S.A. Kulxrix- Terran Space
20 minutes later, a shuttle docked at the NISS, carrying a life support pod containing a Terran woman with reddish hair, pale skin, and civilian clothing of a black leather bomber jacket with a white shirt and black pants, and a strange metal arm bracer on her right forearm. She looked about average height for a Terran, which isn't saying much as they were under the galactic average for height, only the Hexats seemed to be shorter. The Hexat doctor sighed, he would have his work cut out for him.
"Get it moved to the medical wing and start running tests on its physiology. I need to know what I'm looking at before we try prodding around." He shouted to the workers moving the pod around.
"And for void's sake be careful, we don't know how fragile they are. They may be deathworlders but we have no idea what they are capable of, and we don't need a repeat of the Ava."
The Ava, he shuddered. They had been an avian species from a class 2 deathworld, but had been almost laughably weak. When the S.A. contacted them they were in the middle of a contact war with the Krultathan and immediately fielded the Ava, thinking of pitting the two deathworlders against one another. It had been a spectacularly brutal disaster, and the Ava were almost all but extinct, retreating into their cradle world and haven't left in over 500 years. Ironically, the Krultathans, horrified by what had happened, called for peace talks and joined the Alliance only 150 years ago. They had a bit of a reputation to this day for being monstrous for their actions back in the Ava war, and aren't treated much better than second-class citizens, but that was mostly because of propaganda. It's not like the Krultathans knew the Ava were so weak and took advantage of it, they were just another enemy to them.
Still, Kaxus had work to do, to prevent something like that from happening here, and to help his patient. So off to work he went, ending up in the medical wing just as his datapad finished downloading what they knew about these Terrans, and almost dropped the cup of root juice he was drinking as he looked over not just their history and medicine, but their biology.
It was filled with a bunch of miscellaneous info that wasn't related to his patient but did give him a decent idea of the species. Like most predator species they had a violent past. Unlike most predator species they hadn't destroyed themselves. Their sense of medicine was spotty at best, and some of it even made no sense. They had no medicine for replacing fractured bones save for a few, no medications for regrowing nerves and the like, hell they even 'transplanted' dead organs into patients, and somehow they lived?! He had to look more into this.
"Hmm..hemoglobin blood, endothermic and mammalian, one cardiovascular pump, the digestive system includes-" He stopped, staring at the pad. Surely this is a joke, right?
He looks into the info on skeletal structure instead.
"Their bones are how strong?! AND CAN REGENERATE ON THEIR OWN?! How the bloody hell does a species regenerate a mineral structure strong as industrial metals?!"
With trepidation, he looked at their musculature. Surely they had a downside there, right?
Right?
"Oh what the fu..."
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Viza sighed, looking out the viewport at the planet they were orbiting. He had been reading more about these humans, but honestly half of it sounded like some fantasy boogieman. If they expected the S.A. to take them seriously they'll have to cut the fantasizing out and tell them the truth, and soon or else they may end up in a war themselves. He sighed, taking a look at a different set of data instead.
'Huh, their name for their planet is translated as Dirt.' he repeated in his head amusedly while looking out the window at the planet. It was ironic that these Terran's named their planet "Dirt" when over 70 percent of it was dihydrogen monoxide. Still, it was rather beautiful. Much more so than his own planet of Krultath.
"Land of hunters" is what it meant, but they might as well have called it land of sand after what they did to it. No more jungles, or forests, the majority of the planet had been a desert for the past millennia after the nuclear war that almost wiped them out. But here, looking at this blue-green deathworld, he wondered if it was what his own cradle world looked like before they ruined it. It almost didn't seem like a class 4 deathworld. Beautiful, plenty of water, plenty of livable land green with plant life, nice big white cloud- wait, he thought, looking closer at the large mass of clouds.
'Is...Is that a storm system?! It's huge enough to see from space what the hell, what are the humans doing they need to evacuate they need to-' he thought as he fumbled with the datapad, only for his thoughts to be interrupted as he accessed the planet's news system in somewhere called "Florida"
"~As you can see behind me Dave, Hurricane Michelangelo is getting closer to the shore. Winds are being recorded in excess of 125mph with an eyewall of over 75 miles. All in all, just another Tuesday for the typical floridian, who you can see behind me walking about as if nothing is happening. Stay tuned to Channel 8 news for more~"
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Are they kidding me, a storm that size is "just another Tuesday" to these people?! What the hell is a Tuesday?! It was like their own planet was actively trying to kill them and they just didn't care, what kind of people are these Terrans, what kind of horrible planet is this and more importantly,
WHAT THE FU..
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Kix was standing astounded at the storm system on the planet, much the same thoughts running through his own mind.
"Are....are you sure you don't need assistance with evacuation of your people, ambassador. That storm is.. well it's unthinkable to most of the S.A." He says, more shocked at the nonchalantness of these Terrans in the face of this calamity than of the actual storm itself.
"Oh yes, quite fine. It's hurricane season after all, and that one it just barely a category three. Really it's just a glorified category two, It'll die out soon enough. Besides, waffle house is still open, and like my home state says, if it's not serious enough to close down waffle house, then it's not serious." Jacobs said with a grin, looking at the storm.
"You have actual seasons revolving around these storms?!" Kix said, flabbergasted. Sure the humans sent over a ton of information about their home planet, but most of the S.A. regarded half of it as propaganda to make themselves seem tougher than they already were and the other half to be secret threats of genetic modification. But if this is what they have to deal with continually, then Kix supposed some of what they sent made sense.
"And..ahem, what about the other "natural" disasters" your people told us about, those are true as well?!" He tried to remain neutral, but the Hexat ambassador was truly shocked anything could survive down there, let alone sentient life.
"Hmm, Hurricanes and cyclones are basically the same. Tornadoes and twisters, earthquakes, tsunamis, lightning storms, dust storms, snowstorms, solar flares too, but those rarely hit more often than once every couple hundred years. Volcanoes, landslides, droughts, wildfires, heatwaves, hailstorms, limnic eruptio-" The ambassador went on and on and finally Klix had to beg him to stop.
"Okay okay, enough, I get it. By the voids its like your planet is actually trying to kill you." Klix half muttered under his breath to which Jacobs responded with a smile, hiding his teeth.
"Oh, she is, but that's just Mother Nature's tough love."
"She? and that is love?" Kixix said exasperated.
"She, Gaia. For our species females are the mothers, so since the Earth gave birth to us, she is our mother. In some religions she was referred to as a deity, one of whom named her Gaia." Jacobs explained to the apparently done-with-this looking Hexat.
"I... I need a break. You humans are honestly insanity. Let's reconvene in an hour after I am able to somehow recover from...this." Klix said, waving a hand at the window showing Earth. This was the third time in a solar day they had had to do so, mostly because humans are ridiculous, their planet is ridiculous, this whole system is RIDICULOUS, and Klix wasn't sure how much more they could handle.
"Fair enough ambassador, though might I ask that we start with the diplomatic talks when we do so. As amusing as it is seeing your reaction to our home and our people, we both have a job to do after all." Jacobs replied with joviality as Klix mentally shunned himself for forgetting and instead nodded to the ambassador before leaving to his private quarters. What the hell had he...no, had the S.A. gotten themselves into.
Heading into his room Klix sighed, disrobing and laying on his bed, pulling out a datapad to look over the data they had thought was fake."If all of this is real." he mumbled to himself. "Then these Terrans might just be the biggest boogiemen we ever encountered...""Damn what the Alliance thinks, the Hexats need to be on their good side or we are doomed when they get to space." He continued to no one in particular. He knew it wasn't a question of if. If they could survive all those natural disasters, predators, diseases and otherwise, then they most certainly could accomplish it eventually. And when they did, voids help whoever wasn't on their side, because Klix sure as hell wouldn't be crossing them.
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Back in the medical room, Kaxus had recovered from fainting and was looking over the human biology feeds directly from their system, having thought the information the humans had sent to them to be lies. After all, they made no sense! But looking at the live feed, he had to realize that they were true.
Bone density was around 50 times lighter than steel, yet somehow had a tensile strength equivalent to the industrial metal! their muscle density was 1.055g/ml, that was over twice the galactic average and 15 percent denser than the densest known species so far, and thats not even getting into their digestive system, which used literal hydrogen chlorine bonded acids that could eat through metals, or even their immune system which was basically a bioweapon in and of itself.'These humans are insane. They may look cute and cuddly like the lesser primates back on Hexis Prime, but if I didn't know any better I'd say they were biological war machines! and that was without enhancements.'
Whatever happened to this human he was helping, he was afraid to imagine. She had so many aug implants that it made him shudder, some of them were even far more advanced than most terran tech they revealed, and he was supposed to help her? These people were monsters! Demons! Death machines!He sighed for what felt like the thousandth time as he had to keep calming himself down. Monsters yes, but sapient. He had a duty to help her, but he did not know how to, not without prying into the implants. Just as he was getting ready to, however, a message popped up on his data pad, with no origin source.
"Is Ms Ryder away for the Earthbound Governments?"
he typed in response "Yes, who is this?" curiously.
Why would someone contact him this way and why make sure the terran governments weren't around. If he didn't know any better he'd say he was in the plot of a terrible horror movie. He laughed a bit at that until he saw a twitch to the left of him, on the medical bed. And then another. And another, before suddenly, the red haired human bolted up in the bed, gasping for air, and Kaxus screamed a shamefully high scream before passing out...again...