Captain Ra’Jinn sat in her command chair on the bridge and faced her XO, Ta’Kinar. “The probe has done nothing that we can detect in the past six hours, I know you’ve watched the footage of our first contact, but if you need me while I am off shift feel free to call on me at any time.”
Ta’Kinar nodded to his Captain, “I will do so, but if possible you need your rest, tomorrow will undoubtably be extremely busy if the Ambassador does in fact manufacture a new body by that time.”
Ra’Jinn nodded, “Judging by the technology we have seen in our sensor sweeps, it boggles to the mind that this is only a probe, and according to Na’Edin, it is truly ancient.”
Ta’Kinar reached down and picked up his cup on his command chair and took a sip of his Impach brew and savored it’s bitterness as it helped him further awaken. “I thought our science officer was going to have a double heart attack when the spectrometry came back on the age of the probe, I’ve never seen his eyes open that wide!”
Captain Ra’Jinn smiled, “Na’Edin is far too serious for his age, but he will make an excellent scientist one day.”
The XO put down his steaming cup and nodded, “That he will Captain, but in the mean time, your shift is over and you need to be at peek performance for tomorrows shift. I would be surprised if our Terran Ambassador doesn’t know to the second when you come back on shift.”
Ra’Jinn stood and nodded to her XO, “Very well Ta’Kinar, I know when I am being herded out the door, I’ll leave you the bridge, try not to break my ship before I get back.”
Ta’Kinar spun his chair as she walked towards the door, “I will do my best not to Ma’am.” The doors slid open for the Captain to walk through before closing again. Ta’kinar spun his command chair back around to the forward view screen.
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Na’Edin sat at the cramped computer terminal in his personal quarters. On a ship as small as the Unwavering Message he couldn’t expect more, after all, the ship only boasted two shifts, which he found exhausting. However, this was a necessary foothold to larger and more prestigious positions within the fleet. He would have to endure until he could be promoted to a larger and more luxurious vessel, but in the mean time, he wanted to look over more of the extremely thorough sensor logs from both the broad spectrum analysis and the internal scans of cargo bay 3. The age of the probe was simply incredible, but it was also inconsistent, some parts of the probes outer shell were over a billion years old, while others were only several hundred, with huge deviations in between. “Computer, personal journal, first contact probe, continued. Following up from the initial scans, the probe is both ancient and not, perhaps a probe on the opposite side of the universe would require emense autonomy, thus would repair itself as necessary. The Ambassador stated the probe would construct a synthetic body for her to communicate more easily with our crew and our government, it stands to reason it would have amazing manufacturing capabilities.”
Na’Edin looked over to the sensor log, “I have set frequency scanners to broad spectrum, but as yet they have not received any signal to or from the probe. This is disconcerting as this string radio the Ambassador mentioned is not even detectable by our sensors. This could mean that there are whole avenues of physics and science of which we are completely ignorant. Also, another strange fact is that this probe has elements that does not correspond to anything on our periodic table of elements. Some of the scans of the outer shell show elements that are completely unstable, yet have been implemented in this design since it’s creation. I have no idea how they could possibly stabilize some of these elements, some of which are incredibly dense and radioactive in their normal state, but seem to be completely inert from our scans. Power levels on board the probe have not changed since our first passive scans, still sitting around 120 petawatts. It is unknown how a 10 meter probe is capable of generating that much energy, nor why it needs that much power output.” Na’Edin continued adding to his journal entry as the probe in cargo bay 3 finished its construction algorithm.
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Nora stepped out of the internal manufacturing assembly. The inside of the probe had rearranged itself into internal construction mode. This gave a very cramped internal room that she could view manual controls, which she very much hoped would never need to be used, and the Kugelblitz reactor. Viewing the internal cameras on board the probe she saw that she looked similar to her digital avatar, which was based upon her biological body with a few “enhancements”. Running a diagnostic of her synthetic body showed all systems green, and she felt her own arm to ensure the sensors were working correctly. This was the first time she had inhabited a body in almost half a billion years after all. The Captain did not come on shift for another two of their hours, and standing around in this two meter room didn’t sound much fun for a being that could operate in the nanosecond range. So unless she frame-jacked up to slow her perceived time, she might as well shut down and go back to her library until time to activate the body again.
Upon shutdown she found herself back in her library. It’s warm mahogany desk and overstuffed leather chair beckoned to her. She sat and picked up a steaming cup of coffee and looked at her ancient computer terminal. It showed a message, “How odd!” She thought to herself as she clicked on the message. Probe 4.1122x10 to the 32nd, the next nearest probe to FC had sent her a message. Anomalous skip drive detection in the near vicinity, this was backed up by the FC probe in the Unwavering Messages’ cargo hold. The skip drive trail was ancient, over a billion years old and would have been undetectable in Terran space due to skip pollution of the space time over the last eon. “Who would have come out this way that long ago? This skip drive path predated the beacons by millions of years.”
She brought up a floating screen and placed a secure call to Professor Montague. After about seven rings and a slight pause as if a voice mail was going to pick up she saw the Professor appear in her window in what looked like an English safari room, complete with animal heads on display behind him. “To what do I owe the pleasure Ambassador Nora?”
Nora took a deep breath that her digital form did not need, “Professor, we may have a problem, I am forwarding this message from a probe near FC along with full access to said probe. I want to rule out system error or a false positive.” After less than a millisecond the befuddled facade fell away and was replaced by a look of pure concentration. The Professor raised his arms and multiple windows popped into existence, he then waved different pieces of the information into each window and turned to a giant chalk board that Nora was sure was not there a moment ago.
The center of the chalk board showed a loading symbol, spinning in chalk. She had to admit, it was impressive. Suddenly chalk letters began to appear on the chalk board:
1. Analysis confirmed from six additional beacons, skip drive trail is confirmed.
2. Analysis confirmed from six additional beacons, skip drive trail is approximately 1,058,676,238 years old +/- 50 years.
3. Analysis confirmed from six additional beacons, vessel limited to 100 tons.
4. Analysis inconclusive, historical record from that time is incomplete, no record of a skip capable vessel in route to this part of the universe.