[Claw Nebula] An Unexpected Meeting

[Della]

(Since Angelic hasn't shown herself in a while, I'll take up from here, at least for now. Also, I believe that the ship you're in is a bit larger than a Traveller, since Travellers are extremely small and usually single-pilot)

"AN-EE-WAY, I'm Spacecase Two Channel." The pilot introduced himself. He was rather humanoid, a metallic robot painted green and yellow, its face a featureless oval with two white robotic sensors in place of the eyes. It wasn't clear where his voice was coming. "I'm the pilot of this hunk of junk here. No, not Norn, I meant the ship."
He made some sort of greeting gesture towards himself with his two "main" arms, while his secondary manipulators, more long and flexible, lifted Norn off the ground and, passing her over his head, dropped her behind him, while still restraining her.

"Like I was saying, we can give you maps. We travel a lot, you know. Something like destiny. Not that I believe in destiny, but it's nice to think that there's something out to get you." He said. "We... don't have anything to show you with, we don't usually have monitors or such things on smaller ships. We can send a stream, just tell us where."

 

[Exhack]

Khisa bit her lip, trying to sort out what had just happened in her mind, but was still a little unsure. The Spacecase's greeting was what managed to snap her out of it. "I'll send you the coordinates of our homesystem using this location as the point of origin. But we're actually much more interested in who lives in the immediate sector, rather than where each star is. I'd be helpful to know who we'll be dealing with in the future, especially with genocidal empires running around."

"But first, what can you tell me about your race? Of their formation, culture? I suppose I can leave silly things like passtimes and weapons technologies for later, once we're more familiar."

 

[Della]

Channel nodded. "Sure, don't worry, the stream also has political info and a full report of each encountered race. From our point of view, of course... don't take everything we say for granted." The automata added, with surprising honesty.

He sat back down, resting his back on the chair and letting Norn, who now had seemingly calmed down (or maybe was just sulking), go free. "As for us, we're the Free State. We are the last descendants of an ancient race of slaves. We're talking mythical here, we don't even have a clear idea of how long ago. Most time-tracking records got lost in the First War. Bet it was, like, a really damn long time ago."

He tapped his metallic fingers. "Basically, the Deodrah managed to defeat this empire and flee to the stars. Over the centuries, they, or rather we, adapted ourself to live in space. We are all linked to each other, as you might've guessed, so we don't need a government or a bureaucracy or anything. We just do things. No one is in charge, no one leads, and everyone is free."

He gestured outside. "FLEETS! We lives in them. Each fleet has a mom, a mothership, that builds us automata and clones the meatbags. Our life spans are short, like 20 years or so, because it's the optimal life span for having justice and happiness and nice things, in our situation. No private property, no crime, no bad stuff. Oh, and we are usually reincarnated after we die."

He scratched his head in a very humanlike gesture. "Uh, that was a bit chaotic, I guess."

 

[Exhack]

"Admittedly, but I got through it well enough. Now allow me to confuse you." Khisa replied with a relaxed smile, winking at the automata. "Our society was founded when colonists ended a bitter war with a race of ancient and powerful psionic entities to defend against a common enemy. How that ended with a new species emerging from the aftermath of the conflict is debatable, but we've been lucky enough to receive some perspective on things."

"Before that, we were a large expeditionary fleet formed of the disparate tribes of a general nomadic culture, searching for a paradise world to call our own, but no single world seemed particularly adequate. So we would who strip bare entire planets of their visible resources and move on to the next, until fate placed us at the mouth of a great rift." The Envoy shrugged. "Well... causality and stupidity, but you could consider that to be fate, in a way."

Khisa bit her index finger gently, immersed in thought. It wasn't every day that she had to piece together what she remembered from history lessons. "We lost a sizable portion of our fleet, but managed to emerge back into realspace... well, at least we think so, above a planet that seemed to be fairly livable. What happened with the natives for the next few centuries would be a defining aspect of our society."

"Truly amazing things can happen when differences are set aside and pledges of friendship and loyalty are made." She sighed. "I wasn't very specific, was I?"

 

[Della]

The Spacecase seemed to nod. "Mh, yes, really, our past stories look very much alike. Oh, no, don't worry about being specific. Getting the big picture is important! More than details! Dee-tails. Dai-tailz." He repeated to himself, evidently liking the word for some reason.

He paused for a moment. "I'm getting a lot of requests. Most of our people like you. Something to do with your goodwill, your old history, your horns and the facts that it seems like you are nice people." He stated, matter-of-factly.

"And, I guess, because most of us are tired of war and conflict and hope to have a peaceful and mutually beneficial relationship with you."

 

[Exhack]

"That's exactly what we were hoping to get out of this in the first place. At the very least, having some friends and allies in the universe as we begin to set out into the cosmos." Khisa smiled. Maybe she could be sure that, at the very least, they had made a potential friend, and the gift of information was enough incentive to get the politicians to accept them into the home system.

"Would you like to receive a language pack for our main dialect, or a code sample so our computers can communicate effectively? We'll likely be trying to work out a suitable translation key from the data you'll have sent us, but I think that this would be fair and within my bounds as an Envoy."

 

[Della]

Channel clapped his hands. "Of course! Linguistic nut boys will love to have another language to crack. Oh, speaking of which, how about..."

He thought about that he was going to day for a moment, then prodded the ship's hull thoughtfully. "Mhh, it would be awesome if we could establish a persistent comm channel between us and you, so we could talk all we want, but I think you don't use Evanescent Wave Couplers. It's our long-range comm system of choice, y'see... Well, the blueprints are open sauce, so it's no big deal."

 

[Exhack]

"We rely on space compression to cut temporary channels into realspace. It lets us cheat the speed limits on photons by giving the transmission a little nudge when we collapse the channel behind it, catapulting it through space. At least I think that's the system, in a nutshell." Khisa explained, biting the top of her index finger gently. "Yeah, I think if we could get some of our leading communications technology specialists together, it wouldn't be all that hard to establish a semi permanent relay system so our peoples can remain in touch."

"Still, while I do generally represent the interests of my people, it'll depend on what happens when you do reach our homesystem."

The envoy smiled gently putting her glove back on. "But I wouldn't worry about it. As long as you don't assault any of the politicians, I'm pretty sure we'll all come out if with something. After all... you have a lot of things they want, especially information." She said happily.