Chapter One – First Contact

Chapter One – First Contact

The Trowley system, named for the astronomer that first determined a habitable world orbited its star, was a small outpost in the Terran League’s loose confederation of worlds. Maintained by the League Space Navy’s Exploration and Survey arm the outpost had two purposes, first as a monitoring station, to watch the nearby T’latit Hegemony and second to someday serve as a jumping off point for future colony ships.

Trowley four, nicknamed The Swamp by the personnel assigned there, was a wet world. Minimal planetary tilt and a very nearly circular orbit meant almost no seasonal shifts. Rain fell almost perpetually across more than 80 of the surface. The temperatures were relatively mild. Life had not evolved much beyond primitive plants. The atmosphere was breathable by humans provided they used special filtration masks. All in all one of the better worlds found by humans during the second migration.

Admiral Stanton entered the command area of Trowley station. A guard quickly signaled for other people in attendance to come to attention. After acknowledging his personnel the Admiral went to his office overlooking the command area. He began his morning by scanning the daily log. Nothing of any interest had occurred overnight. The T’latit looked like they were preparing to set up a new colony in a star system roughly 20 light years from Trowley’s position.

Stanton supposed that could be considered a big deal. The T’latit were extremely deliberate in their expansion. Setting up maybe one new colony every four or five T-decades. The T’latit had been surveying the system for better part of two decades. The arrival of several large colony ships would, by Terran standards, be considered long overdue.

But it was nothing of great concern. Humans and T’latit had widely different physiologies and therefore looked for much different planets to settle on. The risk of conflict between the two species was remote. So long as Terrans stayed out of T’latit controlled systems and vice versa the two were amiable neighbors. Even if conflict of some kind did break out, Admiral Stanton was unconcerned. The T’latit were two to three centuries behind Terran technology and the area of space under the Hegemony’s nominal control was barely a fraction of the Terran League’s.

So it was looking to be another routine day on the frontier of human controlled space.

----

“Admiral,” Stanton recognized the voice of his second in command.

“Yes Captain,” he acknowledged.

“Something interesting just came in sir,” came the reply. “We have a hit from one of the old Cassini probes.”

That got the Admiral’s attention. “I will be right out Captain.”

Captain Emily Graybore turned as Admiral Stanton approached the monitoring station she was standing at. The Admiral was short; around 5’ 7” but he had a powerful presence. A presence enhanced by the deep scar across his right cheek.

The story of the scar had become, by this point, a legend. The then Captain Stanton was injured when his battle group was caught in an ambush during the war. The surviving vessels under his command were badly damaged and cut off from retreat, forced to play hide seek with a small fleet of Shawn cruisers. With the med-bay damaged and short of supplies the Captain refused treatment for his wound saving the supplies for the even more severely injured among his crew. Finally after nearly four months behind the lines Captain Stanton led his group back to a League controlled system. He could easily have accepted dermal regeneration to heal the scar on his face, but after four months, the scar and the Captain’s stubborn refusal to give up had become a symbol to those under his command. Stanton opted to keep the scar.

“What is the situation Captain?” The Admiral asked.

“Corporal,” the Captain nodded at the person monitoring the screens.

“Admiral,” he began. “Twenty minutes ago we received a flash signal from one of the Cassini probes.”

“How long has the probe been out there?” the Admiral asked.

“At least 250 years,” came the answer. “I’ll have to query Command to get the ID on which specific probe this is, over sixty probes in the series were launched over a fifty year period. But the old nuclear batteries on those things were designed to last for centuries, even through multiple short hyper jumps.”

The Admiral nodded. “What signal did we receive?”

“The probe’s long range sensors detected multiple hyper jumps occurring roughly 93 light years from our current position.”

“Show me,” the Admiral commanded.

“Yes Sir,” the Corporal turned back to his screen and tapped out a set of commands on the touch screen surface. One of the command area’s main viewing holos lit up. The small sector of the galaxy containing the Trowley system appeared. A small red dot indicated the position where the Cassini probe detected the hyper jumps.

“That’s about 80 light years from the nearest T’latit colony,” the Admiral noted. “Was the probe able to get an ID on whose ships are out there?”

“Negative sir,” came the reply. “The sensors on those old birds aren’t designed to pick up the silhouette from a hyper jump.”

“Any indications of how many ships?”

“Again, the sensors aren’t that discriminating,” the Corporal said. “I ran the raw data through our software and the best estimate is between 30 to 60 ships. We can’t even determine what vector they came from.”

“Ideas Captain.”

“It’s too far away from their colonies to be a T’latit fleet,” Captain Graybore said. “They don’t venture that far from home. That leaves two other possibilities. One, it could be remnants of the Shawn fleet massing to make a run at us.”

“The border to the Shawn Empire was 560 light years behind us,” the Admiral noted. “It is possible elements of their fleet could have looped around to hit the League from a perceived weak side, but that is unlikely.”

“Their remaining ships have been making suicide runs since the end of the war,” the Captain replied. “Just two months ago Vaskirk station got hit by three destroyers.”

“They’re near the old border,” Admiral Stanton countered. “This isn’t how the Shawn have operated since the destruction of Shaw One.”

“Then that leaves just one possibility sir,” the Captain said.

“We have a first contact situation,” the Admiral said. It was always a possibility. Since the second migration humanity had encountered four other intelligent species. Only two were space faring. The relatively peaceful and benign T’latit and the ravenous Shawn.

First contact with the Shawn had been a disaster. No communication had ever occurred between the two species. The Shawn simply attacked any Terran ship or colony they encountered without warning and continued to attack until either the target or they were destroyed.

The 117-year war that followed had been the bloodiest in human history, ‘ending’ only after the complete destruction of every know Shawn colony world and the scorching of the Shawn home world. In the sixteen years since the Battle of Shaw One ‘ended’ the war the surviving elements of the Shawn fleet had been making random suicide attacks against League colonies.

“Whose available?” The Admiral asked.

“The cupboards awfully bare Admiral,” the Captain said. “Admiral Sane is scheduled to arrive with eighth fleet in two weeks. They’re making the rounds of all the frontier posts in this sector. All we have available right now is the system picket.”

“We can’t afford to pull ships off picket duty if that is a Shawn battle group out there,” the Admiral paused in thought. “What’s the current position of Captain Seino’s command?”

The Corporal clicked another command on his consul. Another light appeared on the holo.

“The Firebird is surveying S11G-237 sir,” the Corporal said. “That puts them 108 light years from the target area.”

“No nav beacons out that far. It will take them about three t-weeks to get there,” Captain Graybore noted. “The Firebird is one of the old Corvettes sir. The avionics and sensors have been updated, but the weapons and defense grid are at least a century out of date.”

“Captain Seino has also been fully trained and briefed on first contact protocols,” the Admiral said. “And that Corvette is fast and stealthy enough to get away if that is a Shawn battle group. Signal Captain Seino and download the entire package from the Cassini probe to the Firebird’s system. Inform him we are dealing with a probable first contact situation and he is to proceed under first contact protocols.”

“Yes Sir,” Captain Graybore replied.

“Sirs,” Corporal said.

“Yes Corporal,” the Captain replied.

“Additional flash traffic from the probe sir,” the Corporal said. “Another group of hyper jumps. Fairly close to the first group. Looks to be only two or three ships.”

“Close enough to be inside the first groups sensor range,” Captain Graybore said looking at the holo where a light indicating the appearance of the second group blinked into existence.

“Close enough to be inside the sensor range of our ships,” Admiral Stanton noted. “I doubt T’latit sensors would have detected the hyper jumps.”

“Do think they’re shadowing the first group sir?” Captain Graybore asked.

“Until we know more we make no assumptions,” Admiral Stanton answered. “Dispatch the Firebird to investigate.”

“Yes Sir.”