Chapter 36: Chapter Thirty Illeria

The Krall base commander watched her screens. One of her own ships, the Teketh was being towed into port by an alien vessel. One of a design she had not seen before. There were three of these ships that she could see, although it had taken some clever work to actually resolve them clearly on the scanner. The aliens used some kind of dispersion plating to protect their hulls, but it also had the benefit of disrupting scanning beams. As such sensors had to be adjusted to compensate for the effect. If weren’t for the fact that two of the ships were actively towing something, she never would have seen them, and technically they weren’t even cloaked.

Honestly, she was quite curious what exactly transpired for the Teketh to end up being towed back to port by aliens, but neither the aliens nor the Teketh were currently able to respond to her hails. Not in a real-time conversation anyway. The Teketh’s long-range communications array had taken a hit, Cathamari plasma torpedo from the looks of it. The array was partially intact, and she was able to send messages. The receiver array was the part that was utterly destroyed. Her commander had thoughtfully sent her a report, but that was no substitute for a proper conversation.

As for the aliens, they didn’t have any long-range communication arrays in the first place. She had tried hailing them, only to end up feeling foolish when her sensor officers informed her that they were limited to short-range sublight bands only. A rather novel experience for her. Faster-than-light communications were rather widespread among cultures capable of faster-than-light travel. There were like drives a few different methods for achieving it, but such communications were a vital necessity. Thankfully most cultures tended to use similar methods for it. Hyperspace communications also known as subspace communications was by far the most common method for achieving faster than light communication. It was compatible with most sublight bands, but the transmissions themselves were sent through hyperspace, and since a signal could be sent at layers deeper than any ship could reach, the transmissions were several orders of magnitude greater. The most advanced hyperdrives in the quadrant were currently limited to about eight hundred times the speed of light, but a hyperspace transmission could travel at more than a thousand times that speed. Allowing for largely instantaneous communication over vast distances, assuming you were in comm range of course. Like any signal, it was subject to degradation. The Imperium maintained a network of repeaters and so did everyone they knew of. Those networks were what insured real-time communications were possible from one end of the Imperium to the other.

Obviously, these aliens hadn’t yet developed that technology. She doubted they would take long to figure it out though. It was one of those techs that quickly came about once a civilization started traveling the stars. Communication was so vital to a civilization that naturally everyone would be looking to solve the slow speed of radio and photonic communications, at least by interstellar standards. Hell even before cracking the lightspeed barrier many civilizations were already looking into that. Especially if they already had a second colony in their own home star system. Even on a local system scale, sublight communication bands while faster than a courier ship would still take minutes, or even hours depending on how far away the recipient is from the sender. For most colonies that would be closer to the minute's scale, but some colonies might be hours away from the homeworld for a comm signal. Not only did that mean real-time communication wasn’t available, but in an emergency that slow communication could be a problem, especially for an outer system mining colony which would likely be hours away for a comm signal, and then even longer for a ship to actually arrive to provide aid. For spacefaring powers, it was quite obvious how insufficient a sublight comm system was for their needs, as the problems found on the local scale became exacerbated when you moved on to interstellar scales.

Regardless it was something to note, and it certainly placed another card in her inventory. She had no doubt that she would have to deal with them in the diplomatic arena. Since they were towing one of her own ships back to port it was evident enough that they were currently friendly, and had a sense of honor. Still, it was always best to act with an element of caution when meeting new civilizations. The academy still taught them about an incident during the early days of interstellar exploration. One where a small misunderstanding ended up sparking a war that lasted thirty years, and cost the lives of millions on both sides. A war that could have been avoided if they had been more cautious. Thankfully such incidents were rare, and the Imperium had learned from that encounter. Unfortunately, this encounter was happening more quickly than she would have liked, but there was little helping that. It just meant that she was going to have to be more careful. Hopefully, Ship-leader Tika could tell her what she would need to know to avoid any such misunderstandings. The Imperium had enough enemies, they didn’t need to be looking for more.

Glancing at the plot, she noticed that they were still too far for a proper conversation on short-range sublight comms. Close enough to connect, but there would be a very noticeable time delay. A few minutes now, but that was infinitely better than the hours it would have been when they first came out of warp on the edge of the system. They were moving at sublight speeds, but it was honestly at a fair clip. Not many ships would move at .8c for in-system transit. It spoke volumes that they weren’t even decelerating yet. She had a feeling they weren’t going to decelerate until they were practically on top of the port. Their engines however were rather unique so it was hard to really gauge what they could do. She did note that they were reactionless and emitted a faint graviton reading, perhaps some kind of anti-gravity engine. Although completely unlike any anti-grav engine she had seen before. The dispersion plating was more interesting. The enhancement field that ensured it maintained integrity actually had a rather high graviton reading count. That was interesting since it implied these aliens were using the graviton particle as part of a structural field. It was a novel and very different approach to structural fields.

It was also interesting since their technology might yield clues to solving a problem that had been stymieing the Imperium’s shield generator research for a little over a decade now. The Imperium was trying to produce a graviton-based shield matrix. A decade ago a novel prototype demonstrated the potential of such shielding. The prototype was able to completely protect the hull of an equipped vessel from battleship-grade plasma beam cannons, weapons that would normally rip through a shield with pure brute force. Unfortunately, it suffered from an abysmal recharge rate, the cause of this was difficulties faced with sufficient particle generation. The original prototype had required a starbase level power plant just to charge the matrix. 

Pushing that thought aside, she glanced at the plot again, and this time her eyes glanced over a report. She had skimmed it before, but she grabbed it again and started reading her mind once again working on the implications. Their weapons were interesting, but she had a feeling the Teketh’s crew hadn’t fully realized how special the particle cannons on those ships were. The cannons themselves weren’t what piqued her interest but rather how they dealt with waste energy. It was a very remarkable system, even in the scans that was evident. Even if some elements weren’t entirely obvious. From the look of things, they designed their system to shunt the entirety of the waste heat back into the primary capacitors, thereby reducing the amount of energy lost. Krall ships also made use of heat recyclers, but they couldn’t produce one able to take the full heat of each shot. That waste heat had to go somewhere, and they used a subspace radiator to dump excess heat into hyperspace. Subspace radiators were nifty little devices able to get rid of vast amounts of energy by radiating it into hyperspace. They even used a few dedicated to the shield grids, which vastly improved the mitigation rates of their shields. Naturally, those radiators were heavily classified and the specs for them were closely guarded.

The Valorians knew about them and were heavily interested in purchasing them, but at the moment the technology was not for sale. Besides the Valorians already had potent enough energy shields, they didn’t need to have them improving them further with subspace radiators. Although they didn’t want the tech just for the shields, but also their engines. The Valorians had a very efficient design for their warp drives, and it worked beautifully. It was a very elegant design, but like any warp drive the higher you pushed it the more heat the drive produced. The Valorians had been trying to breach the warp five barrier for decades now. Their ships were among some of the fastest in the region, but they capped out at warp four point eight two.  That made them slightly faster than the fastest hyperdrives in the region, and much faster than most Krall ships normally traveled. Although they could travel faster if they wanted to.

Glancing at the plot, she smiled when she noticed they were now in proper hailing range. The ships were also starting to decelerate, and with that reduction in speed came a spike in graviton emissions, a massive spike. That was interesting, and it seemed to conform to her earlier thought that their engines were some kind of anti-gravity engine, although not completely. The emissions were not pure graviton, but something else was mixed in as well. The resulting pulse waves from the drive were applying a fair amount of thrust as well. The ships had already cut their speed in half, and they had only just started breaking maneuvers. She hoped her officers were taking notes. In the meantime, she opened a channel to the Teketh first. Ship-leader Tika may have been thorough with her report, there was much left unsaid that was of more interest to her than the straight facts left in the report. She wanted her impressions and insights into these aliens. It was vital to the success of the battle she was about to undertake. A battle of wits more than anything else, but a battle nonetheless. One where argument and the strength of one’s word held paramount. As such, no weapon would suit her better on the battlefield than knowledge, and Tika was the one who held the knowledge she so sorely needed.

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Countryman shifted in his seat, glancing between the screens and his console. At the moment they were conducting final approach maneuvers and awaiting for docking instructions from the Krall starbase they were approaching. At the moment the starbase was talking to the Teketh, which was honestly expected.

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There was also some traffic in the area, not particularly heavy with about four hundred military ships in the system total at least that he could see. He had also noted the presence of several large vessels that he believed were freighters. The Starbase was the main orbital structure over the second planet of the system, which even from here looked to be fairly Earth-like, albeit warmer. Preliminary readings indicated vast swamps, and jungles covered much of the surface. There were a few deserts in the dryer equatorial regions, but no major settlements were there. The planet had quite a few large cities, and scans indicated a population of just under two billion. Thanks to Tika he knew a bit about this world. It was called Illeria, and it was one of the younger colonies in the Imperium with the first settlement being founded only thirty years ago. The Starbase and orbitals are more recent construction, built due to concerns over Cathamari aggression in the region, and the rising tensions between the Imperium and the Empire

Illeria is a modest colony, but she is the largest of the Krall settlements in this sector. Not to mention the center of their local military operations. The planet was chosen to be the center of those operations for two major reasons, first, it was already a major trade center which meant an existing supply chain was already here. It even apparently already had something called an ‘Inversion Gate.’ Honestly, it sounded a bit like a stargate, but it wasn’t. It was more of a catapult, with the second gate serving as a targeting beacon. Ships would arrive in the general vicinity of the gate, but they do not actually come through it. The gate didn’t sound like the safest thing, but apparently, there was some mechanism at play to ensure a ship didn’t emerge into real space in the same location as another ship. It was an interesting piece of technology, and apparently not the only stargate-esque piece of technology out there. Tika’s people used Inversion Drive, and both Humans and Cathamari used Warp Drive. There was another drive type out there called hyperdrive, and it was reasonably common just like warp drive.

Hyperdrive functions by making use of a domain called hyperspace but it was also called subspace. The domain of hyperspace conforms to somewhat different physical laws, that diverge more from normal space the deeper you go. The fastest hyperdrive equipped ships go no deeper than the third layer allowing for travel at about eight hundred times the speed of light. The stargate-esque hyperdrive technology is called a hypergate. Most hyperdrives are actually rather bulky, which prevents them from being mounted on anything other than a large capital ship. Hypergates are a workaround, they allow smaller ships unable to mount a hyperdrive to enter hyperspace. They can then travel to any other system that also has a Hypergate, and exit into normal space via that hypergate. This tech is closer than an Inversion Gate to a real stargate, but again it wasn’t really one, since the speed of ships using them is no different than a ship equipped with a normal hyperdrive. In fact, they were usually slower than ships that actually had a hyperdrive. Not to mention the requirement of a gate both for entry and exit also limited their usefulness. Despite that, they were used extensively, especially for intersystem trade. Both types of gate were something he wanted to have a look at. Even if they weren’t true stargates, they were still intriguing.

Misaki looked up from her console, and informed him, “We are being hailed by the starbase, sir.”

He smiled, “On screen.”

The forward screen view then shifted to display a Krall female, an older one by the looks of it. Although that was mostly a guess on his part. She smiled, or gave her equivalent of one, and said, “Greetings, and welcome to Ileira Starbase. I must thank you for your assistance, and I invite you to a discussion aboard our humble station.”

He replied, “Your welcome, and I accept your invitation.”

She seemed happy to hear that and then informed him, “I’m sending navigational instructions over to you now. You are clear to dock at capital dock four, I’m also sending a couple of tugs. They will take over towing of the Teketh, and tow her into berth so my engineers can get started on her repairs. I look forward to meeting you in person.”

They exchanged a few final pleasantries, and then closed the channel. Sure enough docking instructions were sent. He planned to follow them, and ordered Eri to follow the course they sent. Before they had been keeping out of the traffic on their own, but now that they had instructions it was best to respect common courtesy and follow them. True to the station commander’s word a couple of tugs were heading out their way as well. It seemed this meeting was going well so far, and as long as he kept Williams from doing anything stupid it would continue to go that way. They needed an ally and from what he could tell the Krall might just be the ally they were looking for.

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