Less than two days later Seo-yun sat on the bridge reviewing reports, when the Comm Handler yelled out.
“It came through!”
Seo-yun jumped out of her seat and moved to the comm station. She looked down and saw that they had indeed received a communication from the probe. The probe had successfully passed through trans space, and had sent all the readings it acquired.
“Alright people, get to work, we need to analyze this data!” Seo-yun said cheerfully. They had just given Olympus a travel method that was faster than anything they could have imagined. And the great thing is that all of their ships could use it, without any need for retrofitting. The ships themselves didn’t need to generate the trans field, they just needed to be in the trans area when the field was generated and they would be sent through. Although, how would they come back then? Seo-yun thought. A few more problems became apparent to her. Their sensors were not yet calibrated to detect trans particles, but soon they will. That will mean that they will need ships able to generate the field, the ones that will map out the translanes in their neighborhood. That could be dangerous. Who knows where an unknown translane could lead to? And how far. They could become stranded somewhere years away from the next translane, and If they don’t find another translane that leads back… She shook her head, there will be time enough to think about that. For now they had the lanes that Union used. They knew the ones that led back to Earth, and the ones they used to get to the Nebula, but if Seo-yun was correct they won’t be able to use those from here. We will need to explore them. She sighed and opened the star chart showing the path of the Union ship. She zoomed in on the section that showed the path from Sanctuary to Earth. The time it took them to get to Earth was just over a year. A year to travel what took us sixty. She grimaced, she knew that she would need to tell this to Tomas. But wasn’t sure what that could mean. Would they go back? Would they even want to? This was their home now. She received no message from Asumy, and she didn’t send any back, she hoped that he was alright. She didn’t know how much Earth advanced in 60 years, and didn’t want to unwittingly let them know where they are. She was sure that they couldn’t have advanced as far as Olympus, they didn’t have the aid of alien technology. But then again, most of the Olympus technology was purely human, the alien tech helped them, but it was nothing that they couldn’t have discovered on their own. Often, Seo-yun thought about her friend, the alien Ai Asumy. It pained her to ask him to stay, but she had to leave someone. It couldn’t be a human, they required food and water, it was impossible to supply someone for that long. And she couldn’t leave any of the Ai they created. They were young, and there was no way to predict what it would have done to them to be active over so long a period. During their trip here all of the Ai’s, were either shut down for the entirety of the trip or woken only periodically. And then there was Asumy. He had already spent thousands of years alone. And she knew that another 60 years were nothing for him. And now with the trans travel, she could go back and bring him here easily. Provided of course that there were any translanes leading back to the Nebula from Earth.
Seo-yun shook her head, it wasn’t time to think about going back to visit Earth. There were still things they needed to do here. She went back to her seat and started reading the data that the probe sent back.
Chapter Seventeen
January 2170 – Nuva
A slight bump was the only thing that announced to Ship Master Kisaragi Hana that her shuttle had landed on the alien – Nel station. The Traveler had finally arrived at its destination, the ship itself was waiting close to the station for the Nel to repurpose one of their hatches on the stations docking ring, as Traveler wasn’t able to dock with the station. Over the last few weeks the Nel diplomat and her human counterpart had discussed many things, most of which were unimportant and simple getting to know each other. The human translators were constantly updated, now being able to convert Nel measuring units to human ones easily. The talks didn’t progress further than the introductions, Hana assumed that those would be done now, with someone more up the chain of command. But they did learn a lot until now. The Traveler’s scanners constantly soaked up information. They managed to get a better look at the Nel ships, and found that they used a different energy source. Their drives were a lot “colder” than the human ones, while producing similar pushing power. They didn’t use fusion, and for now the human scientist couldn’t tell what they did use. The Nel steered the conversations off the topics of technology. They also showed only a passing interest in any kind of trade between them. What that meant Hana didn’t yet know. As soon as she exited the shuttle, she was met with an escort, and instructed to follow them to their assigned quarters. Hana and her party followed without question. They were here to meet with Nuva’s Lanai, the person in charge of the planet. The meeting was supposed to take place later that day. As Hana walked she couldn’t help but notice that inside of the station was made from the same material as the outside, that being some kind of ceramic polymer. Human scientist were familiar with the possibilities, but chose to focus on metals. The light on the station was dimmer than what Hana was used on her ship. After a few minutes of walking they arrived at their quarters. Their escorts showed them in, pointed out a few points of interest and then left them alone. Hana and her party made themselves comfortable, and then started planning for the meeting.
Lanai Sumia sat in the Retnor Maret’s office on the main station orbiting Nuva, Retsar Isani was there as well, together the two of them were leaders of the people of Nuva. They were once nothing but lower officials in the Consortium, but now cut off, left on their own, they were the leaders. Retnor Maret was standing on her left side and Retsar Isani on her right, across from them were Hokra Gotu, Hokra Dson and Oferani Esama, the team sent to meet with the humans. Over the past few weeks they have been sending regular reports, both on the things that they could verify, and speculation. Sumia was startled when she first learned about the appearance of these humans, and even more so when she got the first images of them. But she quickly put it behind her as more and more reports started coming to her hands. They learned a lot about the humans. They were different than Nel, but looked familiar, at least her people managed to reassure her that there was no connection between Humans and Sowir. But the other news wasn’t as good. Retsar Isani informed her that the Human ship was built from metal, a primitive way of constructing ships that the races in the Consortium abandoned long ago. That single piece of intelligence told Sumia that her hopes for help from the humans were not to be. Isani did mention that his scientist were baffled how a ship with as much mass as theirs could move as fast as they could, but still, their speed was barely half of what Nel warships could attain. Isani looked at Esama who had just finished giving her final report in person.