Fear, confusion, worries, uncertainty, desperation, anger. These words all describe the atmosphere on the ship. It’s been flying through the vaccum of space at FTL speed for days now, everyone was losing hope, their lives devastated by the Ventarian raid. Their home planet’s fate was like all the other eastern colonies. First, the settlements were bombed down, then the armoies of slavers and killers came down to finish off the world. A few escaped on ships, but not mady, This one, carrying around 150 people through the void was the only one to not be shot down.
They were going, nowhere in particular, simply forward through space. They didn’t know when or if they’d find another colony to take refuge in, but they hoped, for it was the last thing thy could do.
The unofficial leader, Sto Alvar, was maybe the only one not to simply give up. He cared for the young and injured on the ship, and organized displays of art or comedy, of varying quality, to give everyone anything to do.
Little did these people know, their ship was approaching an unmapped star system, and moreover, they weren’t alone there…
The local police commander of Kaputsnyygrad is informed of an unkown vessel entering the star system:
“Sir, we have detected a unknown vessel in the star system and we aren’t sure to whom it belongs.”
Milorad Ljubo Branislav responds: “I will request that the 1st fleet be deployed to the area. Until then, deploy a small scouting probe to see what their intentions are. Prepare the local forces for combat.”
The officer responds: “Yes, sir.”
The probe is sent, with forces on the planet being prepared for combat while tanks can be seenbeing rolled out from the reserves in preperation for repelling a landing force. While this is happening, Milorad contacts the 1st fleet’s Admiral:
Milorad begins the transmission: “Hello! A unknown Vessel has entered our star system and we request the immediate deployment of the 1st fleet. We are not sure of their intentions, but we have begun preperations for repelling a landing force.”
Uroš Živko Ratomir responds: “We will head to your star system, if they attack, defend as best as possible with the weapons at your disposal while we arrive.”
Milorad responds: “Yes, sir.”
The probe arrives to scout out the ship, the ship receives a transmission:
“Where are you from? Why are you here?”
“Hey, everyone! We’re recieving something!” - someone yelled out of the bridge in excitement and happiness. Sto immideatly ran there to check what was happening. A single pperson was looking at the radio display, which was showing a message was being recieved.
“Huh!? What is it?”
“I don’t know, the computer seems to have a hard time decoding it…”
seconds later, a feminine machine voice speaks out though the ship’s audio system, echoing through the large corridors and halls, saying words in a strange language no one understood.
“What was that? Did the colonists here make a new dialect or something? No, it doesnt sound like common at all… Wait a second.”
Sto and the other Colestian on the bridge took a closer look at the ships flying all around the system, and noticed that none of them were of Republic design. That’s when they realized they were dealing with a first contact.
Soon others started to gather near the windows and arounf the bridge as well, curious of the strange computer signal, and realized what was going on as well.
“Alright everyone, stay calm. These may not be Colestians, but they still might be friendly. Seeing how we don’t know what we’re saying, we should make that clear by sending a message in our language. Maybe they could decode it in a reasonable amount of time. Until we manage to communicate, we just have to wait. It’ll be okay, I assure you all.”
“We cannot understand you, we do not know your language. We don’t have a way to translate your tongue, since we don’t have access to our main servers. Please use this message as a sample to decode our communications.” - Told the message sent to the police commander, but in an alien language sounding more like whistling or blown instruments than spoken human words.
An officer enters the local pollice commander’s office, Milorad’s office:
“The ship responded.”
Milorad responds: “What did they say?”
The officer says: "We don’t know, it seems to be in some foreign language.
Milorad would say, calmly: “Send them another message in binary.”
The officer responds: “Yes, sir.”
With this, the probe sends another message, this time in binary:
“01010111 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101111 01101101 00111111 00100000 01010111 01101000 01111001 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00111111”
After this, Milorad would have a meeting with the 1st fleet’s admiral, Uroš Živko Ratomir, in which they would discuss the current situation:
Uroš would start: “Is there anything new since you sent me that transmission telling me about the unkown vessel?”
Milorad responds: “The ship responded, however we can’t understand them, and i assume they don’t understand us. I hope they understand binary.”
Uroš would say: “I hope the understand it too, and the fact that they haven’t fired upon us yet means they are probably not here to fight us.”
Milorad would say: “I agree. I am glad we could talk today, and i will inform you if anything new happens. Goodbye.”
Uroš responds: “Goodbye.”
"They sent another message! This time it seems it’s in binary… It translates to Where are you from? Why are you here?
“Great, they’re communicating! And using binary language, why haven’t I thought of that! Here let’s reply, we might be saved everyone!”
A binary message came from the ship, this time understandable to the Istrians. Its content translated to We are the Colestians, we come from Silvalia, a planet 2000 light years west from here. We are refugees seeking help. Our intensions are peaceful. We arrived here accidentally
Milorad Ljubo Branislav would be informed of their responce:
The officer says: " They said: We are the Colestians, we come from Silvalia, a planet 2000 light years west from here. We are refugees seeking help. Our intensions are peaceful. We arrived here accidentally"
Milorad Responds: “Ask them if there would be a way to get into contact with their leader.”
The officer responds: “Yes, sir.”
The probe sends the message:
“01001001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110111 01100001 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110111 01100101 00100000 01100011 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101110 01110100 01100001 01100011 01110100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01100100 01100101 01110010 00111111” (Is there a way that we could contact your leader?)
After this, Milorad contacts the 1st fleet’s admiral, saying:
“They have sent us the following responce to our two questions: We are the Colestians, we come from Silvalia, a planet 2000 light years west from here. We are refugees seeking help. Our intensions are peaceful. We arrived here accidentally”
Uroš responds: “Good.”
With this over with, Milorad directly contacts the leader of the Istrian nation, Yusuf Hasan II “Sadiq”:
“Hello! Today a unknown vessel has entered our territory, and I assume you have been informed by Uroš Živko Ratomir.”
Yusuf responds: “Yes Milorad, I have been informed by Uroš Živko Ratomir, I will be comming there soon to observe the situation actively.”
Milorad would say: “Alright then, Goodbye.”
Yusuf would say, calmly: “Goodbye.”
Sadly, no. FTL communications with our government are being jammed. We can’t contact any part of our nation within a reasonable time frame.
The probe sends a new message:
01010111 01100101 00100000 01100011 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01101111 01100110 01100110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01100101 01101101 01110000 01101111 01110010 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100110 01110101 01100111 01100101 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01110000 01101100 01100001 01101110 01100101 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110100 01110101 01110010 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01101000 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110011 00101100 00100000 01110011 01100001 01100110 01100101 01101100 01111001 00101110
(We could offer you temporary refuge on our planet till you can return to your homes, safely.)
Oh, thank you sir. But before, could you please send us your species’ atmospheric composition?
Ah, that is suitable air for us, thank you. Although the carbon dioxide levels are somewhat low, so we might not be able to live here for very long, but that likely won’t be an issue with our temorary stay. Now, we request to land our ship onto the planet. Please send us instructions on where to land.
Land at the spaceport at [INSERT COORDINATES HERE]. (This is all in binary)
Well then, we will be there as soon as our engines will allow us to. Thank you for your permission.
Sto quickly switched the microphone from broadcasting messages to on-ship speakers.
"Alright everyone, we have permission to land! We’re saved!
Cheering and happiness filled the corridors, a thing much appreciated after that much time spent in despair.
Sto steered the spaceship into orbit of the planet and quickly descended onto the spaceport. It sent another radio message to the aliens.
We are here now. Do you perhaps possess any device thet would allow us to communicate face-to-face?
A message is sent in binary, and in several dialects of Istrian:
“We have translators, however we aren’t sure if you will be able to understand any of our dialects, and we aren’t sure what the grammar of your language is.”
(OOC: You would probably will be able to understand some of the dialects with translators.)
I think that will prove sufficient. - He said, shortly before leaving the bridge and headed towards the air lock. He instructed everyone to stay inside the shuttle in case of any unexpected dangers, even if such a turn was unlikely. Stepping through the corridors, excitement and curiosity ciuld be seen in everyone’s eyes, almost periating the air.
Sto came into the entrance to the spaceship and activated the air lock.
The Istrians waited outside for the alien to come out. When the door finally opened and a set of stairs pretruded from the triangular structure of the ship, they were likely met with a kind of suprise, or dissapointment. Human media often depicted aliens as large, thin, humanoid creatures, but what walked down the stairs met none of those descriptions.
It was a small creature, around 3/4 of a meter, or about 2,5 feet tall. It had a vaguely humanoid bodyplan, however the long thin tail, grey coloration and the peculiar limb attachment made the alien look more reptilian. They didn’t have much of a face, their head instead bearing two large “verticall” eyes. From the top of its head extended a long spindly extension that somewhat resembled a single strand of hair. The creature was dressed in greyish white robes with silver outlines on its ends.
Then, he spoke out, raising his head almost vertically to look at the humans.
“Well met, foreign friends. shall we discuss the-”
Sto took a short pause, then talked again.
“Wait, I think we’ve met your nation before…? Or maybe just your species. You are the Pacificans, yes? Hve we by accident ended up in the UOE?”
Yusuf Hasan II “Sadiq” responds:
“We are “Homo sapiens”, and you have ended up in Istria. I do not know of the UOE.”
"Homo Sapiens… yes, the Emeraldians. Your species’s history must be much more complex than we thought… Anyhow, shall we discuss the terms of our stay here?
“There are no terms, you can stay for as long as you need, however do the Emeraldians speak Slavonic, and who or what made you refugees?”, Yusuf Hasan II “Sadiq” says.
“Ah, I suppose we do indeed owe you an explanation. The Emeraldians have their own language, similar to your own, but that must simply be by quirk of biology. They have their own nation, a while southwest from here, with seemingly seperate culture, government structure, and well… everything that makes a nation. That’s why I was so confused about the place we ended up.
As for your second question, our nation, the Common Republic of Colestia, was invaded by another, recently discovered civilization, and their attacks are bloody, with civilians being taken hostage or outright killed behind every corner. And with no way of defending ourselves, the only option for us is to flee with whatever ships we have and hope they don’t find us. We were one of the few lucky enought to succeed.
Sadly, we have no way of contacting other worlds, as the invaders are jamming our communications rendering FTL transmissions useless, and our world further west completely unalerted. Frankly, we have no IDea how our nation will get through this conflict.”
Yusuf Hasan II “Sadiq” would say: “We can offer direct military assistance, and intervene in this war.”
“Indeed, whoever takes a life—unless as a punishment for murder or mischief in the land—it is as if he killed the whole of humanity.”", he would add.