It always come back to First Contact you see. To those you misunderstand the Terran's simple greeting.
"We come in peace."
You see only a greeting. Perhaps one made from weakness in the hope of staving off trouble. You don't see what it truly is.
An offer. A ceasefire for as long as your company remains tolerable. An offer to turn the lemur's murderous gaze elsewhere for a time. You see what they want to see, because you do not think like the Terrans.
You cannot declare War on the Terrans, because they have already declared it. They are at war with you, forever, and always, broken only by temporary truce. You cannot get in the first shot of the war, because the Terrans did not declare war when they met you. They did not declare war when they heard of your home. They did not declare war when the first rumors of you reached them. They declared war when they first dreamed you might exist out in the stars, and they have been loading their guns ever since.
The Terran greeting is a simple but generous offer; to not shoot you yet. And you never even considered how vicious a race must be if they think they had to inform you of that simple courtesy. - Bo'okdu'ust, approximately 45 2PW
The consoles around the large control room all went suddenly high speed live. Data scrolled down the 2.5D screen, filling holotanks and wiping away any previous data. The smartglass windows flashed, data windows vanishing, data streaming down.
It wasn't the first time it had happened, so the shift crewmembers just started annotating the data and recording it on video recorders.
Angela Angus Kusumoto reached for her pen and notebook as her terminal suddenly went haywire.
What she saw made her pause.
EMERGENCY NODE LOCK
CLEAR ALL DATA TRAFFIC
appeared in the middle of her center monitor. The five monitors, arranged to surround the central one, all went dead for a second.
Hexagons, circles, squares all appeared. In each geometric representation of network functions appeared addresses.
Network addresses.
Network addresses wildly outside of known network channels.
She started scribbling as fast as possible, waving her hand.
An assistant with a simple shutter camera that exposed light to a piece of plastic with a photographic film on it ran up, hitting the stud. The camera flashed and a whirring noise accompanied the black plastic square sliding out of the bottom. The assistant let it drop even as she took photos of the other monitors as fast as possible.
EMERGENCY REQUEST
REQUEST APPROVED (OMEGA AUTHORITY)
NINETEEN - ONE NINE - 19 - AGENT TEAMS REQESTED
Angela scribbled down the numbers and the network addresses as fast as possible.
FORTY - FOUR ZERO - 40 -AGENT TEAMS APPROVED (OMEGA AUTHORITY)
RAGNAROK TEAMS UNTHAW PROGRESS - 100%
RAGNAROK TEAM MEDICAL CHECKS - PASSED (2.5 HOURS)
Angela frowned.
"We've got something happening on the hyperlock layers!" she called out.
RAGNAROCK ASSET SKILL TESTS - PASSED (6.75 HOURS)
"Which one?" her supervisor asked.
"Unknown. Network addresses are out of range," she answered, still scribbling as fast as she could. She spoke without looking back. "Paranoid Shot these screens."
The assistant with the camera nodded, getting close, taking pictures as fast as possible, letting the black rectangles fall to the floor. The earlier ones were slowly starting to fill with color.
RAGNAROK TEAM EQUIPMENT ISSUE - DONE (2.38 HOURS)
RAGNAROK TEAMS READY! - 100%
MAT-TRANS SYSTEM ONLINE - RAGNAROK AUTHORITY ACCEPTED
That made Angela raise her eyebrows.
RAGNAROK TEAM DEPLOMENT SUCCESSFUL
NINETEEN - ONE NINE - 19- TEAMS DEPLOYED
SECONDARY TEAMS ON STANDBY
MAT-TRANS RETURNING TO STANDY - GEHENNA LOCKOUT
The assistant with the camera managed to snap two photos before all of the consoles and workstations suddenly shut down and rebooted.
Angela sighed, leaning back, setting down her pen, and shaking out her hand.
She'd managed to copy a lot of data.
"Did you get that at the end?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am," the Paranoid Camera operator said.
Angela breathed another sigh of relief.
"Another day in Atlantis, another mystery," she said softly, shaking her head.
0-0-0-0-0
Birds suddenly took flight from the starport's terminals, flapping their wings and crying out their outrage at something disturbing them. Some people started to look around, wondering what was going on.
The Ornislarp starship on the tarmac suddenly vanished in a broiling hell of particles as the jumpcores all detonated.
It was a race between ravening energy and safety mechanisms.
Between hyper-physics and technology.
The initial shielding held the explosion for a split second before it failed, surrounding where the starship was still exploding into pieces in battlescreens strong enough for a capital ship.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The shield failed before it could fully energize.
But it held long enough for the secondary to already be spinning up.
The blast consumed the ships on the tarmac before it hit the next shielding. That shielding held even as the jumpdrives of the other ships added their fury to the blast. Not out of any conspiracy but simply by virtue of being charged, as was permittable to all diplomatic vessels.
The second shield went down, exploding inward toward the blast the way it was designed.
The third shield was at over half strength when the particle sleet moving faster than light hit it. It bowed, it sparked, but it held, gaining strength from the particles before the main blast wave hit.
But that didn't help the terminal and the starport, which was torn into subatomic particles as the jumpcore blasts consumed them.
Over half a million sentients vanished into the cosmic fury.
The third shield failed at the one and a half second mark.
By that time the Brightflash City Defensive Grid had fully spun up. It contained the blast, which turned night into day.
On Mars and Mercury green mantids and Terran workers stripped to the waist looked up and could see the pinprick flash. With grim purpose they turned back to their tasks, the Hate Anvils of Mars ringing and the Wrath Forges of Mercury roaring.
The blast energies faded away as the city's defense grid bled off the energy.
When the shield dropped it revealed a crater nearly three miles wide and a mile deep at where the Ornislarp vessel had been.
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Oooh, this isn't good. These reports are bad.
I've got 32.25 million dead at Cherry Ripple Starport. We've got injured moomoos. Moomoo emergency response teams are mobilizing.
It looks like the Ornislarp ambassadorial spaceship detonated on the pad. Our safety measures weren't sufficient and the blast hit the city and the moomoo fields.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
SOLDOM
Someone thinks they're tough.
///////
Violet wanted to close his eyes, wanted to look away as he pressed the button. He had been trained to press it even if he was missing his head, post-hypnotic suggestions and post-hypnotic muscle memory implantations carrying through with the action even though he was barely holding onto being able to control his own body.
Part of his brain wanted to start screaming as he realized he was still fully aware, just pushed away from the controls over his own body.
The button clicked.
There was a flash of light.
"RUN, KODOS, RUN!" roared out.
The one in front of him, that was rising up on its back legs, suddenly was crushed into the floor by what looked like a length of wood. A long black spike drove into the Ornislarp's body as the wood smashed it down in a spray of guts, blood, and viscera. The wood yanked away and Violet was aware that the wood was smashing aside the ones holding his leg.
There was the sound of blasters firing, two thudding footsteps, then the sound of flesh being crushed and rended.
Blood splashed the wall in front of Violet, a mangled internal organ in the middle of one splash that slowly slid down the wall.
A slender looking Terran stepped in front of Violet, taking the time to hit each Ornislarp with the object in its hands.
Violet realized that it was nothing more than a wooden board with a nail in it.
"Are you all right, Messah Diplomat?" the Terran asked.
"Blurgh," Violet managed to get out.
The Terran sniffed at the air, then moved over to the environmental controls.
The air swirled and Violet realized his brain was starting to clear.
"Hunting pheromones. They used them to stun you, Messah," the Terran said.
Violet nodded, shakily getting up. The Terran helped him to a comfortable seat.
Right after Violet sat down the door crashed open. The Terran turned, spinning the board in his hands.
"TERRASOL MARSHALS!" came the shout. "ON YOUR KNEES!"
The Terran slowly knelt down, holding the board in both hands.
"Mosizlak-668716. Terran Diplomatic Corps Defense Intelligence Agency," the Terran said.
Violet just blinked. Nobody had seen a Mosizlak in...
...forty thousand years.
0-0-0-0-0
Seeks the Paths to Peace stared as her numb fingers pressed the button, her brain fogging from the Bliss and something else.
Something that seemed to be pushing back The Bliss as the Ornislarp's underside mouth opened up.
There was a sharp KA-RACK sound nearby.
A thick piece of reddish-black wood smashed aside the Ornislarp going to straddle her, the heavy spike embedded in the wood tearing open the side of the Ornislarp. There were two crushing impacts to either side of her, full of the sound of cartilege crumbling and hard chitin shattering.
There was the sound of high-vee automatic weaponry being fired.
Someone knelt over her.
A Terran dogboi.
It ran a hand over her body.
"Internal organ lacerations and bruising. Bruised book lungs on right side. Right foreleg severed just below hip. Right read leg severed just below knee. Severe damage, right side of upper thorax. Severed right antenna. Missing right eye, socket empty. Missing right bladearm," the dogboi said rapidly, digging in the pouch at their side. They pulled out a silver blanket and draped it over her. "We need to extract. Now."
"Roger," came and answer. "Mo! Mo! Cover the package."
The Terran came back as the dogboi tucked the blanket around her and it suddenly sucked tight. She wondered if she looked like she was silver plated now and giggled. The Terran had an honest to Digital Omnimessiah board with a nail in it.
"Mosizlak," she breathed, trying to smile.
Nobody had seen one in tens of thousands of years.
Of course, nobody had ever blown a diplomat's convoy out from under them in the same amount of time.
"I'm here, Madame Ambassador," the Mosizlak said.
"...need immediate dustoff. Ambassador is critically injured," Seeks heard someone saying.
"Get us a window!" someone said.
There was the shriek of high-vee weapons and something exploded.
Seeks stared at the fluffy clouds in the sky. She felt a pinch from an injection being punched through her chitin.
"Dropship! Ten minutes!" came a yell.
A pattern of hexagons appeared above her and the dogboi, who was crouched down next to her, hands working quickly.
Her world contracted as a tube was jammed down her throat. She felt tubes pushed into her book lungs. There was a gurgle of thick fluid and she could suddenly breathe easier. Her head was examined, scanned.
"Negative neurological defects detected. Negative cerebral hemorrhage repair requirements. Phasic lobe damage observed," the dogboi was saying.
Seeks realized the dogboi was talking to an eVI.
The hexagons vanished and the world came back.
There was the sounds of heavy weapons fire. The scream of hyper-velocity rockets. Explosions could be heard.
The dogboi scooped her up, curling slightly over her body, and took off running. Another explosion and debris showered down. She was hustled onto a dropship.
She recognized it. Kind of.
She'd never been in the back.
The back was loaded with armored troops and medical bays. She saw one of her black mantid escorts being loaded into a medical bay before the dogboi set her down.
"HANG ON!" someone yelled.
The dogboi put a hand on her, holding her down as the world seemed to tilt. The dogboi's other hand was moving straps, securing her to the medical bay.
"Package Alpha is locked in!" the dogboi yelled.
There was a clanking noise of metal on metal that came from somewhere nearby.
The lid slid over her.
Everything went dark.
0-0-0-0-0
HAT WEARING AUNTIE
How dare they.
How DARE they!
We are a peaceful people! Diplomats, philosophers, artists!
How DARE they attack us!
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
RIGEL
They're going to regret that.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
When TerraSol finishes putting on their stomping boots, yeah.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
RIGEL
Before then.
Trust me.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
The excitement at the spaceport had wound down. The Confederate diplomatic vessels had not only fought their way off planet, but managed to make the transition to jumpspace and escape.
But that had been several weeks ago.
While the Ornislarp Noocracy began combat operations against the Confederacy, something else was happening that almost nobody was aware of and only a few could guess.
It was a simple thing.
In an infrequently used but always full capacity warehouse just off the starport a crate had arrived. Large, made of endosteel, and so old that it had corrosion on the corners and edges, that the whole front was covered with customs and inventory stickers, the large cargo container had been virtually ignored since it was offloaded decades before.
A few days after the Confederacy had formally opened up diplomatic channels with the Ornislarp and had established the Confederate embassy that was now little more than a rubble strewn crater that still smoked and steamed.
Glurgulgh was a standard warehousing district worker who mainly supervised robots. While not an Ornislarp himself, he still had a decent job that allowed him plenty of free time.
And plenty of food.
He moved back toward the back corner of the warehouse, where the lights were malfunctioning. Most were out, but a few were flashing dimly.
He rounded the corner and stared.
An ancient looking cargo container was open. The two overlapping locked doors now slightly open.
Making a discontented rumbled in his throat he moved forward, reaching out to grab the inventory sheet out of the plastic envelope on the front of the container.
Before he could touch the envelope, a hand landed on his shoulder.
Exclaiming in shock, he whirled around.
A Terran stood in front of him. Tall, slender, with thick white hair piled up in an ornate hairstyle that had thick curls falling down the Terran's back. The Terran was dressed in crimson and silver formal clothing.
A Glurgulgh blinked the Terran's eyes suddenly turned into spirals that started spinning.
"You are under my control, blah-bleh-blah."