Tales from the Inbox: KR-179

2946-10-02: Tales from the Inbox: KR-179

“KR-179 calling station, please respond.”

The crackling voice erupting out of the operations deck speakers startled Fulton so completely that he nearly dropped his freshly-dispensed coffee, and was saved from making a shameful mess only by the fact that he’d thought to put a spill-proof lid on the beverage before returning to his terminal. Hurrying to take his seat, Fulton cursed the timing – he was the only one on duty, with all of Kistler Junction’s senior officers on their rest cycles. The quiet space around the refueling outpost had been empty and silent for the first three hours of his shift, as it almost always was, and the moment he had stolen away to the food processor banks, an incoming vessel had appeared.

Setting the hot coffee aside and pulling up the telemetry readouts, Fulton was surprised to find nothing on the display except an estimated position and the designation KR-179, which was included in the voice message. Normally, the moment an incoming crew got a comms laser fix on the station, the computers aboard their starship and on Kistler Junction exchanged a wealth of telemetry and statistics, and that information filtered up to operations for the duty crew. KR-179, apparently, had sent nothing. A quick review of the system logs revealed that the voice he’d heard had been delivered the old-fashioned way – an analog radio broadcast, rather than a high-bandwidth comms laser.

“Incoming vessel KR-179, this is station Kistler Junction.” Fulton sent, knowing the computer would automatically reply in the same manner. No ship voluntarily resorted to analog transmissions unless it had suffered a total loss of its standard comms equipment, so he assumed the distant voice was nursing a crippled ship into the nearest port after some sort of accident. “What’s your status?”

The signal took almost a minute to reach KR-179, so Fulton sat back and sipped his coffee while he waited. A little excitement was rare on his shift, but it wasn’t time to wake up his superiors yet. The interaction was being recorded, of course; if it proved non-emergency, Lieutenant Commander Alberts would be just as happy to review the logs in the morning.

“Status?” Despite significant static, Fulton thought he detected confusion in the response. Just as he was about to put down his coffee and send another reply, the voice continued. “We appear to be off-course,  Kistler Junction. We’re not picking up any navbeacon signals.”

Fulton frowned. Stray civilian vessels did occasionally stumble into the Kistler system, but he’d never heard of one doing it by accident. Kistler A was a small, reddish star, but its companion was an uncommonly large neutron mass with a gravity shadow some stellar clusters would be envious of. The monthly Navy resupply ship spent almost a week and a half slow-boating in-system from the jump limit. A civilian vessel with lower acceleration happening to fix a jump on Kistler by mistake would realize its error as soon as it arrived so far out from the barren, planet-less binary.

What was more, the voice had mentioned navbeacons. Most of the old Terran Sphere navbeacon relays were still active, of course, but they had never been built this far out on the Coreward Frontier in any case. Only the oldest starships still relied on them; the spatial flux pulses they transmitted were a notoriously inaccurate way to calculate a star drive jump. Any self-respecting spacer had long since retrofitted his ship with more modern systems.

Fulton stared hard at the lack of information on his terminal for several seconds before punching the button to wake the station commander. “KR-179, there are no navbeacons within twenty ly of this star system.” He replied cautiously. “Do you need assistance?”

“Junction, we appear to have suffered a nav breakdown.” As the voice’s two minutes’ delayed response crackled into the compartment, the doors behind Fulton hissed open, and the heavy tread of boots told him that the big, square-jawed master of Kistler Junction had arrived. “Requesting permission to dock and attempt repairs.”

“Hell of a breakdown. Any idea what sort of ship it is?” Commander Alberts’s rough voice muttered over Fulton’s shoulder.

“Negative. The designation KR-179 does not appear in our registration database, and I have no telemetry. I didn’t even have her on the plot until she started broadcasting.”

“I sure don’t buy it.” The big man muttered, pacing away across the deck and past the other dozen-odd consoles, all unmanned and idle. “Stall him."

Fulton shrugged and keyed the transmit-reply button. “KR-179, this station has limited berth facilities. If you can’t get telemetry online, please transmit technical statistics of your vessel.” It was true, of course. Kistler Junction was only a naval research outpost, and it didn’t even have a full-sized, universal docking umbilical. If KR-179 was old enough to need the navbeacons, it almost certainly couldn’t establish an atmosphere seal with the station.

Somewhere behind Fulton, Commander Alberts grunted approval as he signed onto another console. The silence as the transmission winged its way across the void seemed all the more uncomfortably lengthy now that he had company.

“Station, main communications gear is not functional. Our emergency backup has very limited power and is not able to connect at this range.”

“I am sorry, as per Naval traffic policy, I must instruct you not to come within thirty lisecs until telemetry has been exchanged. Please bleed velocity to preserve this distance if you need time to make repairs.” Technically, that policy was waived for ships in distress, Fulton knew, but KR-179 had not explicitly said it was in distress; the voice of its commander had seemed only confused.

“Naval traffic policy?” The voice from KR-179 replied, redoubling its apparent confusion. “What sort of navy?”

Fulton turned around to share a confused look with his commander before replying. “Kistler junction is a research station operated by the Confederated Navy, KR-179. There are no hospitality facilities aboard.” Except, of course, the brig, Fulton knew; as far as he knew, none of its three cells had ever been used as anything but a drunk tank.

“Got him on scopes.” Alberts crowed, sending a fuzzy image to the main display.

Unfortunately, visual light and infrared telescopes didn’t provide much; the vessel was the size and shape of a large yacht, being long and thin with a pair of bulbous pods protruding amidships which probably housed drive projector nodes. In visual light, its hull had an odd bluish color. Other than possessing high levels of reactor heat bleed for its size, the ship was unremarkable. Though the image was grainy and poor, Fulton saw no signs of external damage.

“Kistler Junction, our apologies, we did not know this was a military outpost.” The voice returned, suddenly sounding rushed and conciliatory. Something about the ship commander’s voice struck Fulton as odd, but he couldn’t place exactly what it was. “If you could calculate a nav solution for the nearest civilian port for us, we can make our repairs there.”

“Sure as hell I’m not letting these joyriders dock unless they give us some telemetry.” Alberts grumbled. The big officer made no secret how suspicious he was of the incoming vessel, despite its small size. “Plot them their solution, then send them packing.”

“Gladly.” Fulton agreed, already looking up a nearby port to send the suspicious ship to. “Not that I think they’ll go where we send them, sir.”

“They won’t.” Alberts agreed. “But that’s not our problem.”

One of the first accounts featured on Tales from the Inbox was Tales from the Inbox: KR-122, an account of a small civilian vessel in a frontier-bound convoy having an odd interaction with a stray vessel that disappeared from its sensors shortly thereafter. Shortly after that account was published, a number of members of the audience sent in accounts of what they believed to be the same ship, or similar ships. Most of these accounts were frankly a bit dubious, and a few others were quite credible but did not feature vessels which simply disappeared; most of these were probably pirates hunting convoy stragglers.

Today, however, we have an account of another suspicious vessel using the odd "KR" numbered designation, and it comes along with a reader's research into this designation. Fulton B. was until recently a junior officer aboard the naval research outpost in the remote frontier system of Kistler, which is notable only because Kistler B is one of the largest neutron bodies in explored space. Apparently, this account describes events which took place in mid-2941, when he had only been on the station about six months. Since he is now posted to the Home Fleet in Sol, Fulton found a little time to do some investigation, attempting to find out what KR-179 was doing when it blundered into Kistler.

The files Fulton sent along with his account indicate that KR-XXX was a designation scheme which was used between 2803 and 2831 by the Kresmir Rally, an odd public-private hybrid organization of the sort the waning yeard of the Terran Sphere regime were notorious for. This organization was essentially an attempt to build a spacers' club for young adults who might otherwise be unable to break into the interstellar industry, and Fulton also uncovered some period news articles suggesting it was active in the highly factional political environment of the period. Vessels chartered with KR numbers were vessels owned by the organization directly; it also assisted young adults with financing their own purchases, and those ships would have names rather than KR numbers.

This connection might be a coincidence, of course. Fulton has established no direct proof that links KR-122 and KR-179 to the Kresmir Rally; he hasn't even found documents that establish that the Rally owned ships with those hull numbers.

If any in this audience have additional information about this topic, feel free to send it in. Do be aware that I will clear with Naval Intelligence every submission that, like Fulton's account, refers to events that took place during naval service; only if our representative Simona Durand has no objections with your story will it make the text feed.

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Editor's Loudspeaker: New Rheims Committee Final Report

2926-09-28 - Editor's Loudspeaker: New Rheims Committee Final Report

As many of you likely already know, staff leaks from Congressional staffers suggest we'll be seeing the preliminary report from the New Rheims Committee within the next few days. This feed was quite active in covering the first week of the committee's activities, and we were as disappointed as anyone when Sylja Nisi-Bonn took the remaining proceedings behind closed doors, but the decision was at least understandable. It had, by the first day of the second week, become a media circus, with most of the interstellar news operations picking apart every question and every answer to excessive detail. Admittedly, this feed participated in this over-focus, though I believe that the one significant feed item concerning the matter was reasonable and relevant to this audience's interests.

Full recordings of the testimony provided behind closed doors will probably be released shortly after the report. Of particular interest, Samuel Bosch's in-person testimony in the last week of the committee hearings is of interest; there are no major leaks of what was said during his appearance, and as far as can be determined, the captain was before the committee less than three hours (this is about half the total time the other major witnesses spent before the committee, and we don't yet know why Bosch, who was as close to an eyewitness to the disaster as can be found, was not questioned in greater detail).

As the cruiser Arrowhawk, Bosch's command, is currently in the Centauri Naval Yards undergoing a minor refit, I have reached out to the captain through a third party, asking whether he would like to provide his account to this publication once his testimony has become public. I do not think he will accept this offer, but I hope he does; I've noticed a concerning datasphere trend toward New Rheims conspiracy theories in the weeks of silence on the issue, and perhaps a direct eye-witness report of the incident that is not filtered through the Navy or Congress will help to quash some of the more unlikely theories.

When the committee report becomes available, I will go over it, and call attention to what I think is significant in its results. I caution this audience not to expect a bombshell; Congressional committee reports tend to be remarkably dry and maddeningly reluctant to prove definite, un-hedged conclusions.

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Upcoming Events: Ashton Pesaresi CBCP Centauri

2946-09-26 - Upcoming Events: Ashton Pesaresi CBCP Centauri

Cosmic Background host Ashton Pesaresi will participate in several panels in during CBCP Centauri, which is being hosted this year on the campus of Baumgartner University in the city of Pele. He will participate in the following panels at the convention. See the original announcement feed item (Upcoming Events: Ashton Pesaresi CBCP Centauri Panel Schedule) for more details on these panels:

  • 2946-10-03 (Monday) The Interstellar Community as an Audience
  • 2946-10-05 (Wednesday) Programming Choices For Live and Archive 
  • 2946-10-07 (Friday) Growing Your Off-Planet Audience

Passes to the convention are sold out, unfortunately, but seats in these individual panels do remain open. If you are attending CBCP Centauri this year and have not reserved a seat at one of Ashton's panels, there may be room for a few walk-in attendees. The convention organizers still prefer if you reserve seats beforehand, as it makes their planning situation somewhat easier.

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Tales from the Inbox: Rattanai Rematch

2946-09-24 - Tales from the Inbox: Rattanai Rematch

In the final episode of Jaska N.'s account, we find him joining forces with another prisoner of the raiders who took him captive after destroying his colony compound home. If you missed the previous parts of Jaska's account, you can read them in Tales from the Inbox: Rattanai Raiders, Tales from the Inbox: Rattanai Captivity, and Tales from the Inbox: Rattanai Reprisal.

In his message to me, Jaska admitted not knowing much about the creature he describes having freed from captivity, though his speculation is that it was not a sapient creature at all, but instead an advanced hive-networked swarm masquerading as a single entity. He offered no speculation as to its origins beyond this; it seemed that he was making good on his promise to it, to go his own way and leave it to its own business. He doesn't explicitly say that the creature departed his company after they were set free, but it is heavily implied in the way he described his ordeal that this is what happened.

Having heard other stories about symbiotic sapients (many of them retold so many times as to be devoid of any useful information to research the matter), I do not wish to discount the possibility that he is right, but details he offers suggest that the creature or machine isn't - or at least isn't entirely - synthetic.. Jaska offers no details beyond that the creature was able to help him subdue several Rattanai brigands, at which point the ship's master called for parley and offered to deposit him, Karley, and the mysterious creature on a nearby sparsely populated colony world unharmed.

Despite their fanaticsim, it is unsurprising that this raider band were amenable to a peaceful settlement; faced with a force of unknown capability, they decided to cut their losses and negotiate. This is in keeping with the behavior of some Rattanai commanders during the days of the empire, and it proves that though these towering xenosapients are very different from humans and Atro'me psychologically, they are not beyond all reason. To me, this has always made the imagery of the Terran-Rattanai War more terrifying: it forces one to come to terms with the real possibility that a grand empire of generally rational beings can seek to exterminate or subjugate humanity for what is, for them, rational reasons.

Jaska put his hand against the armored door gingerly, wondering if, locked behind it, was  something that might contribute to his and Karley’s escape, if he could get it open.

The raiders had configured their ship in a manner that made no particular sense to him; though parts of the interior made it obvious that the ship was originally built by a human yard, its Rattanai owners had reconfigured it in a manner that seemed, at least to a retired spacer like Jaska, to be rather arbitrary.

The first two spaces he’d thought likely to be some sort of armory had turned out to be an empty storage compartment and an oddly-fitted plumbing head; the third had been guarded too attentively to slip inside. After watching this fourth doorway for several minutes, hidden in a grate-covered maintenance shaft, he’d risked creeping out and up to it, only to find that its control panel was apparently nonfunctional, its small holo-display projecting a universally recognizable “system fault” symbol, as well as a string of Rattanai language-glyphs which Jaska couldn’t read. Most likely, that meant that whatever was on the other side was of no concern to the fanatical Rattanai crew.

Jaska was about to leave the armored door and whatever mystery compartment lay beyond when the control panel chirped. Returning his attention to its display, he noticed that the Rattanai glyphs displayed below the fault symbol had been replaced by a trio of Terran Anglo-standard letters, “WHO.” 

With a shock, he realized that it was an interrogative. “Me?” Jaska whispered, before he realized what he was doing.

The letters vanished for a moment, then “YES” replaced them. Jaska took a step back, and considered running away; the ship was after all hostile territory. Most likely, the letters were the result of a Rattanai computer technician elsewhere on the ship trying to distract him until armed raiders arrived to return him to his cell.

Still, Jaska knew he needed a lucky break. The narrow maintenance crawlspace behind him beckoned invitingly, but he judged himself able to dive into it at the first hint of Rattanai approaching. “You first.” Jaska replied quietly, craning his head to look and listen for any sign of danger.

The letters “CAP” appeared, then vanished to be replaced by “TVE”. It was clear that the meaning was “captive.” That wasn’t an answer to his question, but it did explain why the limit of their ability to manipulate the display was three characters; perhaps exposed wiring allowed a clever technician captive only limited control over the display.

“I was too, but I got out.” Jaska whispered. “Does this door open from the outside? It gave me a fault when I tried.”

There was no reply for several seconds. “YES” appeared, followed by “WAI.”

Before waiting for whatever would follow, Jaska slapped the control panel’s largest button, which was clearly meant to open the door. As the grinding sound of heavy lock mechanisms indicated success, the displayed letters changed to “TYO,” “UMU,” and finally “STK” before the armored portal slid uneasily downward to reveal a dark compartment not unlike the one he and Karley had been imprisoned in, if slightly bigger. “I must what?” Jaska asked into the darkness, seeing motion in the far corner, where the light did not penetrate.

What uncoiled from the darkness and stepped forward was not human. Though it took roughly the shape of a human, it moved oddly, more flexible than a human in some ways, and more constrained in others. Its long, slim limbs were hugged by form-fitting armor plates like metallic dragon-scales, and its face was a blank, glassy mask. From around this mask, a mane of white, hairlike filaments cascaded in all directions. If it was biologically similar to a human under its armored hide, Jaska decided it was probably the female of its species, based on its slim, somewhat wasp-waisted profile. A long, segmented tail danced in the air around the figure, and Jaska didn’t fail to notice the barbed stinger at its tip.

As if to remind Jaska of his purpose in opening the door, three blocky letters appeared in the creature’s blank mask-like face. Just as Jaska recognized “LET,” the creature replaced them with “SGO.” The meaning of these six letters was quite clear.

“Right.” Quickly, he led the odd figure to the open grate of the maintenance crawlspace, ushered her inside, then followed. After moving a safe distance away from the opening, he reached out to pull the stranger to a halt. “Wait.”

When he touched the smooth scales of her arm, they seemed to shift under his hand, as if it was metallic scales, only loosely connected to each other, all the way through. Surprised, he withdrew his hand, and when he looked up, the letters “WHY” glowed softly against the dim silhouette in front of him.

“Because we’re never going to get off this ship unless we work together.” He told her, still cringing at the feeling of the brief contact even though it hadn’t done him any harm.

There was a pause. “DOY,” “OUK,” and finally “NOW” appeared, each at a delay of several seconds.

Not waiting for the rest of the message, Jaska decided to answer. “I have no idea what the hell you are, and I don’t care. When we get out of this, you go your way, Karley and I will go ours, and that will be that. We just need some way to fight the Rattanai.”

There was another pause, and the alien put out a hand, pointing at Jaska. “WHO” appeared on her face.

“I’m Jaska.” He replied. “I was captured with Karley, a neighbor of mine, but we got out of our cell. What can I call you?”

“INA” were the only three letters delivered in reply. “Ina”, Jaska decided, was as good a name as he was likely to get. 

As he considered this, she reached out and grasped his wrist, holding his hand up in the darkness. The scale-like structures seemed to grind against each other, and the impression that the alien was entirely made of layers of interlocking plates was reinforced. As he wondered what the gesture meant and tried to fight another wave of revulsion, Jaska noticed new letters: “BEC,” then “ALM”

“Be calm?” Jaska echoed, wondering whether it would be impolite to pry his hand free. Ina’s grip was gentle, but the movement of her scales was highly unpleasant against his wrist. “Why? What makes-”

With a sudden motion, the alien pounced on him, and they both toppled to the floor. Ina seemed to lose her form and become an amorphous flow of metallic components, pinning Jaska to the floor. He struggled, and would have cried out, except that the plate of the creature's face pressed itself against his in a macabre mockery of intimacy, covering his mouth and nose, and stifling his breath. He tried to gasp for breath, tried to free his limbs to claw at the object which seemed to fold around his face and head, but found himself entirely restrained. As spots danced in the darkness in front of his occluded eyes, Jaska hoped that, at least, Ina would kill some of the Rattanai after she was finished with him.

Just as his consciousness was beginning to fade, his straining lungs filled themselves with dry shipboard air. The weight holding him down had vanished. “The hell-” Jaska said, then stopped – his voice echoed back into his ears, as if he was wearing a bubble helmet. Reaching up to touch his face, Jaska found his fingers clinking against a smooth, featureless surface; evidently, he was wearing a helmet, or something very like it. The presence of interlocking armored gloves over his hands – and apparently the rest of his body – also became evident.

“I said to be calm.” A smooth feminine voice with an unplaceable accent dripped into Jaska’s ears like warm honey. “It is so difficult to explain symbiosis from outside.”

“Ina?” Jaska sat up unsteadily, uncomfortable with the fact that he was now completely encased in the form of a machine – or a creature - which fitted him like a second skin, below even his tattered clothing.

“Correct.”

“Symbiosis?” Jaska prompted, exploring his person blindly with metal-scaled hands, surprised at how much tactile sensation carried through Ina’s covering.

“Alone, I am weak." Ina replied. “Weak enough to be easily imprisoned. As one, however, we are strong. Strong enough, perhaps, to fight these brigands.” As she spoke, the scale-plates on Jaska’s arms shifted subtly as Ina showed him how she could amplify his bodily strength; experimentally, he made a fist and punched the floor, and was surprised to leave a sizable dent in the shape of his armored knuckles. Ina, he realized, was making him as strong as a decent human-built suit of combat armor would, but it wasn’t clear how.   

The opaque faceplate in front of Jaska cleared. The dim crawlspace now looked as well-lit as the corridors. “This... symbiosis, is it reversible?”

Ina laughed. It wasn’t a human laugh; it had a buzzing multiplicity that coursed up and down his body, as if each scale were laughing individually. It was simultaneously a terrifying and pleasurable feeling. “If you wish.” She replied. “Let’s go find your friend.”

At that instant, the ship shuddered, and Jaska found himself drifting off the deck plates he was sitting on. “That would be her now.”

“Your friend is resourceful.”

Jaska smiled into the faceplate, knowing that Ina couldn’t possibly know about how Karley had contributed to his presence in the first place. “Apparently she is. Let’s go see how agile these lunks are in zero-gee, Ina.”

“With pleasure, Jaska.” The odd being’s voice purred as Jaska maneuvered weightlessly toward the nearest exit into the corridor. 

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