It took three days to reach the star again after installing Ralph and departing the Infinity Base planet. They didn’t have to install Ralph as much as expose the ship to him. Once mounted in position where the original computer core had been placed, Ralph’s module seemed to materialize all of the appropriate ports and connectors and plug in quite easily. True to his word, he functioned as a drop-in replacement for the ship’s original core. Through him they could control all of the ship’s primary functions for themselves, as well as access all of his navigational data. This gave them a view of their current system and allowed them to effectively navigate it even blind as they were, but it also gave them access to his data on the entire Builder empire.
Kathryn had been unable to pull herself away from the archive data and as a result hadn’t slept during the transit time between Infinity Base and the star. As easily as the vast archive tempted her to wander the files, she kept returning her focus to the system they were to portal through to. It was the capital system of a vast galaxy spanning civilization. There were defensive systems and infrastructure that were so alien and advanced there were no analogues in her language, and when asked Ralph had difficulty dumbing things down enough for her to understand even on a rudimentary level. Felix had a bit more luck, but each thing they asked about became another beyond known theoretical physics PhD program. Focused on getting Molly back as she was, she could still spare thoughts of hope that her people back home would someday soon get the same kind of unencumbered access to the repository of knowledge they were currently blessed with.
They were travelling at one and a half Gs, which while not oppressive was also not the peak of comfort. One hardly felt the strain for shorter periods, but over days it added up. People tended to spend more and more time off of their feet and were generally more and more fatigued as the stretch went by. They could have gone faster, but higher acceleration for days at a time presented greater chances of medical problems developing in the crew from it as otherwise underlying conditions were brought about prematurely.
The days dragged on as their anticipation grew. They were hungry both to take the next step in their journey to rescue Molly, and to satisfy their deep curiosity about what it would mean to see the capital planet of such an advanced society. It was the kind of boredom brought about more by anticipation of what was to come than present lack of stimulation. As they waited, much of the crew was often found in one of the observation decks where Ralph’s primary weapon hadn’t blown away the polymer glass in their battle. Protected by the automatically polarizing and darkening clear material, they spent more time than usual staring into the hypnotic star together and marvelled at how familiar the totally alien could nonetheless seem.
Kathryn did the same from the privacy of her own suite and wondered if there was any chance that either side of the builder’s civil war could be friendly to them. She could be reasonably certain after the attack that at least one was not friendly to them. Would they even be able to communicate with beings so advanced?
With so many questions, Kathryn felt lucky when she could be preoccupied with the astrophysics of it all. But the rest of the time, which was far more often, she was unlucky and thought of her daughter. She spent a lot more time crying alone than she was proud of and feeling more powerless than she ever had before in her life. Jaren helped, but things were weird between them. It wasn’t long ago that they’d be spending all this time together in each other’s arms comforting each other. Busy as they were trying to ready the ship, they still found some time to cuddle and commiserate, but it felt weirdly performative. She loved him, but something had been lost in recent years, a certain… intangible connection she couldn’t quite articulate, but had become further exposed in their separate processing of the loss of Maggie.
After three agonizingly long days, they finally arrived at the star’s rift portal. Ralph’s avatar body had been repaired, but he hadn’t yet asked to be put back into it. Kathryn wondered if he wasn’t able to both be the ship’s computer and operate the robot, or if he was merely content to be back in the role he’d been built for and no interest in any other existence. Kathryn smirked when she liked to imagine he was sheepish about being embodied again after how rudely she had dispatched him the last time.
“Can you zoom in on their portal point please, Ensign Patel?” Kathryn asked the younger operations officer who typically occupied the post on Alpha shift with her when Jaren wasn’t taking her station.
“Yes Ma’am.” the woman answered before the bridge’s large wall screen zoomed in from their standard view of a star’s vast roiling photosphere with a small speck of relative black which they were sailing towards.
As the image changed, Kathryn wasn’t quite sure what to make of what she was looking at. Her own people’s portal system operated by pouring redirected solar energy onto a purple rift crystal until its quantum structure and that of its target crystal both exploded into a tear in space connected by a wormhole. They’d been too panicked when entering the system to think to look back at the structure they’d exited from once it’s quantum structure calmed down, but looking at it now it appeared to be cube shaped and quite massive compared to their own rift crystals.
“How big is that thing, Ensign?”
She tapped at his science station several times. “Big,” she proclaimed. Kathryn could hear the surprise in her voice. “It is a perfect cube measuring ninety-three point eight-six kilometers wide, long, and deep.”
As Kathryn looked more closely, she noticed that in fact it too had a purple hue to it and wondered if something about the technology inherently manifested that colour in some way. She pressed a button on her arm rest panel which normally would have triggered the computer to await a spoken command, but as the new ship’s computer it now merely drew Ralph’s attention.
“Ralph…” she thought, “this is a rift facility designed by your builders?”
“Yes. We refer to them as portals, but yes.”
“It’s completely unfamiliar,” she noted. “Does it have collecting satellites like ours which feed it energy?”
“No Admiral; it passively draws energy from the sun and stores it internally for future use. It can open up to ten successive portals without intervening recharge but then requires days to fully replenish its energy stores.”
Jaren switched off the channel from where he was stationed at one of the general science stations behind her. “Kat we can just barely contain the three yottawatts we have to channel through our satellites onto our crystals and the whole system nearly burns out every time. I can’t conceive of the kind of energy system it would take to store and release that kind of energy.”
Amused with him, Kathryn pointed out: “Jaren you realize that closing the channel just means turning off his voice, not his ears on the ship, right?”
She knew him well enough to see the embarrassment before he masked it and regretted mocking him. “Right,” he acknowledged before turning back around to his station.
Kathryn momentarily pursed her lips in concern for him before turning the channel to Ralph back on. “So how do we activate it and enter?”
“Leave it to me,” was all he said.
“Ralph, we talked about this, we need at least the illusion of control here.” she scolded as good naturedly as possible while retaining her authority.
“Understood, Admiral. You can direct your operations officer to execute the new ‘Builder Portal Activation’ command at their station when ready.”
“Thank you Ralph,” she answered with satisfaction. “What can we expect when we cross over?”
“As discussed, unknown. There is obviously some kind of internal turmoil with the Builders. I will send a signal ahead of us identifying myself as well as our mutual situation and intentions, but if tensions are sufficiently high it could still be misinterpreted as a possible rouse by the enemy if there is indeed a conflict. If the system is still the capital, I expect to encounter a strong but friendly military presence on the other side.”
“Well that should be interesting to see,” Margaret dryly offered from behind her at a station adjacent to Jaren’s. The rest of them were on the float and strapped into their seats as they approached the alien portal cube on inertia alone but looking back Kathryn noticed that though her hair was appropriately floating about her head, Margaret otherwise seemed to be properly standing upright against the floor. The simulant noticed Kathryn looking down at her feet in puzzlement at the lack of magnetic gravity boots despite the seeming to be under the effects of them. Margaret lifted one foot off of the ground and rapped her knuckles against the sole of her regular shoes, offering only: “Upgrades.” as an explanation.
Kathryn soundlessly mouthed “ahh…” and returned her attention to the task at hand. “Jaren I’m going to need a situation report as soon as you can get it to me once we’re through. Ships, sizes, configurations, energy readings, everything.”
“You got it,” he acknowledged. “Should be able to pick that up via fleet transponder tags provided by Ralph.”
“Commander Grayson, we’re going to be relying on Ralph to translate and convey our intentions at first and maybe for some time, but you’re still one of the best linguists in the colonies. I want you to follow along and make of it what you can. The more we can do on our own here, the better.”
“Understood Admiral.”
Kathryn opened up a ship wide broadcast. “Okay people we are heading back through the rift so as discussed be ready for anything. If we’re still alive tomorrow then drinks are on me.” She wasn’t sure when she’d taken on such a macabre tone, but she hoped the dark humour might lighten the tension a bit. Laughing in the face of death for whatever reason still seemed to make its likelihood less scary somehow.
“Okay Lieutenant Byrne we’re ready. Take us in.”
The bridge crew watched as the surface of the massive cube facing them seemed to shift and shimmer as they approached. It phased as though somehow simultaneously there and not there but nothing could be seen behind it, only enhancing the oddity of the effect.
They drew nearer and nearer until one face of the cube too up the entirety of their field of view, and the twisty turny uncertainty of the surface came into closer and closer view but revealed no further detail. The surface seemed to ripple and swirl in ethereal eddies which defied comprehension. It made Kathryn’s mind hurt to look into it and desperately try to make sense of what it was seeing but finding no reference points with which to equate the experience.
After what seemed like an eternity of anticipation, the ship’s leading surface finally touched the uncertain boundary plane of the cube, and the event horizon washed over the ship from front to back. Kathryn was able to see for a brief moment the forward view screen be swallowed up by the eccentric surface of the cube, eliciting a deep sense of existential dread as it swept towards her, swallowing her up along with the bridge.
Kathryn was completely unprepared for the effect. She was used to the way everything her senses told her got washed out for several moments as the rift travel she was familiar with overloaded her brain and sensory systems. This transit was so much smoother though to the point that her senses hardly noticed.
When the forward array emerged on the other side of the portal it immediately began feeding data into terminals on the bridge, their limited optical sensors showing on the forward screen a starry night with some distant objects she couldn’t make out without the ability to zoom in. Once through everything felt normal, and quickly looking behind her as they exited, she could see the same wave of anomalous force sweep to the rear of the bridge and disappear behind the rear bulkhead. Jaren appeared unusually concerned as it washed over him, his knuckles white from gripping his chair so tightly. Margaret was naturally enough making a point of looking as nonchalant as possible to the others, perfectly timing the lighting of her cigar with the moment the wave passed over her. Sometimes she could be too much, Kathryn reflected with amusement for a moment returning the full force of her attention to the situation at hand.
“Report,” she ordered as calmly as possible.
“I… I need a minute,” Jaren insisted. “There’s a lot out there.”
“Ops?” she asked.
“There’s a furious amount of comms activity between us and one of the ships out there, I’m guessing Ralph is trying to assure them that we’re no threat and explaining his and our situation.”
“Best not disturb him then.” Kathryn stated with chagrin. “What else can you tell me?”
“I can tell you the star is yet another yellow dwarf like we’re used to?” the young Lieutenant Tarsus offered.
“Okay,” Kathryn acknowledged with bobbing her head to the side. “That’s always good to know I guess, Jaren?”
“I read over a thousand ships out there… energy readings are just completely off the scales. What’s really confusing though, I keep looking for how it’s instrument failure that’s leading me to see this, but…”
“What is it?” Kathryn asked with urgency.
“They’re all platonic solids!” His exclamation revealed how hard it was to believe. “Every ship I look at is either a perfect tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron of icosahedron,” he marvelled. He paused for a moment as he engaged with his readings before continuing. “Well now we know why their portal cube is so large, some of these ships are massive but none are too small to fit through. Some by just a hair’s width sure, and I do mean that literally by the way, by a hair, but every one of them can transit. And… yes. Damn, wow they really are. It looks like the bigger the ship is, the more complex its shapes. The tetrahedrons and cubes are our size or bigger, going up to the twenty faced icosahedrons which can barely fit through the portal.”
“Ok well that’s… unexpected.” Kathryn remarked. It was certainly interesting, but she couldn’t see how she could make use of the information. She opened a channel to Felix in engineering. “Catch all that?” she asked.
“I did, Kat.” he answered after a moment.
“What configuration were our attacker’s ships again?”
“Tetrahedron,” he answered. “They rammed us and penetrated our hull with one of their tips.”
“Right. Thanks Felix, anything to report from down there.”
“No ma’am, all systems operating as before,” he said before adding: “for better or worse.”
“Thank you, Felix.” She closed the channel. “Lieutenant Tarsus, still reading the same comms traffic?”
“It’s slowed down some Admiral,” the young man with angular Asian features said. He had the straight kind of glossy black hair which the light sometimes gave the illusion of blue streaks in it said. “I’m now getting longer pauses between transmission bursts. I’d guess they’re conferring back with an authority further away.”
“Do Ralph’s charts say where their planet is in this system?”
“Yes ma’am,” Tarsus answered.
“I’m guessing that while there is a delay, it’s nowhere near what you’d think it would have to be with the speed of light comms?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Hell of a thing to just step over a cosmic universal speed limit like that…” she marvelled as they waited to learn their fate. “Well, okay. Let’s give him the time he needs then, and hope he really is advocating for us like he said he would.”
As though on cue Ralph spoke to her over the internal comm system. “I have made contact.” he stated so plainly it seemed almost ominous.
Kathryn waited a few moments, lowering her head and widening her eyes in anticipation before asking: “and…”
“They are accepting my explanation for our presence here, but only provisionally. They are checking back with the capital planet for confirmation before allowing us to proceed.”
“And then?”
“This is as favourable an initial contact with them as we could have hoped, Admiral. If our proposal is approved, a research vessel staffed with investigators and diplomats will be dispatched from one of the nearby ships, and they will approach the New Horizon II and board her. They will examine the ship and crew to determine definitively that we are not a rouse by their enemy to infiltrate the capital. Until then we are ordered to enter a parking orbit around the star until this vessel arrives, and if we do not follow their orders exactly we will be destroyed immediately.”
“Well, could certainly be worse.” Margaret dryly observed between puffs on her cigar. “At least they didn’t open with destroying us.”
Kathryn snapped her fingers, then pointed at Margaret after tapping her temple. “True,” she agreed.
“Admiral Barnes,” Ralph said, “With your permission I would like to resume operation of the P4 robot. Having brought your ship and crew to meet my founders and having reported in what I have seen and learned, I now consider my mission complete. I am willing to leave my core connected to New Horizon II to continue to function in place of your lost core, but I am returning all full controls to your people.”
Kathryn’s mood noticeably brightened, and she shot a ‘well how ‘bout that’ look at Jaren.
“Yes of course. Thank you, Ralph,” she added. “When you are embodied again you are welcome to join us on the bridge when ready. I’d like to know everything you can tell us about what to expect before the alien ship arrives. Lieutenant Byrne, put us in a parking orbit around the star please. No fancy maneuvers, just get us there as non-threateningly as possible.”
“Aye Admiral, standard parking orbit, slow and easy.”
The aperture they had exited was of course itself in orbit around the star, so Byrne just had to increase their speed in orbit to put them a greater distance from the star, producing a small, gentle thrust gravity.
“Well?” she asked Jaren and Margaret. “Thoughts?” Kathryn noticed Patricia entered the bridge and wondered when the Command Centre became open access. She noted that she’d have to look into that later.
“We’re not dead,” Margaret offered with an impassive but somewhat surprised shrug. “It’s a start.”
“There is that,” Jaren affirmed with a smirk.
“Jaren it looks like we may have some time here. I want you to pour over what sensor and comm logs in conjunction with Ralph’s navigational data, and with access to Ralphs fundamental core processing, I want you to see if we can get any closer to figuring out how to operate this alien portal system on our own.”
“On it.” He nodded. “Probably be more effective working on that in Engineering.” Kathryn nodded and he turned to exit the bridge, nodding an acknowledgement to Patricia as he passed her.
“Something tells me these aren’t the people who took Maggie,” Margaret offered. “They seemed to have zero interest in talking.”
Kathryn nodded. She agreed but hadn’t wanted to be the first to say it for fear of it just being wishful thinking. “Well to be fair, these ones aren’t doing much talking to us either.” Margaret acknowledged her point with a shrug.
“What is with the shapes of those ships?” Patricia asked after studying the view screen. In the light gravity she softly stepped down to the recessed section of the bridge in front of the captain’s chair for a better look.
“We don’t know,” Kathryn answered as she stood and came down to stand beside Patricia and look at the image with her. “It doesn’t look like they use a kind of propulsion in any way like ours. I don’t care what they’re made of,” she added, “with the kind of Gs they were pulling to quickly get back to the star after attacking us, with any kind of traditional propulsion any organic life should have been liquefied against the wall.”
“So what do they use for propulsion?” Patricia asked.
“Not a clue,” Kathryn said with a smile in a tone bordering on flirty. She hated how Patricia could sometimes make her feel like a nervous girl trying to impress her crush. It was so much easier to just try to avoid her. “Something we can’t even imagine. Our ships are all built around the propulsion system ejecting material out the back of the ship. If we could just move around by magic as they appear to, there would be no need for a front or rear to the ship, no port or starboard. There’d be no need for any irregularity to the shape which probably explains their regular platonic shapes, but it’s just a guess.”
At that point, Felix and robo-Ralph entered the bridge. Ralph had built in magnets like Margaret which he’d apparently installed in himself and Felix was wearing boots producing the same effect, allowing both of them to walk onto the bridge as though there was much more gravity than there actually was in their gentle burn.
“Alright Ralph spill. Tell me everything.”
“It seems there has been a schism between the Builders and there are now two factions. This faction did not take your computer core and daughter though, I assure you. They do not know why we were attacked.”
“What was the schism over?” Patricia asked.
“I did not ask.” Ralph answered. “It was not relevant.”
“Of course not,” Kathryn answered with a sigh. “It is for us though. Are they going to help us?”
“I did not ask.”
Kathryn closed her eyes and shook her head trying to suppress her renewed irritation with him. “Right, okay so what did your conversation consist of?”
“I transmitted the entirety of my logs, they asked for clarifications about a great many things, and I answered to the best of my ability. Pending confirmation, they have accepted my story and have issued our instructions accordingly.”
“And that was it?” Kathryn confirmed.
“Yes.”
Kathryn sighed. “Well, thanks for your help I guess… I still wish you could have thought to probe further on our behalf for more answers.”
“That is not my function,” he plainly stated. “It is however the function of the emissaries they are sending. You will be able to ask anything you like of them, and they will answer as they see fit.”
“Right.”
“Also… thank you for allowing me to complete my mission.” the robot added.
“So what now for you?” Margaret asked.
“Unknown.” Kathryn thought she might detect a note of sadness in his answer, but she could just as easily have projected the observation.
“What would have become of you if you’d have succeeded in your original mission?” Patricia asked.
“I would have been integrated into the new portal system and served as its central computer core.”
“Sounds lonely,” Patricia remarked.
“Very cool,” Felix added, “but yes, also very lonely.”
“I don’t understand,” the robot remarked. “I require no companionship, and I would have been in contact with any ship transiting the portal.”
“Receiving transmission Admiral, audio only,” the operations officer reported.
“On speaker, please.”
“Star Fleet vessel New Horizon II. What follows is contingent on the drone ship unit’s accuracy. We regret that first contact between our species was hostility from our rival faction. This conflict is an exception to millennia spent as a peaceful species. A vessel has been dispatched to survey your ship and crew to ensure your appearance here is not subterfuge by our enemy. Once your nature and intentions are confirmed you will be welcomed to the capital planet for formal first contact honours. Please accommodate our docking with your vessel. If you make any maneuvers which we consider threatening, you will be destroyed. Please acknowledge to any of the ships before you.”
“Well, I guess you don’t need me,” Comms officer Grayson lamented.
“The report I transmitted included details on your language,” Ralph informed them. “It is not a complicated form of communication.”
Margaret looked the robot up and down and then blew a puff of smoke into its digitized face. “Why Kathryn, I think we’ve just been insulted.”
Kathryn simultaneously rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Commander Grayson please transmit this message back on the same frequency. Just tell them that we understand their instructions and are standing by’.” She looked at the others. “I think anything more can be said once they arrive. I’d hate to say something now that could be misinterpreted.”
“I’m… picking up a ship,” Tarsus said. “It’s a… tetrahedron.”
“Naturally,” Margaret offered dryly.
“And it is… wow, they’re speed is… impossible.” Tarsus balked.
“That’s what we thought when we were attacked,” Felix acknowledged.
“Ten G… twelve G… Jesus, fifteen G… wow, twenty, twenty-five… wont’ take them that long to get here at this rate,” Tarsus marveled.
“What’s the maximum acceleration of a craft like that, Ralph?” Kathryn asked.
“Thirty-two point eight of your Gs for a vessel that small.”
“The bigger ones go faster?” Felix boggled.
“Yes,” Ralph answered, seemingly not understanding their amazement. “Much faster.”
“Well at that rate they should be here in just a few minutes,” Margaret observed. “Like, we should be hustling down to the airlock kind of soon.”
Nobody had expected things to happen that quickly. “Right, okay then,” Kathryn said, sorting herself. “Commander Grayson you have the bridge. Jaren, Maggie, Felix, Patricia, and Ralph, let’s go meet our new friends.”