[Note: The following meeting lasted a few hours. This is a condensed version]
A few weeks ago
Gathered around the conference table were the members of a General Assembly committee, various military officers, and some of the Princep’s advisors. The Princeps himself arrived last, his imposing presence quieting the room and commandeering everyone’s attention. “Alright then, let’s get down to business. I’ve read the preliminary briefing, and trust that so have the rest of you.” Princeps Marcus rarely bothered with pleasantries, instead preferring to get straight to the point.
A young Human, the markings on her uniform indicating that she held a respectable position in the Spacy, activated a small handheld device as the Princeps took his seat. “As you all know,” Marcus continued, “Project Argus has been going on for a few decades. Most of you have been briefed on it at some point or another. The officer here will present the entirety of the findings, and then we can decide on what should be done with this information.”
A holographic display appeared showing the local star cluster. “There area lot of signals coming from everywhere in the cluster. Most them are diffuse and jumbled together, due to the vast distances between them and us. We can’t decipher anything from them, other than the fact that there is a lot of FTL travel and communications going on throughout. Closest to us, however, we have managed to detect five distinct entities.” She pointed to the three dots indicating the Republic, “We are here. There is a fairly wide gulf between us and any other civilizations. If anyone is alive in there, they are so small that their signals get drowned-out by everything coming from the rest of the Cluster.”
The imaged zoomed-in on the right of the cluster, three areas of space lit-up, data began to scroll, areas were flagged, the image started to rotate slowly, and more holograms appeared showing even more data. “This is the second area of space were we detected signals indicating the presence of a FTL capable civilization. There is a lot of traffic coming from here. Over time, we have managed to make-out three distinct entities, designated X-2, X-3, and X-5. All signals are given to a computer program to run through the Central Database looking for possible matches. X-2 matches a nation from the Great Wars, mostly in the drives their using, and the location is more or less the same as back then. The signals from X-3 partially match a nation that should be located on the other side of the cluster. We’re guessing that they migrated for some reason or another. X-5 is a complete unknown.
The image panned to the left, a new area was highlighted. “This is X-4. The comms traffic we are getting from there is... strange. We didn't think so at first, but upon looking at the database, we got matches to certain kinds of biological signals. Upon further study, we came to the conclusion that they are transmitting neural signals over their communications network. The reason why can’t be known for certain at this time, but the best theory is that there is a sort of hive mind that uses FTL comms to keep cohesion over the vast distances of space. Most of the other comms traffic seems to be quite normal. No other matches to anything in the database.”
The image moved again to the left, stopping near the edge of the cluster. “This is the same area of space that
H. Mekidaris came from. That’s why when Project Argus started, it was the first place we looked. The signals coming from there are definitely a negative match to anything on the old Human records reguarding the 'Great Enemy' that they were escaping when they arrived to the Republic, except for the general location. Some of you probably know about the ancient listening post that was recovered several years ago. Analysis of it reveals that it was made for the specific purpose of keeping tabs on the old Human territories. Deployed some time after they arrived, it records an entity closely matching the Great Enemy. Eventually something else enters the picture, and proceeds to engage the Great Enemy in fierce combat. The storage space on the post ran out as they were being demolished by the new entity, but how things ended isn’t hard to guess, considering that the new entity is the same thing currently occupying that area of space. The Human records do allude to them having a close ally occupying the same area of space they did. However, the entity doesn’t have even a passing resemblance to these records, or anything else in our database for that matter.”
The display switched to being mostly data, with the few illustrations being graphs and the like. The officer looked straight at the assembled, “Threat assessments: X-5 is not particularly impressive, they’re hard to distinguish from the glare of the others. Power rated anywhere between .25 and .75. X-3 and X-4 are both rated at around 1. X-2 is clearly the most powerful thing in the vicinity, it’s been rated anywhere between 1.5 and 3. As a threat to us, it is not a particularly large one, considering that it has closer neighbors to deal with. Finally, X-1 is somewhat hard to judge. The information we got from the probe would suggest that by now they’d have a rating of 2, however the signals coming from there now are more along the lines of a 1. We are not sure how to resolve this contradiction, the most obvious answer would be that near the end of the war with the Great Enemy, they lost the initiative big time, but still emerged victorious. So basically, we have as our immediate neighbors three powers of about our strength, and one at around half. Then somewhat further off, there is a very large entity of anywhere between 50% and 200% stronger than us.
The information from the briefing was further discussed at length. Questions made and answered, concerns raised, theories proposed, and many things wildly speculated upon. The conclusions reached after much debating were rather simple. Establish standard diplomatic contact with X-3, X-4, and X-5. X-2 would be left alone, best not to wake sleeping giants. Finally, X-1 would be approached cautiously. Humans, and any relevant files regarding their anscestors and their past before migrating into the Republic, would be included with the diplomatic team.
The General Assembly would be immediately informed in closed session. As soon as contact occurs, the public would be informed of all developments. The committee present at the meeting used the powers given by the General Assembly to approve the commencement of contact with foreign entities. Any further decisions would be done publicly by the Assembly as a whole.
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Author's Notes]
