《Project: Outreach》Chapter 14: Abysmal Failure
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When Commodore Dorian Peterson emerged from hyperspace in the now-familiar 'Charlie' system, the difference was truly startling.
Four full-sized Destroyers were almost complete, the long, sleek hulls bristling with the attachment points for the armor plating still being manufactued. A roughly spherical space station, the outside hull studded with hundreds of artificial gravity emitters much like the net that had been used for the 13's trip, hung in place well beyond the system's rim. And the Anvil...
The Anvil was a full-fledged shipyard. After over two years of objective time, its population had grown into the thousands; still mechanical, no actual life signs apparent; with the long spines of hundreds of under construction starships, mostly of the Gunship size, but blended in with at least a dozen larger hulls.
As he studied the system layout, he brought up an image of the sphere. "Nav, get me a course here. This is where we're going to be releasing our prisoner."
With a nod, Shiraki gave the ship the subtle, steady shift to start bringing them in line with the station; as the Commodore called down to the cargo bay. "Sergeant Vasquez. Follow the good doctor's advice as much as possible, but you're in charge of moving that thing into the containment sphere. The plan is to 'feed' that blue jello some mass once its in there, but we still want to keep at least a small amount of the original mass for study. I'm leaving you in charge of the transfer."
After a few seconds, the Comms officer glanced up. "Captain, I've got incoming calls from Captain Amari as well as a Doctor Kent."
"Summarize whatever Kent wants, and bring up the captain for me." He leaned back in his chair, the seemingly young japanese woman emerging on screen as the officer spoke. "He's a xeno studies specialist who has studied everything we've got about the different races the Survivor learned about. Was added to the list to wake up once we knew we had aliens to deal with."
"Nice! Hey, Ichika. I'm going to come see you in person. I'm going to have this Kent guy work with Howe and Vasquez on the alien interrogation. Me, you, Jacobs, Smith, and anybody else you feel is worth letting have input, bring them all into the 13. We'll meet in the conference room as soon as you feel is reasonable."
She gave a low chuckle. "Well, I'd wanted you to come aboard anyway, but I suppose we can have some company for a while."
"No worries.. we can take some time for ourselves after. However much of a threat these guys might be, they certainly aren't a fast one."
Captain Amari tapped her own icon a few times, bringing up information. "Everyone is fairly close, the Alecto is scanning an iridium-rich rock over on the other side of the ring. I can get us all together in... two hours, if she takes a gunship."
"Good. I'll see you as soon as we drop off our cargo."
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***
The containment sphere was a relatively simple device; a solid iron core with a wall that caused it to form a shape vaguely like the 'crew quarters' of the alien ship, twelve electromagnets, and a ring of dozens of artificial gravity generators, all emplaced to keep that iron core distant from the outer tungsten sphere; as well as to push everything firmly towards the center, creating a relative 1G for the central section of the sphere; and a much higher 10G right at the rim to help push away any splashes of liquid or escape attempts.
As the fuel tank was carefully ruptured at the sphere's outer edge, and some of the blue liquid was allowed to spill inside, a blend of 'feeder materials' were added; which the blue liquid consumed, generating massive heat in the enclosed space; that the sphere bled off into a series of external heat sinks, which would, in turn, take hours to reach a comfortable temperature.
The tank was slowly lowered down; once a roughly 2-meter depth of the liquid covered that iron core; and broken up; the creature immediately swimming outward... and then flopping down onto the iron surface.
The pale, almost maggot-like consistency of the caterpillar was only expected for the moments it was visible; before sonar was required to view the unmoving form at the depths of the sphere. Vasquez studied the screen for a few moments. "Who the hell built this thing?"
Dr. Kent; who, at present, appeared to be a young, vibrant man with long blond hair and an overly enthusiastic disposition; clapped him on the shoulder. His own robotic form was a blend of designs; no built-in weaponry, but a fully robotic shell. Less capable of the ridiculous acceleration and speed of the standard models; but immune to the strange dissolving liquid. "That would be myself, sergeant! According to our diagrams, the whole compartment they were in was mostly just smooth surfaces, and we couldn't identify where the controls were. Aside from the lack of a roof, this matches the layout of where it was retrieved from. Granted... we're assuming it somehow draws nutrients from this fluid."
Vasquez gave a slow look over the construction. Then at the figure on the sonar screen, of the prone alien caterpillar. "You just dropped a creature that, from what we can see, never moved at more than a fraction of earth's gravity into a 1G tub. The ship it was on couldn't accelerate at 1G unless it was thrown. Did you see anything about artificial gravity plating in my reports?"
"I.... No. I..." The doctor stared at the screen. "Shit. Is it hurt?"
"Hurt? Probably. Killed? Maybe. If any of my men had actually died acquiring that thing I'd be throwing your dumb ass into the sun right now."
Doctor Kent grimaced as he looked out at the orb; toying with a tiny labradoodle puppy that appeared to have his icon controls around its collar. "Ahh... Engineering, can we turn down the artificial gravity at the core to, say... one percent?" He turned to look at the sergeant. "I apologize. I know full well that earth is on the higher end of gravity for sentient species. I should've known better. I was just considering our own comfort in operating down there... when we won't even be feeling it, really."
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"Ehh. It deserved it. These things are monsters. Don't try to talk, just shoot and run the moment they see you... or shoot and charge. Hopefully we just end up wiping the damn things out."
***
Captain Peterson looked around the table. This conference room had once served as the bridge of the 13 while it was in transit; and easily fit the small gathering of officers inside. "Alright, people. Here's what we know." At the center of the conference table, a map of the 187 systems of the cluster appeared; with one star at its very edge highlighted in red, and nearby stars highlighted in orange or yellow. "We are near the outer edge of the milky way galaxy here. The black hole in the center of the cluster is why these stars are so close, most of the stars out here have dozens of lightyears between them. This one red dot is where the aliens who we are now calling the Mags... first entered the cluster."
"Mags?" Derek questioned.
A small image of the prisoner appeared; solid white, bulbous, and fat, covered with a thin layer of some sort of slime, and with a long row of greyish-yellow legs down its bottom; with a long, prehensile tongue emerging from its mouth, where its claws centered.
"Short for Maggots. They bear a vague resemblance to a blend of caterpillars and maggots, and they don't have a spoken language, so we went for it."
The crowd around the room mostly looked in disgust; though a few looked in fascination.
"This slime they cover themselves with, which we have a sample of, protects them from the liquid; and we believe it allows them to filter nutrients from the substance, while making it hostile to any life-form but themselves. If we replicate it, we can use boarding parties with non-metallic components; we're working on that now, but that's a low priority. Our top priority. Do we stay, or do we go?"
Derk glanced up. "As much as I'd like to avoid a fight, I've got to say. Wherever we go, these things are going to be a problem... eventually. And its always possible some isolated group will discover hyperdrives and then the whole mass will snowball like crazy. In fact... I had the fabrication team spread receivers throughout the system, and it gave us some... disturbing information."
The starmap suddenly expanded, covering the region up to five hundred lightyears away; and showed hundreds of purple dots between the cluster and the galaxy's edge.
"Either the Mags were born out here, on the galaxy's edge, in one of these systems, or they're extragalactic. Regardless, they seem to have begun at the edge of our spiral arm and started to slowly work their way inward; The one thousand eight hundred and forty-three systems marked in purple represent probable radio signals from Mag developments; getting more intense the closer to the galaxy's edge they go. A few of them don't even seem to be coming from stars... meaning that they likely have a full-fledged dyson sphere."
A soft murmur filled the room as Peterson looked over the map, giving a slow nod. "Excellent work, Thompson. So, flight is an option; but will only delay the inevitable. We have an enormous tech advantage. Can we use that?"
Captain Smith gave a small grin, her freckled face filling with malice. "They have no hyperdrives, and their acceleration is worthless. I strongly suspect we could even imitate their radio signals and hull and infiltrate their systems with ease. Maybe there's millions of them... but its millions of bugs that we can crush in vast numbers. Their core systems might be unbreakable, but we can stop their expansion cold."
"Nothing is unbreakable." Jacobs gave a long look at the gathered officers. "If Leanna's right, we can mimic one of their hulls... and slip a starship right up by their star. We have enough iridium here to build thousands of hypercannon. Destabilizing Sol in such a way that it wrecked hyperspace took sixty-four high-scale hypercannons firing in perfect sync. If we just hit the star with three or four of them, we'll create a mini-nova. Enough to be irritating in nearby star systems, but absolutely fatal for everything in the system itself. There could be a billion of the damn things and that would do the job. Hell. Drop a chunk of antimatter into the star's heart directly from hyperspace, and you'll kill the launcher and the star at the same time."
For the moment, everything was quiet. Peterson looked up at the starmap. "So. We start out here, at the cluster's edge. Work our way out. If the concentration is too big to kill... we nuke the star. If its thin enough, we wipe it out. What sort of timetable are we looking at?"
Jacobs studies the map. "It's five hundred and seven lightyears to the galaxy's edge from here. If we can figure out how to copy the enemy hulls... Nine years to build enough ships, and another couple years to get them all into position. I'd recommend we do it as close to simultaneously as possible for the systems outside the cluster; reduce the odds of one of the systems figuring out a hyperdrive... and clean out the stars that have witnessed us ASAP."
"Alright folks. Operation Orkin is in effect. Unless the interrogation team figures out some way we can live in peace with these creatures, we'll just have to clean them from our skies."
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A fake relationship, a diabolical plan and a threat to the human race. The only thing that ties them together is an eighteen year old girl's choice, that could change the course of everything. ***Every year five hundred children are abducted from planet Earth and taken to Pluto to serve as slaves to aliens who are far superior to the human species.When a slave turns eighteen they are allowed to choose their fate for the rest of their lives. They are only given three choices; remain a slave, become a fighter or serve as a Plutonian's lover.For the past eleven years, Aria has spent every second waiting for an opportunity to escape and when she's offered a dangerous but rewarding arrangement by a prominent Plutonian, she is quick to agree. But when the lines between love and hatred blur, will Aria ever be able to escape or will her risky circumstances kill her first?Editor's Picks 2021 *Winner of the Spotlight Awards**Highest rank so far: #4 in Aliens#1 in dystopian#3 in romance (10/2/21)Cover by @Greenteadragon
8 118Ugly
*Dropped*There comes a time when we have to step out into the world on our own. No matter how frightening or depraved your world might be you have no choice but to face it and more terrible, still, to face yourself. For Ulen Gunter Lars Yeadon this is a struggle to lift a life long curse that has made him a object of pity for those around him. As he faces this struggle he will come to realize that the most terrible curses are those we inflict on ourselves.This fiction is Mature: for adult situations, language, depictions of gore, violence and enslavement.
8 99A League Apart - Journeys to the Beacons
The only way from a Golden Age is down, and the planet of Anteia decended to the bottom. A 4000 year dark age of petty wars, and magical and technical stagnation left the continents in a state of decline. A prime situation for an ancient evil to reveal itself yet again. To hold back the eventual tide of death and ruin, an enigmatic being calling itself the 'Cartographer' calls upon a man worlds apart as the vanguard that would usher in the heroes of legends to fight back against desolation itself. Only, the man in question isn't a hero. No powers, no allies, and a defeatist attitude leaves Cameron Walker in a foreign land with people who can summon the elements, manipulate minds and bodies, and fly or turn invisible at will. Cameron has no apocalyptic magic, nor a body that can crush mountains. He just has whatever willpower he has left. Oh, and an arsenal of Earth's finest firearms and munitions.
8 324Immortal Shards
In the boundless multiverse, all possibilities, no matter how remote, exist somewhere. Universes are born, or are created, and die, or do not. In the vast Myriad Heavens Cosmos, a reality far away from our own, a mysterious energy called Mana provides the basis for both physical techniques and magical techniques, and interweaves and is part of all matter, all spirits, and all energy. Mana is the lifeblood of the world, and those who channel and cultivate its power are called cultivators, for they strive to grow along the myriad paths of power and enlightenment. There are many such paths, known as Dao, but they all feature Shards! When a being, man, beast, or otherwise, gains a large enough Mana sea in their body, a crystal core, known as a shard,containing the essence of their power, the ideals and emotions that motivate them, and the essence of their soul will form. A beast which cultivates to the level of forming a shard is called a Magical Beast. A human or other being that does is known as a Mystic. A shard may be a Mage Shard, allowing one to use mana to attack with the elements and produce fantastical, reality bending spells. A shard may also be a Warrior shard, channeling elemental and mana power into one’s physical form, shaped into projectiles, or various other uses; or it can be a Immortal Shard, with the abilities of a Warrior and Mage shard both, and others besides. Anyone who forms an Immortal Shard has the potential to shock the vast planes of reality! In the eternal struggle between the living, who will gain advantage, and for how long? Who will live and who will die? Who will protect and guide the commoners, and fight rogue Mystics and Beasts? Into this world, a child with a potential beyond his wildest imaginations is born. But on the journey of cultivation, there are no guarantees! Will he reach his fated glory, or will he die an ignoble death? This is the story of Alexander Grandstar, and even the gods may not know where it goes! Current release schedule is 1 chapter a week, on whatever day I decide to place it (usually Saturday or Sunday)
8 123Your daily doze of memes
It's pretty much memes I'll be posting ⊙ω⊙
8 162MaNan FS - Love + Arrogance✅
What happens when a girl is pampered beyond limits...???What happens when she turns out a bit arrogant...??Well, a bit would be fine but what if she takes advantage of that pampering of the only brother she has.Meet Nandini Murthy, arrogant sister of Abhimanyu Murthy who never says no to his daughter like sister.Peep in to know how this pampering and his so called bro love turned middle class, simple, down to earth person to a monster.Can Abhi save his sister from the monster whom she herself wished to have him in her life...???A LITTLE BIT DARK...SO NO BASHING PLZ...
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