The ambassador group lounged in the sitting room of Nora’s English library in front of a large fireplace. Nora had set the windows to show it as night with a slight drizzle of rain hitting the panes of glass. Low powered lights and the fireplace illuminated the library behind them. Each had a fine leather overstuffed wingback chair, a table for drinks and snacks between them as they sat in more or less a semi-circle around the fireplace. Nora had her limited AI butler deliver drinks of each Terran’s choosing to them before poofing out of existence once more. Simon took a large pull of his stout. Nora looked at him concerned, “I’m sorry Simon, I didn’t know she would ask you about the war.” Simon put his mug down and shrugged, “It’s not your fault Nora, she asked, and as part of the deal I agreed to be an Ambassador. Sometimes we have to answer hard questions whether we want to or not.” He picked up his mug and took another pull. “We will have to take it slow on information exchange, particularly until we get a bigger presence in this part of space, the last thing we need is to empower this group and they turn on their neighbors.”
Nora nodded, “Professor Montague agrees, but that’s not why I called all of you here tonight, the Professor has found something else.” She pulled up the message from two days ago. “Probe 4.1122x10 to the 32nd found a skip trail, an ancient one.”
Victoria looked at the hologram in the middle of the semi-circle. “This is the closest probe to FC onboard the Unwavering Message?”
Nora took a sip of her coffee, “Yes, and the Professor confirmed it with four additional probes in the nearest stellar cluster, it’s over a billion years old.”
Nigel put down his glass of port, “That is a mystery, but what does it have to do with us?”
Nora shrugged, “I don’t know, a billion years ago someone came through this part of the universe with a small skip capable vessel. Perhaps the life here is from contamination from that vessel, or someone intelligently designed the species out here, or something worse.”
Uhghea groaned, “I don’t like where you’re going with this, come on Nora, you love your puzzles, what’s the missing peace?”
Nora smiled and put down her mug before pointing to the hologram, which then changed. “You’re right, I love a good puzzle, but this is more than that, you see, the Professor has been monitoring the situation since I brought it to his attention. While we were in meetings with the Nal’Shiar, he detected an encrypted string radio transmission. He stated it was pure chance he caught it, which I don’t believe for a moment. It was sent only 30 lightyears from the Unwavering Messages’ location.”
Simon spoke up, “Has the professor had the other probes ping for ships, stations, or probes?”
Nora nodded, “That was the first thing I asked him, and he said he pinged immediately after he saw the transmission, but saw nothing. Meaning the source was either a one shot message and self destructed or is cloaked.”
Nigel took a sip of his port, “Well, that does put a wrinkle in our current situation doesn’t it now? Is the professor working on the message?”
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Nora nodded, “He has given the message to the Terran Guard, the Puzzle League, and the Maths guild. He has offered them a coin bounty for the first group to solve the encryption and create a decipher. I’m putting my money on the Puzzle League, but the Terran Guard is a disciplined military organization, so they may be able to bring more resources to bear, and the fact that they may see a threat. The Maths league is doubtful, they will argue and in-fight with themselves, so I don’t put much weight behind them.
Simon finished his mug of stout, “I don’t like this, I just ran calculations and if someone left our neighborhood of the universe one billion years ago with the fastest skip possible ship it would take around 50 million years to reach this distance. Jennifer went insane after only ten thousand years in isolation, that is a drop in the bucket compared to the time we are talking about.”
Victoria put down her wine glass, “So, we have a billion year old skip trail and mysterious encrypted signal, which means we’re not alone out here. If there is a significant threat, wouldn’t the species around here know something? They don’t seem to be too concerned about anyone or anything except the other races close to Nal’Shiar.”
Nora had her butler reappear and bring new drinks for all, as well as cookies, cakes, and pastries. “If there were a threat out here, maybe they don’t know about it, or don’t know what to look for. Perhaps we should pull up their stellar charts, I doubt we have put much research into them.” The hologram in the center changed to show what was in the Unwavering Messages’ archives. To the galactic north there was a dark spot that was noticeable against the rest of the backdrop.”
Uhghea put down her glass of milk and flicked her cat ears, “What the hell is that?”
Simon leaned in closer, although it wasn’t necessary. “It could be a super void, like the Bootes Void maybe?”
Nora shrugged, maybe would should ask the captain what they think it is, after all, it doesn’t have a name on their charts.”
Nora waved her hand and the hologram disappeared and was replaced by a call window. Hopefully she wasn’t asleep, and after a few rings the Captain answered the call from her Quarters, “What can I do for you tonight Ambassador?” She asked.
Nora brought up a picture from the Unwavering Messages’ cartography and circled the dark spot. “We were having a conversation about this part of the universe and we were wondering if you could tell us if you know anything about this?”
The Captain squinted at the screen and then used her thumb and first finger to expand the image. “Oh, that is Vir’Enus, also known as the dark void. Many of our navigation charts don’t name it as it has nothing to do with our navigation through space.”
Nora nodded, “So this is just a void where there is little star forming regions.”
The Captain nodded, “Yes, but unlike other voids we have seen in our skies, this one has no star formation at all.”
Simon waved to Nora to get her attention, “Yes Simon?” Simon asked, “Are you sure there are no stars within this void?”
The Captain thought about it for a moment, “Yes, I’m pretty sure we have detected no stars in this particular void, it has been quite the mystery to our scientists. It is also the coldest region of space we have seen up until now.” Simon sat down hard in his seat thinking.
Nora smiled to the Captain, “Thank you Captain, we were curious about it as it wasn’t labeled, I guess it will be something we’ll all discover together. Good night Captain, we will see you in the morning.” The Captain seemed a bit flummoxed but nodded and bid Nora goodnight as well. Nora turned to Simon, “What are you thinking Simon?”
Simon reached over and took a big pull from his mug of stout. “I’m thinking I really wish I could get drunk right now.”
Nigel looked over to Nora then back to Simon, “Well, don’t you think you should tell us what you’ve come up with old man?”
Simon hung his head and then looked up and ran his hand through his close cropped hair, “That’s not a void, that’s a hive.”