While Making Other Plans:
Chapter 20

  Two days later New Horizon II entered orbit around the founder’s home world.  The pilot expressed concern about the amount of orbital traffic.  Neither he nor any other human had ever had to navigate in such congested space.  It wasn’t only the sheer volume of craft and stations operating in the orbital space, but the near constant comings and goings from the planet as well.  Fortunately though, when they were near enough for the concern to be more acute, they received a transmission from one of the larger orbital platforms instructing them on a precise orbit they were to enter which from what they could tell was clear of any other ships.  They fell in line behind another ship in the same orbit a little over two hundred kilometers with another equally distant behind them, all lined up in a parallel parking orbit.

  The ships they saw were not all regular shapes like the ones they’d seen near the star.  Many certainly were, but others had more functional shapes.  What appeared to be a series of weapons platforms swarming all around the planet were flat hexagons a kilometer and a half wide and at least a quarter kilometer deep.  They were matte grey solids with no markings or irregularities to their shape.  The sheer number of them swarming around the planet was what made the New Horizon crew suspect them to be part of a defensive system.

  They even spotted some other ships just like Ralph’s, who explained that in wartime any such drone ships such which were complete or near enough, would be repurposed towards the war effort.  He also admitted with some apparent embarrassment that he’d never seen the objects they imagined to be the orbital weapons platforms, but also agreed it was a reasonable hypothesis as to their purpose.

  “Admiral, we are receiving… landing coordinates,” the auburn haired pilot Lieutenant Malcolm Byrne informed her.  “Just like that,” he remarked with some apparent amazement.

  “Any other instructions?” Kathryn asked, trying to lighten the tension.  “Formal wear?  Casually elegant maybe?  Are we to bring a fruit basket?  Bottle of Beashou nectar?”

  Jaren finally smiled and actually let out a curt chuckled  “No, no… just coordinates.”

  “What do you think Ralph?” she asked.  “An invitation?”

  “I believe it safe to assume you have been provided with the location to go if you wish to initiate formal diplomatic first contact.”

  “Right,” she affirmed before pausing for a moment.  “Well, we’ve come this far.”  She released her restraints and put her magnetic boots on the deck pretended to stand in them.  “We’re going to have to take a shuttle so somebody’s going to have to stay behind to command the ship.  Felix had to stay last time, so Jaren it’s your turn to draw the short straw.”

  Jaren somehow managed to seem both disappointed and relieved at once.  He was normally the type to be most eager for this sort of raw discovery, but he’d already had far more adventure on this trip than he’d bargained for.  He was happy to keep an eye on them from the ship and run support, but she imagined he also felt more comfortable with one of them staying behind on the ship, their only hope of finding and retrieving their daughter.  Kathryn, Felix, and Margaret could all look out for each other and they’d been at this long enough that Jaren could trust his wife’s ability take care of herself and handle whatever came up.

  Kathryn reached down and pushed a button on her chair’s console to open a comm channel to Engineering.  “Felix, Margaret, meet me at Shuttle One.  We’re going to go meet our new friends.”  She then turned to the robot they were pretending wasn’t still in control of the ship, standing a couple meters to her left with his feet magnetized to the floor.  “How ‘bout you Ralph, feel like coming along?  Do you consider this a kind of home?  Would you be happy to see your builders again?  If nothing else I have a feeling you’ll at least be useful as an intermediary and translator.  It seems like they already can technically communicate to us in English, but you’ve spent some time with us— I dare say we’ve developed a certain rapport at this point.  Care to join us?”

  “I am willing yes,” he affirmed in his tinny voice.  “I have no particular urge to.  My consciousness only begun when I was activated in my target system, so I have no sense of any home planet and I never knew any Builder personally, but it would be… interesting to come along, and I am happy to assist you in communicating with them if I can.”

  “Really, happy?” Kathryn marvelled, her overall sincerity bordering on sarcasm despite herself.  She was genuinely surprised at him saying so.  “Is that even a thing for you?”

  “Figure of speech perhaps?” he asked.  “Did I not use the expression correctly?”

  She just returned a mirthful smile before Jaren drew her attention.

  “Kat…” Jaren started before seeming to double check something before continuing.  “Based on what our scans can tell us and what was reported in the invitation about the composition of the planet’s atmosphere seems safe for us.  I mean,” he turned around in his seat to face her, “obviously that says nothing about microbial dangers, but…” she shook his head to himself, getting off topic of what he really wanted to report.  “It’s the gravity down there.”  He looked over at the view screen to watch the planet slowly pass underneath them and Kathryn did the same.  “It’s one point six two.”

  Kathryn quickly looked back at him, surprised.  “Really?”  She looked back at the viewscreen.  “Hunh…”

  “I wouldn’t recommend spending more than a few days down there,” he offered.

  “Jaren my man, I can think of any number of reasons why I wouldn’t want to spend several days down there.”

  The man raised an eyebrow and tilted his head to the side for a moment before smirking in amused agreement.  “Right, right…” he said, looking down in thought for a moment.  “Well just be safe then.  Get what we need and hurry home.  We have lots of work to do.”

  Perhaps having spent too much time with Margaret, she offered him a sarcastic salute and a ‘yes sir’, but smiled as much as she thought necessary for him to know she was just teasing.  All things considered she was actually feeling quite encouraged by it all so far.  The aliens weren’t displaying any aggression so far and seemed as content to be making contact as they were, and there seemed to be as good a chance as she could have hoped for to get their help tracking Maggie down.  Making nice with them also made getting home again afterwards actually plausible, but getting home was at this point such a distant secondary in her mind’s hierarchy of concerns that she’d need a telescope to clearly see it.

   

  The four departed down to the surface in a shuttle.  They had a good view of their exterior as the inside of the shuttle was lined with displays which showed the exterior from cameras mounted on the outside, which sometimes gave the uncomfortable feeling of flying through the air nakedly vulnerable and the disconnect between seen extreme motion and still air on one’s face.  There was a landing pad at the exact coordinates they’d been provided with which was at the end of a walkway nearly a kilometer long which lead to a massive crystalline structure.  Mist obstructed seeing how far up in the sky they were, but the surface of the walkway was a kind of purple crystal, the same kind of material as the twisting crystalline spires rising from both sides of the path every dozen meters or so on both sides.  

  The colour of the crystal material shifted around depending on the light hit it between and around indigo and violet, and while it didn’t vary across the whole range, she couldn’t help thinking about it as a kind of rainbow bridge.  At the end of the path was a structure which was hard to describe in Kathryn’s own mind because she’d simply never seen anything like it before.  It seemed to be made of rough shards of crystal of various sizes and configurations all pressed together into a mass, with the same colour shifting as the bridge, but between adjacent shades of emerald and jade.  

  ‘The Emerald City…” Kathyrn whispered to herself, a reference so deep and distant it was practically epigenetic.  It meant something, but the meaning was far beyond her grasp.

  She’d felt the weight of the gravity immediately.  There had been a peculiar situation as they approached the surface as the familiar inertia of decelerating as they approached the surface was stronger than usual, then let up, but never stopped.  When they’d landed it felt like they were still decelerating.  The sensation was disquieting in a way she couldn’t articulate.  It made her feel the alienness of the place in her bones.

  It had the vague shape of an ancient castle with a generally rectangular central section roofed with innumerable smaller crystal spires.  In the corners of the central sections were massive twisting spires like the ones lining the path but on a mammoth scale, easily a kilometer wide at the base where they disappeared beneath the mists and reaching into the sky over twice as high as the tallest point of the central structure.

  After they’d landed Kathryn quickly closed her eyes and took a deep breath before attempting to stand in the increased gravity.  It wasn’t altogether unfamiliar—  travelling in ships with Koboli anti-matter propulsion technology she was somewhat used to operating in higher than normal simulated gravity but something felt different about this, even though there was no real physical distinction in the sensation to notice.  

  As the shuttle touched briefly hovered above the currently mauve landing pad, Kathryn noticed a solitary creature standing at the boundary between the landing pad and the not fully rainbow road on the shuttle’s wrap around projection of the exterior.  A glint of reflected sunlight caught Kathryn’s eye and she noticed a small ball floating near the alien.  From what she could make out from its distance to her and the loss of fidelity through the shuttle’s screens, the surface seemed to be entirely mirrored.

  The shuttle touched down, and its legs bent noticeably more than they ordinarily would with the extra weight in the heavier gravity well, creaking with the strain so much that Kathryn felt the shudders through her seat.

  “Touch down,” Felix reported, following procedure.  “Powering down engines,”

  “Game faces everyone,” Kathryn said without taking her gaze off of the strange alien.  This is one of if not the most significant moment in all of human history.  Everything is on the line here,” she added, “personally, professionally, and civilizationally.”  She took her eyes off of the alien to look directly at Margaret.  “So best behaviour,” she said, an order as much as that would work, and a plead for however much more that would be worth.  She could tell Margaret wanted to be herself, but instead just nodded her understanding.  Seeing Felix and Ralph likewise nod their understanding was satisfying enough for her.

  She undid her restraints and carefully stood up in the higher gravity, feeling the weight aggravate her aging joints which a lifetime in the service had already rendered in a fairly constant state of minor discomfort.  “Open the door please, Felix.”

  The panel of wall between her and the alien lowered down and away, extending a ramp out the end from within as it approached, and then came to rest on the crystal-like ground.  She drew a deep breath and blew it out before plastering on as confident a smile as she could before walking down the ramp and towards the alien.

  “Greetings,” the mirror ball floating beside it said as she approached.  “Welcome to our planet.”  The affect of the tone was flat, as though it didn’t understand how to properly approximate tone so just excluded it from the voice synthesis.

  Kathryn instinctively thought to reach out to shake its hand but was able to stop herself as she remembered that this was a human cultural act which could as easily be interpreted as a threat by the alien as a gesture of good will.  But to her surprise, the creature extended its two jointed arm and offered its taloned four fingered hand for her to shake.

  “Proper names will be a stumbling block at first I’m afraid,” the mirror ball said, which Kathryn surmised the alien was using to articulate her language for her.  The alien then uttered a series of deep tones so low that Kathryn barely registered it as sound and felt more than heard.  “— is my name in our language,” it continued through the ball.  “Sadly there is no approximate it using your vocalizations, let alone language.”

  “Well…” Kathryn uttered.  She was struggling to remain as professional as she wanted to given how dazed the was by the enormity of the surreal moment.  “What do you call this planet?” she asked, immediately feeling like she was stupidly making small talk, but in the moment unable to think of anything more appropriate to say or ask.  Her joints ached and she wondered if something in the air was making her light headed.

  The creature emitted another low rumbling series of tones which she registered more in its vibrating the large bones of her body than the tiny ones in her ears.  

  “I see,” she said, pursing one side of her mouth in disappointment.

  “For now, I suggest you create your own labels for convenience,” the voice from the ball suggested.  “We will take no offence.”

  “How ‘bout Bob then?” Margaret offered from behind her.

  Kathryn choked on the suggestion.  “Bob!?” she turned to angrily exclaim at her when she’d regained the capacity to.  “Not now, Margaret.  Please.”

  “Not for him,” Margaret winked at her, “for the planet”.

  “We,” she sighed as she shook her head with angry irritation which she masked as best as she could, which was minimal.  “We can’t… we cannot name the planet ‘Bob’, Margaret.”

  “I like it,” Felix chimed in, to which Kathryn shot a pleading ‘for the love of god please stop’ look at him.  “That would make them the Bobbins, wouldn’t it?” he asked, turning to Margaret.

  “Well yes, I believe it would,” the simulation of an old woman acknowledged with glee.

  “Felix—”

  “He did invite us to make up our own terms for them,” Felix shrugged.  After adding that much he seemed to feel bad about it and apologetically shrunk a bit into himself.

  Margaret however, apparently not finished, then added: “And we can call this chap Bill perhaps?  Bill of the Bobbins of Bob?”  Unable to help himself, Felix raised an interested eyebrow at her but was otherwise finished playing along.

  The blistering glare Kathryn gave Margaret was almost enough to melt her artificial skin, and when the simulant saw it, she shrunk back under her gaze as well, seemingly concerned she’d maybe taken things too far this time, considering the immensity of the moment.

  Having stared both of them down, Kathryn closed her eyes and quickly took a deep breath trying to compose herself before turning back to the alien.  It held out its hand again for her again.  “Then I am Bill, your special emissary to the Bobbins of Bob.”  

  Kathryn felt like she might faint.  The sincerity with which he’d said it made it almost seem like he was in on the joke and she almost laughed in his face when the mirror ball had said it, or vomited with anxiety at how this was all going.  One of the two.  She took his hand and gingerly shook it.  ‘I guess it’s my fault for naming the A.I. Ralph…’ she muttered as she took closer notice of the limb she was shaking.  

  It had the kind of fine, short, hairs she’d expect of a human sized insect, and the hairs had a sheen of royal purple when the sun hit it in a certain way.  It made her realize that the fur was not actually black as she’d initially thought, but that it had a tint of purple to it so subtle it was easily mistaken for pure black aside from the streaking strips of bright orange fur across it’s head and body, and running part ways up its arms.  Among the most alien things about it was the way it had two joints in it, three if she counted the wrist, both seeming to have only one range of motion like her own elbows, but in perpendicular directions.

  She felt her eyes fixate for too long on the creature’s face.  Three large bulging all black eyes equidistantly crowned its head.  Two were looking back at her obliquely instead of centering one eye on her to look at her directly.  Its gaze was offset in a way which granted greater peripheral vision like prey animals back home, but she imagined the third eye around the back allowed it a kind of full wrap around vision.  She wondered what it must be like to experience the world like that, to always see everywhere all at once, for forwards and backwards to be meaningless concepts.

  It was its mouth which perhaps made her the most outright uncomfortable to look at it though.  It had two fuzzy mandibles rooted in either side of its mouth, which when not speaking rested horizontally across its mouth with one stacked on top of the other.  The two thick projections folded over its mouth gave it the odd impression of big lips, but with nasty looking talons at the end of each and framing the corners of its mouth.  The mandibles in particular resonated something deep in her genetic memory and she had to fight a sense of revulsion at feeling like she was shaking hands with a giant insect.

  “Greetings, um… Bill.  My name is Admiral Kathryn Janine Barnes of the United Star Fleet.  This is my Chief Engineer Felix Ulysses Parker, and… uh, ‘Specialist’ Margaret King.  Standing behind her there is Ralph.  You wouldn’t recognize his form of the robot he inhabits, but it is animated by the intelligence of one of your deep space probes.”

  “Yes, we are aware,” the mirror ball said as the alien seemed to look at Ralph and then back at her.  “We find it quite interesting you chose to do that.  Since we made initial contact with this ‘Ralph’ unit, I have been tasked with learning everything we can about you.  About your language, your culture, your mission, and everything that’s happened to you since you left home.”

  “Sounds like a lot to study very quickly,” Kathryn remarked with a raised eyebrow.

  “We are… very quick learners as you will see.” it answered.

  “Right,” Kathryn acknowledged, once again momentarily feeling a little dazed at everything.  “Very quickly, I’m sure.”

  “Shall we?” Bill said through his mirror ball as it extended one of his arms towards the long path the emerald crystal palace.  Its arms were rooted about halfway up its body.  Like it’s eyes, they were equidistant around its torso, each arm in the middle between two eyes.  Kathryn obliged and followed along, her crew following behind her.  “I assume you have many questions.  You may start whatever you like.”

  “I don’t know where to start,” she said, her eyes wide with the overwhelm at the challenge, but immediately regretted failing to be more assertive.

  “You may take whatever time you need.” Bill assured her.

  “My… well our, most pressing concern at the moment is the location and whereabouts of my daughter and how we can get her back.”

  “Yes, I can imagine,” Bill said.  “Concern for one’s offspring is a fairly universally common biological imperative.”

  “Do you know where she is?” she asked.

  “Sadly no, we do not.”

  “Do you know why she was taken?”

  Kathryn could feel Bill’s rear eye fixating on her for a moment before it seemed to lose focus and she imagined it was resuming focus on the path before it as they traversed the bridge.  “We suspect it was for the same reason Ralph was triggered with the imperative to bring you here.  You represent a technological novelty, and you were likely targeted by our enemy to obtain samples for study towards a new potential military advantage.”

  She couldn’t imagine what possible military advantage such advance aliens thought they might glean from studying them, but it wasn’t what mattered to her right now.  “Is she still alive?” Kathryn asked.

  The alien seemed to hesitate in responding.  “We don’t know.  I’m sorry.  It is certainly possible she is still alive, but it is by no means assured.”

  “Will you help us find her?” she realized she was holding her breath after asking and forced herself to let it out.

  The alien stopped moving forward and focused its rear eye on her again.  “Admiral Kathryn Janine Barnes of the United Star Fleet, I assure you we wish very much to become friends with your people.  We will assist you in finding and retrieving your daughter in whatever ways we can which do not compromise our war effort.”

  “Admiral Barnes or Kathryn is fine, Bill.” she clarified.  “And thank you,” she added.  “I’m immensely gratified to hear that and I’m sure my people will feel the same way.”  She pushed aside as quickly as she could the xenophobic streak on her home planet towards the indigenous creatures referred to as squiddies and continued.  “Who is your enemy.”

  She saw Bill’s body rise and fall as though it were sighing, but it didn’t seem to breathe the same way humans did.  It then continued resumed walking towards the crystal palace as it explained.  It didn’t walk with the typical up and down of bipedal humans nor the side to side way she’d come to expect four legged animals to generally move.  It had four legs under it, distinct from seeming to have three of everything else.  It’s motion was something between a glide and a skitter, seeming to neither bob up and down nor weave side to side.

  “Our people knew peace for over six thousand of your years, the longest uninterrupted peace in our history.”  Kathryn marveled at them having a history even longer than six thousand years, but let him continue instead of fixating on that aspect.  “But an ancient debate arose which divided us on fundamental ideological lines for the first time in living memory.  For the first time there was disunity when our society is typically somewhat harmonious.  The debate became hostile.  Eventually it became violent.”

  “What was the argument about?” Felix asked.

  “My research suggests you are familiar with binary code, the fundamental basis of all computing?” it asked.

  “Sure,” Felix answered, seemingly surprised they would still use such a basic form of computer programming.

  “The argument fundamentally rests on which comes first,” Bill explained.

  “Which… what comes first?” Kathryn asked.

  “Which integer,” it explained, “one or zero.”

  Kathryn stopped moving forward and stood still. dead in her tracks.  The alien continued on for a small distance before realizing she’d stopped, then came back the short distance to stand in front of her.  “Wait,” she said.  It was hard for her to believe what he’d told her.  “You’re having a massive galactic civil war… just over whether or not fundamental binary code starts with one or zero?”

  “Yes,” Bill said through the mirror ball.  It took on a shade of blue, and she wondered if it meant some sort of emotional expression to make up for the flat affect of the simulated voice.  If so, maybe blue meant confusion.  “Do you not understand?” it asked.

  “No, I…” Kathryn uttered with depressed amazement.  “I suppose I do.  I suspect… I fear that I understand it all too well.”

  “Good,” it said as it resumed walking and Kathryn obligingly following again.  “We naturally enough understand that zero comes first, as there must be the absence of something before something can exist.  The enemy faction however, believes somethingness is required to define the nonexistence of something, that there can be no nothingness in relation to somethingness.  Quite silly, really,” it pointed out matter of factly with apparently absolute confidence.

  “Yeah,” Kathryn uttered, the absurdity eliciting a minor panic in her chest which added weight to the already excessive gravity by now making her knees ache considerably.  “Of course…”  Her reaction was easily contained for a woman such as herself, but the same panic kept niggling at the back of her mind that something so trivial could be the root of something so massive.  

  But some memory flickered from her distant past.  She remembered something from her intro to philosophy class back in her university days.  Though posited as a sillier what came first one or zero, the description of their respective rationales was really something more akin to a religious schism.  The question of how somethingness could come from nothingness had plagued human philosophers since humans had developed the cognitive capacity to pose the question.  Some though nothingness invoked somethingness, others thought somethingness, some eternal god outside of time perhaps, had to precede everything, even nothingness.

  “How goes the war effort?” she asked, pushing the memory away.  All of that philosophy crap really didn’t matter much at the moment.

  “The conflict initially broke out over a hundred of your years ago and the initial insurrection was put down quite easily.  We were unaware however, that a small extremist faction had broken away.  They had been building up a military force in secret in a system with an uncharted portal node.  When they re-emerged a few years ago we found that they were engaging in a tactic which was… terrifying.”  The thing seemed to shudder, and the floating ball took on a purple tint.  ‘Fear,’ Kathryn noted grimly.

  “And what was that?” she asked, almost afraid to know, given how Bill reacted to thinking about it.

  “They hard wired their Link to be permanently active.”

  “I’m sorry, the link?”

  “No Admiral Barnes, my apologies.  I must explain.  We Bobbins have a technology we refer to as ‘The Link’.  It was first developed thousands of years ago, but we forgot long ago how anyone could possibly function without it.  It is a system which allows us to network our minds with each other the way you might network computers together.  When we are in The Link, those within it think and function as a single mind, with each mind contributing to the greater consciousness the way individual neurons contribute to a single mind.  We descend originally from creatures which existed as a colony.  After individuating during our evolution, it was a natural drive for us to figure out how to rediscover that way of existing again through technology.

  “One of the first things we learned about The Link was the danger of leaving it permanently activated.  Not only did it leave individuals vulnerable to overt manipulation as they lost their sense of self, but individual life and experience was lost completely.  None wanted to exist as a member of The Link permanently, so the system was developed in such a way that we can enter and exit The Link at will whenever we wish, retaining some small sense of self while in it which allows us to be able to exit at will.

  “The Link is comfort,” Bill explained, “The Link is knowledge.  The Link is power.  But in The Link we ourselves are lost to it, and so we have learned how to be sparing in when and why we enter it.  We can easily access whatever information we need from it at any time without having to enter it, but we can also choose to surrender ourselves to its warm embrace.  There are times in our annual cycles when we all gather in The Link in ritual, milestones in our life we enter to share with the rest, comforts we seek from it when things are difficult.

  “The enemy however, took the radical step of hard wiring The Link so that every member of their faction is permanently connected to it, leaving them merely a drone of the hive mind.  We don’t know if this was a deliberate choice, or if the hardships of their isolation drove them to it more and more until they forgot to exit.  Their existing this way is not only a sacrilege to us, but we are terrifying at the prospect of being permanently absorbed into their link.  Unfortunately however, their existing this way has proven to make them a particularly ruthless and cunning adversary.  They act with one mind, with a single intent and will.  This makes them very dangerous.”

  “We saw all of the ships at the portal,” Kathryn said.  “Are you anticipating an attack?”

  “An attack is always possible,” Bill answered plainly, his ball turning a tinge of green.

  “I see,” Kathryn acknowledged.

  “This has been our home world since soon after we created The Link, and it is by far the most heavily fortified system in the galaxy, but there are only a few thousand Bobbins left in this system.  All of the others have been evacuated to secret bases scattered throughout the galaxy in case of catastrophe here, until we have turned the tide of the war.”

  “A few thousand,” Felix balked.  “We saw over a thousand ships stationed just at the portal!”

  “Yes,” Bill acknowledged.  “Those ships are largely automated and if necessary can operate completely autonomously.  There are typically only between one and four crew onboard such vessels depending on the size.  Of course there are hundreds of drone robots onboard to effect repairs and carry out other functions.  They are quite self-sufficient, much like the vessel this Ralph was integrated into,” it added, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the robot following last behind them.

  By now they were nearing the crystal structure at the end of the path, impossibly imposing now standing right in front of it.  The front wall seemed to reach all the way into the sky, the further spires even further up into space.  The illusion was hard to avoid.  Kathryn still couldn’t quite tell if the material was glowing from within or absorbing and reemitting light from the sun.  Three major crystals immediately before them which reached up to the top of the central structure began falling into the ground, and Kathryn marvelled at the lack of vibration or sound as they slid away to reveal an entrance to the facility and the small group crossed the threshold into the facility.

  “Our analysis suggests that we only have a sixty three percent chance of winning the war, but even if victorious, it will come at a ruinously destructive cost.  But now there is hope.” Bill said as the crystal shot up behind them again as smoothly as they had originally descended but much faster.

  “Oh?” Kathryn asked, and for a moment wondered if this was the moment they decided to see how humans tasted.  She scolded the thought back to the back of her mind.

  “We have reviewed the telemetry from your initial battle with Ralph.  A species as technologically unsophisticated as yours should never have been able to disable a Bobbin drone ship, but you did.”

  “That’s right,” Kathryn confirmed with a note of pride which she immediately realized might be misplaced.  “We took him out with an antimatter warhead.”

  “Precisely,” Bill said as it led them inside a ring marked on the floor in the centre of the large room they’d entered after passing through the front entrance.  Once they were all standing within it, the ground within the ring abruptly began to rise out of the floor, lifting them up into higher sections of the facility.

  “Forgive me,” Bill offered, “but using antimatter as a blunt instrument the way your missiles do is, well… quite simple.  Simple in a way which hasn’t occurred to us for thousands of years.  We’ve been focusing all our efforts on creating ever more powerful beam weapons of the sort which damaged your ship in the same encounter.  What hit your ship was a fraction of one percent of the power output possible from similar weapons on of the larger warships you passed upon entry into the system.”

  “Wait,” Felix demanded, his mind seemingly blown.  “You’re saying you’re so advanced you just forgot about antimatter?”

  “We certainly never forgot about the concept of its existence, it is a fundamental aspect of subatomic physics which we of course understand completely.  But the creation of it, its potential use as a weapon or power source were for us, well… beyond antiquated.  Observing how effective it is against the shadow matter our ship’s shadow matter, we can certainly relearn such things quite quickly, but development will not be immediate; it will take time.”

  “And the clock is ticking for you, isn’t it?” Margaret asked.  They elevated passed level after level of what seemed to be an abandoned sprawling crystal castle.  Bill wasn’t kidding; though they did see the odd other Bobbin as they passed, the facility was obviously largely evacuated.  

  “It is.” Bill affirmed.

  “Why?” Kathryn asked.

  “Because the enemy has your computer core,” it explained.  “and has no doubt studied the same battle and come to the same conclusions as we have.”

  “Well shit,” Kathryn uttered despite herself.

  “Indeed,” Bill agreed.  “But we have something which they don’t.”

  “And What’s that?”

  “You,” it answered.  “Your ship.  Your weapons which already exist in a deployable state.”

  “Well, we do,” Kathryn clarified with concern.

  “Of course,” Bill’s mirror ball assured her with a hint of dismissiveness with a greenish-blue tint.  “But I will be blunt Admiral Barnes.  You are our guests and free to leave at any time, but if you decline to otherwise assist us we will be forced to confiscate all of your antimatter and send you on your way with instructions how to portal home and hoping we can still be friends.  The continued existence of our civilization is at stake here, and we cannot allow such a war turning resource to slip past us, especially if it could fall into the hands of our enemy.”  For what it was worth, Bill seemed sincere that it hoped they could still otherwise be friends, and that it hoped they could bargain amicably for it.  It was absolutely clear though, that them leaving again with their antimatter was simply not negotiable.

  The rising platform approached the top of the building, and as they approached the ceiling it phased away in the same way as the alien vessel’s airlock after docking with New Horizon II.  The platform then took its place as the ground on what seemed to be the roof of the structure.  The spires still continued on and scraped the sky high above them, but around them on the roof of the main structure was an immense, immaculately manicured alien garden with a seemingly infinite variety of plants which she couldn’t even begin to try to identify.  Some had an appearance vaguely similarity to plants she was familiar with back home, but most she couldn’t even begin to find analogues in her memory.  One way or another they all betrayed their alien origin, though.

  “Admiral, this building is the centre of everything for us.  Here is not only the core of our Link, but also of our governance, our bureaucracy, our science, and our culture.  All of it rotates about the axis of this building.  It is the capital of our capital.  In this garden are carefully maintained botanical samples from thousands of worlds.  Our galactic population nears a hundred trillion and before this war began we were a thriving civilization.  This building would ordinarily be bustling with excited activity at meeting you; you would be greeted by any number of people wanting to meet and learn from you.

  “We cherish first contact Admiral,” it said, turning the attention of its two nearest eyes to her.  “Ordinarily you would seek to embarrass you with lavish regalia at our meeting each other.  If you wish we can gather up those who can spare the time hold as monumental a feast and welcoming ceremony as we can muster; it would honestly be a welcome reprieve from the drudgery of war.  The alternative is we skip all of that for now and start working together on a plan to retrieve your daughter and defeat our now common enemy once and for all before they learn how to destroy us all.  We can show you the galaxy, teach you wonders beyond your wildest dreams.  We could be better friends to your people than you could possibly imagine.  But we can’t do any of that if our enemy defeats us with the technology you have unexpectedly introduced to the equation.”