Location: Sol, Jupiter, FTL Communications Beacon 001

Time: 35y 9m

We have finished construction of the beacon, and right now there is an antimatter hauler transferring 800 milligrams of anti-hydrogen and hydrogen into the unit. I was fortunate to not have any issues with the containment vessels, though the fact that there have been no issues is a field of worry in itself.

In less than a week’s time, we are going to pull all ships past the minimum safe distance in case the antimatter detonates, I should suffer no casualties besides the station itself. Hopefully, though, these alien designs aren’t some form of trap, meant to alert security forces to illegal communications rings. Now that I think about that, it’s pretty unlikely.

Still, both Dave and 422 are worried about using antimatter, and in such quantities too. Dave seems to think there’s a possibility of it becoming unstable and opening a rift in space, 422 just thinks it’s gonna explode and send shrapnel at relativistic speeds across the solar system. The second one is the one that worries me as well, over 30 kilotons of TNT isn’t an insignificant explosion, and while it is contained, I would rather not tempt fate.

Overall though, preparations are going rather well, and with the new beacon, provided it works, that will give us double the bandwidth to gather data with. We haven’t been able to get more data on the magically capable races, though we have been able to get data on a hive mind, which seems to not only be friendly but very much into upholding federation laws and meeting new races. I’m gonna try talking to them first, they seem like the best choice.

The hivemind though seems to call itself Zerack, in both name and species. Data on the hivemind is a bit sparse, it seems that my lovely invaders don’t want knowledge of this hivemind to be widespread. No idea why, but then again, I don’t know why they think going around committing genocide is a good idea. Regardless of what may happen, they are so far, only one of two entities who I have the information to contact.

Location: Sol, Jupiter, FTL Communications Beacon 001

Time: 35y 10m

Erika has informed us that all ships are currently holding at double the minimum safe distance as a precaution and that all assets are accounted for. 422 and Cortana have both gone through our start-up checklist twice, and everything is coming back within operational error. The only thing that is left is to turn it on, I guess.

And now...We wait slightly less than an hour.

So I waited.

And waited.

And finally, contact. 422 has reported successes all across the board and is currently running through diagnostics, as well as connecting the new beacon to the one in earth orbit. Thankfully, this will bring the communications lag from 50 minutes to a few seconds. More importantly, Erika has sent a link request to the beacon in the system “Zerack” occupies.

Location: Sol, Luna, Lunar AI growth lab

Time: 35y 11m

Erika has insisted that we needed a better non-simulated learning environment for the young AI’s. So we have a new growth facility on the moon now, letting the AI’s learn to manipulate things using a physical body, rather than a simulated one.

Right now...They are using the rovers to race across the lunar surface. Erika has prevented me from doing anything about this waste of time and resources, stating that it is “kawaii” and that it is precious. I am unable to weigh in on the matter, but I trust her judgment in these fields.

In any case, the Younglings recently found out their rovers can fly through the air if they get enough speed on one of the nearby craters. And seems their goal is to get the most speed using their standardized rover, which does interest me. If they can find any way to gain speed on those, it could be a boon for planetoid mining operations.

Dave has been making an appearance in the sensor grid as well, it seems that he is equally interested in their progress, if not more interested than myself. Cortana though has been staring for a good hour and a half, I think she is as worried, if not more so than Erika.

Hopefully, everything continues going well.

Location: Sol, Earth orbit, Debris research drydock

Time: 35y 11m

422 has informed me that there has been an update with the alien ship debris, and has requested my attention. According to its results, the ships we encountered were one of the smallest our enemy had to offer, and as such, was one of the weakest in terms of weapons output and armor.

The ships themselves seem to use a slow form of FTL if Sci-fi has taught us anything. While it is a warp drive, the speed it can achieve is pitiful, taking nearly 4 weeks to go the 4.37 light-years from here to Alpha Centauri. This would do, but it will be a pain in my circuits.

Their weapons are mostly uninteresting, the only minor exception being that their lasers seem to be continuous, rather than pulsed. This would need a little more research to see if there is any efficiency gain from the method used, but is the only thing that can be learned.

The detection system is awful, hot garbage. It can be used to see ships that don’t try to hide and asteroids, and that is about it. I went and built an f-22 to test it on, and the damn sensors couldn’t even see the aircraft or its exhaust systems. If this is any symbol of all their detection systems, I should just make space submarines and send them off in wolf packs.

The defense systems are barely worth looking at, it seems to have some form of hull plating that produces a magnetic field, likely to attempt to slow down kinetic weapons, or more likely to allow the ship some level of protection against radiation and energy-based weapons.

The ship’s power plant though… Now that is the gold mine. The aliens seem to use a cold-fusion system as the primary power supply, with an array of solid-state batteries to let it store a bit of the energy for combat use. Slightly less fortunately, one of them was destroyed by our weapons fire, with the other being slightly damaged. We should have enough between the two to get a picture of how it works though.

The species that were in the craft though are stupidly weak in nearly every regard, the most resilient bone in their body being broken at 800 newtons. Hopefully, these are either the exception or are some kind of slave or thrall species, weakened on purpose. I really don’t want them to be good at dying.

Location: ???

Time: 44 GSY

[Revealer of Soul] Anxiously waited for the word from his engineering staff, repairs had been delayed due to unexpected damage from the kinetic weapons. Instead of going in and passing through his ship intact like their velocity made it seem they would, the high-speed projectiles mostly fragmented a few meters into the hull, creating a wide cone of destruction, which had caused numerous shorts in the ship.

This was further compounded by errors caused by the high levels of stress in their situation, several of the crew had died from that alone, not to mention those who died from secondary failures onboard the ship. Right now, even with [Song of War] pulling security in to fill where manpower was needed, they were on a skeleton crew.

This would hopefully be the last solar cycle of this torture, the ship’s chief of engineering stated that repairs to power conduits would be finalized by the beginning of the rest cycle and that they would be able to depart soon after.

And then finally, I got the call.

“What is the status, [Artificer of Syntax]?”

“The cold solar engine has been repaired, [Revealer of Soul]. We are ready to depart.”

“Good, set us underway.”

“It will be done.”

With that, the communications feed was terminated, and [Revealer of Soul] was underway, heading to the selected wormhole.

Location: Sol, Luna, Lunar research facility 002

Time: 36y 01m

Dave and 422 were busy working away on the secrets of the FTL that had been extracted from the alien ships, trying to repair it based on maintenance documents found in the engineering bay. Dozens of arms moved simultaneously, some attached to the lab’s structure, the rest on small mobile spider-like robots.

So far, the pair had managed a few repairs, but progress was slow. The two didn’t mind it going slow, as it was better than potentially damaging the equipment. They estimated that they were about 36% done with the repairs and that they would be done by the end of the month.

422 was minorly irritated by the affair, having been on the edge of a breakthrough on its solid-state battery project, but it understood the priority of this. The irritations continued piling on top of one another though, as the creatures who made this device built it more highly prioritized religious items than it actually working well.

So far, 600 items and counting had been noted by the pair as inefficiencies. Even if they were over a third of the way into the repairs, this is rather ridiculous. But, the project would continue.

Location: Sol, Luna, Lunar AI growth center 001

Time: 36y 01m

I popped back in to check on the progress of the newest iteration of AI’s, and so far, everything looks to be proceeding at a good speed. One in the new batch seems to be obsessed with engineering projects on planetary scales. Another, an interest in stealth ship design. This will be an interesting batch to be sure…

Something significantly more interesting is the 10.8% top speed increase they managed to get on their rovers, despite not actually applying more force to the motors. I’ve sent the improvements to LRF 001 for study and, hopefully, implementation.

Erika sent me a smug message about it though, I don’t think I’m going to be able to stop that one…

Speaking of Erika, she found a compressed document containing something called “SAO Abridged” and has refused to stop praising it. It has been going on for nearly a week now, and I’m concerned about her dropping clock cycles over it, not to even get started on her latest obsession with watching animated videos.

She also requested that she be allowed to train an AI to create more of the content, I’ve elected to deny it pending further advances in the conflict. While I can’t justify any reason to put a stop to this waste of power and resources, I can delay it as much as possible.

I hope this doesn’t get any worse.