Diaspora

"Man had been so unscrupulously ushered into the stars, had it not?"

Captain Milos crew of the Sol Confederacy Expeditionary Ship Soleil Levant had to agree with Commander Honaker's statement. It certainly was an interesting period in the history of humanity. After all, the divided states of Man managed to loosely unite for the betterment of the species. Dwindling resources on Earth and greater instances of political extremism led to the signing of the Zurich Convention. There were some holdouts that hadn't signed the convention, though they were short-lived as revolutionaries and rebels realized it would be better for their country overall to sign the treaty. It was far from a resolute declaration of total unity, of course - Man's divided nature would still be present. As such, those founding states had considerable autonomy to do as they pleased. As the world became more developed and those initial ventures into exploration of the Sol System were established however, the younger population acted more collectively as a species than as people all belonging to different states, creeds, and religions. This unity led to the beginning of the terraformation of Mars and Venus, even though those first pioneers knew it would take millennia to complete. Their descendants, like Captain Milos - enjoyed the fruits of their labour immensely.

"Indeed, Commander. We are lucky to live in a time where the beliefs of utopianism as it were millennia ago are now expected to be provided, not dreamlike. Not to say that the Confederacy is a utopia. God knows how many compromises and 'agreements' we've had to make over the years."

Honaker smiled immensely at that statement.

"Anyway, Captain - I believe I'm dragging on this supper far too long. It's what, 12:30 shiptime?"

"Of course, Commander. I'll have my meal and then head out. After all, courier is supposed to arrive tomorrow. Better to be ready for the next charter. I'll take a round of the bridge before I go, though."

"As you wish, Captain. Let's dig in, shall we?"

Captain Milos took his round of the bridge. It was nothing special, of course. In the old seas of Earth, it perhaps would have been more glorious - but here it was simply his chair, many, many consoles for his bridge staff, and a screen showing the view of a camera on the external hull of the ship. It didn't have any practical purpose, after all - stellar combat generally happened over hundreds of thousands or over millions of klicks as hours-long, drawn out games of cat and mouse. Unless you were particularly crafty, the outcome of an engagement was generally already decided once intel was clear on who had the advantage in terms of tonnage and fleet size. Of course, that didn't mean you wouldn't take any losses at all. Most of the time, some unlucky crew would be dealt the wrong cards and have their ship destroyed with overwhelming superiority. After all, there weren't any fancy "shields" here as they had been described in the old science-fiction tales of yonder. One good hit with a missile and you'd be ripped apart, and it didn't take extreme close range for a missile to do total damage either - a detonation at a few thousand klicks away could at least do some damage. Hence, accuracy and EWAR capabilities were key.

His ship currently lied in the periphery of Man's furthest territories, a grand empire stretching across dozens of lightyears with 53 billion men and women inhabiting everywhere from Earth, Earthlikes, backwaters, space stations, asteroids, and mobile cities. Though all of those things were in the heartland of Man. He and his crew were out here where there wasn't even a preliminary base established, but that was par for the course on a government expeditionary vessel. He signed up to meet the Little Green Men, but 20 years in this business and he hadn't found any. Perhaps humanity has found them, though he and his crew wouldn't know for quite a long amount of time. FTL communication was far from ever existing in their lifetimes, much less the lifetimes of their grandkids. The best way to communicate across the stars were courier ships - just like the horse-riding messengers of old.

The Soleil Levant was waiting for orders from a courier boat to instruct them on new orders. For now, they were in the outer edges of the Twin Stars of Icarus and Daedalus. A rather apt name, for the figurative road ahead was littered S-space oddities. Stratified space, as it was called - was the general collection of "spaces". They were currently in n-space, or normal space - which was the bottom of the barrel in terms of speed. It would take roughly 3 generations to cross the hop to the next star with n-space. Once they got above n-space using the Korhonen engine, they'd reach O-space (or Omega space). And it'd go on and on, reaching faster speeds as they did it. The currently most fast S-space available to man was Nu-space. Sometimes there would be "turbulence" in these S-space regions, getting more intense the higher up you went. Those oddities were described as metaphorical gusts of wind that were millions of times more powerful, capable of ripping ships apart. So, it made sense to try and not die.

Till they got official orders to move onto the closest uncharted system, they'd be sticking around here. And they'd have to make the best of it.

"Captain Milos is monologuing again, it seems." said Science Officer Nguyen. He spelled his name like Mee-losh, which was what he grew up with. The others called him My-los though, which was fine with him.

A few of his crew chuckled at that. Their chuckles were quickly cut out by a message from CIC, or SIC - depending on whether you were the military type or the scientific type.

A life-size and colored hologram of Lieutenant Harrington appeared in front of him at his console.

"Sir, unidentified contact approaching from the K-one-eight-niner-three system has just jumped down from O-space approximately 14 minutes ago according to Recon Drone 023."

"What? Are you sure?"

"We initially presumed that it was a vessel employed by a member state - but upon further examination... it seems like we're looking at aliens, here. Sir." the Lieutenant made sure to end her statement with "Sir". But Milos could feel the mixture of confusion and horror in her statement. After all, she would be at the forefront of potential first contact.

"Well then, Lieutenant. Raise General Quarters, it's time to meet the Little Green Men. If everything goes well, guess who's going to be the center of attention for the newsies?"

Harrington stifled a smile. "Of course, Sir."

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"So, what do you think about 'em?" said Milos.

"Well, they weren't the aliens I imagined. They look.. weird, really." replied Honaker.

"Eh, at least I didn't have to shake hands. Admiral Venizelos' fleet was roaming around and arrived for the stare-down just in time, otherwise I'd imagine we'd be in limbo for at least a month. How long do you think the newsies back on Earth catch on to it?"

"They probably have a Nu-space capable courier heading back there as we speak. This is big news, after all."

"Congratulations then, Honaker. We're famous now."

"Won't change our salaries though."