Alex paced back and forth in front of the couch. “Ok, they really look like elves, they’re tall, skinny, overall good looking, and have pointed ears? It’s like a video game or some old fantasy movie.”
Kara answered from a sitting position on the couch, “Unknown, however, these were the three largest settlements we detected from orbit, we have since located thousands of smaller settlements spread across the giant land mass.”
Alex stopped pacing and looked over to Kara, “Do you think there could be humans down there as well?”
Kara shrugged, “Unknown and until we do more surveillance we can’t know.”
Alex turned around and looked at the screen, the clear image of an Elven women in what once looked like fine clothing but had seen better days. Then turned back to Kara, “So many questions, can you bump up our surveillance drone production, maybe see if we can find some smaller ones?”
Kara vanished from the couch and appeared in front of the table where the hologram perpetually hovered, Alex sighed and walked over to the table. Kara gestured to the holo and the local region of space changed to a diagram of what looked like a metal baseball appeared. “This is the latest in spy drone technology. They are smaller than the ones we sent, but are far more complex to build, and like the last three have no way of traveling through space.”
Alex nodded, “Ok, that will definitely do, how much longer will these take to fabricate?”
Kara opened up the diagram to show the litany of parts inside, “These ‘sparrow’ models will take approximately three times as long to build, but we can set a few auto factories aside to focus on only their production.”
Alex looked around the table for snacks, “We can deliver them to the planet as we get enough built to fill up a transport.” He settled on some tater tots. “I think our first mission should be language analysis. If we can’t understand them, the pretty pictures and videos don’t mean much.”
Kara switched the view back to the local portion of space, a busy area indeed, as hundreds of drones and haulers zipped about gathering materials for the Missive’s never ending repairs. “We should choose one of the cities and focus on it.”
Alex swallowed his tater tot and answered, “Lets do some recon first and see if there are any human settlements, we would focus language analysis on them, then work up their culture and history.”
“That brings up another problem, we need more processing capacity.” Kara said as she brought up a diagram of the ship. “We have an empty cargo bay, it was originally filled with torpedoes, but they were expended in battle. The other still has eighty five, but we couldn’t get to them due to battle damage. I suggest we use the empty bay to extend our ships onboard computer system to speed up language and cultural models.”
Alex smiled inwardly, Kara never suggested ideas, “Agreed, I doubt we’re going to need to rebuild our torpedo supplies soon, better to make use of a cargo hold that close to central systems, even if it will make our ship a little lopsided. How long will it take to get the new systems online?”
Kara looked back to him impassively, “A few days to mine and refine the materials, a few days of nanite construction, then a few days of installation. I expect about a week until we’ll have the new systems online.”
Alex swallowed another tater tot, “That works out then, the sparrow model probes will take at least a week to get built and delivered, even then it’ll be fewer than a couple of hundred in that time frame, we can use their information to stress test the new computers. In the mean time, we’ll have to use onboard systems to compile information from the old probes we have on the planet now.”
Kara seemed to hesitate before speaking, “There is one other thing I need to bring to your attention.”
Alex raised an eyebrow, more information sharing from Kara? “Is it good news or bad news?”
Kara shrugged, yes, she actually shrugged, “The current data confirms that physics here do not match conventional physics. Many things are the same, such as gravity, however, some things are not.”
Alex didn’t like the sound of that, “Can you give me more information than just physics are wonky here?”
Kara’s eyes glowed a brighter blue for a moment, “Zero point energy is much more free flowing, the probes use Casimir effect reactors, which are good for their compact size and minimal energy requirements, however, those reactors are outputting far more power than the probes need, they are radiating heat to deal with the excess power generation.”
Alex decided against another tater tot, “Ok, that sounds like it might become a problem, is this interfering with either of us, or the ship?”
Kara shook her head, “No, I have found that my processing time has improved, as electrons can more easily flow through my substrate with less resistance, causing less thermal loss. You seem to be in the same situation, the ship was modified for space combat, it is more than capable of radiating excess heat into the vacuum of space.”
Alex thought for a moment before choosing a small sugar cookie, “Could this have anything to do with the strange inhabitants here?”
Kara’s eyes blazed bright blue, a sign she was processing a ton of data, “No, I do not believe so, however, the physics of our universe may have influenced this one. Information theory may transcend spacetime and affect other universes, if a large enough population of humans think of Elves, Dwarves, or Orcs, perhaps another universe creates them?”
Alex finished chewing his cookie, “So we’re now stuck in a fairy tale land someone came up with in a coffee shop?”
Kara snorted, she gets humor, one more point for sentience. Alex thought, before she answered, “I believe it is far more complicated than that. But for simplicities sake, let’s say… maybe?”
Alex turned around and walked over to the couch, “Well, if we’re going to be stuck here, we should immerse ourselves in the culture.” He said as he plopped down on the couch.
Kara appeared on the couch beside him, “It will be another week until we can get more drones there and even more time after that to work out their language and culture, how could we do it now?”
Alex turned on the view screen, “Simple, we’re going to watch The Lord Of the Rings trilogy, that should do it.”
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If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Eleven and a half hours later, in the suggestive time that Alex and Kara operated in, Kara looked over to Alex with an eyebrow raised.
Alex looked back, “What?”
Kara paused before answering, “You don’t really believe the elves down there will act anything like Legolas do you?”
Alex smiled and stood up from the couch, stretching, “No, but that would be awesome.”
Kara sighed and vanished from the couch to appear by the table once more, the hologram that floated above the food changed to the ruins of what were once large cities, “These Elves weren’t using magic and bows and arrows, they had the beginnings of a technological society.”
Alex strode over looking at the table for something to munch on, “Yeah yeah, then they nuked themselves into a nuclear winter.” He said as he grabbed a small cheeseburger slider and took a bite.
Kara shook her head as reading from the probes showed new data on the sides of the picture, “No, the explosions down there were not something so crude as hydrogen bombs. I’m getting readings of hafnium.
Alex nearly choked, “We use hafnium torpedoes in space combat, and they’re a relatively new thing.”
Kara looked at the data, eyes glowing a brighter blue, “The trace residuals combined with the residual radiation field shows that this hafnium was from this more energetic Universe, not ours.”
Alex stared at the readings, “Wait, they had the technology for hafnium weapons but not space travel? There’s no trace of a space-based infrastructure at all here.”
Kara nodded as she agreed with the statement. “You are correct that they had no space-based infrastructure, not even satellites yet, however, I do not believe they developed Hafnium weapons either.”
Alex thought about that statement for a moment, chewing on the last of his slider. He swallowed and then spoke, “So someone else bombed them from orbit? Someone with starships and hafnium torpedoes that were manufactured in this Universe?”
Kara continued to look at the holo, “I would extrapolate that they were bombed from orbit. Most of these impact sites do not show signs of horizontal drift like you would see from a ground based launch.”
Alex put his hands on his hips, “Well shit! So you’re telling me someone flew here, bombed them back to the stone age, and then left?”
Kara looked at Alex through the hologram, “That would be the most probable conclusion.”
Alex paced back and forth, “Can you tell if it was a single ship or a fleet?”
Kara’s eyes flared blue, “Unknown, the isotopic half lives conclude the weapons were all manufactured at the same time. There are not many cities down there that were hit, less than two hundred and fifty, even our freighter turned warship could have done far more damage in an orbital bombardment if we were fully stocked.”
Alex brushed his hand through his hair, a nervous twitch he retained from back when he was still biological. “There goes the production schedule, finish up the current round of drones and get those auto factories on getting the ship combat ready. We’re still pretty banged up, I don’t know if we could defend against a group of girl scouts right now, much less an unknown alien fleet.”
Kara swiped her hand and the hologram swapped to rotating 3D wireframe model of the Missive. “The torpedo tubes are all back online, sixty four are hot in the tubes, with one in the chamber behind it. We have almost three full cargo bays of reloads, two hundred and eighty five to be precise. However, we have less than thirty operational point defense cannons, most of them being sheered off by the wall. It will take some time to refit the over two hundred hard points.”
Alex put his hands on the table and looked at his battered ship, “Armor plates look good, although we do have some still missing, shield emitters seem fine, and ripple drive is reading nominal. We can run from a fight I think, but I hate to give up the advantage of this ore field. How long until we can manufacture the point defense casemates?”
Kara’s eyes glowed, then faded. “I’d like to properly cover our hull with point defense, bring the number up to three hundred and fifty. Also, with the added computer banks in bay two that we were going to use for cultural analysis, we can also use it to offload the excess point defense calculations. We have two shots left with our hull mounted rail gun, I’d like to fill the revolver with four more. That puts us at three months repair and refit.”
Alex looked down at the table, cursing silently to himself, “That’s a long time to be sitting here mining and manufacturing, pull the probes from the planet and launch the other six around the system. How far can twelve probes be launched and still have full sensor coverage with string radio back to us?”
Kara pulled up schematics for the probes, “Looks like about one light month radius sphere for twelve, we could make the sphere bigger with more probes, but shutting down auto factories and loading new templates will take away from manufacturing point defense casemates.”
Alex shook his head, “No, one light month is enough. If they don’t have faster than light communications we’ll have plenty of warning, if their ripple drive is as fast as ours, we’ll have about a day’s notice. That should be enough time to bring in all our assets and get out of here.”
Kara put her hands behind her back and nodded. “Yes Sir, plans have been revised, estimated time until probes reach one light month, sixteen hours thirty three minutes.”
Alex stood up straight, “Well, enough business for now, I think I need to watch a comedy while we wait for the auto factories to spit out the sparrow drones to load up the transport.”
Kara nearly bounced at that announcement and disappeared from the table and appeared on the couch. “That sounds excellent, what do you have in mind?”
Alex picked up a bowl of popcorn from the table and walked over to the couch, “I need something silly, maybe something like Monty Python.”
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Nine days later Alex was standing in front of the holo eating a taco, well, trying to eat a taco, it was falling apart and dropping its innards onto the floor. Cursing a bit he had the environment get rid of the mess on the floor. (And on his uniform top.) “Ok, all sparrows released and the hauler is heading back.”
Kara nodded, arms crossed behind her back, “Correct, I am sending them out for language interpretation, cultural history, and scientific study of their world.”
Alex gave up on the taco and it vanished from his hands, “Auxiliary computer shows all systems green in cargo two?”
Kara double checked the diagnostics, “Yes, ready for stress testing from the sparrows. I really wish we could have produced more than a few hundred of them.”
Alex nodded, “Me too, but we just don’t have the luxury of time. We don’t know how long ago the planet was bombed, we could have have a fleet land on top of our heads at any time. Getting the Missive combat ready is top priority.”
Kara sighed, “Once we are ready, can we switch back to producing more sparrows?”
Alex shrugged as he picked up a brownie, “I don’t see why not. With the current number of sparrows down there, how long will it take us to be able to communicate with the inhabitants of the planet?”
Kara’s eyes blazed blue for a moment, “A little over a year with the current number, we will be able to understand most of their language within six months, but things like slang and what we would call pop culture will take significantly longer.”
Alex took his first bite of the brownie, rolling his eyes, whoever came up with the buffet table was a programming genius! “All auto factories have been switched to full military production?”
Kara swiped the holo to the internal cargo bays, “Correct, we are currently manufacturing casemates, auto maser cannons, additional armor plating, torpedoes, rail gun rounds for the revolver, and the mining drones finally found a carbon rich asteroid, there should be enough to imbed carbon nano-flakes into the armored hull segments.”
Alex finished his brownie and wiped his hands on a napkin on the end of the table, “Excellent, we won’t be a giant space reflector anymore. Hopefully the sparrows will help us get an idea of what happened to the planet, would be nice to know what kind of threat we could be up against.”
Kara then swiped the holo to show the schematics for the hafnium torpedoes, “I have discovered something very interesting. Our torpedo yield has increased by approximately two and a half times in this universe. Hafnium detonation is far far easier to attain as well, if we had these physics on our side in our universe, we would have cracked hafnium detonation three centuries earlier.”
Alex paced back from the edge of the table to the holo, “So the bombardment was from weaker weaponry than we have now?”
Kara pulled up an ruined city and the crater in the center, “If we would have launched that weapon, there would be almost no trace of hafnium, and the explosion radius would have been over double the size. I believe these weapons were quite crude compared to our technology, only able to work due to this universes strange physics.”
Alex ran his hand through his hair, “Well, that is some good news, we still don’t know how many ships might swing by to bomb this planet on a regular basis or how often they plan do do so. At this point, all we can do is get our ship back to fighting shape and gather more information about this Universe.”