Celestial Forge, The Stars Beckon Forth [Mass Effect / Celestial Forge SI]

[TrueGuardian32]

The ship shook, everyone was inside, and watching intently. Before in their vision the world started to split, white lines formed in space as white bubbles started covering both starships. However, once the bubble fully covered them, they were still hovering in the same place.

I spoke out loud, "So… this is how this works?"

Astha chuckled, "FTL Bubbles are active. Waiting on you Alana."

A comms communication hit back. "Hitting thrust in 3. 2. 1.-"

The stars around us shifted, becoming white lines, as the planets disappeared. Carter asked "How long till we are there?"

Astha looked into the air, "Six minutes."

That is absurd. "I thought it would take hours." Terrence spoke, "Didn't the briefing say it would?"

"That was for version 0.3 of the FTL Drive. We are already at version 1.5." Astha replied.

Lin spoke, "We already have multiple versions of the FTL Drive?!"

"It's an active project. It's being refined by multiple people daily. It's only natural for it to progress." Astha replied.

"So… what are you expecting Director Carter?" Haruto asked, looking over at the Director.

Carter shrugged. "Not much honestly. We have really good documentation on the Alpha Centauri star system. There is one Garden World, and a few other celestial bodies we can investigate the system. For the most part this will be a data collection trip. Four total planets including the garden world."

"Wait, weren't there only two planets?" Trisha asked.

Carter replied to that, "Upgraded scanners, we are able to get a good idea of the star systems in several light years."

Astha interrupted. "Exiting FTL in Three, two… one."

The surroundings stopped being blurry, and outside the window we could see three stars, and several small asteroids and four planets, two of them being rather small, but one looking rather similar to Earth.

"Welcome to Alpha Centauri." Astha spoke, "Receiving connection from Hightstar."

A familiar hologram appeared. It was the same figure as last time, Commander Calder. "Highstar is going to take an escort position while you work. Take your time."

"Understood." Carter replied before standing up and doing a minor stretch. The call ending, "Alright, you heard them. We will start by collecting samples and running samples of the lifeless planets, finishing up with Centauri B. Since that thing is looking rather habitable from orbit."

—

The rest of this… was actually rather boring. I spent most of the time just examining what we took pictures of to see if we missed anything. Which hadn't been anything so far. It would likely take us a few days to finish scanning everything. Most of it was actually automated, even a portion of going over the data was looked at from Science AI's in the Sol System.

I want to use the FTL Engine again to go to another system, that was cool. Maybe we could find something.

"Detective Williams, can you take a look at this?" Zhao Mei asked, looking up from her monitor.

I sighed, and came over, it was a picture of one of the moons. I paused. Looking closer. That is not natural. "Are you talking about this?" I said pointing at the unnatural structure.

"What?" She looked, "Oh, no. I was talking about this." She pointed to a separate picture, it was a bunch of dunes in one of the moons… or these are from the same moon.

"That." I paused, "That is an anomaly."

Everyone started crowding.

Director Carter spoke, "We have located an unidentified structure, possibly a ruin?"

A hologram appeared shortly, two in fact. It was Commander Calder and USF Director David Gard. He was bent over looking at the details, obviously what was sent back. Calder was taking a more obvious approach, placing the Highstar between them and the anomaly. "Orders Director?"

Gard tapped the bottom of his helmet. "Send drones to take closer pictures before we investigate further. For now I want the Starseeker to finish surveying the rest of the system. We will take a look at this anomaly further after to see just what it is."

So this is going to be more interesting than I thought.

 

[TrueGuardian32]

"The flares mean that habitats on the planet are rough, but not impossible. Good temperature control bases can allow for a colony on Proxima d. Similar situation on Proxima c and b." Director Carter was summing up our findings. "We've also located several resource rich asteroids in this system that appear to be in partially mined states."

Zhao Mei spoke up excited, "Does that mean we get to go explore the anomaly yet?"

Carter paused for a moment, "We might not get the chance. Just because we found it doesn't mean that United Star Front Director Gard will allow us to get close."

Astha appeared in a hologram form. "Actually, we are getting comms from David Gard now."

We all started to scramble to the Command Center. I fell over Terrence, and got scolded from Carter. But it didn't take long till we were all in the Command Center.

A few moments later, the hologram of David Gard appeared. "So, I have spoken with Commander Calder already, he will be remaining in the system for a time. But against better judgement, I've decided to allow your team to investigate the anomaly. So before you go down there I am going to share a bit of what we know."

The other two alien sites were displayed along with closer pictures of the newest alien ruin. "I've been able to confirm that this alien site is completely different from the first two we have discovered in the sol system. Different ages. I'm of the belief that this location is about one hundred and twenty thousand years old. Which is why it is so broken down compared to the alien sites we have at home. The Lithoid site for example is around two hundred thousand years old but made by really good engineers, made to last for hundreds of thousands of years, and the Prothean site however was around fifty thousand years ago."

He paused for a moment, considering things. "I've also gone over the data, and some of the orbits of asteroids are off, as if they were orbiting something that is now missing. We suspect there used to be another planetoid, likely the size of a moon that is completely gone. We believe we know what caused it, but the ruins may have data referencing it." He then gestured to the pictures of the ruin, as if he didn't just tell us something insane. "For now I am allowing you to go down there. Astha will be piloting combat drones to help escort you for your own safety. You are to arm yourselves with the self defense shotgun as well." Drones flew in holding massive shotguns, I looked at it. The thing was the size of my leg, where is the reload on this?

"Stay safe. Have fun." The Comms call is cut off.

Carter took a breath, then spoke to us. "Well, Good news. We get to explore the ruin."

He looked at the rest of us, and realized that we were still in shock from the revelations from that short transmission. Then he chuckled. Before shouting, "TERRENCE! MEI! CHAD!" We snapped out of it.

"You three are heading down. This is your specialty, Terrence you take samples of the local rocks and ecology for data purposes. Mei you investigate the ruins see what they hold. Chad you are to help move equipment. Oh, Rickson! You are going down to, you are going to need to directly document this with recordings."

The ones that didn't go, including myself muttered a bit, but after venting for a moment we flurry into activity, helping prep the away team.