Just something silly that occured while putting down ideas for the latest D&D campaign I'd been roped into running, then written in the small amount of free time I have between bouts of studying. Not my fault, it just wouldn't leave me alone.
Anyway, paranoid survivalist humanity that makes right-wing militias in the US look sane and well adjusted.
(START)
His handling of the torch was clumsy, the white-hot tip leaving an uneven, ragged line on the grey metal of the installation walls. It was to be expected, he was a scientist, not a technician, but what he was or wasnÆt didnÆt matter anymore. He wasnÆt a soldier, either and, yet, here he was, dressed in a suit of armour just a bit too large for him, spending his last few hours of freedom defacing a wall in a research outpost.
He lifted the visor briefly, inspecting his work. It wasnÆt pretty, chaotic and confusing and so very, very primitive. A crude approximation of the paintings the natives of the third world, still lacking even in the most primitive of technologies, had been observed making. The sequencing and pacing made little sense to him, but then, he was a geologist, not a geneticist or anthropologist; theyÆd designed the pattern, claiming it would be comprehensible, easy to decipher.
It was stupid, he thought. Ridiculous, if they failed, the Empire that had conquered most of the galaxy à what chance would a bunch of savages barely able to use stone tools be able to do. And, still, heÆd kept silent and helped out, wasted his last hours out of the military à probably his last hours alive, on wielding a tool heÆd never held in his life, attempting to make carvings that looked like something other than a random, shapeless scrawl.
Satisfied, he returned to work. Meaningless, pointless, futile though it may have been, he kept silent. At least it was something and if he didnÆt make it, if all their plans failed, then at least there was a small chance the primitives could extract some measure of vengeance.
Five hours later, their work finished, the scientists and technicians, now soldiers, departed, carefully shutting everything down.
The facility would remain bathed in darkness for fifty thousand years.
(approx. 50,000 years later)
Bright yellow cables snaked their way across the floor, connecting pieces of equipment with each other. White and grey boxes housing field generators, garish warnings gracing their sides, stood out like sore thumbs in the environment. Still less so than the lamps, simplistic things in yellow cages, providing illumination just a shade too bright to be truly comfortable.
Not that anyone could be truly comfortable. It was an event for the history books, firm, physical evidence of alien life. Not just alien life, alien civilization. The entire world was watching, every scientist, politician, every human being was watching.
Mission commander Dietrich von Auttenberg tried to remember that old prayer heÆd heard mentioned once or twice. Dear God, please donÆt let me screw this up? Sounded about right.
It probably made for boring a boring show. Xiu and him standing at the access point, the Chinese taikonaut monitoring the generators theyÆd dragged from the landing site, he himself standing to the side, monitoring the positions of the rest of the team and maintaining a constant rate of updates via the comm relay set up above the entrance.
The half-hour time delay imposed on communications by the sheer distance between Earth and Mars made things a bit more complex as it took close to an hour for Earthside scientists to react to anything, making the team scurry back and forth across the installation to get a closer at this or that.
The astronauts, well, three astronauts, a cosmonaut and a taikonaut, had whiled away the time trying to guess at the equipment piled in the rooms the exploration group had looked into over the mission channel, the one not being transmitted to all of Earth at once. The guesses got more outlandish with each new piece uncovered, the elegant, dark grey shapes giving no hint of their true purpose.
It had turned into something of a game, a way to whittle away the time spent waiting for the scientists on Earth to receive the latest images from Mars, decide what they wanted looked at next then for the transmission to reach the red planet.
The comm crackled momentarily, the slight accent, little more than excess pressure on the Rs, revealing it to be Mikhail Sokolov, the Russian, ôCommander, thereÆs something you should see here.ö
Dietrich took a moment to look at Xiu, or, rather, the womanÆs mirrored face-plate doubtlessly covered by diagnostics and system reports from the equipment she was tasked with monitoring, ôXiu, can you take over?ö
A moment later, an icon on DietrichÆs HUD flashed orange, then vanished. He offered his friend a nod and a, ôThanks.ö before departing.
The corridors seemed to stretch forever. The ceiling high enough to be lost in the gloom, beyond the reach of the light from the lamps scattered across the floor. The helmet-mounted ones were strong enough, but there was nothing there. Three hours of obsessively glancing upwards, the explorersÆ sense of paranoia coupled with the sheer alienness of the environment triggering some primal fear had thoroughly convinced them.
The corridor finally gave way to what was tentatively labelled as the central chamber, a massive circular edifice housing an unknown piece of equipment, dark and inactive like everything else in the installation. Massive, towering over the explorers even at the top level of the chamber.
The remaining two members of the team stood in place, next to the entrance Dietrich had used, lamps, both the independent units carried by the team and the helmet-mounted ones playing across the wall, shadows flickering in the deep gouges taken out of the grey wall.
Katell, the ESA patch clearly visible on her suit, was hanging back, a hand-held high definition camera in her hands, moving with the perfect precision imbued by countless hours of relentless training. Mikhail simply stood to the side, watching, faint mutters coming over the channel.
A prayer, it sounded like.
As the mission commander entered further into the chamber, the gouges became à more. The seemingly random lines became shapes, symbols, pictures, letters of an alien language, covering all the walls, circling around the chamber, time and time again, descending down to the bottom then continuing down corridors, the crude artwork faintly visible everywhere.
There was something primitive about it, like the cave paintings of humanityÆs past. Tiny figures, two arms and two legs and oddly elongated heads, like in the depictions of hunts some distant ancestors of the explorers had so proudly put on the walls of their caves with what paints they could make and what tools they could invent.
ôItÆs like the Bayeux tapestry, I think, the one showing the Norman invasion of England.ö MikhailÆs voice startled the German astronaut, the slightly shorter Russian having, apparently, moved next to Dietrich while he was occupied watching the carvings, ôSame here, I think. ItÆs a story. This part, at least.ö the other man waved vaguely downward, towards the lower sections of the chamber and the corridors leading to the lower levels of the installations, covered with the carvings, ôOther sections have language. Mathematics. Schematics of this base, I believe.ö
Dietrich spared a glance in the direction his companion indicated. The carvings didnÆt stand out well in the gloom, less so on the dark grey walls, but the inscriptions certainly seemed to be getting more complex the further down he cast his gaze.
ôI think they left this for us to find.ö The RussianÆs voice was quiet, heavy, ôA message.ö
DietrichÆs fingers passed over the nearest glyph. Some kind of animal with tentacles, featured prominently on the very first section, it and a hundred of itÆs friends. There was no feeling, the gloves were too thick for that, but the electric feeling was something else entirely.
Here he was, touching history.
(scene break)
It was a good thing the Alliance insisted on hard-suits during all high-risk starship operations, Grand Admiral Kestanie Drescher reflected. It wouldnÆt do for the crew to see that she was just as pale, sweaty and nervous as they all were.
Watching the Arcturus Prime Relay as if it was about to come alive and murder them all.
The Citadel Front was the mightiest armada in the Alliance, a hundred and twenty battleships, twenty battlecruisers, twenty carriers and hundreds of cruisers and destroyers. The firepower at her command was unimaginable to the exploration team that had first reached the Prothean installation on Mars and the Tapestry waiting within.
And it still felt like it wasnÆt enough. The Reapers had destroyed the Protheans, brought down civilization after civilization in an endless cycle of genocide. Now she was expected to go out and look for them.
SheÆd trained all her life, like every human had. Raised from infancy to be soldiers, ready for the inevitable showdown hanging over their heads like the Sword of Damocles. It didnÆt help, nothing could prepare one to face the kind of responsibility that lay on KestanieÆs shoulders at that moment.
Lieutenant CortezÆs voice was a bit higher than it normally was, ôT minus four minutes.ö
Kestanie didnÆt allow them to see her flinch. She nodded, calmly, the picture of poise and grace. Her voice was calm, far calmer than she felt, ôThis is it.ö Fleet-wide communications were a button press away, a small icon on the command island, the holo-tank meant for co-ordinating the entire fleet in battle, ôAll squadrons, this is SSV Charybdis. Sound off, combat readiness.ö
The ships had been on alert since before transiting the Charon relay, their crews in hard-suits, weapons primed and ready. Still, this was the final leg of the journey. From Arcturus it was a straight shot to the Citadel.
Straight into a trap that had fooled more civilizations than anyone cared to imagine.
The voices came, just as steady and calm as KestanieÆs own.
ôSSV Cho Oyu. First battleship squadron at action stations and ready.ö
ôSSV Yavuz Sultan Selim. Second battleship squadron at action stations and ready.ö
ôSSV Qin Shi Huang. Third battleship àö
It continued in the vein. SSV Saint George, SSV Pico Cristobal Colon, SSV Florida, SSV Bindusara, SSV Saschen-Anhalt, SSV Nanga Parbat and more than a dozen others. All ready to march to their destiny.
Finally, it was over. The last squadron had reported in, SSV Amalfi and the fleet was in formation for the jump. The transit would scatter their formation, but they were ready for it. SheÆd issued orders for the ships to return to formation the moment theyÆd finished the jump.
Now all that was left to do was to ride out and meet destiny. Hopefully, the Reapers hadnÆt shown up, yet and humanity still had time to prepare. Scatter more colonies to the four winds, squirrel away more cryo-facilities, built more ships, dig in deeper.
After a long moment, she issued the order, ôEngage transit protocols.ö
A hush descended on the bridge. The weight of what they were about to do settled on all their shoulders. If the enemy had started their purge, all their mission would accomplish is bring their attention on Earth and her people. Oh, theyÆd fight, bleed the enemy as much as they could before dying either at the hands of the enemy or their own to keep the Reapers from perverting them and turning them against their own people. Still, if they were there ...
Humanity feared the Reapers more than anything, even as they spend a hundred and fifty years preparing for the inevitable conflict. A mixture of resolve and defeatism, resolve to fight, belief that it would, ultimately, be futile.
Still, nothing to do but do and die.
The relayÆs core spun faster for a moment and the next EarthÆs mightiest, but far from only, fleet departed.