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Spacetravel has always been a goal as well as a dire fascination of humankind. To explore the twinkling lights of maybe long burnt-out suns of faraway solar systems. To find and conquer new planets with challenging atmosphere, fauna and flora, and to maybe, just maybe find some species similar to them. Sensient. Caring. Humane in their behavior.For humans, despite being so many of them on their flying little dirt planet, felt incredible lonely in this big empty space, that not only seemed to get bigger and emptier the more they knew about it, but quite literally continued expanding the longer they waited.
With the continues expansion, other solar systems as well as galaxies, were getting farther and farther out of reach.Paired with the worsening health of their beloved blue planet, there was a lot of motivation to put more money and therefore more research into space travel, alternative energy sources and energy generation, colonizing some of the surrounding planets to get more dearly needed resources and so on.
In recent years it had taken incredible efforts to stabilize and unite the big and small countries of earth enough to launch and coordinate a collaborating space project. The different factions were very tense, obviously.
You try and get over a 125 (actually 151 but sometimes losses must be cut) world leader to sit down in one big conference, to discuss this.
The establishment of at least a peace like coexistence already took about a decade, with wavering success due to political coup’s and economic and ideologic competition as well as ethical boundaries and abolition of past hostile or aggressive deeds.
With the environmental state of the planet as a whole getting worse and worse, it got easier to sway them in the following talks. Them discussing the partnership and cooperation at developing an international institute, which would solely focus on their mission regarding previously stated goals, to develop their technology far enough to make space travel over long distance and short time actually possible.
In that case, various information and varying state of advancement of pre-existing Space Organizations and Administrations were quite helpful, as those geniuses loved to bounce of each other’s ideas.
(Being in a room with them and hearing them brainstorm and discuss might as well be a foreign language course.
Also each and every one of them still took pride in their previous institution, so like united institutes some kept their prestige and pride for them while working together.)
Or in short, to focus on the common good it would do humanity, to, well, not die on an overheating planet filled and surrounded partially with trash, all alone, not knowing if anyone is actually out there that might be abele to sympathy as a species. Duh.
Well, all good and in place the earthlings actually did overcome a lot of struggles regarding their previously clumsy attempts of getting off-planet.
Surrounding speres, such as Mars, Pluto as well as several moons of Jupiter and Saturn had been “colonized”, as in machines and people were in place to harvest various chemical elements and valuable gas and metals. Only mars and one two or 3 moons actually had been colonized to the point people could live there in actually liveable conditions.
A lot of technological advancement took place during and after those harvests, making spaceships and the like faster, safer, more durable etc.
Yet, humankind had yet to quite leave the safety of their beloved solarsystem and sun. Probes and transmitters had been sent, and it was by now almost clear that the universe was not empty with just humans.
There had been signals, faint, few, short and not really intelligible, but sounds other than the usual dull space buzz.
Almost 2 decades after the partnership between the countries and states of earth had been established, the previously only reluctantly and underfunded military department received the green light to increase recruits, training and strategy, in case of hostile or aggressive contact, or dare say, invasion.
Obviously, the department of “intergalactic understanding and diplomacy” blossomed besides that. There is very good reason to assume that, no there wasn’t an almost magical translation device of some sorts, and yes not everyone might be hostile so we need people who might record behavior & language etc. to figure out communication between species that might not resemble human or human culture at all.
The Institute as a whole was named ISAECA (International Space and Aeronautics Exploration Cooperation Agency) with several departments branching into different fields reading space exploration.
For example, there was the Research department with several subdivisions, focusing on research such as new fuel cells, focusing on harvesting of interstellar radiation and photons as a potential energy source. Some developed new robotics or AI to help navigate and operate the high-tech space ships. Others were focused on medical research with access to newly acquired technology. Granted that one was not solely for space travel, but would be helpful all around.
Then there were the military like Aerospace Defense & Offense Department, which focused on usual soldier like stuff. Strategy, Combat, which included hand to hand, battleship, weaponry fight with diversified nature like swords, guns, and “blasters” of some sort.
The Intergalactic Diplomats Department and the Information and Record Deparment, responsible for getting to know different planets, their conditions, the flora and fauna, and not causing a war.
And so on.
There were a lot of departments which were responsible for training mechanics, medical personnel, Navigators, fighter pilots, communication officers and so on.All of them received previous to their specific training a basic ISAECA education, a mix of austonaut paired with foot soldier training, and crisis-management education.
It worked well enough, although the specific timetable and training got adjusted several times over the years to make it work better. To make a crew and the apprentices and seniors work together like a well-oiled machine.
Almost 40 years had passed since the cooperation between the country’s got written down on paper and their partnership to reach a common goal, as a species, started.
There were now several international academy campuses from the main institution of ISAECA to get young people and talents early on to join and form their specific skillset and sharpen preexisting talent.
Lot of times the recruits would be fully fleshed out, successful and capable Graduates by the time they reach 20 years of age. There were honors courses and special classes for the more talented ones, the peaked ones. Getting in there and graduating as one would promise you a great future, and make you a master in your field, basically.
And by now earth was finally ready to take out the outer space, to travel beyond their solarsystems, with a human crew, and explore cautiously the surrounding area and galaxy.
The first few ships that got send out took months to respond, as everyone on their home planet and colonies eagerly awaited their arrival home. It was to be expected, the travel time had been significantly shorted but it was still a long fucking distance with what their ships could manage.
Out of 3 crews sent out, 2 responded positively. The first around 8 months after leaving, the second one 9 ½ months after. The both had encountered some asteroids or semi lendable kind of space, to land on, but had yet to encounter any more hints toward sentient species.
Although, the “noises” did increase and became clearer.
However, the 3rd had yet to be heard of.
That was concerning to say the least. There were no responds, even after months.
The other 2 ships were on their way back like planed. One, the SS-Alpha Rega had reported a loss of 2 people at a stop of a very thickly fogged planet they visited to stock up their hydrogen gas.
Apparently, the planet was laced with cracks and ravines, as well as very dry sandy rock formations, which could give at any moment you took a wrong step. All the evidence regarding that situation pointed to them taking an unfortunate fall down into the depths.
Albeit everyone had their suspicions on what rly happened.
Their signal was gone, so were they, there had been some noises like rocks falling, but no one had seen them fall or heard a scream. It was very concerning indeed, yet it was not possible for them to stay any longer or to look for their corpse in the thick fog longer than they already had, they spent a week looking for them, and had someone else almost falling too.
Their resources were not meager, but looking not all to well after spending that amount of unplanned time there, so they had to leave. They did, but with great reluctance and doubt.
Their return had been celebrated and their losses mourned greatly. A lot of meetings took place to discuss the disappearance of 2 crewmembers, and an entire ship, as well of the potential of foreign diseases brought back, despite the secure space suits.
All in all, it was counted as a success and exploration continued.
That’s when reports of “foreign ship like formations”, and weird noises on the communication lines became more frequent. At first there was no hostility, sometimes it almost seemed like a lost and discarded ship of alien nature was just hovering there, but there were signs there were creatures, people, of some sort there.
Waiting.
And observing.
Aggressive interactions soon followed. Fortunately, these ships didn’t look anything alike, and most of the times didn’t even help each other, which their generals and senior officers concluded, must mean those were roaming stragglers, pirates or something?
In became apparent, that they had been responsible for the disappearance of crewmembers, ships and even the occurring transmitter and comm
unication problems.
And oh, that was not taken well, you don’t go around and picking up some humans like they are easy streetcats. Who knows what they might do with them, already did to those that disappeared?
So, humans absolutely fired back. The trained fighter pilots, soldiers and expert strategist, who previously only sat on the bench, preoccupied with the “what if’s” suddenly had an outlet for all their knowledge.
Those stragglers were often defeated, minor ships had more advanced mechanics for travel but not necessarily weaponry. Humans however did.
Bigger, more advanced ships got the pleasure to deal with multitudes of tiny agile fighter drones and ships, attacking them from all sides while dodging with ease. While other groups came to infiltrate the ships and take them down from the inside.
They did not know who or rather what t expect, but they learned. They didn’t want to be the quiche kind of humans doing experimentations and dismembering of alien species; however they were at a loss on what to do with them.
They learned from experience of those who made it back, their appearance, skills, noises and attacks and so on.
They tried to let them live, would take a lot of stuff from the ship and leave them the minimum of fuel, breathable substance and resources to make it about 2 solar systems over.
Samples of blood and organic substances that was left on the humans during their fight got analyzed and recorded.
They had yet to engage in a positive interaction between one species and another. Some crews reported hesitance or human like expressions from their attackers, but at that point no one could tell why they hesitated, if it was rly an act of kindness, and doubt rather than thinking up some escape or new strategy.
The earthlings and the ISAECA got nervous and skeptical. So new special forces were invented, with highly skilled individuals and a compact crew, consisting of limited number of people.
With the “information” they got from some of the encounters they had some about various foreign languages and writing systems, tho some words that might be universally used, were written in different letter.
One of the more often mentioned phrases or words were:
“Iリℸ ̣ ᒷ∷ᓭℸ ̣ ᒷꖎꖎᔑ∷ c𝙹⚍リᓵ╎ꖎ 𝙹⎓ ᔑꖎꖎ╎ᒷ↸ ⎓𝙹∷ᓵᒷᓭ”
which due to some other intel and language annalist and so on, the figured was some kind of agency. It was often mentioned on protocols and report that were found in their database, as well as something that seemed like some kind of law-report or criminal offense warning.
The special force was put into place, and was eventually to reach this facility to establish friendly or at least neutral terms between their forces. Eventually being the keyword.
For now, they were released in batches of some sorts, to venture out farther that the regular explorers, to steak out hiding sports, potential resting spaces and lock for more information that might guide them towards this agency.
Highly functional and performing individuals were gathered in those crews, partly made up of experienced officers, personnel and mechanics, as well as fresh blood right from their institution, having out performed everyone and learnt the most recent information and tactics.
It just so happens that out dear protagonist, Tommy D.K. Innes had found himself in one of those soon leaving batches, as a so called fully fleshed out “offense/defense unit” and mechanic.
It just so happened that his best friend during their training time, Toby “Tubbo” Underskor was on that same batch, with the same crew and almost the same occupation. An offense/defense unit, except infiltration training, with expertise in Coding, work with foreign language and technology as well ship-operation.
It also happens that they were the batch that go sent out, right after another of their ships and crew completely vanished, which hadn’t happened any time recently.
And therefore, it shouldn’t have been all that surprising, with the know risk, that it just so happens their ship and crew got yoiked and taken.
They might be trained in almost anything regarding space, but this was gonna suck…
So much for a space adventure, more like a big fuck you from the universe.