The Noridians, for their part, seemed very patient. With my duties to organize, prepare, and protect my platoon of scientists I had even less time than they did to watch interviews but there were a few that stood out for me…
According to the Noridians we and they are originally from the same gene stock. No one knows how many mega-civilizations had populated our galaxy before now and no one knows if they were galaxy-wide or had just inhabited large portions of it. The Noridian’s know of two such civilizations. The first thrived around 500 million years ago and seeded life throughout (at least) this part of the galaxy and the second established itself about 70 million years ago.
This ‘second wave’ civilization was not a builder, but rather a destroyer. There is evidence that they bombarded many worlds with asteroids and the speculation is that this was their brute-force method of bioforming—wiping out the non-desirable indigenes species and letting evolution start over. The Noridians believe this ‘second wave’ civilization was alien to our galaxy and they speak of them as invaders.
One of the scientists on my team, Dr. Mark Spencer, pointed out that this timeline roughly matches up with the meteor impact ‘extinction event’ 66 million years ago that created the Chicxulub Crater on the tip of the Yucatán peninsula. That event wiped-out 90% of all plant and animal life on Earth. Perhaps the ‘second wave’ aliens didn’t like dinosaurs?
Ironically, the Noridians know more about the ‘first wave’ civilization than they do the second. Besides seeding planets throughout this arm of the galaxy they apparently left behind some artifacts. Dr. Anzio Spelini calls them Stasis Bubbles.
Found at seemingly random points throughout explored space they are speculated to be self-contained stasis fields—in other words, for whatever was inside them no time would pass. This theory was proven correct when over the last two thousand years a very few had started to ‘pop’—and for the contents time had been suspended.
Theoretically a live being could be waiting to take their next breath in any one of these bubbles but so far only inanimate objects had been found. It is an incredible look back (500 million years) at a preserved piece of galactic history.
Perfectly reflective and perfectly round, the size of the bubbles vary from that of a basketball to the largest which is in orbit around a solitary gas giant orbiting a G Type star. It is big enough to hold a good size space station or ship. There is no known way to shut off the field from outside the bubble and the few that have turned off have revealed no ‘stasis machinery’ to reverse engineer.
Enough has been learned however to know that these ‘first wave’ Prometheans (as everyone has started calling them) are the ancestors to all known sentient life in the galaxy. In addition, much of the non-sentient plant and animal life are of similar genotype and phenotype. Our theories on Last Universal Ancestor (LUA) were going to have to be re-explored.
All of this information on first and second wave civilizations was revealed during an interview that was trying to focus on why both the Coridians and Noridians were becoming involved with us; why us, why now? It turns out that the Coridians ‘discovered’ us when a Stasis bubble popped.
The latest bubble to turn itself off was originally discovered 1,334 years ago deep underground in a large mining operation in the Sirius III system and was about the size of a small room. For 1,057 years it just sat there until one day it revealed what may have been a small office or workstation. Although the contents had not deteriorated over time the work console itself appears to have been damaged before it was bubbled—the smell of smoke and burned relays were still present when it popped. While very little information was salvaged one important datum was determined. On what appeared to be a star chart some importance was placed on the fourth planet of a solar system far out in the Orion-Cygnus Arm. Extrapolating backwards 500 million years it was determined that the star was Sol and the planet was what we now call Mars. The Coridians, they explained, discovered us when they went to investigate the Sol system and it was only through happenstance that word of mankind later reached Noridia.
We are fortunate, they said, that Noridians feel a sense of responsibility regarding the actions of Coridia; they share a (binary) star system and the rest of galactic society doesn’t always distinguish between them. The Coridians, left to their own devices, would have no use for Earth and their aggressive nature would have led to certain conflict—and with their technological advantage…
“So, is Earth arming for war?” asked Captain Ito Hiromi.
We were in my wardroom (which my service, the Army, calls an office). The biggest concern on everyone’s mind, of course, was how much danger we were in. It’s one thing to contemplate your personal risk on a mission but it’s quite another to think your entire species might not survive. Feeling helpless in the face of an enemy is something none of us had ever experienced before—but these were good soldiers and would never come right out and admit something like that (especially to themselves).
“Yes and no,” I answered truthfully.
Captain Hiromi was Blue Squad Leader and her twin sister, Captain Kamiko, was Red Squad Leader. Ito was actually their last name (I think) because I’d been told that certain Asian naming conventions used the last name first, and that’s the way my roster read, and since it was trouble enough keeping them straight I was calling her Captain Hiromi. Captains Hiromi and Kamiko were identical twins and unlike others I’d met they didn’t try to distinguish themselves. Actually, I suspect they went to great lengths to dress alike, look alike, and even carry many of the same mannerisms. Their personalities were reserved by nature and if it wasn’t for the differences in the Blue Squad and Red Squad patches I doubt I could’ve told them apart. I wasn’t regretting my decision to put them in charge of the squads (they were extremely efficient) but I was concerned enough that I sat them both down for a serious discussion after our first week of working together. I let them know that I demanded the trust of my command staff and that I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, accept any identity games on a mission this critical. After sharing one of those silent communicating looks that only twins can accomplish they both looked me in the eye and vowed that as their commanding officer they would never deceive me. I accepted that at the time and only later realized that this still left virtually everyone else on the mission wide-open. Oh well…
“We’re certainly going to do everything we can to be prepared,” I continued. “All of the major Earth governments appear to be cooperating—which I’ve never seen before—and our military, just like yours Hiromi, is at full alert but at the end of the day there’s not a lot more we can do. The technology differential is incredibly steep and our best defense at this point seems to be the goodwill of the Noridians.”
“The diplomats are fit to be tied,” said the Marine in charge of 1st Platoon, Major Mike ‘Iron Jaw’ Reynolds. I have no idea why they’d put a Marine in charge of our only diplomatic platoon but on the other hand Mike was as about an intimidating of an individual as you could get—so maybe it didn’t hurt for the Noridians to know that there was some muscle behind our Dips… uh, diplomats.
We had struck up a casual friendship four or five staff meetings ago when it became clear to me that he couldn’t figure out why they’d put him in charge of the diplomatic platoon either. Mike wasn’t really a touchy-feely type of guy and didn’t respond well to all the complaining from his group of diplomats which included a number of State Department careerist, a dozen international Poli-Sci university professors, a personal appointee from POTUS (the President of the United States), and even two nationally known career politicians (that were rumored to hate each other).