Scout Expedition

by Stephen Brandon

  Chapter 9: I was named Suzzie after grandma.

  Poor old grandma. She spent her life as a researcher trying to figure out the propulsion system of the alien spacecraft that attacked my grandfathers group of humans. Now she's loosing her mind. Her worse nightmare is about habitat 47.

  She was consulting with them when one of the young engineers researching gravity waves dropped a piece of wire into the generator he'd built. We still have the video on the accident. The really sad thing about the video is that we cannot see where the wire fell, and we cannot see what wiring he may have moved or shorted trying to extract the wire.

  His first mistake was not disconnecting the power source. Even though it was turned off the capacitors probably still held a charge. His third mistake was not re-positioning the recorders to show the interior of his device. He reached in with his hand and then it happened. The shocked terrified look on his face still haunts grandma to this day. What happened next was even worse. A glow started radiating out from the test unit and it formed a sphere about 3 meters in size. Then we saw it jiggle sideways a few times before it broke all contact with the lab wall and floor. A corridor recorder shows where it punched through to walls and continued traveling. When it went through the habitat hull explosive decompression killed hundreds. One of the accompanying warships caught it on radar accelerating at almost a 90 degree angle to our trajectory until it red shifted off the radar.

  All gravity researcher was halted until a separate testing lab spacecraft could be built. For three decades we've been trying to reproduce the accident. Whatever happened produced a field that sustained itself and rode the gravity wave that we were crossing. Enough about grandma.

  We're about 1 1/2 shipboard years out from rendezvous star 6. The scouts sent a contact signal that was received yesterday.

  Today communications received another contact signal with the attached message. Occupants human, but not from our convoys, Safe. Everyone is excited about the possibility that we've finally made contact with humans from earth.

  We arrived yesterday and were quarantined. The other humans claim that the medical personnel must evaluate all the pathogens from both our groups and create drugs to cure them before we can make face to face contact. Their habitats aren't as heavily armed as ours, however their warships are. When our scouts entered the system on their fly-through their warships were put on alert. When our scouts reentered the system they were targeted. The only thing they say that prevented them from destroying our scouts was the fact that they picked up our radio communications and called a ceasefire before any missiles were launched. Even with the quick reactions from both sides three of their warships were radiation damaged when the self-destructs were activated on the antimatter missiles. They are as paranoid about hostile aliens as we are, but they describe the alien ships differently.

  Their aliens were kidnapping humans from earth. Their aliens used some kind of faster than light drive.

  After explaining our alien attack to them they told us about what had happened in the Sol system.

  How earth and the asteroid belt had gone to war and finally how everyone in the asteroid belt had to move to Saturn because of the fact that earth had disrupted the asteroid belt. Earth is now a wasteland.

  The government council then informed them what year we were from and that all of that couldn't have happened if their year calculations and ours were to match. That's when we found out about the Saturn mission and the fact that it was thrown back in time 1400 years. By their and our calculations we must have been thrown back in time also.

  It's been a year and the medical nanobots are in full production now. As we are inoculated we can travel to their ships, but can't return until ours population has the nanobots.

  We started building the gravity drive propulsion systems into the habitats. The warships were designed wrong for the gravity drive to work efficiently. Our space dock and construction spacecraft worked great.

  We'd been there 2 years when their council called a meeting and insisted that all our leadership councils attend. We found out that they had a faster than light communications system. Then they informed us that the kidnapped humans had been located. There was an Alien Alliance and it was the culprit, but peace had been made. They were intelligent, but had no feelings about exterminating any species that was a threat. They'd carried 3 groups of humans to a planet for observation. That however didn't explain our aliens unprovoked attack.

  Late last night two spacecraft flew through the system. Contact was made this morning by one of our modified warships. They sent a safe to enter signal and told us that the convoy would be here in 9 months. Manufacture of the medical nanobot inoculation machines went back to full speed along with gravity drives. They still will not tell us how to make the faster than light communications system, but if we will allow their observer council to place members on our ships they will act as observers and communications links.

  This morning all the engineering sections were presented with detailed plans on how to build the aliens faster than light propulsion system. With the limitations listed only the habitats are big enough with enough mass for it to work. Then we were told what the Saturn system was doing. Our warrior council requested the space dock be assigned to them. By their calculations if at least 3 warships were docked the mass and size limitation would be met. The council agreed provided the warrior council build 2 more space docks using their own personnel.

  We're starting year 7 in this star system. Another of our convoys arrived yesterday. With over 2 billion humans in one spot it was decided that our convoy would split and depart headed for the next 2 rendezvous stars. Just over 3000 of the other humans want to go with us. That's about 1500 split between our two convoys. About 2000 of our population decided to move to other habitats including theirs. We've also been given the locations of several of their groups and requested to stop in on them when we could.

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