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“Well, we’re here.” Carly Spenser, doctor of physics and one of the few humans crazy enough to leave Earth to study the rogue planet that had drifted into their home solar system, watched as the pilot carefully settled their ship into orbit around their destination. “Is everything still transmitting back to Earth?”
“Our systems are still sending,” Chip Chase replied, looking down at his console for a moment. “And everything was still green from mission control’s side as of two days ago.”
Two days wasn’t bad for lag, all things considered. Hopefully it stayed steady at that rate. She didn’t want to worry her parents or her fiance too much.
“Great. Let’s stay in orbit around–”
“Doctor, we’ve got incoming!” Dani Burns–pilot, security and professional overprotective big sister–interrupted, sounding slightly panicked. “And it’s big!”
Carly didn’t even have time to look at the sensors before whatever it was–big, as Dani promised–was stopping in front of their viewport. It looked like another space craft, with wings on the side and some kind of thruster in the back, but the shape was strange and definitely alien. “Where did it come from?”
“Orbit around the planet,” Dani replied. “Just out of our line of sight.”
Carly nodded. “Okay. Transmit the greeting package. If it’s an alien ship and not some kind of security drone, maybe we’ll get a friendly reply.”
And if not, they wouldn’t have time to worry about it.
“Transmitting greeting package,” Chip said softly, sounding nervous. Carly couldn't blame him.
“Great. While we wait for a reply, get the rest of the crew up here. They should see this.”
“Yes ma’am.” A bell rang throughout the ship, summoning the rest of the crew, not that there were many. They’d only been able to get enough support to send six of them to investigate, and if something went wrong, no one was going to come look for them.
But Chip, Dani, Charlie, Mikaela and Garret were as brave and determined as she was, and even if they died here the would have advanced human knowledge with what they transmitted back. Would have let Earth know that the rogue planet was trouble and that they needed to be prepared for hostility, just in case.
“Doctor, it’s doing something!” Dani’s voice still carried that panicked edge, though she was staying at her station.
On the other side of the veiwport, the alien spacecraft was moving. Drifting backward just a little, with plates that were lifting up and shifting away, and then suddenly entire parts of it were spinning away to shift into… something. After a few seconds, what had been a space craft of some kind had changed into a bipedal …robot was the only idea her brain would serve up, and it had a frighteningly human face.
It smiled at them. And then, from their radio speakers, “Hello, explorers! My name is Skyfire, welcome to my home!” The message repeated a few times, in each language they’d included in the greeting package.
“Holy shit!” Charlie exclaimed as she and Mikaela stepped onto the bridge. A sentiment echoed a moment later by Garret as he joined them.
Carly couldn’t say she disagreed. No one had said meeting alien life was going to be like this. “Chip, open a two way frequency. Let’s see if we can have a real conversation with Skyfire here.”
“Yes, ma’am!” he replied. “Frequency open.”
Mission control was going to freak when they got these transcripts.