SCBM
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🕑 Added 2022-12-28 12:58:57 +0000 UTCHey guys, hope you all had a good, if not great 2022, I sure had fun making me new site and branch out from fanfic. How about we celebrate with 5067 words from my current project? Yes? Yes. Currently im about 70% through so lets hope I'm not a lazy piece of work next year.
“Think we should skedaddle?” Carl asked. “I’m gettin’ laser warnin’s.”
“There’s a problem with that,” Alice said. “You burned through most of our fuel, sir. My predictions suggest we may not make it through the nebula without activating our distress beacon.”
“What else was I supposed to do?” Lambert said. “This is the first time anyone’s battled in space since… since ever.” Spaceships had been armed for warfare since before Lambert was born, but the concept of fighting with them had only been experienced through simulations, at least until now.
“I did not mean to sound rude,” Alice replied, its tone apologetic.
Before Lambert could reply, the alien group started moving, their IFF tags coming closer to theirs, until Lambert could make them out through the canopy. The laser targeting warnings flicked off after another moment, Lambert’s hands clutching the flight sticks tightly as they came closer and closer.
“They’re gonna hit us,” Carl said, Lambert shaking his head.
“They’re not stupid. Put the PDC’s back into their housings, Carl, and keep your hands off the missile controls.”
“Are we surrenderin’, Cap?”
“Look at their guns, they’re lowering them. We’re just returning the courtesy.”
Carl grumbled something incoherent, then complied, the rotary guns twisting into their default positions. The alien weapons had likewise done the same soon after the Raptors had been destroyed, sinking back into their recesses, so Lambert wasn’t worried about retaliation, though his gut was still twisted with apprehension. They were coming in very close now, enough that Lambert could make out the small lines of where each individual panels of the hull met on their strange ships.
The alien convoy came to a halt three kilometers out, the trio of huge ships practically filling up the canopy view with their silver and orange bulks. The attack ships idled in front of the big ones, the little engines on their sides shooting out wisps of flame as they stabilised the crafts.
Lambert was almost afraid of moving his hands, the alien ships just sitting there, probably running scans over the corvette by the way the systems were giving off signal warnings. After a few long minutes, the leading attack craft moved forward, Lambert recognizing its tag as the same ship they’d followed in earlier.
The other alien ships remained idle, Lambert’s heart racing as it closed in to two kilometers, one, then a few hundred meters before the alien ship stopped. It was pretty much right beside them at this point, Lambert leaning forward on his console to peer over at the large glass dome situated on the alien ships nose. It was coated in a smokey shade of orange, but he could just make out movement behind the glass, the shadowy outline of… something.
The strange vessel tilted in a three-sixty spin, its canopy rotating in place as the rest of its ship twirled round. It ended the spin the right way up after a few moments, paused, then did the spin again, this time going the other way.
“The hell are they doin’?” Carl whispered, as if afraid they’d be overheard.
“I don’t know,” Lambert replied, shifting in his seat when the alien ship came to a stop, as if waiting for Lambert to do something. He thought for a moment, then grabbed the left joystick, tilting it to the side with a mechanical whir. The corvette turned on just the one axis, Lambert’s perception becoming a mess as the alien ship appeared to turn, when in fact it was the corvette that was technically spinning.
The corvette did a full spin, then Lambert turned it the other way, copying the alien ship’s gesture. He even added a slight tilt to the left and right, the way jet pilots would flap their wings in salute to nearby planes.
The aliens copied the gesture, Lambert grinning as the the fish-like fins on its flanks tilted to and fro.
“I think this is going well,” Alice said. “Keep copying them sir.”
“What are we, parrots?” Carl mumbled.
The alien craft stopped mimicking for a couple minutes, Lambert doing the same. Then, flipping so that its rear faced the corvette, the alien ship inched forward a few hundred meters, then stopped. It flipped again, its canopy facing Lambert. It flapped its fins in greeting again, flipped once more, and moved another hundred meters. It repeated the whole dance twice more. Lambert would have scratched his head if his helmet was off.
“Any ideas what this all means?” he asked no one in particular.
“The most likely intention I can predict is that they want us to follow,” Alice said.
Lambert watched the ship move further away, then stretched one of his shoulders as he gripped the sticks.
“Here goes nothing,” he said, edging the craft forwards, keeping their thrust to an absolute minimal. His heart raced as they fell in behind the alien ship, passing between its two cohorts idling up and off to the sides. From this angle they got a clean view of their laser guns. Each turret had two individual barrels, one above the other, the lengths flaring out near the middle and end, where a square muzzle capped the barrel. They were connected to the hull by blocky housings, what appeared to be wiring wrapped messily over the bulks. Each turret had to be fifteen meters long from muzzle to base, almost as long as the ships themselves.
The alien ship matched their crawling speed, heading for one of the carrier ships, leading them right between its two main branches, where a few kilometers of empty space divided the two sections of the ship.
They cruised in closer and closer to the carrier ship, the pink void replaced by great swatches of metal hull trimmed with orange bands of light. It felt a little like sailing between two horizontal skyscrapers, football fields worth of metal stretching out in all directions except for down.
Silver decks jutted out of the thick branches of the alien ship at random intervals, huge tubes snaking out of the great slips between them. Humans would cover up internal wiring, but these creatures appeared to not have bothered. The way the internal lining of the ship boxed in huge shafts of space gave off the impression of giant, empty bookcases, the shelves shadowed by the decks that covered them from the distant sun.
“This thing has no weapons, barely any armour, and is as big as a prison ship,” Carl mused. “It sorta looks… I dunno. Primitive.”
“I know what you mean,” Lambert replied. The very first spacefaring ships that left Earth were just as blocky and oversized. And yet these aliens had somehow invented shields for their smaller ships.
Speaking of, the alien ship they were following suddenly switched off its own protective barrier, the arrangement of polygons popping out of existence. It slowed down to a halt, then banked on the spot so that it faced the left branch. Lambert copied the maneuver, his canopy facing the great wall of metal.
After a pause, the wall between the two decks in front of them began to split down the middle, the two slabs of metal sliding back into recesses on the left and right. Lambert leaned over his terminal, his eyes wide as he peered into the slowly revealing interior. A row of circle pedestals rose out of a colourless deck, lined up beside the expanding doors. There was an attack ship resting on the pedestal to the far left, secured to the dial by three-pronged skids extending out of the craft’s chin and rear – landing gears of some kind. There were also thick straps of cloth snaking along the hull, looping over the ship like a giant harness.
Lambert counted half a dozen pedestals when the doors disappeared off to the sides, three of which were occupied with those alien attack ships. Behind the dials was a short deck that was populated with tall machinery, probably equipment allowing the aliens to repair and access their bulky ships.
Their alien escort began to drift towards one of the empty dials. The hangar, at least that’s what it appeared to be, was barely tall enough to accommodate the alien ship, Lambert holding a breath in anticipation when its roof almost grazed the hanger’s low ceiling, the craft cruising into position slowly.
It hovered over the empty dial for a moment, its landing gears extending out of the recesses on its stomach. It inched down towards the dial, landing like a truck dropped from a great height, its suspension dampening a rather rough-looking landing.
“What’re those things floating around over there?” Carl said. “Behind the ships?”
Lambert blinked, seeing dozens, no, hundreds of figures between the ship pads and the far wall. The figures were slightly hunched, bipedal creatures sporting thick, green suits that made them look especially bulky and tall. Zooming in with a camera, Lambert noted that each one sported long, beak-like visors that stretched forward over where the head would be on a human, made from a sparkling glass that reflected the corvette’s distorted image.
Each alien was grasping something, whether that be a nearby handrail sprouting from the deck, a piece of strange equipment, or each other. They floated through the microgravity, their visors turned towards the corvette’s canopy, Lambert swallowing a lump in his throat as he examined the huge number of aliens inside.
“Is the whole crew down in that hangar?” Carl asked. “Look at em’ all.”
“You’d be abandoning your post too if an alien boarded your ship,” Lambert replied. “How come they’re just floating around? Where’s their magnetic boots?”
“Perhaps they have no base concept of simulating gravity,” Alice mused.
“But they’ve got shields,” Lambert replied. “It doesn’t make any sense. Are these things even Suvelian?”
“I reckon not, Cap,” Carl said. “I’ve seen pictures. These guys are way too big to be Suves.”
“Another species?” It wasn’t beyond being impossible – once the Suvelians were discovered it became almost a guarantee that more aliens would be out there, but after more than a hundred years of encountering nothing, it was still a shock. “Then why were the UEC attacking them?”
“Could have been the other way round,” Carl suggested.
“Doubt it,” Lambert replied curtly.
Movement from their escorting ship drew his attention, a hatch on the top of the vessel flipping open, the lid bouncing on the side of the hull before a hand reached out to stop it. A figure lifted itself out of the ship, an elongated visor turning towards the corvette. Lambert could almost feel its eyes on him, the figure’s arms raising into view – the limbs sported an opposable thumb and three long fingers, the alien gesturing towards the empty dial on the ship’s right.
“Looks like they want to meet us,” Lambert said, gripping the joysticks in his hands. He hesitated, the huge crowd scrutinizing him from within the hangar.
“This was your idea in the first place, Cap,” Carl said, as if sensing his apprehension.
“I know, just… I’m kind of terrified.”
“Me too, man.”
Wishing he could wipe his brow, Lambert eased the corvette forward, the pad, and the crowd, coming closer by the second. Hangars like on the Hub were designed to fit no more than two ships each, where ships would be secured to railings and be brought through airlocks into large assembly areas. They were so compact, and having such a wide space open to the void was a strange sight.
With Alice providing corrections, the corvette floated into position above the landing dial, main and secondary thrusters adjusting their inertia until they were settled. Lambert flicked the landing gear switch, hearing the mechanical whirs of the legs extending somewhere below him. Watching the tactical map which had turned into a wireframe representation of the hangar, he tapped at the thrusters, easing them down to the deck, much gentler than their alien counterpart had, and in half the time, too.
The thunk of metal rumbled through the corvette as they landed, the suspension rocking the chassis as the gears automatically used their magnetic locks to secure them to the surface. The corvette was much smaller than the alien ships, the dial stretching at least ten meters in all directions from them. The aliens slowly floated closer when Lambert powered down the engines.
He flicked off the safety belts of his harness, the straps blooming out from his chest as he pushed himself off the chair by the armrests. He gripped one of the overhead rails to stop himself from flying into the canopy, the man unplugging the cables that connected his suit to the flight terminal.
Most pilots compared the cables to restraints, but Lambert felt a great sense of freedom each time he jacked into ship flight systems. In space, one had complete freedom, and being stuck in the tight confines of the larger ships for months on end was the real restrainer.
When he was free of the cockpit, he used the hand grips along the walls to turn himself round, moving to the hatchway leading into the main section of the ship built into the wall behind the pilot’s chair. He pushed himself into the corridor beyond, awkwardly adjusting himself so that his feet touched the deck. All flightsuits were equipped with magnetic boots, designed to let personnel walk on ships without centrifugal force.
Little lights on his ankles turned green as his feet neared the deck, Lambert hitting a button on his forearm sleeve. The boots turned on, gluing the man to the floor, though the strange sensation of microgravity still had an effect on the rest of his body.
Keeping one foot on the ground at all times, he moved down the corridor, passing by doorways and other hatches leading to different parts of the ship. His boots turned on and off each time he paced, making it feel as though one foot was always wading through glue.
To his left one of the doorways slid open, a human clad in a suit identical to Lambert’s stepping out of the frame. C. Brown was etched onto a patch on his breast, the human’s bearded face just visible through his tinted visor.
“Sorry,” Carl said, the speakers in his helmet giving his voice a tinny effect.
“For what?” Lambert asked.
“Eatin’ on the job. Made a bit of a mess in there.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the gunner station behind him.
“You’re cleaning that up when we get back,” Lambert scolded.
“No way, after I just got three confirmed kills? I’m gonna outrank you, Cap.”
At the far end of the corridor, a staircase led down into the lower deck. They made their way down, boots whirring as they switched their magnetics on and off with each step. The cargo bay was a dark, small room packed of crates secured to the deck by looping straps and magnetic rails, the tracks set up in line with the ramp so that cargo could be easily rolled out. A few of them contained ration packs and everyday supplies, while most were full of spare ammo belts for the PDC’s.
The two men lingered for perhaps a little longer than was necessary, a numerous crowd of aliens waiting for them on the other side of the ramp. Lambert brought with him nothing but his music player, which he’d pocketed right before they’d engaged the UEC. He wasn’t’ sure what else he needed, and neither did Carl, who fumbled through one of the storage crates, producing something after a few moments.
“Should I bring one of these?” he asked, lifting up the pistol.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring a gun to our first talks. If we can even talkwith these things.”
Carl put the weapon back, and Lambert moved over to the panel that controlled the ramp. To say that he was nervous would be an understatement. Human crowds were bad enough for Lambert, but alien ones were another story. He and Carl were representing all of the Hub’s people the moment they walked out there.
“You know, I thought it would always be the aliens comin’ to us,” Carl said. “not the other way round. Now we’re the little green alien men, like in the movies.”
“You ready?” Lambert asked.
“Nope, just do it before I lose my nerve.”
Lambert nodded, and hit the ramp control button. Gears clicked in the cargo bay’s confines, the sound muffled to the humans, the wall in front of them beginning to lower, a pair of hydraulic legs on the outside lowering the heavy frame to the ground. Light spilled into the compartment, as did the view of the hangar. The hundreds of aliens had closed in just a little, coming right up to the landing pad without actually touching it.
He noted some of the aliens at the front recoiled, Lambert reminding himself they were just as scared as he was. They’d never met aliens either, or at least, not humans from the Hub. Whether they’d actually met with UEC officials was a mystery.
Lambert took a tentative step forward, leading his companion down the ramp. His boots calibrated to the surface of the alien deck after he tapped at it with his foot, securing him down.
He turned around and stared at the giant doors open to space, seeing the opposite branch of the ship framed by the darkness of the void. The hangar was much larger than human ones, downright spacious in comparison, but he didn’t think that was a bad thing. Movement from the side drew his gaze back towards the attack ship, and he turned to see three figures crossing the deck between the two dials.
Now that he got a closer look, he noted how strange the aliens appeared. They walked – or floated in this case – on three-toed legs that were digitigrade, their calves and thighs well-built for supporting their eight feet tall frames. What appeared to be switches and buttons ran down their chest plates, their torso’s as broad around as an oil barrel. Perhaps these aliens had not invented touchscreens yet? On their lower backs were a couple of tall, segmented sheathes rising up from behind them. They looked like long sword blades, perhaps tail coverings of some kind. Their three fingers and opposable thumbs were pointed with claws, each one clinging to nearby handrails to keep them from floating away.
The one at the front turned its helmeted head on Lambert as it floated closer, the man noting how it seemed to bob its head when it reached the lip of the dial. On its arms, cables ran all across the limb, meeting at a plate that branched off the back of the arms in a delta-wing pattern. The plates were maybe half a meter wide, the metal sheet as long as its arm and tapering to a point behind the alien’s shoulders. It reminded Lambert of the wings on a bat, with little claw-like protrusions running along the curved edges.
One of its companions did not have these wings, whereas the third one did. Where they some kind of suit extension, or was it more biological?
The lead alien stepped slowly onto the pad, its gaze firmly locked on Lambert through its tinted visor. It seemed to want to come closer, but after a moment its head shifted towards the right.
He followed its gaze, facing the huge crowd of aliens, some of them parting as a figure emerged from the back of the gathered procession. While most of the aliens were clad in green suits, this new alien had red markings covering its grey chest, strips of crimson paint trailing from one shoulder to the waist. It must have been some kind of insignia, the aliens letting it through to the front.
It floated just in front of the dial, not quite touching it as it rested a hand on a nearby rail. Lambert swallowed a lump in his throat and took a ginger step towards it.
“Feels like we’re surrounded by bugs or somethin’” Carl said, falling in behind Lambert.
The way the aliens floated on all sides was a little unnerving. The whole ‘air’ of the hanger was full of aliens, floating above the crowd to get a look at them. They clung to each other for support, Lambert noting that about a quarter of them didn’t have wings.
He stopped just a few meters away from the alien with the red markings – better to just call it Red for reference – a little intimidated by its size now that he was close, its eight-foot frame would have towered over him had it been standing.
It moved one of its arms to a pouch on its belt, producing a small box that looked a little bit like a handheld radio. It held it out like it was offering it to him, but it was about two meters away, and rather than close the distance, it simply let the device go, the object floating through the microgravity towards him.
It inched along through the air, and Lambert caught it, turning it over in his palm as he examined it. There was a little screen on the main face, with maybe a dozen small buttons built in below it. On the top of the frame, a wire stretched out of the housing, as well as a little cylindrical knob that looked like the cap off a bottle of sauce. If one had combined a radio and a phone together, this was what it might have looked like.
“The hell is that thing?” Carl asked, leaning round his shoulder to look at the device.
“And you said my questions are stupid,” Lambert said. “I’ve no idea.”
“Try turnin’ it on.”
“How, just start pressing random buttons?”
As they argued under the scrutiny of the alien crowd, one of the strange creatures interrupted them, Lambert looking up to see the alien from their escort ship had moved over, standing beside the one called Red. It moved a hand in a circular motion, the two humans watching it as it let its arm rest. Carl waved back at it, huffing when some of the aliens in the crowd copied his gesture.
The alien produced a device exactly the same as the one Red had given Lambert, holding it up so the humans could see. It gripped the little cap on the top with a thumb and finger, and twisted it. A little bulb on the end of the long antennae flashed, and the sound of a beep was just audible through Lambert’s suit. The alien let the cap go, the thing twisting back into place. It turned the knob again, another beep and flash accompanying it.
The humans watched with confusion as the alien paused for a few tense moments, then turned the cap three times, paused again, then did the process five more times. It then rested the device by its hip, and gestured at the one in Lambert’s hand, the aliens seeming to want Lambert to do something.
“Like this?” he asked it, gripping the cap and turning it like the alien had done. The device beeped and flashed, and the aliens looked to each other, perhaps glad that he could understand how it worked. And yet they appeared to wait again, and when Lambert looked to Carl, who just shrugged, the alien took out its device and repeated the whole ritual again. Two beeps, three, then five. Then it waited.
“I’m not sure I follow,” Lambert said, even though the creatures couldn’t hear or understand him.
“I think I might,” Alice said. Although the artificial intelligence resided within the ship, it could still communicate to them through their suit radios. “Two, three, five. Those are prime numbers.”
“Primes?” Carl said. “Why do they want us hearin’ prime numbers?”
“Perhaps they wish to test our intelligence and mathematical merit,” Alice said, Carl groaning at the second-last word.
“Isn’t turnin’ up in a spaceship and savin’ their butts good enough?” Carl asked.
“It would tarnish our first impressions if we didn’t understand simple math,” Alice said. “Maybe they’re just simply curious.”
“I hate maths,” Carl said. He pronounced the words maths like he was saying mass.
“I believe they want us to continue the sequence,” Alice continued. “Recommend you handle this one, Lambert.”
“I’d be insulted if she wasn’t right,” Carl said. “Floor is yours, Cap.”
“Uhm…” Lambert stared at the device while reaching far into the back of his memory, trying to recall his educational years. Alice sighed through the channel when he didn’t add anything more.
“Please don’t tell me neither of you know what prime numbers are?”
“We don’t exactly use them when flyin’ around in space,” Carl defended. “When you’re gettin’ shot at, or shootin’ at someone else, primes are the last thing I’m thinkin’ about.”
“Math is a universal language,” Alice tried, Lambert interrupting before they could argue further.
“Just give us a recap or tell us what the next one is, machine, I think these aliens are getting impatient.”
“Prime numbers are integers that have only two factors, meaning that it cannot be made by multiplying two other numbers. Two is a prime, because it can only be divided by one and two. Three is a prime because it cannot be divided cleanly by two, leaving just one and three as its factors. Do you understand?”
“Nope,” Carl said with a shake of his head.
“What about four?” Lambert asked.
“Four is even, and even numbers can be divided at least three times – by one, by half, and by itself. So even numbers aside from two are not prime.”
“So the alien did two, three, then five beeps,” Lambert mused. If he went by Alice’s logic then six wouldn’t be prime, so he could rule that out. Next came seven, and he tried breaking it up down by dividing it, wishing he had a pen and paper on hand.
“If you really wish I can provide the answer,” Alice began, but Lambert cut it off.
“No no, it’s seven. The next one is seven. I think…”
He gripped the cap between his fingers, and when Alice didn’t say anything, he twisted it seven times. When the final beep sounded off, the aliens glanced between each other in a way that came off as excited. The alien from the attack ship brought up its radio again, and this time turned the module eleven times.
“Okay,” Lambert said. “Eleven’s a prime, I guess. Twelve’s out, because it’s even. Thirteen… can’t be divided by six, five, four… I think that’s prime?”
He clicked back thirteen times, and the aliens reacted, Lambert wondering what they were saying, if they were in fact speaking behind their helmets. The alien with the radio pressed one of the face buttons on the device, making sure Lambert could see which one. He hit the button on his own, and the screen turned on with a flicker of static.
There were four rows of alien symbols, arranged into two columns. The columns were separated by a transparent line. A lot of the symbols appeared very similar to each other, but not quite the same, the keypad buttons also labelled with yet more symbols. They looked like a blend of hiragana and ancient Greek letters, all twisted about to form their alien language.
The symbols on the right were fairly basic, but the ones on the left were more complex, each one separated by a curved line. It was impossible to describe them since he had no base of reference. The space on the second row of the right-hand column was empty, with a square box flashing like a keyboard awaiting an input.
“What do they want us to do now?” Carl said, peering over Lambert’s shoulder at the screen. “Not more maths, please.”
“What do all these symbols mean?” Lambert asked. “They know we can’t read alien, right?”
“It does not matter if you can read their language,” Alice said, coming in to save the stumped humans once more. “Look carefully, this appears to be some sort of pattern test. You don’t need to know what they mean in a linguistic sense.”
Lambert squinted at the little screan, and then it clicked. The shapes on the left column were combined to make the ones on the right. Although the machine was saving face in front of these aliens, Lambert didn’t like how reliant he was on the thing to help him.
“Alright,” Lambert said. “so this line is… the squiggly Q and the upside-down car together. I think that’s this one.”
He clicked the button marked with the symbol he thought was right, and the device beeped again, the aliens bobbing their heads in a way that came off as relieved, excited even.
“Their concepts are compatible with ours,” Alice said. “Now you must find out if they communicate the same way.”
The one he called Red decided it was satisfied with the tests, floating up onto the dial and using the rail to come closer. When it was about a foot away from Lambert, it stopped. Now that it was up close, Lambert had to crane his neck to look up at its glass helmet, its snout turning away as if afraid to meet his gaze. The way it seemed so hesitant around him was almost amusing in a way – this thing towered over him, and it was as afraid of him as he was of it.
He opted to make the first move, holding up the device in his palm. Red waited for a moment, then took the device from him, its pointed fingers just barely grazing the lining of his glove. Lambert could feel the tension bleed away in that moment, these aliens weren’t a threat.
Red’s helmet moved as if it were talking into a microphone in its helmet, and then turned around, one hand on the railing, the other gesturing at Lambert as it moved away. After pausing and repeating the hand-movement, it floated off again, the crowd parting to let it pass.
“Now that, I understood,” Lambert said. “It wants us to follow.”
“To the probin’ room,” Carl said, Lambert giving him a nudge and telling him to stop messing around. The
