“Hello, early morning shift!” I proclaim to the room as Sylvie and I enter the watchroom.

“Hi, Ash,” Alex replies. “We got an asteroid today. Huzzah.”

Des, looking at the real-time map of all of the known objects in space shown on the wall, laughed. “I told you, you big dolt.”

“Just because it isn’t exciting doesn’t mean it isn’t still more exciting,” Alex grumbles in return.

“Good news, Destiny,” Sylvie jumps in, “I got another chapter almost done for you. Ash helped me figure out what my problem was during your watch. Just needs a bit of time for editing, and then you’ll get it in your inbox.”

“You know I’ll be looking forward to it!”

“And, Alex, the answer was not a dream sequence,” I add as an aside. “I’m sorry, maybe it’ll fit in later, but it was not the right time for it.”

“Really? Well, fine, I guess. Stay sane, as you watch this all-too-static screen, friends.”

“You know we’ll try,” Sylvie replies. “See you two later!”

And they make their way out of the watchroom, leaving the two of us to ourselves. The last watch, I had settled down onto the couch pretty easily. This time, I was wound up for something to happen. I knew it was coming. Trying to settle my building unease, I looked at the map-wall, getting a feel for the neighbourhood. Being a trained astrogator, I knew how to look at a system map and understand the sort of relationships between the planets.

The system, as it is shown to us on the wall-screen, consists of a fairly Sol-like system. Anchored by a G-class star, three inner planets with the third one having a moderately sized moon, now also swarmed by a station at one of the Legrange points, and a number of satellites in low and synchronous orbits. Past the asteroid belt, five gas giants fill out the family, three of them being ice giants, pushing out the Kuiper-equivalent belt a little bit. On the edges of the map were small views of each planet. The innermost planet was very reminiscent of Mercury (which is very normal, from what I know). The next one out clearly has an atmosphere, and some evidence of water in a polar ice-cap, but it is a definite Mars analogue. No venus here. Of the giants, both gas giants have small, simple rings, the innermost one having a decisive gap about a third of the way out, but nothing near the complexity of Saturn’s glorious dance.

Also at the inner edge of the Kuiper belt, in resonance pockets with the farthest ice giant, are the two gates. One of these connects back towards Sol and the rest of the Human-discovered lands. The other connects outwards, further into the yet unknown reaches of the galaxy. An exploratory vessel had taken the plunge through the outward gate, and was expected to report back eventually, but probably not for several months. Until it did, we were at the edge of known space, a daring colony on a promising world. And now, for the next few hours, me and Sylvie were the guardians of humankind’s territory, watchers at this nearly silent outpost.

It was startling then when a ship punched in from the outward gate. An alert booped through the room at its arrival, calling the unexpected change to attention, but there was little for us to do but watch what the ship did – even though we could see it because of the sophisticated observation systems which could spot the craft from such a distance, we could not communicate with it yet. Depending on where exactly it went, we might be able to talk to it as it crossed pseudo-Saturn’s orbit, but if they dove off of the ecliptic, there were some paths which could nearly evade all of our communication carrier stations.

“Um.” I swallow.

“Poor Alex,” Sylvie sighs. “I guess we’ll have to look at it, huh?”

“We had better take a look, yeah,” I nod, and walk over to the screen. I tap near the new craft, and the raw visual pops up. The craft is fairly small, all things considered. About 120 metres long, 40 metres at its widest, with a pointy nose and a pair of up-swept, straight wings to each side, with a shorter but bulkier fin balancing it out at the bottom. The wings were split into several flanges, somewhat looking like a simple representation of feathered wings, but done with a simplicity which reminded me of heraldry’s care for distant recognition.

“That... isn’t human,” Sylvie notes after we look at it for a moment in silence.

“It really isn’t. First contact, unless our scout already found them.”

With a moment having passed since it arrived, the computer systems had begun noting how the ship oriented itself and accelerated. It’s path began laying down clearly towards our nearest communication carrier platforms.

“That ship is fast!” Sylvie notes, as the computers begin estimating its arrival into comm range as within an hour. An average human ship, for comparison, would probably take a day to make that trip, within this game. Outside of the game, that trip would be a 5 year trip, or longer, basically too long for anyone to make the effort.

“We have a first contact message prepared, right?” I ask, uncertain how much the game wants me to take control of the situation.

“Right here,” Sylvia nods, tapping a button. “And, also, the contact alert should also be sent, I guess.”

I see that button, nestled at my side of the map-wall, and reach over for it. “Agreed.” I hit it, and though nothing seems to happen at the moment, I know that whatever preparations the various station residents and settlement leaders had laid were being enacted with all possible speed. “Now we just wait for them to hear our call and respond?”

“In whatever way they see fit.” Sylvie bounces on the balls of her feet. “I hope they can talk back to us.”

“I hope they try to, whether they can or not.”

“Really, I want both.”

I nod. “Yep. Both is good.”

“But, now we have an hour. An hour of pure, unwavering boredom, as we wait for stuff to happen. And then how long to know what happened?”

“Space is big. Usually that’s cool,” I note, “But sometimes, it is mind-numbingly boring. Game of Go Fish?”

“Really?” Sylvie turns to study my expression. “A game, now?”

“You want to stand here, slowly stressing out about what is going to happen anyways?”

Sylvie looks back at the map with a grimace.

I sigh, and scuff my heel across the floor. “You aren’t wrong, Sylvie. But we’ve done everything we can for now. We just need to keep our eye on it. In an hour, they will have reached that station. In another hour, we’ll know what happened. Go Fish does not take much focus. We can watch that screen as closely as we want to,” I turn and start to move toward the couches.

“Ash?” Sylvie asks behind me, and I turn around, to find her face extremely pale. “Think about the timing. It doesn’t work out. From us to planet Echo is an hour, yeah, but the gates are much farther away. It shouldn’t take less than, what, 3 hours? To get from the outbound gate to Echo station, I mean. This ship is travelling faster than light.”

She’s right. “... If they want to, they can beat every sign of what they do at Echo back here. If they’re actively hostile, we don’t have a chance.”