The Euclidian: When Worlds Collide (uncut) Read online

  The Euclidians eventually exhausted places to explore within their own galaxy that met their requirement to find advanced civilizations outside their territorial boundaries. They decided to start exploring nearby galaxies, meaning those that were 3 to 21 million light years away. This would take between one and seven hours using seven dimensional jumps. Searching whole galaxies for intelligent life with manned spacecraft was a daunting task, so they created an automated system of thousands of probes that traveled to different parts of a galaxy within the first dimensional layer. This compressed the space to be searched yet still permitted decent visibility and monitoring for communication signals that might be coming from a planet. Using this method they soon found what they were looking for.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE DELTAS

  The Deltas started off as an intellectual, ambitious, cultured tribal people. Their society evolved from hunter-gatherers to villages, cities, and nations. Like most people, they fought over resources, land, and religion. These wars were a catalyst for technological innovation, and the Deltas created unspeakably cruel weapons that killed people on a grand scale. This enormous loss of life wore on them and eventually took them to depths of despair that made them reflective, even introspective. The warring nations settled their differences diplomatically and formed a global alliance under a ruling council made up of members from each country.

  The Deltas were a homogeneous humanoid species. They averaged two meters in height, and were slender and athletic. Weak, slothful, and gluttonous individuals were not tolerated because it was felt that they did nothing to help improve society. Citizens were expected either to work for anything that was provided to them or to do without.

  The female Deltas were taller than the males, and also more aggressive, but they comprised a demure segment of society because for the most part they dedicated their lives to raising children.

  Over several thousand years of the council’s rule, the Deltas across the planet adopted a single currency and language. Trust between the countries permitted technical advances to flourish at an accelerating pace. They quickly moved from air flight to space flight to interstellar travel, using a mode of transportation that incorporated dark matter to travel at near the speed of light. They did not, however, learn how to perform long-distance space travel, so traveling to a planet four light years away still took them well over four years. The Deltas mostly felt that there was no real need to achieve higher speeds. None of the planets they had come across had advanced life forms: no humanoids whatsoever. They focused on expanding their empire and reaching beyond their planet, never expecting that an advanced species might come knocking on their door from some distant part of their galaxy.

  When a Euclidian ship showed up in high geo-synchronous orbit above the capital city of Vashti, there was mass hysteria on the part of the Deltas. Their first reaction was to attack the 100 kilometer-long ship, but it seemed too large to risk an all-out assault. The Deltas surrounded the Euclidian ship with attack vessels and waited to see what would happen.

  The Majorellen aboard the Euclidian ship contacted the Deltas over a public communications channel. He expressed their peaceful intentions and requested to speak with Minister Hastings to discuss an official visit. The operator couldn’t believe her ears. How could these aliens know of Foreign Affairs Minister Hastings? He was used to dealing with foreign entities, but not aliens. The operator patched him through.

  The Euclidian captain took over the communication link. He had learned just enough of the Delta dialect for short, focused conversation.

  “Greetings, Minister Hastings. I am Captain Boqoo of the Euclidian ship Riemann requesting permission to land in a shuttle with our diplomatic entourage.”

  “Permission granted, Captain,” replied the minister. “Two of my ships will escort your shuttle to a safe landing area.”

  “Great. I look forward to meeting you.”

  A hatch on the Euclidian ship opened and a small vessel departed. At least it was small compared to the resource extraction ship. It was still a hundred meters long and twenty meters high. The Euclidians had configured all of their ships to carry cargo, on the theory that to do otherwise was to waste a ship. The shuttle’s holds were empty except for the gifts the Euclidians had brought along.

  Having an alien species land on their planet was unprecedented. The Deltas were not sure how to respond to such a request from an unknown alien presence. The fact that the person initiating the communication spoke their language and yet looked nothing like them was extremely jarring. How did they know Minister Hastings? How did they wind up in orbit about their planet without being detected beforehand? What did these aliens really want? There were so many questions to be answered.

  The minister of foreign affairs directed that the receiving area behind the council building be prepared as it normally would be to receive dignitaries from the various Delta nations. Silver carpets had already been laid on the ground in front of the grand entrance to the council building for the upcoming unification celebration. Once a year the Deltas celebrated the day the treaty was signed that combined the separate nations of the planet. At that time there hadn’t been a war in hundreds of years, but the multiple languages, currencies, and customs of the various countries made it difficult to communicate, perform commerce, and align global calendars. Unification was intended to combine and synergize the disparate nations. The different customs continued to be celebrated, but now the celebrations were shared across all nations.

  The timing of the Euclidian arrival was convenient, as all the governors were in town for the unification celebration and were interested in meeting these aliens. Still, out of caution, they didn’t go to the receiving area just in case it turned out to be an ambush. Only the council chairperson and her staff were there to greet the Euclidians; she felt it was her duty to represent the Delta people on such an important occasion.

  Figure2. Euclidian delegation meet Deltas

  The Euclidians arrived in a delegation of ten people. Instead of stepping from the vessel they beamed over to the receiving area, their entrance petrifying the Deltas. The Euclidian ambassador greeted the Delta council chairperson with a traditional bow. She responded with the same bow. He presented her with a statue, made of pure rhodium, of the historic Delta figure Osceola who was credited with unifying the Delta nations. He also offered her a cubic ton of the Euclidians’ most precious metal, athenium.

  The Deltas were happy to receive the gifts, but weren’t sure what to do with the athenium as they were not familiar with the material. The Majorellen, acting as interpreter, indicated that they would provide specifications on the metal as well as examples of how it could be used. The chairperson asked about weapons, and the Majorellen assured her that neither of their vessels had weapons and that none of the delegation carried weapons except for the two Ossie bodyguards who carried short spears to protect the delegation.

  The chairperson expressed her humor at the thought of these two small men with swords protecting the delegation from attack. Without being specific, the Majorellen let her know that the Ossies had special powers that make them quite formidable.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE ALPHAS

  The Alphas were a warring people. They spent much of their time fighting each other. Men fought men, tribes fought tribes, and countries fought countries. Countries fought civil wars and created new countries. Something about the genetics of the Alphas made them irritable and itchy for a fight. Over time, necessity had pushed them to cooperate with each other. Tribes forged alliances just so they could fight against other tribes. While the tribes didn’t trust each other, they understood the importance of alliances for overpowering their enemies. This idea manifested itself at higher levels when countries aligned themselves to take over neighboring planets and strip them of their wealth. The countries still disliked each other, but understood the concept of cooperation for the greater good.

  The Alphas were an advanced civilization with a desi
re for military dominance that motivated innovation. They found many new and clever ways to inflict pain and destruction on their enemies, which were each other. This passion persisted when they started building exploratory spaceships. They equipped their ships with weapons so they could attack any other ships they might run across. Their preparations went to waste until they discovered a means of long distance space travel. They initially discovered a gravity-based propulsion mechanism, less efficient than the Euclidian or Alpha mechanisms, though it got them up to half the speed of light. This permitted them to visit planets within their solar system and nearby solar systems. To their dismay, they did not run across any life forms to terrorize. They did, however, set up listening posts wherever they visited, just in case. They left prisoners to man the posts as a punishment. Volunteers for such miserable, isolated assignments were hard to come by.

  Eventually the Alphas discovered long-range space travel by means of wormholes. They perfected the ability to open a wormhole at high speed that would take them more or less instantaneously to a distant spot along their current trajectory. But not before they had lost a few vessels into far-off stars, due to miscalculating the effects of gravity or speed.

  Once they were able to maintain control over their interstellar transport, they began to encounter more civilizations, though their method was still somewhat hit and miss. They had not discovered the Euclidians’ means for long range monitoring of distant regions of space to avoid wasted trips. As they came across alien vehicles in space, the Alphas behaved like pirates, attacking and looting the ships. They stole the cargo and whatever technology they could, and left the remainder of the ship and crew drifting in space. They eventually identified and charted interstellar shipping lanes, and patrolled them with their warships. They met little resistance as they plundered, and finally grew bored with attacking ships.

  The Alphas learned to use their technology to take over planets and raid them for their resources. The inhabitants were usually slaughtered. The Alphas had never considered mining these planets or taking slaves. Instead they set up military outposts across the areas of space that they claimed as their own, to look for other enemy ships to attack or cargo to steal, and to house reinforcements. This tactic protected them from planets that sought to retaliate against them for an earlier attack, which may have destroyed half of their population. One of the outposts noticed an armada of ships approaching the Alpha home planet. The Alphas set up an ambush to intercept the ships in deep space. Once the enemy ships were blown apart, the Alphas sent their own ships to kill the remaining inhabitants of the attacking planet. They even set off a device to destroy the atmosphere in case they had overlooked anyone in the genocide.

  The Alphas were soon uncontested in their corner of the Juban Galaxy. The Euclidians, however, through their long-range scanners, discovered the Alphas, although they did not understand their violent tendencies. The Euclidians outfitted a space vessel with gifts, such as sweet fruit trees and precious metals, and set off on a diplomatic mission to engage the Alphas with an offer of alliance.

  By now the Euclidians had formed strong relationships with beings from several nearby solar systems. Each place had its own special set of wonders including the people themselves, minerals, vegetation, and technology. These planet nations included the Deltas, the Perjorans, the Majorellens, and the Ossies. The Euclidians had formed strong alliances with each of these nations except the Ossies. Each species had abilities that set it apart from the rest. The Deltas had great technology. The Perjorans were great interrogators. The Majorellens were great at communicating with new species. The Ossies made excellent assassins.

  The Deltas were the most advanced technologically. They had invented space travel at least 200 years before any of the other nations. They had outposts across their solar system and in neighboring ones as an early warning against possible threats. They had developed military space ships to protect themselves from an enemy that they felt would come someday. When the Euclidians had appeared in orbit above their planet they thought it was the enemy they had long dreaded.

  The ship had appeared out of nowhere, without warning from any of their outposts. It was the largest ship they had ever seen, over 100 kilometers long. They did not know how they could possibly fight an adversary with so large a ship. Their fears were quickly allayed when a television broadcast came over their civilian airwaves. A Majorellen working for the Euclidians was speaking to the space dispatcher in a Delta dialect. The person was asking for a peaceful dialog with the planet’s government.

  The Euclidians wanted to avoid the diplomatic mistake of showing up unannounced as they had with the Deltas, so they arrived in Alpha space at a distance of 200,000 kilometers from their home planet and hailed the Alphas over a public channel using an Alpha dialect. A Majorellen had been studying the Alphas for several months prior and had learned their language. The Alphas were shocked to receive the communication and fearful of what this new species might have in store for them. They gave the Euclidians permission to enter orbit around their planet and to send down a delegation. The Alphas warned the Euclidians not to take any aggressive actions, although they were not sure what they could do in defense.

  The military general in charge of Alpha space quickly used a secure channel to order all outposts to report anything they might know about the arrival of the Euclidian ship. In the meantime, he sent ten space fighters to escort the Euclidian ship. None of the outposts had anything to report except for one of the Alpha moons that reported that the ship just appeared out of nowhere from a spot in space, which did not appear to be a wormhole.

  This perplexed the general. He commanded the lead escort ship to report details of the Euclidian ship.

  “General,” replied the flight captain, “the ship is enormous. It is about 80 kilometers wide and 120 kilometers long. I can’t tell if it has weapons systems. I can’t see any engines or hatches or a control center. They must exist, but the ship is so massive and so full of nooks and crannies that it’s difficult to see where any of the ship’s vulnerable systems might be.

  “Focus, Captain!” shouted the general. “If you had to take it out, do you think that you could?”

  “If our entire fleet attacked, we would have a difficult time taking it out. But even if we disabled it, we wouldn’t want this ship crashing into our planet. It could cause a cataclysmic event.”

  “Fine, then just escort it in and warn me if it does something out of the ordinary.”

  “Yes, General.”

  The general was perplexed. He wasn’t sure how to handle this sudden event. He decided to call in all ships within a day’s distance away. He had the orbiting and land-based missiles realigned to point toward this possible threat. He then warned each of the planetary countries so they could join an attack if needed.

  The five escort ships placed themselves around the Euclidian ship, unsure of how best to position themselves. They found that they lost radio contact with one another if they were on opposite sides of the ship. Then they found what looked like the operations center at the top of the ship near the front and decided to take up positions there.

  ***

  Once in orbit, a hatch on the huge ship opened and a small vessel shot out. It landed at a military base near the host country’s capital. The place was swarming with dignitaries, local residents, and the news services. The Euclidian ambassador noticed the grandstand outside the ship and decided to have himself and his entourage beamed directly next to the awaiting dignitaries.

  There was a gasp from the crowd as the group appeared. The guards drew their weapons, unsure if this was an attack. The country’s foreign ambassador composed himself, ordered the guards to put away their weapons and then greeted Ambassador Powell, who stood at the front of the assembled group.

  “Greetings. I am Ambassador Plexus. On behalf of the planet Alpha and the country of Howard I extend a warm welcome to the Euclidian people.”

  “Greetings, Ambassador. I am Ambassador Po
well. On behalf of the Euclidian people I extend my arm in friendship.”

  The two clasped arms and bowed in a traditional formal greeting.

  “Ambassador Plexus, if you find it appropriate I would like to offer your country a few gifts as a token of our desire to open friendly relations with your people.”

  “Please do,” replied Plexus.

  “First I would like to present to you a statue of your war hero Lile Birk in pure rhodium.”

  As Ambassador Powell finished speaking a large statue of the Alpha hero appeared on the ground next to the receiving stand. A loud roar and applause came from the crowd in attendance.

  “Next we would like to offer forty fruit trees stored within sealed containers so you may quarantine them as you see fit and later place them where you find most appropriate. Lastly, we offer one ton of our most precious metal. I brought along one of our engineers in case you need assistance in understanding its practical uses.”

  The engineer bowed to identify himself. The other items appeared next to the statue as the ambassador announced them. So far, the Euclidians had charmed the Alphas.

  “Thank you for your kind gifts, Ambassador. They are greatly appreciated,” responded Plexus. “Now, if you would kindly board our vehicle I will escort you to the palace, where you may prepare for a reception with our president and his cabinet. Do you have any bags aboard your ship that you would like to bring along?”

  “Yes,” said Powell. “Perhaps you could bring them in another vehicle? My assistant will stay behind to handle our luggage.”