gate and see what happens. Mainly because the only way to tell a good address from a bad one is to go through the gate.

  l33tpally: What happens if you hit a bad address?

  GoldDigger: No one knows.

  l33tpally: C’mon, seriously though.

  Requiesce-in-Pace: He’s right, though. No one knows. And even if nomads can return from death, no one is willing to invest in 127 million shuttles to send them through to random destinations and only lose most of them, if you’re lucky.

  MacD: So how did M.Mollen find a 17th gate address?

  M.Mollen: I was stealing things for a client, and while I was in the fancy part of the vaults, I looked around for anything fun that I could take for myself.

  SemiSolidSnake: Hey, is anyone else on Earth right now?

  Blaze: I’m in the Sicilian Enclosure, why?

  SemiSolidSnake: Then you might want to let them know that there’s some crazy bastard driving from Berlin to Sicily.

  Blaze: Wait, driving? All the vehicles should be gone by now!

  SemiSolidSnake: Oh yeah, everything more complicated than a steam engine is gone all right, but this fucker made himself a steam engine. After he made himself a smoker to make jerky as ‘travel rations’ for himself and his ‘pet’.

  M.Mollen: How are things behind the lines, Snake?

  SemiSolidSnake: About as you’d expect. Never thought I’d use those survival classes in a video game, but there you go.

  Blaze: So what’s up with this guy that I need to warn people about? Other than the fact that he can apparently make tech from scratch?

  SemiSolidSnake: Well, his ‘jerky’ is made from the bodies of people who had too much tech in their heads, and he basically has a Gauz girl chained to him whenever he goes out.

  M.Mollen: Real piece of work, then.

  Blaze: I’ll let them know about the incoming. How long do you expect?

  SemiSolidSnake: Well, they’re basically going about the same speed as a horse. Give it a month?

  Blaze: All right, I can work with that.

  MacD: So where did the new gate address take you, M.Mollen?

  M.Mollen: Oh, I’m pretty close to the galactic core right now.

  Requiesce-in-Pace: Haha. That’ll definitely make it difficult for future assassins to find you.

  Chapter 101 – Nuevo Edo

  (BSN Shinokage, Unknown Space)

  I was standing on the ‘Flag Bridge’ of the Shinokage. Well, that’s what people called it, since it was the backup control center for the ship, and I was out of the Captain’s hair here. It also allowed me to look at the strategic situation without stepping on the Captain’s toes tactically.

  Looking at the status of my fleet, I smiled. The Nightforge and the other ships were hanging back, well-protected with the flotilla of gunboats in place, and fighters ready to launch from my carrier. Shinokage, my four Assassins, and two squadrons of Raptor stealth fighters led the way to the super-Earth planet that seemed to be where the colony ship Juan Ponce de Leon had wound up. How it ended up damn near to the galactic core, in another arm of the galaxy, was something many of us were very eager to find out.

  First, though, we had to deal with the defenses around the world, and find some way to introduce ourselves without either getting blown up or wiping out their defenses. Since they had taken the trouble to put that many weapon satellites in orbit, something told me that the defenses were very much necessary. Blowing them to hell would not put us on good terms with the locals, and I would feel rotten if we left them defenseless against some other attackers.

  “Raven, what do we have?”

  “The satellite network is used for communications, but it seems the primary purpose of the network is for planetary defense. Comparing passive scan data to historical weapons systems, I believe we’re looking at two types of weapons on these platforms. Primary standoff weapons look to be ballistic in nature, along the same idea as the main weapon on Shinokage and the Assassins, but not nearly as powerful. However, they are likely able to fire more rapidly than we are, giving them the ability to ‘shotgun’ an area of space with weapons fire. Secondary weapons are missile launchers equivalent to mid-22nd century space-based nuclear missile launchers. Unless they have improved the warheads considerably, it would take two, maybe three hits to destroy an Assassin. Once inside the ballistic envelope and into their own weapons range, the Nightforge would be safe from anything the defense network could throw at them before destroying the platforms.”

  “So their tech hasn’t improved any from when the Ponce de Leon left. Interesting. The historical records show that they at least had an industrial plant to start the colony with, but I suppose whatever brought them all this way out here may have left them with limited options.”

  I shook my head. That was a question that could wait for answers once we were talking to the people on the ground. “You’ve detected communications, yes? Have you been able to break the encryption and discern the local language?”

  “Communications have been decrypted, yes. They are using encryption that is very advanced compared to what was available when they left Earth, but is still a thousand years out of date for us. Ironically, if we had not been supplied with older encryption codes from the historical database, the method of encryption would likely have been too primitive for the advanced decryption algorithms to make sense of.”

  I chuckled at that. “A thrown rock, properly aimed, can make you just as dead as a modern rifle with all the bells and whistles. Make a note that all communications officers, tacti cal officers, and assault teams are to familiarize themselves with period codes, weapons, and tactics. If they can outwit our algorithms by using old tricks they don’t know to look for with their communications, they can do it in other ways, too. Now, what about their language?”

  “That is trickier, Commodore. The Juan Ponce de Leon was funded by business interests from South America following the Quito earthquake of 2135. While many of the colonists were from the local Spanish-speaking population, the financiers and leaders of the expedition, along with about 25% of the colony population, was Japanese or of Japanese descent, due to corporate involvement in the area. It appears that, during the trip, a fusion of the two languages was born amongst the general populace. Translation software for all personnel has been set to adaptive rotating language, but we will likely miss a good deal of context from the different syntaxes combining in unusual ways.”

  I blinked, a little stunned. “They went and did WHAT now? Ugh, that has a damn politician’s fingerprints all over it, no doubt. Probably a whole committee of the fuckers. This is why you don’t let committees handle basic things like this. No sane person would think that combining those two languages was a good idea!”

  “It takes a certain level of insanity to launch oneself from star to star at sublight speeds, knowing only your grandchildren might live to see the destination. Or to go through an energy vortex you don’t understand the workings of to a place you only hope will be on the other side.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Fair point, I guess.”

  Raven cocked her head to the side, and said, “We are receiving a message from the planet, Commodore.”

  “We as in Shinokage, or we as in the fleet?” There were certain ramifications he didn’t appreciate if they had found Shinokage and determined it was the command ship for his fleet, after all.

  “Sorry, sir. Communication is old-style broadcast radio. Seems to be directed at the Nightforge, which makes sense as she is the least stealthy ship in the fleet, and the largest. The fighters patrolling the area are also based more on tactical superiority than stealth.”

  “Understood. Message contents?”

  “A mathematical series of pulses, sir. It matches one of the old ‘first contact’ packages that used to be used before humans discovered actual alien life forms in 2212.”

  “So, they’ve spotted us, but our ships aren’t like anything they’ve seen before. We haven’t come in guns blazing, so they’re trying to talk. Good, that gives us some hope we can have an actual relationship with these people.”

  I considered for a moment, and then said, “Route communications through the Nightforge. No need to tell them about Shinokage just yet. Send the next string of the replies, and then the final string of the package. Then text, in English, Japanese, and Spanish, asking for technical details on data transmission, video capability, and so on, so we can talk more effectively. If possible, get them to send along proper translation guides for their language. Also, I want you to add this…”

  (Command Bunker)

  “You are certain of this?”

  “Yes, Captain. The vessel answered the mathematical series, and then skipped ahead to the last line of each series that we would have used in our first contact package, in the exact order we are supposed to run the series. They have to have come in contact with Humans before.”

  “And they must have had some kind of contact with them that didn’t involve gunfire and whatever those damn Demons do to the poor souls they capture.”

  “Captain, more transmissions from the unknown ship. Message is text-based, instead of pulse tones. Does not appear to be encrypted… Computer suggests that they are using a language called ‘English’ from the historical records. Message now repeating in Japanese, and in Spanish. They are asking for technical data, and local language translations. They… Captain, I think these might actually be humans!”

  “What makes you say that, Lieutenant?”

  “The message ends each time with the following: Hello Cousins. Nice to see the Children of the Juan Ponce de Leon weren’t lost as had been thought.”

  “By the kami, that bastard did it.”

  “Captain?”

  “That ‘explorer’ Espina, who stole a shuttle and ran through the Demon Gate. He always said that the Gateways could be used to get in touch with Earth again, but no one believed him. He stole the recording device that the Founders brought with them on the colony ship. If they know we are of the Juan Ponce de Leon, then Espina must have found someone on that side, and they had enough contact with Earth that they knew who they were looking for.”

  The captain considered, and said, “On my authority, send the technical specifications they asked for. They want to talk, lets make sure we can talk. And send them a primer on Nihon-Espanol. And make sure the computers are set up to translate the languages they used. I want us to be ready to talk when they return contact.”

  With that, the Captain walked into the office they used as commander of the bunker where deep space transmissions were monitored, and picked up a secure comm device that worked via landline. “Switchboard, get me the Premier. Highest possible urgency. Codeword: Kikyo.”

  (BSN Shinokage, Unknown Space)

  Captain Inatumal looked up as I entered the bridge with Raven at my heels. I nodded to her, and took up a position next to her chair, “Status, Captain?”

  “We have received confirmation from the Nightforge, Master. The government of the planet is somewhat excited to meet with us. As you commanded, we’ve given them enough hints to let them know that we at least have communication with Earth. They just transmitted their reception capability, so we can send video transmissions when you are ready.”

  “Excellent. Time until their next transmission?”

  “Approximately two minutes, Master. They are supposed to be getting the leader of their planet to the secure station where they’ve been broadcasting to us from.” The captain looked confused at that part.

  “They’re being cautious, Captain. If we turn out to be evil aliens bent on world domination, then following the source of the signal will give us a location…” I paused and looked at the map, “about twenty kilometers from the nearest civilian settlement, instead of the center of their government. And if something goes wrong with the first meeting, then they can sweep it under the rug instead of having it blow up in the media. It will be just like the old UFO conspiracies on Earth.”

  “Weren’t most of those proved to be true, though?”

  “Oh certainly. Just not for several centuries after their existence had been relegated to the stuff of conspiracy theories and myth, along with outright hoaxes like crop circles. By the time people found out the truth, the truth didn’t matter any more to the organizations involved. Humans had already met ACTUAL aliens, so the stories of aliens from centuries ago didn’t interest them.”

  The comms officer coughed to get our attention, and said, “Captain, Commodore, incoming transmission from the surface, full video. I believe it is their Premier this time.”

  I nodded, and said, “Take transmission from Shinokage directly instead of bouncing off Nightforge, but repeat to the entire fleet so people have a record of this meeting. Decloak the stealth ships and fighters as we begin transmitting. Tactical, do be kind enough to let me know if they start targeting us, yes?” I winked at Inatumal, and said, “A bit of theater, Captain, to set the tone for future negotiations.”

  There was a flurry of activity, and then everything was ready, as I stood in the center of Shinokage’s bridge, the main screen came on, showing a group of three women, one of whom was in a military-type uniform, the other two looked to be civilians. The civilian in the center was a bit older looking, more statuesque than beautiful, like a tempered blade. I offered a slight bow, as one leader might make to another in Japanese culture, and said, “I am Commodore Mirikon Mollen of the Black Star Navy, and owner of the Black Star Company. Who am I addressing?”

  The woman was exotic looking, to be sure, as one might expect with a mix of Hispanic and Japanese blood. She returned the bow, and said, “I am Premier Fukuya Talia of Nuevo Edo, the colony founded by the Juan Ponce de Leon. We have long hoped for contact from Earth, but how is it you came through the Demon Gate?” There was a pause as someone whispered something to the military woman, who stiffened, and then whispered to the premier.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11