On board Vel ‘Tar scouting vessel.
Designation: Binding Shadow
A small probe, roughly one meter across, made it’s way silently back to it’s point of origin. The Binding Shadow was one of many thousand predator class scouting ships, and it’s probe had performed the sector sweep assigned to it. Most of her crew slept or enjoyed leisure time, one of the many perks of being a scout in the strongest military known to exist. Only the Captain and other necessary personnel were paying attention when the probe pinged the Binding Shadow, requesting a docking sequence.
“Sir, Probe 36-B is back. Run it through normal diagnostics and data recovery?” Asked a young man with close cropped black hair and green eyes. Normally not extraordinary features by any stretch of the imagination, but when coupled with his nearly three meter height, ashy gray skin, and abnormally muscular frame they painted a picture that was altogether not human.
He was however, a very standard example of one of the Vel ‘Tar. As demonstrated by the Captain of said scouting vessel. Captain Ornis Bal, another half meter taller than any crew member on his ship. A point of pride for his species. Those in charge, regardless of their ship’s role, had to be the strongest. His hair was very nearly silver in color and was pulled back into a tight ponytail. It accentuated his strong jawline and blueish gray eyes; as well as hiding the implant at the base of his skull.
“Proceed with docking procedures and send the scouting information to my terminal. Might as well go over it myself, pretty slow out here.” The giant man gave his orders.
Despite his stature and obvious military power, the Captain was well known to be a reasonable and rational man. He wasn’t prone to anger and tended to lead with a firm, but fair hand.
The probe drifted to the port side of the craft before a 10 meter docking port opened revealing a hanger bay behind some sort of shielding device. It slid in and docked in its designated charging station and form an uplink to the ship’s main computer.
Captain Bal stared out into the vast space around his ship. While he certainly admired the...vastness, of it all, he often wondered who he’d pissed off to get this detail. There were always wars to fight, and he had been a part of many of them. Typically scout duty was for older veterans who requested the duty to get off the front lines from time to time. Sighing internally, he just reaffirmed to himself that he may as well make the best of his circumstances.
As the data from the probe began to roll onto this holo projected monitor, he began to scour the data for anything useful. Anything that might get him back into the action. He read through material analysis of an asteroid belt, a rather large gaseous planet, and another ringed world. Finally his eyes made it down the list to a planet with a very interesting piece of information.
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Name: Earth
Planet type: Terrestrial
Radius: 6,371 Kilometers
Population: 7.6 Billion
Surface Composition: 71% water, 29% land
...
...
...
He grinned to himself, not escaping the notice of the other crew members on the bridge. “Well ladies and gentlemen, looks like we will all be getting a pay raise. Probe 36-B went and found us a populated world.”
There were a few high fives exchanged and amongst the hushed whispers there an audible excitement.
“All right, let’s find out what exactly we are dealing with. Computer, detailed analysis of Earth’s population. Focus on sentient races of any importance.”
A charming and yet clearly robotic female voice responded over the ship’s comm system. “Yes Captain. It would seem that there is one dominant sentient race on the planet, although they are divided into several racial groups. As a whole, they use ballistic weaponry, are space-faring but not interplanetary, and tend to live to an average age seventy years.”
There was a small pause before it continued. “Apologies Captain, a year is what they call one rotation around their sun.”
“No need to apologize, a very thorough analysis for a probe actually. Ballistics and non-interplanetary space travel, a rather young race. Any information on mana signatures.”
“It would seem the probe ran the scan twice, but did not receive any perceivable feedback from beings with mana. It then proceeded to acquire a tissue sample and determined them to be mana deficient, not mana-locked.” The A.I. responded.
He raised his hand and scratched at his chin while compiling all of the information they’d gathered into something he could present to his higher ups. “Well...that’s better than nothing. Still, Tier 1 species aren’t particularly well suited to anything. Perhaps…” He trailed off lost in thought.
There was a notable silence before he finally spoke up. “When was the last time high council ran a planet through a Tempering?”
“It has been 319 cycles since the last Tempering. It was used on the Vormak, Sir.”
The Captain’s eyebrows rose at hearing that piece of information. The Vormak were a physically adept species. Stupider than rocks, but they were invaluable to mining operations and other manual labor jobs across their Empire. If he could remember correctly, their value also meant that they were treated rather well for slaves, thus there wasn’t much resistance anymore.
“I’ll be in my quarters writing up a report to send to the high council. I’ll be requesting the necessary tools for a Tempering. Take us to Earth and set up at a safe scouting range. I doubt they have anything that could detect us, but safely see if there is anything else you can find out about them in the meantime.” He said to the other bridge officers.
Soon the ship was buzzing with activity. It had been awhile since a scouting ship had found new life, but it was always a big deal regardless of what kind of species they encountered. In this case they had found a rather useless bunch, but they could least be harvested as a form of entertainment. As for the survivors, well...they would hardly be human anymore.