Two months later Alex and Kara were sitting on the couch watching old game shows, something they somehow decided was fun to watch when the video froze and Kara spoke up, “Sensor net just triggered, putting all drones into stealth mode incase we receive an active sensor ping.”
She then disappeared to the hologram at the buffet table, Alex bounced up off the couch and walked over to see what the holo was displaying. “One ship, our probes have been in stealth this whole time and show no sign of active sensors. Well that is unexpected, that ship is huge.”
Alex stared into the holo, sensors showed the pine cone shaped craft in remarkable detail, “Eight kilometers long, four kilometers at it’s widest point, it is rotating at half a rotation per minute to give artificial gravity. Almost no EM field for shielding, at best they could be deflecting space particles. Looks like they would be relying on armor for space combat.”
Kara spun the holo around looking at the data streams still coming in from the probes, “They are coming in at 10c, which is far below the Missive’s cruise speed. Whether they have slowed down coming into the system or if it is a design limitation I do not know.”
Alex pointed his finger at the armor plating and the weak EM signature which was confirmed to be pointing forward. “No, I believe that is their maximum velocity, if they were to exceed that the deflector shields would not be able to stop even micro meteor impacts that made it through the ripple field. The armor isn’t exactly exotic materials either, just an extremely dense titanium ceramic composite, nothing like the Warsteel we use for plate.”
Kara’s eyes blazed blue as she made calculations based on the continuous data streaming from the probes. “Agreed, however, this is odd.” She stated as more detailed information updated in the wireframe model of the vessel. “I believe this vessel is biological.”
Alex’s eyes grew wide, “A living starship? Are you sure?”
Kara’s eyes stayed their brilliant blue as she continued to absorb information, “It appears to have a nervous system, circulatory system, and gastrointestinal system. It also appears to feed on free hydrogen in the interstellar medium and power itself via a biological fusion process.”
Alex pondered this a second, “Wait, that makes no sense, the outer hull is obviously fabricated, not biological.”
Kara looked from the holo to Alex, “That is correct, however, I believe the vessel was outfitted with the armor and weapons.” She expanded the vessel in the holo to show the forward hull, “They do not have torpedo tubes, they are on cradles lashed to the armor. There is no point defense that our sensors can detect. I would say these are space faring creatures used as beasts of burden.”
Alex rubbed the back of his neck, “Our sensors aren’t detecting any string radiation transmissions, that means they must be flying blind.”
Kara studied the sensor data before answering, “I do not believe that is entirely true, it seems they are riding a weak gravitational wave towards the planet, I believe the ship itself may be able to sense the wave and use it like sonar or echo location. Also, no ripple field is present, they are literally being pushed by spacetime itself.”
Alex looked alarmed, “Ah crap, could they detect us?”
Kara shook her head as she manipulated the raw data on the sides of the holo, “Theoretically yes, practically no. The Missive is in stealth mode, and while a gravity wave could wash over the ship, we are in a dense asteroid field. We would appear as just another floating chunk of rock, they would have to have very good algorithms to see something amiss from the distance to the planet, much less from their current distance.”
Alex nodded, “So they see the universe like an ancient submarine would on earth, as signals around them you think?”
Kara nodded as she continued to process data, “I would say it is a near certainty at this point, there simply isn’t enough radiation emissions coming from that ship to do anything else.”
Alex settled down a bit and eyed a fig newton, picking it up from the table, just as he went to take a bite Kara spoke, “That is strange, I’m reading bell inequality in the vessel. Checking sparrows on the planet. Oh, that is brilliant. They do have faster than light communication.”
Alex pulled the fig newton away from his mouth. Then he cheated by looking up what bells inequality was, “They’re using quantum entanglement to communicate to the planet?”
Kara swiped at the holo for more information, “Yes, and before you ask, no we can’t intercept what they are saying. If it weren’t for the ‘wonky physics’ as you say here we wouldn’t have been able to detect it at all. Or if they had a real shield emitter on board it would have blocked the probes from detecting it.”
Alex took a bite from his fig newton, “Ok, so they can talk to the planet, probably talk back to wherever they call home as well. Do they pose a threat to us?”
Kara continued to process the information from the probes, “The only significant problem is the number of torpedoes they could launch at us, there are literally thousands of them on racks all over the hull. Even with all our point defense systems running some could get through. But no, I would say a single ship of this class would not be dangerous to us. At the very least we can run from it.”
Alex chewed on that, as well as his fig newton, “That’s a relief, we’ll stay in stealth and watch the sparrow drones on the planet to see what they do. If they start nuking the planet again, we may have to go into action.”
Kara stood up straight and crossed her arms, “I would expect nothing less from you Captain.”
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Five days later Alex and Kara stood in front of the holo, between passive sensors on the Missive, passive sensors on the probes, and the small active sensors on the sparrows, they had a good idea of what the pine cone was, and it’s capabilities. First of all, it was a living starship, during it’s slow down and settling into orbit Kara deduced it could manifest weak gravitational waves, allowing it to literally swim through space.
Most of what Kara theorized in the first few minutes was now confirmed, it was very strange the combination of both biological and technological traits they were seeing. It was on this day that the vessel began sending down what could only be considered drop ships.
Kara combined all three sensor points on the main holo, “They are all identical in size, and mostly hollow, they mostly resemble our ore haulers, but are quite a bit larger.”
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Alex considered that while picking up a small chocolate chip cookie, “Mostly hollow means they aren’t sending troops down to the planet, you may be right, these are for hauling goods back up to the ship.”
Kara swapped the holo from the wireframe of the drop ships to one of her stealth sparrow drones, “I have one drone that can intercept near a potential landing zone, they are landing outside of most population centers, this one just happened to be flying between villages.”
Alex bit into his cookie and chewed, watching the video feed and keeping an eye on the navigational data from the drop ship. “Are they using chemical rockets to land that huge thing?”
Kara looked to the data coming in, “Yes, it appears they are, however, remember, physics work differently here. They are getting far more energy out of a chemical reaction than we would in our universe, perhaps up to forty percent more.”
He nodded as he watched it precariously land, kicking up dust and debris for a quarter of a kilometer. The tiny probe sped towards the vessel and took up a station keeping role around a hundred meters from what appeared to be the main exit ramp.
Kara looked to the other inputs coming in, hundreds of the Elves were approaching the vessel with wagons of some kind of ore. She turned the probe and used it’s camera to zoom in, but could not determine what it was. “The probe cannot determine the ore they are loading, well, to be precise, the ore doesn’t correspond to anything on our periodic table.”
Alex puzzled over that for a moment, “We ran out of new elements at one seventy three due to the physics of our universe, something about electrons would have to travel faster than light to hold the element together or something like that. Do you think that the wonky physics here allow for more elements?”
Kara looked from the scans all stating UNKNOWN to Alex, “I would say that is a near certainty at this point. Whatever this material is, it is extremely dense, those wagons are barely a quarter of the way full, but the six horse-like animals pulling them are struggling on the mostly flat ground.”
Then the back ramp began to open, slowly at first, but then quicker as the enormous weight of the ramp pulled on the hydraulics on either side. Out stepped what Alex would have considered a hybrid of Humanoids and Lynx. They reminded him of art from ancient Egypt, except their legs bent backwards, like the hind legs of a dog.
They then started shouting to the Elves who brought the wagons of ore into the drop ships while they watched, holding what appeared to be some kind of fire arm. Alex took control of the drone and had it scan the weapon, then looking over to the data flow on the sides of the holo-tank.
“Kinetic weapon, chemically powered, magazine fed, nothing more than a slug thrower. It would’ve been standard military issue five hundred years ago back on earth.” He said as he watched the Elves begin to empty the carts into containers in the haulers.
Kara nodded, agreeing with his assessment. “Those would be quite deadly against opponents without proper body armor, which I doubt the populace has. It appears that this new race of beings has been keeping the Elves as you call them from advancing technologically.”
Alex shook his head, sighing. “Yeah, until we get better language models I doubt we’ll figure out how long this has been going on. You still think the bombardment didn’t happen all at once?”
Kara nodded once more, “Yes, I am getting different trace elements at each sight as the sparrows move around the planet, I believe the bombing has been going on over a very long time, causing the spreading out of population to the villages rather than concentrations in large cities.”
As they watched the Elves empty their cargo and leave they saw the huge ramp close as hundreds of wagons left the area in a hurry. The hauler then started up its engines and launched itself back towards the huge mothership in orbit.
Alex looked from the video feed in the holo to Kara, “If they have room for those big ass cargo haulers, could they have fighter craft? Like the carriers from the Empire?”
Kara shrugged, “Unknown, and without a full sensor ping with the Missive’s active sensors we wouldn’t know until either they launched them or didn’t. I would assume that since they do not have an escort of smaller ships, that they must rely on smaller fighter craft to help defend the ship, but if they are powered by chemical rockets as well, they would have very little range.”
Six more days passed as the haulers left the mothership and filled up on the planet over and over again. Alex was watching a sitcom rerun when Kara called over to him from the holo. “Sir, the mothership is moving.”
He stood up from the couch and walked over to the table, looking down for a snack. “I guess they have all their tribute and they’re heading back to wherever they came from?”
Kara watched the wireframe of the ship, “I suppose, wait, what is that?” She asked as she put both hands into the holo-tank and spread them apart to zoom in on a tiny dot leaving the ship. “Sir, that’s a torpedo, launched from one of the racks on the hull.”
Alex looked from the holo to Kara, “No way to get there in time, it’s a chemically powered torpedo but it will reach the surface before we can get our ripple drive spooled up, much less get the fusion torches online.”
Kara waved her hand through the holo and touched a sparrow that was in the area of the oncoming torpedo. It showed a medium sized town on the banks of a river. No way to tell what the population could be, in a brilliant flash a shockwave roared towards the sparrow, then the signal cut out as it was reduced to metal slag.
She looked through the holo to Alex, waiting to see what he would do. He shook his head and started pacing, she knew that look. It was what he did when he was trying to make a serious decision, he did it before the battle of Birmingham, as he weighed the price of his ships and the lives of their crews versus the millions on the planet.
Alex stopped and turned to the holo-tank, “Is there any indication that they are launching more?”
Kara swiped from the current view to a planetary wireframe with the giant pine cone leaving orbit. “No, it appears they only launched the one torpedo, they will be leaving orbit in the next few minutes, their current trajectory is concurrent with the direction they arrived from.”
Alex sighed, “If we destroy that ship we risk these Lynx creatures sending a fleet to this planet to retaliate. We could make the situation worse for the Elves.”
He paced back and forth running his hand through his hair before turning back to Kara, “Use the probes to gather more information on their outbound journey, use the information from when they came into the system and figure out where they are going. At 10c they can’t be going very far from this system.”
Kara nodded, using the holo to turn the probes focus on the outgoing ship. “Sir, will we be following them?”
Alex thought about it for a moment, “How long until we finish repair and refit?”
Kara’s eyes blazed blue, “After the vessel leaves we can start back to work, we still have nearly a month of work still ahead of us. The only place we can cut corners is on torpedo production, that could save us two weeks if we put all other production into everything else and worked on torpedoes in route.”
He looked at the holo as he spoke, “How big of a risk is it to construct torpedoes while traveling at 10c?”
Kara’s eyes faded, “It would be very dangerous, it’s already quite dangerous building them inside the ship, but we don’t have the time to setup the auto-factories in deep space. Onboard a moving starship raises that risk substantially.”
Alex looked away before turning back to her, “No, we can’t risk cutting corners here. We can’t help these Elves if we’re dead. We finish work on the Missive, then we put everything into sparrows and probes for a week. We’ll drop what we can build off at the planet and make our way to wherever the Lynx are going. Our top speed while in stealth is 25c, we can finish our repairs and still beat them to their destination.”
Kara nodded, “That is… sensible Sir. What will we do when we get to our destination?”
Alex shrugged, “We gather information, while we are in route I want the auto-factories churning out probes and sparrows, if it is a system with a planet we’ll deploy both, if it is a space station or shipyard we’ll drop off probes to watch them. We don’t know enough of what is going on here. Best to get information from the Lynx and the Elves.”
Kara crossed her arms behind her back, “I will get a triangulation on their possible destinations, then get the mining drones and haulers back to work. Once we have more raw materials to feed into the forges I can get the auto-factories back up and running. Is there anything else Sir?”
Alex turned and walked to the corner of the room that was once setup for the crew to eat at a huge corner table, he swiped his hand and the table vanished. In its place the corner became his strategy center. One wall had monitors showing the local star cluster, the current system, and finally the planet of the Elves. The other wall was a whiteboard he could take notes with. “I’m going to try and wrap my head around the situation we’re in. You tend to the present, I’ll try to plan for the future.”