Ospea System, Cormyrean Confederation
Ambassador Ka'rah'li stood in the bridge of her ship, her face not betraying even a hint of emotion. The Captain of the vessel, a young Uy, sat at his command post keeping a watch on the variety of readings coming from not only his ship but fed over from the ships of their military escort. Neither of them spoke, the Ambassador because she had no reason to and the Captain not only because he was busy but because he couldn't be certain that his comment wouldn't be some form of jab at the Ambassador. She'd strolled onto his ship and had been commanding him around like he was his subordinate, and it infuriated him to no end. But she was the most important person on board the ship, so he dealt with it but he didn't have to like it.
So when the Captain spoke up, it was only because he had to. "Ma'am, we're receiving both an audio transmission and a packet of information," he said.
Ka'rah'li's face barely registered anything, but she did respond, "What kind of information?"
"From a cursory examination, it seems to be some form of first-contact packet," the Captain explained, "Numbers and math and the like."
"Good, I want that examined and decoded as soon as possible," Ka'rah'li said, "Now play the audio transmission."
"I was planning on it," the Captain replied dryly as he began to play the transmission.
"Well, it sounds like words at least," the Captain said, "I think. I can't make any sense of it at all."
"I wish we had begun planning for this decades ago," Ka'rah'li said, masking the irritation in her voice, "Maybe we would have been able to bring along somebody who actually spoke one of these languages."
"Languages? How in the world can you tell it's more than one?"
"It's quite simple, Captain," Ka'rah'li said, but simply left it and then and didn't bother trying to actually explain it.
But before the Captain, who was becoming exceedingly frustrated with the Ambassador, could say anything about it he noticed something else. "Ambassador, it seems there are several ships making their way towards us," he said.
"Do they appear hostile?"
"I would say no, since they haven't shot us yet," the Captain replied, "But since we're dealing with aliens, we can't be sure."
"Well, in that case I want you to send our own data packets," Ka'rah'li said, "Diplomacy goes both ways, after all."
"Yes Ma'am," the Captain said, exasperated. The data in question was similar to what the Confederation had sent over; long strings of data that gave the basics of both the T'kai and Uy languages, but would likely take a fairly long time to actually decode. So it wasn't considered useful to until after First Contact had been established, but Ka'rah'li had decided that since the Confederation had sent data of their own it only made sense for her to send theirs.
"So, we're just going to sit here?" the Captain asked.
"Well what would you have us do?" the Ambassador asked rather condescendingly, "Until they send us something we can actually understand we do not want to make any movements they might construe as hostile."
The Captain quietly grumbled to himself, since the Ambassador did have a point. So he simply went back to what he'd been doing before at his console while the Ambassador finally decided to take a seat. Though Ka'rah'li still didn't actually do anything aside from sitting there.
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Val'kik System, Cha'ak Claimed Space
Admiral Da'ran, along with everyone on the bridge of the
Abiy Gaa'za, watched the video sent over from the unidentified vessel. None of them had ever seen an alien quite like the small, furry thing they saw speaking gibberish and making strange gestures. And when the message ended, all of his men were sitting there waiting for orders and wondering what exactly was going to happen. Admiral Da'ran was definitely not happy about this turn of events, since he was a military man. Throw him into the fray fighting pirates any day, but a possible First Contact was not what he'd been trained for.
"Alright, first I want the databases searched for anything like that alien; I want to be certain this is actually First Contact. We're also going to need to send a message back; looks like they were asking if we were peaceful or hostile so I want one of you to take out that image of the two ships flying together and just send that back to them. And I want you to power down all weapons, but make sure the shields are at full power. Understood?" Admiral Da'ran said, his voice sure and full of confidence despite his not being entirely sure of the whole situation. The orders to power down weapons were relayed to all of the ships under his command, while those on his bridge worked on his other two orders.
"Sir, I have the video cut out of their video; shall I transmit it to them on a loop?" one of the Admiral's men asked.
The Admiral nodded, and the video was sent. It was quite simple; just the short sample of the Meknik vessel flying alongside another put on a loop. Da'ran honestly hoped he hadn't misunderstood the message they'd been trying to get across, especially when another one of his men spoke up.
"Admiral, I've looked up all the databases we have," the man said, "And there's no record at all of any aliens like these. Not even anything secondhand."
The Admiral sighed as this information, and sent a message to the Overseer aboard the World Eater carriers. And it wasn't long before the pair of them were activating their hyperdrives and making their way to Cha'ak itself to inform them of the current True First Contact situation Admiral Da'ran was currently dealing with. And he'd decided it best to keep his fleet here to keep an eye on things and possibly engage in contact with the new aliens, though he couldn't wait for Cha'ak to send a proper ambassador over. Assuming nothing made this end in violence.
