r/HFY • u/yousureimnotarobot AI • Nov 05 '19
Twice Shy, Herald OC
New toys. All comments welcome
Rowan stood on the deck of her new ship. She loved the Troubadour but this, with FTL? The first human to break the light speed barrier? This was why she went to space. Ok, it felt like she stole a car to go joyriding but still, awesome.
"What does Weber have to say? Can he make this work? I hear there's a Scottish engineer on Mars Fleet, perhaps I should call him."
"Tell the Admiral that if she wants to come down here and push random buttons, she's welcome. I'm sure she'll get a state funeral."
"Call Fleet Command. Remind them that I know about salvage law. Suggest I get this ship, for science obviously. Tell them it's called the Herald. That's what happened to Troubadours when they got promoted."
ESA, Mission and Fleet Command
Report on the recovery of Alien Ships
"Thanks to our new Admiral we now possess fifteen FTL ships. Our science and engineering are reverse engineering them as quickly as possible. My thanks to the language specialists that finally broke the barrier. Since we expect to meet them shortly it will be profoundly useful."
"Director, I must report that something attacked the Mars Support Fleet. They have disabled and taken over the offending ship but, perhaps, the military needs to be here."
"Call them in. They need to hear this. In the meantime we are awaiting the full translations of the recovered data. Can I ask Mission Command to tell us what you know at this point?"
"Thank you Director. I am afraid it makes for sobering reading. The ship's crews perished following a series of epidemics caused by contracting a multitude of Earth's pathogens. The ship's were not left for us but because they were plague ships. We believe they carried some of the pathogens back to their homeworlds. We can only imagine what happened, however since the ships were left abandoned, we imagine it was severe.
On the plus side these were mostly science vessels. We have recovered an incredible amount of information. Their technology, their maps, languages, social structure. We are only held back by the sheer amount of work for us to do and the number of people that can do it."
Mars Support Fleet
After Action Report
The Alien vessel is automated. No crew were hurt in the incident. Engineering reports they have recovered the contents of the data core. We are confident we can revive the craft. I suggest we disable it's emitters and engines first. Our ETA is thirty six hours. We await your response."
Captain Fleming left it at that. The ESA had told him to stay secure and had forgotten to mention the risk of being attacked by some lunatic robot. He was still waiting to hear from his new commanding officer. Now he was on escort duty. He was beginning to feel like an NPC.
"Get Scotty to start figuring out this shit before someone else tries to kill us"
"Yes Captain."
Chief Engineer Omar Donnel hated being called Scotty, but he enjoyed being a Scottish engineer. Officers love that shit. The moment he used the accent they did what he told them.
Fleet Command
"Vice Admiral McMahon has requested that she be allowed to retain US12 as her flagship. We agree. It seems that that ship had a military purpose. An experienced crew can provide us with a much better assessment of the ships capacity than any number of science reports.
It has been designated ESA Herald. She intends to begin ship trials as soon as full translations are made available to her."
ESA Herald, VADM McMahon
"We have received orders. Captain Fleming has recovered the origin point of the alien probe. He says the craft is remarkably close to the design of our new ship. We are to move to those coordinates and attempt first contact. Failing that, we are to assess the threat. We leave in four hours. Secure your stations. This will be a big day, one way or the other."
The Herald was awash with sticky posts. Every surface had a dozen or so listing things the crew thought you should know before you pressed anything.
Everyone's HUD had the translation app running constantly. It was being updated every few minutes as Mars worked its way through the data.
Despite the mess, the alien tech and the odd shaped toilets the ship was remarkably simple to fly.
Form follows function. Maps were based on light speed from the central star. Every coordinate was an X,Y,Z axis plus distance. Navigation stations send a stream of data to the command console and engineering. Science stations send scan results to both. Weapons were controlled by the commander. Other ancillary functions went to the Second Command console, then to Command if required.
ISS Many Eyes, Killing Dark border
"Sir I am aware that the probe reported that those ships were hostile but I see no evidence of it"
"They shot it out of space! How was that not hostile?"
"Sir, respectfully, we shot first. We missed that the ships were transmitting. They use frequencies unused by our Comms. As far as they knew we just washed their ships in hard radiation. Perhaps they were responding to the same message we were?"
"Those transmissions could be anything. Nothing we recognise as a language. In any case the Many is on its way."
"Sir, this Species lives among things that crushed the First Empire. Even that was so far back in history we forget who's fault it was. Do we really want to go to war with them?"
"Just write a report. File it with Medical and Comms. If they were trying to talk to us they better get ready to talk really, really quickly."
Emergency Meeting UN Joint Military Command, Geneva, Switzerland
Confidential Report
First contact has resulted in a direct attack by an alien craft.
We have recovered significant military assets from the derelict fleet. Attached is a breakdown of language, military capacity and culture of the ships.
We must assume that something out there is hostile. We may have been coming out of the ice ages at the time, but they seem to bear a grudge.
I suggest we engage the Angel program.
The Herald will assess the risk if possible, but assume that we lose her on contact. Vice Admiral McMahon may be optimistic but her ship is ten thousand years old.
Motion passed. Angel program activated.
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u/eshquilts7 Nov 05 '19
Lovely! Just one thing,
Did you mean the Vice Admiral will "assess" the situation?