At The Ending Was The Word

Thirty-Six Paths of Illumination, the (n.): A memetic mystery cult designed for the Imperial Exploratory Service by the Word of Command, ICC, the Thirty-Six Paths are designed as a means of handling severe cases of exodeism (q.v.).

In many cases, when primitive species conclude that it is necessary and proper to worship the “Shining Ones”, the “Great Star Gods”, or other such epithets, creative theology leads them to conclude that denials of divinity are merely a test for them, or indicative of avatar incarnation, or some such. In such cases, extreme denials or proof of non-divinity tend to cause severe backlash, societal disruption, and cultural implosion is not unknown, leaving aside the consequences for the unwilling gods.

Thus, the Thirty-Six Paths of Illumination are intended as a pathway to slowly and carefully wean exodeists and their societies from their faith in a manner designed to minimize the resulting personal alathkháln and societal consequences; a thirty-sixth level adept of the Paths is fully aware of the reality of the situation and equipped to join in enlightening those below.

Other visitors to worlds in which exodeism is prevalent and the Thirty-Sixth Paths are in effect are requested to cooperate by non-contradiction with the program, and warned that memetic safeties and countermeasures are woven into the memeplex.

– A Star Traveler’s Dictionary

 

The Risk Buffet

“All I’m asking,” the younger one said, “is whether you think it’s a good idea.”

“And all I’m saying is that I shouldn’t – can’t – tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a first-in scout.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Because I’m a first-in scout. Hear my meaning. I’m in a profession defined by hurling ourselves into the deep unknown with almost no idea of who or what we might find, then when we do find it, poking it repeatedly to see if it does something interesting. If I had a normal soph’s risk appetite, I’d have gone into Survey work, or the family trade, or become an accountant. I became a first-in scout because I’m chronically insensitive to caution. We all are.”

She took a deep breath.

“And that is why you should never ask me for advice on what’s appropriate for you.”

 

Trope-a-Day: Bold Explorer

Bold Explorer: While I shall leave specific examples to individual fics and so forth, they have a lot of these in the Imperial Exploratory Service, and especially in the first-in scouts and volunteers to crew (as infomorphs) far horizon probes. You have to be a little bit crazy to go boldly where no soph has gone before, and all that.

Sung Wherever The Imperial Exploratory Service Buys Liquor

(Very lightly filkificated for somewhat-inebriated Eldraeverse purposes from “Space Shanty“, by The Senate. The vast majority of the words remain theirs.)

Oh, the whiskey is floatin’, won’t stay in me glass –
I’m weightless and spinning and drunk off me ass.
Oh, the whiskey is floatin’ in a sphere o’er me head –
If we don’t hit this window we’ll surely be dead.

So reach for the whiskey, sophs, reach for the stars!
They won’t stop us drinking on old Talentar1
So reach for the whiskey, sophs, reach for the sky!
Ere the vacuum of space sucks the bottles all dry.

Oh, infinite profit awaits us in space –
We’ll seek out and contact with fervor and grace.
New worlds and new sophonts we simply adore –
Let’s party where no-one has partied before.

So reach for the whiskey, sophs, reach for the stars!
They won’t stop us drinking on old Talentar –
So reach for the whiskey, sophs, reach for the sky!
Ere the vacuum of space sucks the bottles all dry.


1. As mentioned before, Talentar produces a lot of grain for the rest of the system. And what else is there where there’s grain and engineers?

Yep.

 

Zoom

2016_Z(Alternative words: zettahertz.)

Today’s question for Dr. Science is, “What’s the biggest optical telescope in the Empire? How far can it see?”

Over the years, a great many different telescopes have held that particular title: from the Great Eye at the Starspike (Eliéra’s oldest observatory, dating to the pre-Imperial era), through the first orbital telescopes, the large refractor at Farside Observatory, Seléné, and the Deep Orbit Oculus in far Súnáris orbit.

All, however, were rapidly outclassed by the discovery of very-long-baseline interferometry, which uses a technique referred to as aperture synthesis to correlate signals from a set of telescopes to produce images having the same angular resolution as an instrument the diameter of the entire set. Some limited use was made of these techniques with ground-based and orbital instruments, restricted by the difficulty in accurately quantifying optical-range photons for software processing, but once these difficulties were solved, construction began on much larger interferometric telescopes. Three particular examples of these held the title of largest optical telescope in turn, and while the others have been upgraded and remain in use, it is the last of these retains it today.

The first of these, the Barrascán Array, was constructed in the Meryn System, consisting of an array of millions of statites (produced by self-replicating, autoindustrial techniques) 48 light hours in diameter. Intended for general observation, the array possesses an angular resolution of 1.12 x 10-20 radians, enabling it to resolve objects 20 cm across at 2,250 light-years (i.e., the current fringe of the Associated Worlds, which was then unknown space).

The second, intended to carry out both exploration surveys and long-range observations of the galactic core, was the Very Long Baseline Observer, which made use of smaller arrays of deep-orbit telescopes located in systems across the width of the Empire, each reporting via the interstellar dataweave to the Exploratory Service’s headquarters in Almeä System. This gave it an effective diameter of 164 light-years, and thus an angular resolution of 3.74 x 10-25 radians, giving it the capability of resolving with micrometer resolution objects throughout the Starfall Arc, should its view be unobstructed. Indeed, if not for intervening objects, planetary rotation, local weather, and other such obstructions, it would be capable of reading a book over the shoulder of a sophont on any world in the galaxy — were one to pass within its view, since as you can imagine, an array of array of telescopes 164 light-years across is somewhat unwieldy to maneuver.

The apex of this technology is the Super-Size Synthetic Aperture, intended for in-depth studies of the deep universe. The SSSA takes the general concept of the VLBO even further by extending the array – by means of various treaty arrangements and leases – across much of the width of the Associated Worlds, reporting data back over tangle channels. Its effective diameter is no less than 1,825 light-years, giving it a theoretical angular resolution of 3.36 x 10-26 radians – which is to say, it can resolve a 33 m object at the rim of the observable universe.

The SSSA, however, is limited by the larger gaps between its elements, which are themselves limited to a single mobile telescope per system, and thus in turn by the amount of light collectable by each of these individual telescopes. It is also, unfortunately, constrained by the difficulty of maneuvering and recalibrating such a massive device, and by the political difficulties of passing through many different polities during reorientation, which tends to cause lengthy delays, increased costs, and where no permission can be obtained, gaps in array coverage. For most practical purposes, therefore, the VLBO can be considered the largest general-purpose optical telescope available to the Empire.

Dr. Science

– from Children’s Science Corner magazine

 

Trope-a-Day: Aliens Steal Cable

Aliens Steal Cable: Sort of true – despite the various technical problems mentioned in the trope, it is a very popular way to acquire a linguistic and cultural corpus from worldbound civilizations before making contact. But it involves both (a) studying their technology to figure out the signal encoding, and then (b) parking a probe somewhere close in to their system and/or placing a tap on their Internet-equivalent to gather uncorrupted signals. You can’t just do it easily over interstellar distances, especially if you don’t know that it’s there.

Hornéd Moon-class starfighter

(Note: for the avoidance of confusion, this is not the same starfighter class as Raymond McVay has been posting over on the G+ fan community; so don’t be confused by the differences…)

“It looks like a blueberry croissant.”

“Blueberry croissant… of DEATH!”

– overheard at Golden Groves (Principalities) starport

HORNÉD MOON-CLASS STARFIGHTER

Operated by: Empire of the Star (Imperial Navy, Imperial State Security, & Imperial Exploratory Service; reliable UARC-sponsored mercenaries)
Type: Starfighter, Orbital and Near-Space Operations
Construction: Ashen Planitia Fleet Yards

Length: 24.8 m
Beam: 60.4 m

Gravity-well capable: Yes
Atmosphere capable: Yes (depending on loadout)

Personnel: 2 nominal, as follows:

Flight Commander / Sailing Master
Flight Engineer

AI expert system support.

(Can operate with a single pilot.)

Additional life support capacity exists to support four passengers in addition, although this requires hot-bunking in three shifts.

Drive: Nucleodyne Thrust Applications 2×1 “Little Sparky” antimatter-catalyzed fusion torch drive
Propellant: Deuterium slush / metallic antideuterium
Cruising (sustainable) thrust: 10.2 standard gravities (9.6 Earth G)
Peak (unsustainable) thrust: 14.0 standard gravities (13.2 Earth G)
Maximum velocity: 0.3 c (based on particle shielding)

Drones:

4 x hardpoint mountings for AKVs, typically Slasher-class

(Hardpoint mountings can also hold single-legionary drop pods, Piton-class, or covert ops equivalents.)

Sensors:

1 x standard navigational sensor suite, Cilmínar Spaceworks
1 x enhanced passive tactical sensor suite, miniature, Sy Astronautic Engineering Collective
1 x enhanced-resolution planetary surface-scan sensor suite, Imperial Exploratory Service (spec.)

Weapons:

“Flyswatter” point-defense laser grid, Artifice Armaments

Other Systems:

Artifice Armaments cyclic kinetic barrier system
Cilmínar Spaceworks Mark III long-duration canned/semi-regenerative life support
3 x Bright Shadow EC-780 information furnace data systems
Ashen Planitia 1-SF vector-control core and associated technologies
Cilmínar Spaceworks high-capacity thermal sinks and integrated radiator system
Aleph Null Systems tactical communications suite

Small craft:

None.

The Hornéd Moon-class is a small starfighter intended for fast attack and fast insertion missions in planetary orbit and deploying to the surface. As such, it has atmospheric capability, and even the ability to land.

In overall form, it resembles – as the quotation indicates – a croissant or crescent moon of flying-wing conformation, with the thin “inside” edge of the crescent facing forward. The two forward-facing points of the crescent are rounded, and rise to a near-cylinder at the for’ard end, and a rectangular section of the central section is “humped” at the rear; this contains the drives, whose nozzles protrude from this rectangular shroud aft.

Atop the starfighter, paired hardpoints on the dorsal hull to port and starboard hold the AKVs, when mounted. Additional mountings near them permit jettisonable fairings to be used to permit atmospheric entry or departure when non-streamlined AKVs are carried.

In between them, atop and for’ard of the drive shroud, radiative striping mounted directly atop the hull, beneath protective shutters, provides heat dissipation. To provide additional control (to the reaction wheel system) when in atmosphere, a number of multiple-purpose aerodynamic control surfaces are mounted along the leading edge of the hull, and to two small vertical stabilizers at the port and starboard edges of the drive shroud. Deployable rollagon landing gear are fitted ventrally in a multiple tailwheel configuration.

The main body of the ship is entirely devoted to fuel storage, with multiple deuterium tanks wrapping around the small antimatter cryocels for maximum protection. Meanwhile, the starboard near-cylinder provides housing for the ship’s avionics, including (beneath the forward-mounted radome and associated shuttered ports) for the triple sensor suites and tactical communications systems.

The starship’s small habitable area is located in that to port; the forward-facing airlock (whose outermost section is covered by a retractable streamlining fairing and extendable airstair) at far port gives onto a short corridor providing access to, in order, the ship’s bridge (behind an open viewport for close-maneuvering use), a two-pod sleeping area, a small room tripling as galley, fab shop, and rest area, and a single-person ‘fresher at corridor end. Limited avionics and life support access is possible through panels in this area; however, there is no pressurized access to the main avionics bay in the starboard near-cylinder or to engineering systems; such access requires EVA. Likewise, if drop pods are carried, access to those (for pre-deployment boarding, say) is only possible through EVA.

 

Sniff, Sniff

“In reality, there is no such thing as a life detector. Vitalism long since having joined the scientific junk-heap, it is a regrettable fact of the universe that there is no quick, convenient, and universal ‘vital field’ that we can tap into to determine the presence of living beings.

“But there is a life detection routine in the computers of your scout ship, you ask? How does that work?

“The answer is: approximation.  We know a variety of things that suggest the presence of life. The most obvious example are the signifiers of technological civilization: patterned electromagnetic emissions, the characteristic neutrino products of controlled fusion reactions, and so forth. Where there is technology, there was someone to build it – at least at some point or another, and so the probable detection of technology is also the probable detection of life.

“But there are those few common characteristics that all life does have in common. Self-replication is one, not – by and large – terribly useful for quick detection. Existing within a solvent – for a broad definition of solvent encompassing everything from nebulae to degenerate matter – is another, which can at least tell us where not to look. But of most use is the last: life is an entropy pump. It depends upon energy differentials and pumps against the natural flow, maintaining and causing inequilibria.

That gives us something to look for.

“A life detection routine hunts through the data collected by primary sensors looking for such inequilibria. Reactive gases – such as oxygen – remaining a significant component of a planetary atmosphere, implying their continuous production. Sustained low-level thermal sources, suggesting managed combustion or other energy transaction – bearing in mind that what is to be considered low-level is very different for the outer-system múrast and the star-dwelling seb!nt!at! While almost impossible to detect at any but the closest range, the electromagnetic emissions of high-order informational complexity associated with cognition are the most reliable sign – for life that is both intelligent and which makes use of electronic or electrochemical signals in its ‘nervous system’. These, and tens of thousands of other experience-learnt rules, continuously updated, are programmed into the expert system that underlies the life detection routines used by the Exploratory Service.

“It’s still no more than 80% accurate, yielding commonly both false positives and – worse yet, if missed – false negatives, and so the wise scout never trusts such a system without a close, personal investigation. But it can tell you where to place your bets.”

– A Junior Explorer’s Handbook, Vevery Publishing

 

Starships of the Imperial Exploratory Service

Of course, what I didn’t establish in the previous posting is exactly where the Empress Eledíë-class fits into the line-up of starship classes used by the Imperial Exploratory Service, so that I shall expand upon in this post. The short answer is: basically, pretty much in the middle, in what we might call the “cruiser-weight” classes.

Now, it’s somewhat harder than it might otherwise be to list all the classes the IES uses, because they’re big believers in the philosophy of modular design and assemble a lot of specialized starships of one-off classes from parts when there’s a mission requirement (like, say, Sniffer Packet), or even a mission convenience, to do so. But if one excludes those, a list of the most commonly used classes would read something like this, smallest to largest:

Clairvoyance-class far horizon probe

Which, as starwisps, are accompanied, naturally, by the previously described Lucifer VI-class starwisp tenders. The far horizon probes are tiny, solid-state AI craft whose job is to be the real “first in” explorers to any given star system, working beyond the boundaries of the stargate plexus, out in the Outback, looking for interesting systems to poke around in.

Inquisity-class planetary exploration vehicle
Vertiginous-class planetary exploration vehicle

The lineal descendants of the rovers and robots that did the first planetary exploration way back in the heyday of the first Spaceflight Initiative, like Wayseeker, the planetary exploration vehicles carry out similar missions of groundside investigation even today.

There are two distinct classes of PEV for two distinct types of planets: the rather more common Inquisity-class drives along the ground (or occasionally floats) for investigating those planets that have ground. The Vertiginous-class, contrariwise, flies throughout its mission, for investigating those planets that really don’t.

Aval Cyprium-class microscout

The chosen vessel of first-in scouts, the Aval Cyprium-class (named after famous historical explorers, starting with the one who found the Edgestorm the hard way) is a single/double-person landing-capable starship found flooding into newly opened constellations and chasing reports of anomalies all over the Worlds for the IES, doing preliminary investigations and figuring out if there’s need for follow-up and, if so, of what kind.

Peregrine-class scout

The bigger cousin of the Aval Cyprium, similarly landing-capable but with a crew of a dozen and a replaceable laboratory module that can be swapped out to suit the requirements of the mission specialists aboard, the Peregrine is the “little workhorse” of the IES, doing a lot of those follow-up investigations and much of the general work of exploration and survey. When doing a whole-system or multiple-system workup, several of these will often accompany a –

Empress Eledíë-class explorer

As described here. This is the first “cruiser-weight”, as you might put it, vessel of the IES. It’s the “big workhorse”, the dedicated exploration vessel that takes lead in going where no sophont but a first-in scout has gone before, and turns their notes on what a system is like into a complete, detailed, scrupulously accurate work-up suitable for inclusion in the Repository of All Knowledge.

It also serves as the go-to craft for any large exploration missions of virtually any profile. It’s flexible and modular enough to support a wide range of roles, so when something needs investigated on a large enough scale that you can’t fit the mission profile or the mission specialists into a Peregrine, you send for an Empress Eledíë.

Chatelaine-class surveyor

The second of the cruiser-weights, the Chatelaine-class is a specialized variant of the Empress Eledíë used by the IES’s sister organization, the Imperial Grand Survey, whose job rather than pushing into and exploring the unknown is comprehensively cataloging and checking on the known, and maintaining the essential infrastructure that keeps the known known.

(Less respectful IES personnel sometimes deride the IGS as being naught but a bunch of asteroid-counters and beacon-fixers. The IGS responds that it’s all very well going off and having adventures, but if you want to be able to find your way home and be sure that it hasn’t been smacked by an errant comet in the meantime, thank them.)

Calria Adae-class establisher (DSOV)

The third, the Calria Adae-class (named after the first soph on one of Eliéra’s moons), looks very much like a miniature colony ship, because it is. When the IES needs to plant a hab (bigger, obviously, than an inflatable temp) or a planetside outpost somewhere for long-term studies to be carried out, these are the starships that do that. 

Hello, World-class contact cruiser

And the fourth of these, the Hello, World-class, is a specially dedicated vessel for the task of making First Contact with New Life and New Civilizations. It has more in common with the IN’s cruisers than most IES starships – hence its designation – because, sadly, experience teaches that sometimes, things don’t go smooth. 

(Not necessarily meaning hostile aliens, of course. Sometimes it just means having to shoot down a whole bunch of ICBMs because  anything appearing in the sky is obviously a secret weapon of their local planetary enemy of the day. Eye roll obligatory.)

Sung Iliastren-class mobile research base

The really, really big one, for when they need to science the shit out of something in a hurry, the Sung Iliastren-class (named after the natural philosopher who basically invented the scientific method thereabouts) is a dreadnought- or even superdreadnought-sized agglomeration of laboratories, supercomputing centers, and other science-oriented facilities with a suitably large propulsion bus stuck on the end. 

When you need an entire research institute somewhere in a hurry, this is what you call for. After serious budget approval. 

(In some particularly interesting locations, there are very permanent-looking research stations that are actually one of these covered in a couple of centuries’ accumulation of add-on modules and temps.)

Empress Eledíë-class explorer

So, if you were following my G+, this is what I said this morning:

Well, since The Martian , and seeing their gorgeous model of Hermes , I’ve had a real urge to design the Empress Eledíë-class explorer, which one might be able to claim resembles its bigger, upteched, somewhat more Raygun Gothic cousin, but still from the same essential design school.

(This may slightly confuse people who’ve seen William Black‘s awesome rendering of the Drake-class frigate. The answer is that the Empire has multiple schools of spacecraft design: the Drake and its colleagues have their sleek, unitary look because the necessities of building starships that get shot at a lot, especially in the ‘can classes, mandate packing everything you can inside the well-braced armored shell.

The more commercial ships, the Cheneos-class and Kalantha-class freighters, for example, have a more industrial look that eschews the above for efficiency, although still with the Imperial eye for beauty.

And so the Imperial Exploratory Service’s vessels, the direct lineal inheritors of the scientific, research-oriented, modular tradition going all the way back to the Spaceflight Initiative, reflect that in every line of their design.)

So, yes, I’m mucking around with some preliminary sketches and numbers for that. Post at later.

Well, turns out that’s not stringently true, because I have yet to produce some sketches which satisfy me even to the level of the various dubious sketches posted here before. But what I can give you is a nice verbal sketch of the design layout, so here we go.

The Empress Eledíë (a class named after the founder of the Imperial Exploratory Service, if you were wondering), like the Hermes, is essentially a spinal design; it’s built around a long central passage-core, in this case a cylindrical axial passage and conduit space nested inside an octet truss, with internal handguide tracks for getting about the length of the ship quickly, and a matched pair of very long emergency ladders for those occasions on which it’s necessary to move about under thrust when the microgravity-sustaining space magic isn’t working. (This is not a recommended procedure.)

(To simplify matters in the following description, I’m going to use the standard IN nomenclature of defining cardinal directions perpendicular to the thrust axis as dorsal, starboard, ventral, and port. These are, of course, entirely arbitrary: the designers simply defined a 0° meridian and allocated names to directions at 90° angles therefrom. But they’re convenient for description.)

There are two places in the design where things aren’t simply hung off the spine, at the furthest extent of the bow and the stern. At the bow, this is the foreshield and the cargo pod. Like most sensible tail-lander designs – not that this class does or could ever land – this also includes the for’ard airlock, which is the starship’s primary airlock.

But you need a foreshield, or something to fulfill its function, when you’re going to go flying around on top of powerful drives. So at the bow, the spine expands into a support frame around the outside of the cargo pod, which in turn supports the foreshield. The axial passage runs through the cargo pod to the for’ard airlock. (Having the cargo pod right up here makes it nice and easy to move supplies in and out.) The pod includes vacuum-accessible cargo holds mounted on its surface at the cardinal directions, to store big items intended for use outside, like replacement probes and cutter modules.

The foreshield itself is a large convex plate divided into four quarter-circle segments, mounted at the 45° intervals onto the surface of the cargo pod by damn great motorized arms. When you need to use the for’ard airlock, these arms pull the plate segments out and back to expose it and let you dock, or something dock to you.

Moving aft, the next thing we encounter are the communications and sensor towers. The actual towers are to dorsal and ventral, and are designed to extend, raising the forest of antennae and telescopes and dishes and sensors at their tips to the point that they can look beyond the foreshield, when the ship’s not under hard burn. Lesser geodesics to port and starboard house the continuously operating navigational sensors.

A minor bulge a short distance behind them houses the working elements of the for’ard reaction control system.

Aft of those, four cylindrical-with-rounded-ends bitat pods, very similar but differentiated by minor features (the bridge has a cupola for visibility, for example, and the robot hotel has an airlock for the maintenance ‘bots to clamber up and down the spine), strapped onto the truss provide working space: the bridge from which the ship is navigated to dorsal, the sensory analysis center to ventral, and the robot hotel and some auxiliary engineering space to port and starboard, respectively.

Next up, the low power radiators (to port and starboard), for dissipating modest amounts of heat from life support and other auxiliary systems that aren’t the reactor and drive.

We now enter the pleasingly symmetrical central section of the ship, with the for’ard gravity wheel, the habitation wheel, which rotates clockwise on a four-spoked mount. It comes with crew quarters, the galley and mess, the gymnasium, the library, recreational areas, and various other your-home-in-space facilities.

Behind that is the docking cruciform, in which a symmetrical four-fold expansion of the spine hosts secondary airlocks. On an Empress Eledíë with its standard loadout, these carry the starship’s small craft – standard Élyn-class microcutters, capable of commuting to and from planetary surfaces. A supporting framework helps secure them while under thrust.

In the middle of this section, a bigger cylindrical pod which wraps around the axis, is the ship’s park. The central part of that is exactly what it says on the tin, an open microgravity space that functions as a park and greenhouse, serving both to freshen the air and replenish the food supply, and to provide some open space to help people from going space crazy on long missions. Tankage for life support and spare water and so forth is wrapped around the outside, which lets it double pretty effectively as a caisson, in case of solar flares that the regular shielding can’t manage.

Aft of that is the laboratory cruciform. These aren’t the main labs, however: the cruciform structure itself is basically identical to the docking cruciform. In the standard loadout, though, it holds the hot labs, which are Bigelow-style inflatable habitats used for additional microgravity lab space. With the advantages of being isolated by the airlocks, and readily detached from the rest of the starship in the event of some artifactual oops.

And at the aft end of the symmetrical section, the aft gravity wheel, the laboratory wheel, which has a similar four-spoked mount to the habitation wheel, but rotates anticlockwise, thus cancelling out the gyroscopic effect of all this spin gravity as much as possible. It contains laboratories, workshops, and other research-oriented facilities. Most importantly, it contains a segment that’s offset to the outboard, whose “floor” opens up; this is the probe garage, so designed to allow probes to simply be dropped through the floor and centrifugal force to carry them outward and away from the starship, clear of the shielding and to safety range, before engine ignition.

Aft of this, finally, we now reach the drive and engineering section. First, of course, we reach the propellant tanks, multiple layers of D/He3 tanks strapped onto the truss serving in their double role as fuel bunkerage and radiation shadow shield, and right behind them, at the 45° intervals, the four high power radiators to carry away the heat from the reactors and the drive. The pressurized axial passage within the truss ends at this point in a heavily shielded airlock: it’s mostly the ship’s mechs that climb further back down the truss, and even when sophonts do, they go outside to do so.

Beyond this point the spine begins to broaden into the drive-supporting thrust frame through which’s volume the various high-power engineering machinery is fixed, including the power reactors, the vector-control core, and so forth, and on top of which is surface-mounted the clusters of the aft reaction control system,

And then, at its base, the clustered fusion torch drive that pushes the whole starship along.

(Keep well clear.)

Echoes

ESniffer Packet hung invisibly in place, far above the ecliptic of this nameless Ember-class star, whose sole distinction was its position nearly 800 light-orbits from Chanq (Vanlir Edge). The starwisp was a speck in a soap bubble; trailing behind it, the flimsy, filamentary acres of its light sail now re-rigged to keep it in position near the star’s pole.

Meanwhile, frantic activity bubbled the surface of the wisp core, its few grains of mass dissolving as the ‘wisp’s nanomachine payload went active. Shielding and raw mass were devoured as core programming took over from the transit processor, using the last fragments of power available in the tiny radiothermal generator to kick off the transformation process, exuding thin fragments of wire mesh plated with magnetic stiffeners, solar collection foil, and nodal nanocomputer signal processors – using the mesh itself as an antenna, capable of acting together as a single radio telescope a mile wide, absorbing all radio bands from the log-2 to the log-9.

The a-chanq civilization had fallen barely a decade before the Worlds had reached them.

But with the help of thrust and fortunate stellar geometry, the Exploratory Service could still hear their echoes.

Clarke’s Third Law

Or, A Typical (Paraphrased) Exploratory Service Response To The Embarrassing Problem of Xenodeism:

“So you’re some sort of gods?”

“That depends.”

“Depends?”

“If you mean: do we possess assorted skills, powers, devices, and other techne capable of duplicating pretty much any miracle attributed to the mythological deities of yore, yes. If you mean: are we exemplary, awesome, righteous, and worthy of emulation in all things, we’re flattered, and maybe. If you mean: should you get on your knee-equivalents and start grovelling before us in worship, knock that shit off right now.”

Trope-a-Day: Military Moonshiner

Military Moonshiner: Played straight for some reason, despite the fact that neither the Imperial Navy nor the Imperial Legions is a dry organization.

(Also in the Imperial Exploratory Service, which contains the expected number of people who consider “can we make booze out of it?” to be one of the mandatory tests worth performing on alien plant life.)

Let There Be Light

Lucifer VI-class Starwisp Tender

With the ongoing spread of the stargate plexus, it became rapidly apparent to the Imperial Exploratory Service that it would rapidly become impracticable to continue to launch trans-horizon probes from its existing fixed facilities, and indeed that to construct new launch facilities at the current edge of the stargate plexus would, in the long term, be economically foolish as growth continued to render them obsolete in turn.

To resolve this problem, they commissioned the design of the Lucifer-class starwisp tender, now in its sixth design iteration. The tender is essentially a complete phased-array laser capable of accelerating a starwisp (probe or otherwise) to not only normal relativistic velocities, but to the high-relativistic range (0.95 to 0.99 lights), coupled to a deployable solar swarm capable of generating sufficient power, when in close solar orbit, to power the laser array, all mounted upon a fusion torch drive sufficient to move the tender between systems, albeit slowly and with low maneuverability at best. A hangar and maintenance facility suitable for housing and readying for deployment the starwisps themselves awkwardly perched on the side of the core ship completes the design. No quarters for biosapient crew are provided on the Lucifer-class; it is intended for long-term deployment under full automation, with only the occasional presence of infomorph crew required for optimal operation.

29 Lucifer-class vessels are in commission at the present date, of which 24 are attached to the Exploratory Service in its joint program (with Ring Dynamics, ICC) of probing highly-rated prospect systems in the Outback to plan future plexus expansion. The remaining five vessels are registered to various private relativistic-trade consortia. Of these, 20 are of the Lucifer VI-class, seven of the preceding Lucifer V-class, and two, the oldest, of the Lucifer IV-class. Lucifer itself, class prototype for the first design iteration, is permanently stationed at Almeä L4 as a museum ship. All other Lucifer-class starships are believed to have been decommissioned.

It is also worth noting that reading the class specifications, which are precisely correct in stating the Lucifer-class’s lack of formal weaponry and civilian classification, appears to generate in some few pirates and hijackers (those, for instance, responsible for the attacks on Photophoros, Luminary, and Radiance) the incautious ambition necessary to pick a fight with an 864 terawatt highly-collimated laser intended for use over interstellar distances – thus clearly demonstrating, perhaps, the distinction between knowledge and wisdom.

– Fíerí’s Starships of the Associated Worlds, 421st ed.;
Vol. IX: Esoterica

An Inglorious Coda

Arkuel Múras: Where’s next on the agenda?

Ethly 0x4414CC2B:  Freylis.  Fourth planet of Ardylis in the Dark Sea, two moons, oxy-nitro-water garden world with a levo-protein, levo-lipid, dextro-carbohydrate, DNA-encoding ecology.  And most interestingly, a former sophont civilization, or what’s left of it.

Arkuel Múras: How former?

Ethly 0x4414CC2B: By the aging on the city cores and the radio shell, five or six centuries, approximately, and the remaining artificial satellites and the artifacts we found on the major moon – some rocket parts, scientific instruments, and monumental engravings, dating to perhaps a century or century and one half before the end – would bear that out, as would the current levels of common industrial pollutants in the atmosphere and the available bioarchaelogical records showing their fall from a peak shortly before that time.

There are some signs that the civilization took some time to die out – the remaining cities appear to have been abandoned from the outside in, suggesting a population eroding by attrition.  No signs of general war or natural disaster.

Moiré Andracanth-ith-Cyranth: These satellites – any habitats, shipyards?  Signs of star travel?

Ethly 0x4414CC2B: No, no habitable stations.  The technology of the artificial satellites is equivalent to our Middle Information Age, which suggests that they could have had the technological capability, but don’t appear to have exercised it.  The technology of the lunar artifacts is older, pre-Information Age, I would say, but no later —

Moiré Andracanth-ith-Cyranth: Feh.  It’s another bloody choker.

Ethly 0x4414CC2B: Choker?

Moiré Andracanth-ith-Cyranth: Pedant.  General Socioeconomic Systems Failure, Etiology Unknown.

(pause)

The biosapient equivalent of an elliptic collapse.  Where a civilization stops or greatly slows development for one reason or another – one economic blind-alley or another, factional protection, neophobia, safety paralysis – runs the complexity overhead of their socioeconomic systems up beyond what their infotrophic pyramid can support, relying on the legacy of the past to keep going – then discover the hard way once they start slipping that they can’t build back up again.  In this particular model, they keep ignoring the problems until they slip all the way.  It’s a classic civ-killer trap.

Arkuel Múras: Anyway, back on topic, gentlesophs.  Any exceptional recommendations for this one?

Moiré Andracanth-ith-Cyranth: Anything particularly unusual about their technology that, say, our cousins over at Probable Technologies would be interested in?  Or any connections to other extant civilizations?

Ethly 0x4414CC2B: Nothing in what we’ve been able to dig up so far.  The cities are all pretty wrecked, anyway, not much to find even partially intact.

Moiré Andracanth-ith-Cyranth: So, a fossil world in a bad part of space with nothing but some academic archaeology and a few artifacts for museums of the ironic going for it?  Scrub it.  File the plat and toss it to the auction guys at the Registry.

Ethly 0x4414CC2B: Well, there could be some interesting successor species… but, yes, not a high priority for us, I must concur.

Arkuel Múras: I also agree.  Good.  Where’s next up?

Ethly 0x4414CC2B: Galróp.  Third major moon of a gas giant, fifth planet of Pesdiné, in…

– from the minutes of an IES review meeting

Dedicated to the alt-text of this xkcd strip, but noting that studied, and remembered – especially in any grander sense than a footnote in a dossier in a filing cabinet in storage room 32-3-C-19(a)may be a little too hopeful, at least when you consider that the people who will find them have an entire galaxy filled with cultures that haven’t got EPIC FAIL scrawled right across them to play with, instead.

To Boldly Go

“INASMUCH as the proven success of the Thirteen Colonies and their foundation by means of lighthugger colony ships has demonstrated the viability of such starships for interstellar voyaging;

“And inasmuch as the reconnection of the Thirteen Colonies to the metropolitan Empire and our Reunification has demonstrated the potential of the stargates to permit fast travel and communication between established worlds;

“And inasmuch as the trusty and profitable relationship between the eldrae of the colony of Galáré and the galari whose homeworld Galáré is has demonstrated the great value of relations, formal and informal, with the other sophont species of our galaxy;

“And inasmuch as Our scientists have detected signs that demonstrate, to a high order of probability, that such sophont life abounds in the universe beyond our few systems;

“And inasmuch as the quest for knowledge and advancement is a core principle of Our Empire;

“WE hereby direct the formation of an IMPERIAL EXPLORATORY SERVICE to seek out and survey systems and worlds beyond the frontiers of Our Empire, and to make contact with such sophont species as may exist thereupon in Our name.”

– Her Divine Majesty Eledië II, Imperial edict “On the Exploratory Service”, 10 years post-Reunification

World Within World

The history of Thalíär remains a mystery.

On this point, I must first acknowledge the salience of my colleagues’ reports.  The various shafts, canyons, and large-scale gaps in the upper and middle planetary surfaces do not occur in any geometric, fractal, or other discernible ordered pattern, nor do the edges of these phenomena appear even as regular as cleavage planes, or to bear tool-marks.  Variation in atmospheric pressure from the uppermost point of the planetary surface (Sardal’s Peak) to the lowest (the Undersea surface at the Thunder Well), a distance of 3.2 miles, follows natural expectations based upon its composition and the low planetary gravity.  The planetary ecology shows no signs of engineering, and while partially differentiated across the world’s layers, clearly shares a common origin.  There are no signs of artificial constructions, including the absence of convenient or evidently engineered paths between layers, and the walls and pillars which support the middle and upper crusts appear to be entirely composed of native rock, with no trace of exotic materials familiar to us from known Precursor megastructures, or indeed presently unknown.  All these factors, while not in themselves conclusive, are indeed suggestive of a non-artificial origin for this planet.

Nonetheless, I and my survey team are unanimous in concluding that no known geophysical mechanism could result in the triple-crust shell-world structure seen here on Thalíär, nor have we been able to postulate or simulate any mechanism or combination of mechanisms that could result in this or any similar structure.  While this is no more conclusive than the circumstantial evidence for natural origin listed above, our inability to construct a reasonable hypothesis to explain Thalíar’s structure in natural terms, in the light of our studies of the hundreds of planets so far examined in detail by the Exploratory Service, strongly suggests that Thalíär is nonetheless a construct.

In summary, therefore, the Thalíär Expedition concludes that it has no damned idea how this world came to be, nor, in the absence of new evidence, new exploratory techniques, or the artist’s signature coming to light, does it expect this situation to change in the near term.

– Geologist Excellence Cymnea Steamweaver,
reports on the Thalíär (Principalities) shell-world

Mentoring Newbies

“One of the most challenging diplomatic posts – in my own opinion, right after being posted to a hostile star nation – is that of ambassador to a planet that has only recently been contacted by the Exploratory Service.  While the Contact team will have done their best to explain to the newly contacted planet the essentials of the milieu in which they now find themselves, the details of ‘the Galactic way of doing things’ will frequently be yours to convey.  In addition, while most star nations have had the rough edges rubbed off their cultures by exposure to the greater galaxy, the same cannot be said of recently Contacted worlds, which therefore pose additional challenges.”

“Another aspect of such ambassadorships is that newly contacted worlds are frequently the recipients of large amounts of attention, both diplomatic, if other star nations are active in the area, and commercial, as starcorporations and trading combines both Imperial and foreign descend in the pursuit of new products and new markets, while the recently Contacted world itself will often seek to establish relationships with greater galactic powers, and to gain technological advancement through trade.  Helping a newly Contacted planet navigate these shoals while avoiding the appearance of attempted domination is one of the most difficult balancing acts the Diplomatic Service has to offer, and successfully doing so often a crown to an individual’s career.”

– Calen Minaxianos-ith-Minaxianos, “Ninety Years Abroad”

Hello, World

“In general, you will find in fiction that most Contact missions are portrayed as relatively subtle.  In reality, this is almost never the case.  The experience of the Exploratory Service shows that when one makes contact in too subtle a manner, one is actually signaling – in a remarkably effective pan-species manner – that one is being too sneaky for the Contacted civilization’s good.  A number of historical contact missions have gone wrong this way.  In addition, this can prove particularly perilous when making Contact with a multi-polity world; the contact cruiser may be taken for a superweapon or signs of an attack by some of those polities, and the Contact attempt may start a planetary war.  Even when this mistake can be cleaned up afterwards, such missions rarely end well.

“Consequently, Imperial Contact doctrine eschews subtlety, wherever possible.  Be big, be loud, be brash,  send messages across half the system to announce your arrival, make sure the local watchers see you – take a hundred hours off the life of your hull shooting atmosphere entry, if you must, but make sure that the Contact can be detected by as many people as possible, and cannot possibly be seen for anything other than what it is, a genuine extraplanetary Contact.  It almost always pays off in the long run.”

– Imperial Exploratory Service, An Introduction to Contact