Warp Point Prime Defense Fortress

Barham System

Marcus 5, 853 AIS (Anno Imperium Solarianus)

“Emergence. Emergence. I have an emergence.” Senior Technician Ninth Class Roger Abernathy looked up from his displays, which were flashing warning signals across the board. The fractional artificial intelligence backing his display kept chanting that notice into his headphones, repeating the message until he tapped the ‘Warning Acknowledged’ button on his panel.

Abernathy surveyed the displays. Whoever it was had emerged at the out-system edge of the warp point, was lighting off in-system drives at low power, and surely had not had time to signal anyone that they had arrived. The warp drive analysis system tagged the arrival and reported “Identifying”, a process that might take a minute or two. The system display plotted this ship flashing red, and showed no other vessels, known vessels not being shown.

He sipped at his cocoa mug. The AI would take its own sweet time about being positive that it knew what it was looking at. The gravitronic detectors would synthesize the breakout arrangement in a few moments. On paper, at the appearance of an unknown ship the senior officer on watch should’ve brought Warp Point Defense Fortress Alpha to yellow alert, but that standing order had been overridden by a local order two centuries ago. There were no unknown ships, only freighters that were a bit off course.

The breakout monitors came up with the display of the breakout pattern. What on earth was it?  There were at least three bizarre features.   He tagged his communicator. “Senior Chief Pelham! Senior Chief Pelham! Breakout! Unknown ship. Not a conventional drive!” The Senior Chief on duty would undoubtedly be in his office doing paperwork, that being the only useful duty he could perform.  The AIs would now take forever and a day to decide what to do.

In only a few minutes Abernathy heard slippered footsteps behind him as the Senior Chief ambled into the control room.  “So what do we have, Mister Abernathy?” Sebastian Pelham asked.

“Unknown ship.  Not a conventional warp drive.  Here we go.  They’re signalling to enter quarantine lane,” Abernathy answered.  “AI hasn’t IDed them.  Quarantine lane has responded.”

“But who are they?” Pelham asked.

“Unknown.  We’re about to enter their light cone,” Abernathy said.

“Senior Chief, shall I raise screens?” Tactical Technician Jingfei Wu asked.

“No reason to,” Pelham answered. “Not yet.”

“Signal from unknown,” Senior Comms Technician Richard Vanderwelt reported. “On Screen Three.”

Screen Three showed the standard color test pattern followed by a vaguely humanoid face.  Pelham did not recognize the species. “This is freighter Peaceful Harmony out of Grognir, originally from the Kingdom of Pandor on Teruwhon.”  With the voice came a series of digital datapacks, showing where the freighter had begun its journal and what its intermediate steps were.  “I am Ship Leader One. We are here to explore possibilities for peaceful trade between Pandor and the Solarian Imperium.”