First Contact
06 Jan 2017Tristan Pacheco
Weeks. Literally weeks of flying around the Federal core systems doing small jobs at the behest of Admiral Eickert. We've accomplished nothing of interest except earn enough pay to eat, drink, and in my case, redecorate the bedroom aboard the Last Horse. I've been wondering why we've been kept on such a short leash. Today, I found out.The squadron was escorting me carry "Top Secret" (in reality rather dull and unimportant information) dossiers from Espilon Eridani to the Federal shipyards in Eta Cassiopeia when I received a long-distance hail from Admiral Eickert, our CO. He said to drop whatever we were doing and return to Mars High immediately. Naturally, we were all so relieved that SOMETHING exciting might happen that we forgot to question what could spook the Federal Admiralty so much. A hop, skip, and a jump later we were back in Sol, and received yet another hail from an unfamiliar address. I answered and someone by the name of Cyril Yumi answered. What was immediately alarming was her rank: Fleet Admiral. That's a 5-star rank, only possible at times of war. My first thought is that the Empire had done something terrible, and that the tensions boiling over for nearly a year now had finally exploded.
She asked me where we were and barely gave me time to answer before saying simply, "Expedite", and hanging up. As we flew towards Mars, my sensors lit up with all sorts of contacts. Looking at my left computer, I was stunned.
Federal Navy Ship
Federal Navy Ship
Federal Navy Ship
Federal Navy Ship
Federal Navy Ship
Federal Navy Ship
Federal Navy Ship
And so on. There must've been wing-strength presence in the system. I relayed the information to the rest of the Angels, but they had already noticed. Was the Empire sending a fleet to Sol? They wouldn't dare. This had to be something else. At this point, the tiniest nagging doubt at the back of my mind was whispering: Thargoids. I suppressed the urge to speak these thoughts aloud. I am a sane man. Aliens may exist, but not here. We would have found them by now.
We were, miraculously, the first to dock at Mars High. Within 5 minutes, the traffic control chatter was an unintelligble mess and ships were being redirected all over the place. The pads were stuffed with all manner of Federal Navy Ships. Unwilling to get trampled, we met up between pads and made haste deeper into the station, and then to the Federal Navy HQ. The entrance to the facility had been set up like some disaster relief facility, with signs pointed to various rooms and ground troops guarding the doors. Apparently the building was prepared for company. Our excitement was very rapidly turning to dread. They weren't making much of an effort to keep this secret. The populace aboard the station would surely notice this. Is whatever's happening public knowledge?
Why wasn't I informed sooner? This was a nightmare. Minutes later, we were redirected from the main path, which headed to the main auditorium, to the offices, and subsequently to Fleet Admiral Yumi's desk. Our conversation did not last long. She showed us a video. It was taken from the hull cameras of a Federal Corvette. I noticed the patterns of the hull in front of the camera. It jumped into hyperspace, and all was well, until, wait...what? The vector started waving back and forth, as if the whole ship was being pushed and pulled. My limited understanding of hyperspace told me this was impossible. It isn't like normal space. Left, right, up, and down don't translate in higher dimensional space. Suddenly, the ship was yanked violently into normal space. It seemed to be floating, lifeless. Cockpit recordings would've been very helpful in understanding what was going on. Turns out that wasn't necessary. Some kind of...ship...flew overhead and turned in front of the vessel. I recognized those patterns. The same that were present in the crashed ship we dissected. We left the station afterwards with new instructions. From now on we were patrol vessels. Our mission? To assess combat capability of these unknown vessels. We may be drawing very near the end of our lives.