All That Glitters Ch. 26

"I will advise the President that Nuclear weapons may have to be used. I will advise you on what he says on the issue. Considering what almost happened here recently, the deployment of nukes is not an option that the President will want to consider, but he must.

"The chain of command for the use of nukes goes through me to the President. Everything else, I will leave with you. You seem to have things well in hand," Ramison finished.

"This brief has gone on long enough. Start the processes and be ready to send the first comms to them as soon as we can work up some kind of psychological profile on them. I want that sooner rather than later.

"The Contact Team is composed of Dr. Hitron, as team lead for scientific points, Dr. Galt, as the psych specialist, Capt. Dostier, Military advisor to the team, the two Ambassadors Mr. Demoiné and Ms. Halton, will add their expertise in negotiations with the so called superior minded, Kim Oshiiru, Lt. Mbibo, and Gillaya for their unmatched personal combat skills, and finally Raymond Clark, as the representative for The Wanderer. He will be the point man, with the UDC coming in during the negotiation phase of this contact.

"Raymond's tactical mind is unmatched by any in the Navy and he will be the person who directs the activities toward helping to break the Warrior Class.

"Any of you around this table that can think of anything to add, please get it to Dr. Hitron or the respective head. I want weekly updates and I want to be ready to start sending out messages sooner rather than later. That is all," Fiona finished, dismissing the briefing.

The Fleet Shem, Five Light Years from the Piscium System

Mind-Hur Tae, was a female communications specialist who sat listening to the other ships of the Fleet Shem, passing on information to the shift supervisor when she thought something of importance needed their attention.

A member of the electronics specialists, she was proud of the fact that she had risen to her pre-eminent post as Principal Comms Specialist on the Koh-Tan Se-Lam Roe ot Shem, the fleet's flag ship.

Messages for and from the Jurte passed through her while she was on shift. She was listening in on comms between the great ships when her thoughts were interrupted by a strange signal.

Mind-Hur quickly worked to isolate and identify the signal and was shocked by what she found.

"Ma-Ret Rai, I think we have an anomaly," she told the person who was the Commander on Deck for the ship.

"What do you mean, an anomaly?" Ma-Ret demanded of her tech. Dammed techs, anything they hear is a fucking anomaly, she thought.

"Ma-Ret, there seems to be a message being sent to us from an unknown source," Mind-Hur dutifully replied, aware of the contempt that the Warrior Class had for the tech classes, seeing it firsthand from the deck commander.

"What message is that?" demanded the Commander.

"Do you wish me to broadcast this message for all on the command deck to hear?" Mind-Hur asked of her superior.

"Send it to my station," Ma-Ret ordered, after a moments reflection.

Mind-Hur did something at her station then walked over to the command station and pressed several buttons. She gave Ma-Ret an earpiece to listen to the message.

Once she was ready, Ma-Ret nodded to Mind-Hur, who opened the message. The two of them listened as a being that looked superficially like their species but was coloured wrong, began to speak in their own language, though with a few words wrong here and there.

"This is Raymond Clark, representing the people of the Terran Union," came the obviously machine translated voice of the person in the image. "We know that the Fleet Shem is currently headed to The Home Star, where our people are currently working at mining the minerals from the destroyed planet that we presume was your original Home World.

"We are aware that once before, you killed another group of sentients that were mining on your original home world. Be advised that we are not like them. They did not want to fight, and actually actively attempted to escape from you.

"We are not like those sentients. We will not run away. We would prefer a peaceful resolution to the issues if you will state them and allow us discussion. But we will defend ourselves and repulse any attack against us.

"We know the location of your fleet, and can get to you at anytime, this communications probe is proof enough of that. If you wish to speak further, to enlighten us as to your intent or to ask for negotiations, we will entertain any reasonable request. You need only send a message back on this frequency and the probe will bring your requirements to us.

"Should you want face-to-face discussions, that too can be arranged. Simply make your requests known to us and we will make the arrangements. Both our peoples have much we can offer each other; thus we look forward to a long history together in friendship between two peoples.

"It would be a shame, if we lost the peaceful interaction between our peoples simply because we do not understand each other, or do not want to understand each other.

"We look forward to your answer. Thank-you for your time and have a nice day."

The two listening looked at each other and blinked. They didn't know what to say. This was something that neither of them could have imagined.

Ma-Ret decided that she was not being paid enough to make decisions on this issue and contacted the Jurte.

The Command Council Chambers, Fleet Shem

Sa-Het Sai-Rai sat in her council chair, next to that of her Ro and fellow Jurte Kur-Han Kai-Ro. The commanders of the other great ships sat in their appropriate places around the circle with the commanders of their Fighting Phalanx's beside them. The only non-commander in the chamber was the tech Mind-Hur Tae. The group had just finished watching the imagery of the strange being.

"Discussion?" Sa-Het Sai-Rai opened the floor.

"These people have obviously been studying us for some time now," said Jonin-Tar Rai, the commander of the lead ship, the Mahl-Tar ot Shem. "They know our language sufficiently well to be able to communicate with us. They know our recent history with The Home Star, they obviously know our location, as they have sent the probe to us, and they unequivocally told us they wish peace with us, but not at any price."

When no one else spoke, Sa-Het Sai-Rai turned to the tech. "Mind-Hur Tae, your assessment?"

"Jonin-Tar Rai is correct, My Jurte," Mind-Hur began. "They have learned enough of our language that they have automated the translation. That is a feat that we would not have been able to do without years of study. They may be faster than us but I think it more likely that they have spent some time studying us before they made contact.

"I have been able to find the 'probe' they mentioned," she said, pulling up an image of the device. "It is 450 mindel to our rear. It is very small, yet they use it for communications between us. How is this possible? How did we not see it until we looked for it.

"Part of this is that we are looking forward and not to the rear, where this device current sits. That should not have been a surprise, in hindsight, but there it is. They know our communications frequencies. Once again, that denotes much study.

"They know our history, how, I cannot say for certain, however, I think it is because they have been studying us at length and not just the Fleet Shem. That worries me greatly, that they know so much about us, and we know next to nothing about them. What worries me more is that the only way they could have studied our history is at our home world.

"That suggests that they can get to our home world, study our people, and then come to make offers of peaceful resolution to us here at the Fleet Shem. How long have they actually been studying us? How is it that we have not seen them before? That they make offers of peace is very disturbing. Only the superior make offers of peace, as they can swat away that which they do not like or want at their leisure.

"Personally, I suggest we talk to them. There is no harm in doing so, and we may find out more about them, enough for us to make decisions on actions that we may wish to pursue," Mind-Hur finished.

"You would presume to make decisions for your Jurte?" Kur-Han Kai-Ro snapped.

"Peace, my beloved," Sa-Het Sai-Rai said, mildly to her fellow Jurte. "She made nothing more than a suggestion, and one with merit."

"What do you mean?" Kur-Han asked of his Rai.

"We will accept their offer of a face-to-face. Let us see how we can make use of that," Sa-Het finished.

"How do we send a message back to them Mind-Hur?" Sa-Het asked.

"I would suggest we simply send a comms signal to them on the frequency they first used, my Jurte," Mind-Hur said. "They know our language, so it should not be difficult for them to translate it."

"What message should we send?" Kur-Han asked.

"One of peace, of course," Sa-Het answered. "Why antagonize them before we find out more about them?"

So it was that an hour later, the Jurte Pair sat on their council seats and sent out a message of invitation to those who had spoken to them.

Mind-Hur Tae, watched by the full Council of Leaders, entered the message into her workstation and sent it to the probe trailing the ship. A few moments later, the probe briefly accelerated, then suddenly disappeared, shocking those who were watching.

The techs had a field day analyzing the data the gleamed from the probe's disappearance. What they told the Jurte Pair after their analysis, set the first hook of doubt into the Pair's minds...

End of chapter twenty-six.

OK. I can hear people now, "What's this two hundredth credits worth thing?" It's the equivalent of two cents worth. Geeze people, isn't that obvious?

Units of measurement: A Mand is the basic unit of measurement and is equivalent to 1.125 meters, the average pace of the Piscium B Society species. A Mander is 100 mand, or 112.5 meters. A Mindel is 1,000 mand, or the equivalent of 1.125 kilometers. Thus 450 mindel = 506 km.

To think, this was originally meant to be only ten chapters long! Here we are at chapter twenty-six and still going...

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Be well, Be kind to one another, Be safe.

bigtddybr