Going Bold

The alien camp was continuing to stir with activity and Andrea was getting a great deal of additional information about the appearances and possible roles of many of the different members of the group as they seemed to rush about preparing defenses and getting themselves deployed along the camp’s perimeter. Andrea noticed that the being that had found the original probe was not standing to, along the wall but was positioned out of the way near another smaller being who seemed to be shouting orders, pointing, and gesticulating to direct and motivate people who would come rushing up to report and then rush back off again to fulfill some order.

It seemed clear to Andrea that regardless of who was in charge of the expedition overall, she suspected Professor (the being who found the probe) was, the defenses seemed to be under the direct command of someone else. There did still seem to be deference to Professor and they were present in the command area of the camp, which meant they likely had a degree of influence even in matters that appeared outside their direct purview.

This meant that Andrea was all the more eager to make Professor the first point of contact if at all possible, they seemed to have influence in their group, without necessarily being too militarily minded and seemed to be of a curious, exploratory nature and/or profession, all factors that would help contribute to a positive outcome during first contact, or so Andrea hoped.

As the minutes wore on, the activity in the camp died down and the watchers at the walls settled into what seemed to be tense anticipation. The lack of any action seemed to build their anxiety, Andrea noticed the nervous shuffling and when the lighting was good rapid eye movements, among the sentries.

As Andrea watched the activity at the alien camp, Lin guided their caravan through the forest, climbing a bit as they moved towards the top of a small rise nested in a low area surrounded by slightly higher hills. Of all the possible base camp sites, this was by far the most promising so Lin decided to check it out first, even if it was one of the farther options. Being sited on a rise while simultaneously being surrounded by taller hills to help break line of sight. Lin recognized the risks in not taking the local high ground from a defensive stand point, but fully intended to station concealed drone detachments on the surrounding hills and thus have firm control over the entire area near the base camp, as well as the best possible chance of maintaining secrecy during the initial contact phase.

It took them a further 45 minutes of careful but steady progress to finally reach the site, they were slowed a bit by the extra precautions Lin had instituted, She had combined the more familiar exploratory drone scouting configuration with a wilderness infantry tactics field manual's recommended deployment for screening against ambush from high velocity attack drones and munitions. The mass, agility, and terrifying velocities that the earlier attacker had managed to reach, were way outside the bounds of any natural fauna previously recorded by the Surveyor Corps. Lin felt that it was best to expect more surprises. “Andrea, I think the sooner we can make contact with the locals the better, we can learn the dangers of the environment through careful study but we’ll be a lot safer if we can get someone to explain things to us. I had viewed the aliens as the biggest possible security risk, but I’m less certain of that than before.”

Andrea sent over snippets of the footage the high altitude drones where sending her from the alien camp. “I have to concur with you Lin, they certainly seem to be nervous about something, perhaps they’re familiar with the roar of my earlier pursuer, or perhaps they know something else that has them spooked, either way it only makes me more eager to meet them.”

Andrea noted that the alien camp seemed to have settled in for a long night of extra vigilance, the vigorous activity had completely died down and ‘Professor’ seemed to have returned to their tent along with a small portion of the group, the rest occupied various posts, mainly along the perimeter barricade. This worked out nicely for Lin since it meant Andrea could set aside her observation duties and assist in setting up their base camp.

The first thing they did was an extremely through sweep of the area, scanning for wildlife, and checking terrain stability. They detected nothing that seemed to be a threat, a few meter long 4 limbed reptilian looking animals briefly hissed at Lin’s drones but soon decided that they’d rather find a new burrow, abandoning the large fallen tree that they’d seemingly begun nesting inside. The tree had fallen just a bit below the peak of the small rise and created an opening in the forest floor, without a more than a barely noticeable break in the canopy overhead. “Look a perfect pre-cleared site for our largest two domes, the rest we can fit easily among the trees at the edge of the clearing.” Andrea was thrilled to have a naturally formed site for the large fab and power domes, placing them could be tricky, particularly if you wanted to be subtle and avoid too much heavy forestry work. While Andrea and Lin could easily clear even the massive old growth trees that dominated this forest, it would not be subtle, or quiet and would definitely garner attention, which they wanted to avoid for more reasons than ever.

A flurry of activity soon overtook the little clearing deep in the wooded valley. A pair of heavy duty inflatable foundation platforms began to take shape over the fallen trunk as well as many smaller such platforms scattered at the periphery of the open space, vaulted overhead with a cathedral like roof of branches and needles, though in the dark the majesty was obscured from normal vision and infrared-LIDAR composite images tended to suck some of the majesty out of such sights.

Once the foundations had all been set up the new stable platforms were then built upon further. Domes identical to those the duo had used on Ristula began to inflate and rise higher and higher into the air. The next several hours were laborious Andrea spent them directing a team of drones moving, assembling, and deploying heavy equipment while she got her hands dirty working on lighter furniture and devices, getting the interiors of the domes set up and the many tools installed and tested for function. They could still get back ups sent through if they discovered any critical equipment failures in the next couple of days, so Andrea was determined to be thorough about testing everything as soon as possible. While Andrea worked on the interiors, Lin maneuvered her drones around the exterior, continuing to probe the nearby areas for interesting features or possible threats as well as building up concealed sensor suites to provide redundant coverage of all approaches to the base camp, Lin’s newfound concerns about the striking range and speed of the wildlife meant that she was already planning to queue up additional sensor suite packages, since she was going to use up all available reserves to establish a long ranging and comprehensive static early warning system for their new home.

After hours of work setting up the base camp, it began to get lighter as the night faded into a red and gold morning light, the colors filtered down through the branches and needles of the trees overhead and gave a warm delicately patterned beauty to the vaulted chamber formed by the open area. Lin and Andrea both paused in their work to appreciate the view. Silently sharing a moment of peace and beauty, that reminded them of yet another reason they both loved to explore.

Eventually the moment past, as all such moments must, and the duo resumed their work. By this point Lin had joined Andrea in setting up and checking the function of the equipment inside the domes. The power generation and storage systems where working properly and the test runs and then first batches of sensor suites all demonstrated that the main fabricator was also working. A quick sampling of the local environment provided a variety of raw materials to drop into the feed stock refining systems, which showed good functionality for breaking down raw materials into refined chemical compounds for use in fabricators. The Biochemical organs were showing healthy life signs and processed sterilized organic samples from the local environment with no noticeable issues. These four central systems where the most critical and could be used in conjunction with one another to produce virtually anything, Including more of themselves if needed. The Von Nuemann approach to exploration was not considered ethical or wise by the Surveyor corps, but they did recognize the value of being able to scale up production capacity in order to give Survey teams the maximum possible level of flexibility in meeting challenges.

Having verified the functionality of the most important equipment that they brought through the portal with them The duo spent the morning going through the smaller and important, but not totally vital, equipment. They found few issues and the quick fabrication and replacement of a couple of parts that were slightly out of tolerance was the most that was required, otherwise it was a smooth setup and shakedown of all the equipment in their base camp. They were getting close to finishing when the observation drones that had line of sight to the alien camp pinged notifications about an uptick in activity that Andrea had set them watching for earlier. "I'm going to let you finish the last of this setup Lin, it looks like our friends over at the camp are starting to get more active again and I want to make sure I've got my eye on that as much as possible so I can learn anything useful for when we go to make contact with them."

Lin signaled an acknowledgment and then kept working while Andrea moved over to one of the domes that had been set up as a living quarters. Upon entering Andrea quickly set herself to trying out the newly installed shower system to clean off the evidence of her chase with the predator and the hours of physical labor during the setup. Now feeling refreshed Andrea quickly donned a clean copy of her field uniform and started to fix up a warm meal with the kitchenette that shared dome space with the showers. While she worked at prepping a nice breakfast she kept part of her attention on the activity at the camp which, as it happened, matched her own in large part. With what looked to be large cook pots set up in an open-sided pavilion being tended to by a small team of the humanoid beings. Interestingly there didn't appear to be any use of fire but there must have been some kind of heat involved as there appeared to be steam curling off the pots and a quick peek at the infrared imaging confirmed that they were quite hot. “I’ve spotted another interesting anomaly Lin, They appear to have some technology that’s allowing them to cook without visible fire being used. Combined with the strange sound isolation of the tent the probe is in, I’m starting to suspect that we’re missing some pretty crucial information. I noticed their guards seem to be armed with simple firearms of some sort, or at least that’s what they remind me of, at the same time they appear to be relying on draft animals for transportation, and their sources of light and heat don’t appear to be produced by combustion of flammable substances. I’m having difficulty parsing exactly where they are technologically, it doesn’t quite line up with any of the surviving historical records for human technological development from before the Displacement, nor with the patterns of development during the second founding after that.”

Lin took her usual pragmatic stance. “Well ultimately, we just need to get a rough idea about how dangerous to us they could be, so we can plan contingencies for when we make contact. Once we start talking with them I’m sure you’ll get a better handle on what kind of paradigms they’re working within, technologically, socially, politically, and so on.”

Andrea nodded “You’re right, especially since we want to make first contact before the aperture closes, in case it looks like an immediate disaster, so we have the option to withdraw completely one last time. After the aperture closes we’re committed to being here for the long haul.”