The jump sequence had been coordinated across the entire fleet. At 17:15 UTC on October 4, 2140, the 1,142 ships of the 12th Army simultaneously disappeared from the space above Europa and, at the exact same moment, reappeared on the outskirts of the Tau Ceti system, 49 AU from the orange central star.
On the recommendation of Special Agent Oliveira, the decision was made to position the fleet far enough away from the inner worlds of the system to make detection virtually impossible, unless the inhabitants possessed a level of technology significantly more advanced than predicted.
Captain O’Sullivan appreciated Oliveira’s cautious approach to the mission. Predictions were one thing; reality was something else entirely. Just because both the Terrans and the Kelar had taken two centuries to progress from the invention of the radio to the field generator didn’t mean that timeline was a universal rule. The pace of technological progress depended on factors like population size and how open a society was to sharing scientific ideas.
During the Kelar War, several surveying expeditions had been sent by the Terran-Etarian alliance to the Tau Ceti system. The primary purpose of these missions was to search for signs of Kelar presence there. The expeditions cataloged the planets of the star and observed them from a distance, listening for radio signals of Kelar origin. No signals—Kelar or otherwise—were detected. Whether this was because the inhabitants of the system had not yet invented radio or because their transmissions weren’t yet powerful enough to reach space with sufficient strength to be detected by the surveying ships remained unknown. However, this lack of signals provided a rough timeline for gauging their technological development.
If no radio signals were detected during the Sunguard’s last visit to the system half a century ago, the radar signals identified coming from the Tau Ceti system two years ago must have been the result of newly developed technology. This placed them at a technological level comparable to Old Earth during the 20th or early 21st century.
All evidence, therefore, pointed to the Tau Cetians having just recently started to explore space using chemical rockets or not yet possessing spaceflight capabilities at all. In the latter case, the 12th Army would have been safe anywhere in the system. However, if the system’s inhabitants were capable of launching primitive rockets into space, it was entirely possible they had also developed nuclear warheads for those rockets.
Captain O’Sullivan’s face twisted into a dry smile. It was all too easy to dismiss primitive technology. But just because the Tau Cetians lacked hyperspace capability didn’t mean they couldn’t pose a threat to the Sunguard. The detonation of a megaton-class nuclear device created with 20th-century technology would be just as devastating as a megaton-class nuke from the 22nd century. While the bomb itself might be clunkier and more primitive, the resulting explosion would be identical once triggered.
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The 12th Army hadn’t rushed things. For weeks, they had remained in the outer Tau Ceti system, monitoring the inner worlds for signs of a technological civilization. The surveying expeditions during the Kelar War had identified the second planet as one hosting life, since remote sensing had detected oxygen in the atmosphere. At the time, it had been placed on a list of potential sites for military bases outside the core worlds, but beyond a few minor skirmishes, the Kelar War had never truly expanded beyond the Alpha Centauri system. Nothing had come of the plans to establish a base there, and the world had never been visited.
That was about to change. From Tau Ceti 2, a multitude of radio transmissions streamed through space. They were all rather simple in nature, either in the form of unencrypted voice transmissions or radio telegrams. The linguists aboard the 12th Army, along with the intelligent computers assigned to the task, had dove into the problem of deciphering the planet's major languages.
As it turned out, it wasn’t a very difficult problem to solve. With the large corpus at their disposal, sorting the recordings into different groups based on language and mapping the patterns within the sentences had only taken a handful of days. Once the linguistic patterns had been established, frequency analysis was used to sort words into likely categories. At the same time, maps connecting words to other words were created and used to begin inferring meanings for the different sounds. That had been the challenging part. But once the first words were deciphered, the floodgates opened. Just as a human listening to speech in a language they only partially understand can still grasp the gist and infer the meaning of unknown words, the intelligent computers working on deciphering the alien languages quickly started to produce dictionaries of new words.
Now, the twelve largest languages on the planet were well understood by the Terran Federation’s linguists. While fascinating, Captain O’Sullivan had no intention of learning them all—at least not initially. The three most important would do for now.
She had spent most of her time over the past few weeks in the comfortable white chairs of the Neural Learning Laboratory. So had Special Agent Oliveira, Admiral Ekberg, and the soldiers of the Wałęsa’s security team. The first language they had completed learning four days ago; now, they were beginning to grasp simple sentences in the second. The neural writers they had been hooked up to used precisely controlled electromagnetic fields to induce currents in specific neural paths of the recipient’s brain. To the brain, a neural signal induced by the writer was indistinguishable from a naturally occurring signal. Essentially, the neural writer provided the sensory input needed to acquire a language, without the mental effort of learning it. It didn’t exactly write new memories, but it induced the sensory input the brain could use to create the needed impressions itself.
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The door to the lab opened with a soft hiss, and Special Agent Oliveira entered the room. Today, he had had enough after six hours at the receiving end of the neural writer, so he had gone to the Wałęsa’s radio room to check on the monitoring progress.
“Any news?” Captain O’Sullivan asked. She was curious about the alien world and eager for the chance to put their newfound language knowledge to use.
“Indeed we have,” Special Agent Oliveira responded with a grin. “I got to see the first draft of the briefing dossier on the planet. It’s quite fascinating.”
“Tell me the headlines!” she requested. “Unless there’s something in there the Sunguard feels is over the head of a mere captain?” she asked jokingly.
Oliveira laughed loudly. It was certainly true that in a military organization such as the Sunguard, there were topics only Special Agents and Admirals were privy to. But the information in the dossier was for the benefit of the entire team. Without it, none of them would be able to do their jobs properly.
“So, we finally have a name for the planet,” he began, starting with something simple.
Good, O’Sullivan thought. She had hated having to say Tau Ceti 2 for so long. It didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. “What is it?” she asked.
“Jerr. They call themselves Jerrassians.” He had a guttural undertone in his voice when he said the foreign words. There was no hint of an English or Interstellar accent in his pronunciation, as if his brain was now completely comfortable with tasking his vocal cords to produce the alien sounds.
“The largest country is called United Jerr,” he continued. “It covers almost half the land surface of the world and contains about 80% of its population. Though it hasn’t exactly grown this large by peaceful means.”
“That sounds ominous,” O’Sullivan replied. “I guess there’s some history there, context we need to understand them. Do we know what happened?”
“We do,” Oliveira answered dutifully. “At least on a large scale. The headlines, as you said. It seems that about ten years ago, a couple of the largest nations on Jerr banded together, united by a shared political agenda with similarities to communism on Old Earth. Together, they formed the seed of United Jerr. But apparently, they weren’t content with the territory they controlled and launched a war on their neighboring capitalist states. From what we can tell, they don’t have nuclear weapons yet, so I assume it was a conventional war, despite eventually involving most countries on the planet. It’s an operation they’re quite proud of, calling it the Great Patriotic War and still celebrating their victory over their neighbors. After the war, the defeated capitalist countries were forcefully annexed and incorporated into United Jerr, though from what I gather, they’re not exactly treated as equals.”
“Are we sure it’s this United Jerr we want to talk to?” O’Sullivan asked, concerned. Communicating with an alien world divided into hundreds of nations would be difficult, if not impossible. If United Jerr was as large as Special Agent Oliveira said, it made sense to focus their communication attempts on them, but it made her uncomfortable.
“Well, I’m still thinking about it,” Oliveira replied. “I only learned about this half an hour ago. But I don’t think we have much of a choice. The next largest nation holds just four percent of the world’s population. I don’t see how we can carry on an authoritative first-contact mission with such a small part of the planet. Whether we like it or not, United Jerr is probably our only option.”
“So who do we talk to?” O’Sullivan inquired.
“The communist government of United Jerr is called the People’s Council. Their seat is in the capital, Kerrma-non. I should warn you, though, the name of their government is a bit of a misnomer—they don’t exactly represent the people. In fact, they’re quite autocratic, possibly even dictatorial. I’d say they’re no more democratic than North Korea or East Germany were back on Old Earth.”
“There are different levels of dictatorships,” O’Sullivan said, feeling she had to play devil’s advocate. “Maybe this one isn’t too bad.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Oliveira replied. “Sure, if you listen to the broadcasts from United Jerr, they’re all about peace, equality, sunshine, and rainbows. But some of the smaller countries that haven’t yet been conquered present quite a different narrative. Given the context, I’m more inclined to believe their version of the story. They tell of work camps and summary executions, of people disappearing in the night, never to be heard from again. And apparently, the annexed regions aren’t being invested in by United Jerr. There’s talk about infrastructure and healthcare not being rebuilt after the war, and now starvation is starting to rear its ugly head in those regions as well.”
O’Sullivan was silent for a long time, considering their options. “I’m glad it’s you and not me making the decisions on how we should proceed,” she finally said. “But like you said, we don’t really have a choice here.”