December 6th, 2017 20:19 GMT

Seven pairs of eyes stared blankly onto a screen. For a few seconds they had engaged in excited chatter, but when Katarina showed them what the board computer had rendered as a result from sensory input, the conversation abruptly stopped.

"..That is not possible, how is that possible?" Baguette could not help but exclaim in shock, the others unable to refute his statement. It was, indeed, outrageous.

"T-That is a motherfucking space station. Trutheim, how big did you say this t-thing is?" Robert's voice wavered a bit.

"..Sensors say at least four-hundred meters in diameter." She did not dare state it as fact, so she subconsciously blamed it on the sensor array and computers.

"That is the most fucked up turn of events anyone has ever experienced, i dare say." Taku regained a bit of his posture.

"And yet, what did we expect? It had to be a planet, asteroid, spaceship, station or nothing at all. So from a logical viewpoint, this is still inside mission parameters." Katarina interjected.

"Tell that to the supreme race who built that thing and by proxy, most likely also built us." Robert responded sharply.

"We don't know that yet" Alina remarked. "Maybe they just found earth in the past and injected our genes with information."

It was a weak argument in Roberts opinion, but she had a point. They only knew of that station's existence for less than an hour. Too early to draw valid conclusions.

"I think we can agree that there is no way in hell that thing was built by humans. Our own ship is the pinnacle of what we can do with current technology. Dear lord.. g-guys, GUYS, we just made history. Aliens are real, we got proof of that at least. This moment encompasses the dream of the complete fucking human race, so to hell with those gloomy faces!" Blackwood almost shouted, an exaggerated grin showing on his face.

He was only half serious about that, but it was enough to break the tension in the cramped observatory. Everyone calmed down a little.

The station shown on the screen was a giant ring with a round obelisk piercing vertically through the empty space within. Like a needle held through a wedding-band. What was weird was that there were no apparent physical connections between the obelisk and the ring and yet they moved through space in unison, their relative positions to each other never changing.

"Hey, is that color realistic?" Frank Miller asked Trutheim.

"Should be. That thing is completely #DFDFDF colored, a perfect light gray. No different shades, at least not from this distance. It looks perfectly even, for now. If they mounted devices on the hull, they are yet too small to make out." was the answer.

"Any sign of activity? EM, Movement, anything?" Robert asked, curiosity gaining the upper hand.

"No, from this far, that thing seems completely dead."

"Any other objects in the vicinity?"

"Also no, except if they are smaller than a few square-meters." (AN: She uses square-meters instead of cubic-meters because radar works based on surface faced towards the sensors. You could for example have a stick, a few centimeters in diameter, hundreds of meters long, and it could not be picked up by radar as the exposed surface area is too small.)

"Captain, what is the plan now? Phase 4 is complete now, is it not?" Blackwood stated.

"We will draw closer until we have an orbit, close enough for better data, wide enough for sustained acceleration-gravity without being pressed onto the walls instead of the floor. Everybody, back to your posts.

Tscherenkow, prepare your testing suite.

Trutheim, prepare two drones and when Tscherenkow is done, mount her tools to one of them. Mount the other with full-spectrum sensors, EM, Gravity, Camera, everything you got.

Blackwood, stand by on the railgun, in case your dream of a space fight becomes acute.

Miller with me, assist me on plotting a course.

Taku, Baguette prepare a door-to-door salesman speech in case we go knocking at our new neighbours house. Hell, prepare a barbecue invitation if need be, just make it good." Reel took a deep breath after passing orders.

The others signaled understanding and hurried to their new tasks one by one.

December 7th, 2017 00:04 GMT

Robert had steered the ship onto a stable orbit thirty-five kilometers away from the station and now kept them equidistant at all time. Every full rotation, the PSC-1 would turn on its own axis and accelerate, decelerate in succession, thus maintaining earth-like acceleration-gravity on ship with one small break while turning.

"Probes 1, 2 are green. I've mounted Tscherenkows cutting laser and chemical analyser onto drone number one. The other got the minified version of our main sensor array installed, plus an 8K-Camera on both." Katarina radioed to the bridge. Inter-com's broadcast mode was still active, so everyone could keep up with the newest situation without anyone else having to repeat information.

"Perfect. Launch them at will, sooner the better." Frank responded in accordance with Robert beside him.

"Roger that." and ten seconds later "Probes 1, 2 launched. Information streams live on ports 101, 102."

Everyone had either a tablet or screen in front of him and was fixated on the two streams of data transmitted by the probes. The drones speed was comparatively small as they were powered by a small fission reactor with an ion-drive using Xenon as propellant. They looked like glowing dices, about one cubic-meter in size each, with a few nooks and crannys on the outside, the actors and sensors installed on them.

After ten minutes, the drones passed the one kilometer-to-station mark and started recording in addition to streaming. The first distinctions on the foreign objects hull could be seen and it made the crew hold their breath in awe. Delicate seams formed patterns whose meaning was outside their understanding. Clearly, those lines hid some kind of technology fundamentally different from the kind humanity used to this point.

"That looks like those scifi space-things you see on TV all the time." Baguette commented, making everyone chuckle for a second.

Then, a warning sound could be heard, transmitted from drone number two.

"The fuck? Trutheim, what's happening?" Robert inquired.

"I don't know exactly, b-but the readings go crazy! That 'dead' thing just got a whole lot less dead. Energy spikes at multiple points beneath the surface!"

The streams showed a dim red glow on some of the pattern lines. Then, drone number two lost signal. The stream 102 a flickering snowstorm.

"Turn drone one to get drone two into visual! Now!" Robert shouted. Immediately Katarina did as told.

"Seriously? Captain, the drone number two is drawn to the structure! I lost control completely." Everyone went stiff in shock.

"Retreat with the working drone when you can! But try to keep visual on the lost one, we need to get more data to understand whats happening!"

"Captain, let me take a shot at this thing! It won't do much damage but maybe we can save our drone!" Blackwood said, excited. His time to act was near and he liked the rush of battle.

"Negative! We do not want to provoke them, whoever they are. Stand down!" Robert tried to defuse a difficult situation.

Meanwhile they watched in horror as one of the red lines started to glow brighter and brighter before revealing a dark hole in which the captured drone disappeared in.

"Fuck this Captain! It's now or never!" Luke Blackwood put his hand on the trigger and took aim.

"NO! Wait.." ..A shock ran through the ship. That idiot! Robert, and probably the others too, thought. Now they could only watch the heavy projectile hit the station near the drone-eating hole which had closed by now. The railgun projectiles they brought were Iridium rods one meter in length, ten centimeters in diameter. Made from the heaviest metal found on earth, those projectiles destructive power was remarkable. Yet, the space station suffered zero apparent damage.

Drone one docked minutes later.

"All Crew, be advised. Emergency meeting in the living hall now. Trutheim, compile the footage and bring it. We need to act fast, or the situation is out of our control completely. Reel out."