The room was silent. Never before had something like this happened; it should have been impossible. They were deep below the earth, in one of the most secure bunkers on the planet, staring at an isolated server. An empty server. Finally, one of the stony-faced soldiers snapped back to reality.
“Alright, gentlemen, you know the drill. Warn the rest of the planet, if this thing is wide-spread we need to know and stop it. Give a planet-wide data purge order, and pull out the hardcopies. I must go inform Lord Scytheros of this incident.”
Colonus Pact, Araknis Araknis Keep
The rain gently spilled through the open window. Lord Scytheros had always found the planet beautiful. There was just something perfect about the lighting during a storm, they way the rain bounced off his scales. For the first 25 years of his life, it had been home. Soon, it’d all be gone. As would his father.
“You’ll ruin the carpets.” Scytheros turned to see his father standing in the doorway.
“Now that’s a surprise. I would have thought you’d be saving your strength. Ishani’s birthday is still three months off.”
“Oh, save me your judgement. I’m a dying man, Scytheros, I won’t be bedridden!”
“Do what you please, who am I to contradict High Lord Araknis?Your wish is my command.”
“I see you’re still as amusing as ever.”
“If you think I’m funny, you’ve clearly never met Vrache.”
~[Lord Scytheros, High Lord Araknis, we have a situation. An alien has appeared on Scytheros.]
Colonus Pact, Scytheros Secret Military Bunker
Soldiers flooded into the room, guns trainex on the strange alien that stood before them. The ranking officer stepped forward.
“And just who might you be?”
“Can any of you understand this clown?”
“She’s speaking French, sir”
“An earth language? What did she say?”
“She appears to be waiting for a diplomat to arrive.”
“Alright, alright… ok people, lets keep this place locked down! Keep your guns locked on the ghost girl. If she tries to leave, shoot to kill. I need to go find someone qualified to engage in a first contact situation.”
“Christ, what’s with these people?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. The sooner the sarge gets back here with one of those suits, the better.” As if on cue, the sergeant opened the door to the server room, carrying a holo-projector.
“Alright, there’s been a change in plans. Lord Scytheros wants to deal with this. Personally.” Suddenly, the projector lit up, displaying the Vanti in all of his glory. He turned to the intruders.
“Welcome to Scytheros. Now, would you care to explain yourselves, or should my men start shooting?”
“Hi… Should we want you to explain why we found one of your ships in our territory or do we want to ignore that and move on to the diplomatic portion of this?”
“Translation, we’re Rosecordi and why’d you break into our territory?”
"You seem like an interesting bunch, so I’ll spare you the denial. However, I think it’s rather bold of you to demand any further information from us, seeing as you managed to find our location, not an easy feat, I assure you, not to mention your theft of military files. Very bold, I may add. For less… reasonable individuals, that could be taken as an act of war. Lucky for us, I like to be reasonable.
“While your offer is certainly worth considering, even I don’t have the authority to simply declare an alliance, such things have a protocol to follow. But, this does bring us back to our intrusion into your space.”
“You recently fought a war against CoUS, strengthening an alliance that was beginning to weaken. They have begun to consolidate their influence in the sector; that same alliance happens to make up most of our border. See the problem, no? It became vital for us to learn just who you are.”
“Well… Do you wanna meet in person or how do you protocol…?”
“She’s a little… Confusing at times. It does make sense, but why would you employ an explosive onboard? When we towed it back, someone told us that hey, they got an explosive on board, and as soon as we shut down the onboard server, they tried to explode the ship?”
“Why don’t you guys tell me these things?”
“You have the mental capacity of a twentyfive year old.”
“Our methods of gathering information have evolved with the limitations of our sister species, who I believe you’ve met. Certain precautions must be taken, although in this case, they clearly failed. Just from the fact that we’re able to have this conversation right now, I wouldn’t call them unwarranted.”
“You sure don’t pull your punches, do you? It makes more sense to think of my species as one in the same with the… ants, as you called them. I’m not interested in giving you a history lesson, but the short of it is that our ancestors traded our society for power. That’s had long lasting repercussions that have only now begun to correct themselves. Now, I’d like to know how exactly that war started, if that’s not asking too much.”
“Explain how we’re supposed to peacefully resolve a stealth mission into our territory. Communication is off. Can’t communicate, you’ll blow the ship. Can’t shoot an ion missile, you’ll blow the ship. We didn’t bead the ship 'til we punched the area full of EMPs. Then we found it, traced it to a “Colonus Pact.” Then we figured out via a borrowed star map where you might be. We found a museum full of… Demons? And then we were sent here. Now we are here.”
“I’m starting to wonder if the use of the word ‘bureaucrat’ has a different meaning to the Rosecordi. Even if I trusted you, which I do not, excepting the part about ‘demons’ committing high treason, I am noticing an annoying trend of yours to never address my questions. Now, we can go on and prattle about how unfair spying is, or we can sit down and try to settle this before things turn nasty.”
Scytheros grunted, shaking his head. This is starting to get a little tedious.
“Alright, you want Colonus and Rosecordi to be friends, but so far all we’ve done is spy on each other. We need something to work off of, some reason we’d benefit from working together.”
“You and I don’t like the CoUS. Well, what if had a partnership based around them being… Oh I’m just spitballin’ here… an interstellar threat to both of us? Maybe they realize they can take one of us, not both of us? Now they can’t use us being separated as a reason to go after one of us. Now we have reason to be friends.”