Going Bold

Smash! The crash of water in Andrea’s ears announced her arrival, her body rocketed up from the sphere with the momentum of her jump breaching the surface before she had really registered being submerged. Falling back into the water Andrea took a moment to find her feet, standing in her gear next to the aperture the water of the pool nearly topped her shoulders with the waves of her arrival rebounding and slapping her face as if in rebuke for the disturbance.

“I’m glad we moved the drone platform and other gear out of the way. A mild concussion would have really gotten us off on the wrong foot.” Andrea silently thought to Lin as she began to quickly swim to the edge of the pool where the larger drones had assembled the survey gear. “You’re welcome, though with your reinforced skull and other implants I was more worried about damaging our gear.” The fact that Lin’s concern was probably valid meant her comment’s status as a joke was ambiguous. Andrea didn’t mind she knew Lin cared about her, they’d been working together for long enough that they were comfortable communicating in ways that might come off as rude to outsiders. As she flashed a wry laugh symbol to Lin she reached the edge of the pool and climbed up onto the relatively flat rock surface that had been transformed into the duo’s staging area.

Andrea reported back to Jorge. “We made it through the aperture with no issues and are proceeding with our planned startup, we’ll keep in touch regularly, and send all our data back, till the aperture closes.” Some of the drones under Lin’s direction were packing for the move to a new location, while others had already begun deploying concealed security equipment and communications relays to the surface to ensure contact through the aperture when it was open. The concealment would give an extra layer of security since the chamber was clearly known to the local inhabitants and if some or all of them proved hostile a covert method of communicating home when the aperture opened again would be critical. Lin had argued that overtly attempting to fortify and secure the aperture was more likely to attract trouble then prevent it. Better to let obscurity do the heavy lifting if possible.

Andrea generally let Lin take the lead on matters of security and in this case Andrea felt that setting up an obvious armed camp and blocking access to a site that held unknown significance to the people they wanted to contact would make hostility far more likely. She was taking the lead on negotiating first contact and had decided that they should set up their base camp in a concealed location some distance away from the pyramid structure that rose over the entrance to the aperture cave complex. Even the being that discovered their probe might not realize that they came through the aperture, indeed, the possibility that the poor lighting and water had disguised the aperture’s existence was possible. Andrea and Lin had decided to keep their use of the aperture to themselves, at least until they learned what the beings they planned to establish contact with knew about it, and what social consequences the truth might have.

Andrea’s first order of business was to deploy some high altitude high endurance observation drones. Andrea tasked one of their Donkey semi-autonomous cargo transporters with following her and loaded it with 3 of the sophisticated blimps that would be their eyes in the sky and long range com relays. Having the 3 meter long 2 meter tall Donkey looming behind her, shockingly quiet on it’s four reverse jointed metallic limbs, would have been quite the intimidating site to any unlucky spelunker. Andrea and her artificial beast of burden only barely fit through the passageways to the surface. Lin was having her drones duck into side passages as they passed, still hard at work setting up the covert security and communications systems.

Outside the pyramid the mountains surrounding the valley were Stygian giants, who’s looming presence was apparent only as it was silhouetted against the glitter of stars and the hooked tip of the minor moon in waning crescent peering over the ridge behind Andrea as she exited the structure. Based on the limited observations so far there appeared to be two moons, one much larger than the other, while day cycles seemed to be about 30 hours in length. The timing of Andrea and Lin’s activity was deliberate, they planned to use the cover of darkness in the hope that it would let them deploy their observation drones and establish a concealed camp away from the pyramid without being seen.

Andrea unpacked and prepped the three observation drones on the bare rock field stretched out in front of the pyramid. As she worked Lin pinged her and sent a quick clip for her to see. The probe in the tent had witnessed a tired purple face yawn before stretching and turning off the source of the strong steady light they’d been working under. It was the being who’d grabbed the probe, Andrea had nicknamed them Professor since they appeared in the tent for hours on most days carefully examining and testing both biological samples and what appeared to be archaeological relics. As Professor left the tent, the raised flap briefly let in sound and revealed a largely silent camp with the distant sound of one individual with a stentorian snoring problem. “Looks like even the workaholic is finally calling it quits for the night, perfect for minimizing potential complications as we move out.”

Andrea snorted at Lin’s hypocritical dig at Professor’s working habits. “We don’t know enough to be sure what their scouting and night guard abilities are like so we’ll just have to work as discretely as we can and hope for the best. It’s not the end of the world if we’re spotted, I’d just prefer to negotiate from a position of strength when we make contact, and the more leverage I have with knowledge about ourselves the more I should be able to guide our interactions towards a peaceful outcome.”

“I’m a bit more leery about potential trouble, but regardless of the level of danger, I’ll make sure our base camp is as hidden as possible. I’ll leave it to you to judge how much of our capabilities to reveal as we get to know the people here.” Lin was a bit frustrated by the prospect of having Andrea be the sole point of initial contact with the aliens, but agreed with the reasoning behind the decision. During planning sessions with Jorge, Dr. Arbordous and the rest of the Study team it had been decided that initial contact would be more likely to succeed if their appearance and behavior fit more within the observed paradigms of the strangely humanoid beings.

While Lin did have experience using a drone that was practically indistinguishable from a traditional human she didn’t generally like to be tied down to a single body closely enough to fully take command of it, and partially autonomous drone functions would take over the humanoid body as Lin’s attention flitted between drones. This was normally no problem, as she could maintain conversation through a virtual avatar regardless of how or where she was embodied. However, the little that they had witnessed from the probe so far, gave them no reason to think that these aliens would have any understanding of this, and would be better off gradually introduced to the idea of a disembodied intelligence. Most importantly Lin just wasn’t a fan of using humanoid bodies when in the field, they were fun to play around with during down time, but she overwhelmingly preferred other forms when working.

Those other forms were on grand display as Lin finished the covert installations leading from the aperture chamber to the surface and began to shepherd a large train of 15 Donkeys hauling the packaged habitat domes, supplies, additional drones, assorted gear, and some heavy duty items including major power generation and fabrication equipment. As the Donkeys marched out from under the pyramid in eerie silence, a quietly humming cloud of drones of various sizes and configurations flew out from around them scattering around to scout the nearby area or keep pace with the caravan. The more attentive observer would, if they could look past the silently trotting giants and faintly humming swarm, see a third stream of movement that scuttled close along the ground with the fluid grace of spiders. These nimble arthropoid drones, neatly dodged under the feet of the Donkeys and many trailed behind the end of the line as Lin used them to clean up and cover any tracks and traces that would be left behind by this parade.

Andrea finished prepping the high altitude drones as Lin sent some mini-drones out at ground level in every direction to start plotting the best trail for the Donkeys to follow, letting them place their steps so that they left minimal traces that the trailing spider drones could easily disguise. They weren’t sure exactly where they wanted to set up their base camp but they knew it would likely be away from the location where the probe’s signal was coming. As the high altitude drones began to climb silently into the night sky the duo were able to study a detailed model of the region that grew in size as their eyes in the sky gained height and moved further out from the pyramid. While the darkness did obscure some things, the numerous types of sensors available gave all the info Lin needed to plot out several possible base camp locations and send smaller flying drones to make closer inspections.

While Lin busied herself with scouting locations for their camp, Andrea was keenly studying the low-light and infrared images of the encampment containing the probe. It was a collection of tents perched on the top of a low hill about a kilometer down the valley. It looked like the hilltop had been cleared recently, likely for the express purpose of setting up the camp, the felled trees appeared to have been incorporated into a defensive works around the camp with open areas for about 100 meters outside the earthen walls. “This is interesting Lin, it looks like whoever these people are they felt the need to fortify their camp to some extent.” Lin pulled up what Andrea was looking at “hmmm… it could be for particularly dangerous wildlife, or for hostile sentients, or both. We’ll just have to be extra cautious, whatever they’re worried about could pose a danger to us and if they’re fighting hostile sentients we might have a hard time making peaceful contact.”

As Lin switched back to scouting for a camp location, Andrea continued to examine the camp. They had a few people seemingly on watch, but the majority of the camp appeared to be in their tents. Counting what she could see in the infrared imaging Andrea placed the number of humanoid beings in the camp at around 70, with a couple dozen large creatures penned up separately, and scattered inside some tents were numerous other heat signatures of various shapes and sizes that appeared to be a surprisingly wide variety of living creatures. Hopping onto the Donkey that had held the high altitude drones Andrea continued to observe the camp as Lin smoothly incorporated the 16th Donkey into the middle of the line and began to leave the area of the pyramid towards a set of promising locations.

The caravan made steady progress moving quietly and occasionally detouring in order to avoid leaving an obvious trail. Lin maintained a security perimeter in all directions with various flying drones quietly watching for potential threats in every direction and stealthy spider drones scattering ahead and behind the route to settle in, feeling for ground tremors and quietly observing their surroundings in search of possible ambushes or covert followers. These extensive precautions were standard on new worlds where there was no knowledge of how dangerous the wildlife might be, and even more important when unfamiliar intelligent beings were known to be in the area. These layers of detection meant that Andrea was all the more shocked when, about an hour after leaving the pyramid, she suddenly felt a solid mass slam her off the Donkey throwing her a few meters through the air before she slammed into a tree. Andrea hadn’t even reached the ground when the large creature that had slammed her from her mount let out a deep roar ending with a high pitched hollow trumpet and charged directly at her.