Bridgebuilder

"Alright, so we're all in agreement that those things-" Alex was standing in front of the big tactical display in the main area in the command building. Right now, he was gesticulating at a silvery, six pointed, starfish-shaped satellite. The satellite in the video was not quite directly above them, one of a network that appeared to stretch around the interior of the sphere. There was space up there, effectively. Zero atmospheric pressure once the drone had penetrated the last layer. "Those are what's generating the barrier."

He was still in his environment suit, though he had turned it down from candy apple red to a nice matte black at the request of everyone who had to look at him. Right now, that was nearly everyone.

The satellite - just over a hundred kilometers away from the barrier - appeared to be delicate, almost spindly. It was actually enormous. Each slender looking limb had a faint curve to it, and stretched over nine kilometers from the hexagonal central hub, which itself was the size of a large space station - the majority of it sticking out the back, the base pointed towards the ground was built like a step pyramid, each layer smaller than the last.

The drone's primary camera had lingered on it for a solid ten seconds, tiny motes of light - roughly the size of a shuttle, if not larger - slid along its angles, often never reaching the end of whatever they were traversing, just fading away.

"I don't know what else they'd be doing up there, and the energy readings the drone pulled were massive. It fits the bill." Dominic Crenshaw, the Human ELINT specialist, was pacing around the back of the room reviewing the small amount of data this very brief trip had provided, increasingly agitated by these findings and their limited nature. "The sooner we can start getting some real scans of it and whatever it's actually generating up there, the better."

"Don't worry, Crenshaw. Plans are already being made." Williams was, mostly, keeping this meeting on the rails. There was a lot of excitement and a little bit of unease in the crowd, most of whom did not have the discipline that the Lieutenant expected from her Marines.

Alex saw the wisdom in not keeping people who weren't used to finding massive alien structures bottled up too much. "Right. Any word yet on when they'll get us a better drone? And are they sending a specialized drone pilot or is someone here capable?"

Williams shook her head. "Nothing new yet on that front, but I suspect between Karras and myself, we can handle the drone while you pilot the shuttle."

The next step had been roughly agreed upon so far. They were to get a bigger drone with more specialized sensors sent over, then take it up there with the Hokule'a. They could then operate it remotely from the comfort of the shuttle.

Also they needed a drone that could handle imaging for much greater distances. There were more of these satellites in the distance, a network of them that was assumed to cover the entire interior. Behind all of these satellites was a yawning void, but it wasn't hollow. There was another object back there, but a drone set up for in-atmosphere work wasn't looking for objects tens of millions of kilometers away, no matter how much Alex wanted it to be so.

That thing was strange, a black and gray blur with one glowing strip taking up a third of the visible side pointed their way, slivers of light visible on the edge of each dark area. Part of the solution on how the day and night cycle here was handled - the builders really did have a lightbulb in there. It was also enormous, of course. An immense, partially glowing beachball. A million kilometers across, maybe. The lack of resolution kept them from getting a good measure of it. It was bright like Sol, but not quite as intense - it was also much smaller than the sun and its output probably bolstered or somehow modulated by this satellite network.

It pretty clearly wasn't a planet, though, so there went his ten dCred. Unless there was a planet inside of that. He would hold out hope for now.

On the up side, that left loads of room for a little FTL jaunt. No, he wasn't already planning it. Not in great detail, anyway. Just a little supposition. Things to test the potential safety of using drones.

"Have we heard anything about the waverider upgrade for the Corvin?" Alex already knew that was a no, they'd only been at this for like two hours now. The oversight team was percolating, they probably wouldn't have concrete news until the next morning.

The look Williams shot him across the room was good evidence that his guess was right.

"I have received communication from the Empire, somewhat related to that - they are dispatching a Tamat Anka deep space research drone to be sent across." Carbon said, holding up her tablet. "It is a newer design with sufficiently long range scanners and some waveride capabilities."

She was sitting in the back next to Abbot, who had absolutely nothing to do here as not a single morsel of data that even resembled language had been detected yet, and their Brit was trying to make something appear from the wisp of data available to him. He had been in the running with Alex as the least useful member of the team for a while. They didn't have any more heavy things for him to lift, and he didn't have experience running a drone, so Abbot appeared to have officially taken that title. For now.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Williams nodded to her. "Do you or any of the Tsla'o side of the team here have experience running one? For that matter, do we have the equipment necessary to connect to it?"

"To the first point, I do not believe any of us have used this particular drone before. I have worked with related units, as has Kova." Carbon paused and considered the second half of that. "It is packaged with a control unit that should have enough range, but I will inquire about an interface for the Confed's networks."

"While I assume the Navy will be getting us a drone with more range soon, options are always good." Williams looked over the group, checking to see if anyone was going to be piping up with more questions or comments.

It didn't look like it. Everyone, save for Abbot who was still reviewing the data like he might be able to resolve a WELCOME sign out of those motes of light, was pretty much tapped out at this point. The Theia's sensor and camera setup was intended for terrestrial work, usually inside a hundred kilometers range. There just wasn't enough to keep working on. "All right, let's break for now. If the offsite team comes up with anything big, I'll drag everyone back here unless it's in the middle of the night. Otherwise, start thinking about dinner."

Alex waited until nearly everyone else had left and linked up with Carbon, who had been ushering others out before she left the command building. Totally reasonable thing to do, they had worked together for over a year at this point. Aside from Williams and Zhenshen, they had the most history. "So what are your opinions on this thing?"

She hadn't really talked about it in the meeting. Nodded along to a few suppositions, spent a lot of time communicating quietly on her comm. "It is something that needs much more research and evaluation before I can say one way or another."

"Very pragmatic." Alex replied, packed snow crunching quietly under their feet. That was Carbon... When she was at work, at least.

"I consider the hypothesis that the network of satellites is the source of the layered shield to be both likely and reasonable." She said, a small smile aimed his way as she turned to glance over at him. "But I would like to review more thorough data before I pass judgement one way or another."

Alex nodded as they queued up for the mess hall airlock. The weather was cold and clear, but the wind was only sporadic now. It had gotten up to 1, today. Someone was playing music inside - there was a PA system in these buildings, they just didn't use them in favor of using individual comms - it was faint, but the brass of horns carried through the airlock, along with a very distinct voice. "Neya must have convinced Zheng to dig around in the entertainment stores."

Carbon shot him a quizzical look. "What makes you say that?"

"Well-" They stepped into the airlock and Williams jogged up behind them. Carbon held the door, and Alex refrained from talking about Neya's interest in what sounded like the Tsla'o equivalent of Jazz in front of people who didn't know that she had been left to watch over him when he'd almost been assassinated. "Zheng just seems like the sort of person to play Jazz. I'd recognize Louis Armstrong anywhere, digging into the standards of the genre."

"Armstrong does have a very distinct voice." Williams added as the door cycled closed behind them.

The temperature in the airlock shifted as the air handling system adjusted it to match the interior of the mess hall. The song - La Vie en Rose now that he could make out the lyrics - ended, and another began shortly thereafter. He sucked in a breath through his teeth. "What a Wonderful World might not be the best track to play for Tsla'o."

"Is it offensive?" Carbon enquired, looking between him and Williams, both eyebrows raised now. The first verse filtered in as the inner door slid open. "Ah. I see. Well... A little beauty is good for the soul, even if its arrival is unexpected."

Carbon departed the airlock without another word, but Alex caught a flicker of blue as she glanced at him, and he had a strange suspicion that she wasn't just talking about the song when she said that.

Williams hadn't caught that very brief glance as she looked over at Alex. "I didn't expect them to be into Jazz."

"It's a classic for a reason, I guess." He shrugged and followed Carbon. "It is, at the very least, a short and rather joyful song."

The entire crew was already in there, which wasn't too big a surprise - it was close to when the team ate dinner, and the mess was their primary gathering spot in general. As he expected, Zheng and Neya were sitting at one table with Amalu and Zhenshen, and Neya didn't look nearly as unsettled as she had that morning. Amalu was in the booth next to Zheng and they were sitting awfully close together. Sure, Amalu was using his comm to translate from the tablet that Zheng was running the music from, but this was like... relationship close. They were leaning against each other. Smiling, chatting. Happy.

Alex's first reaction was that they needed to be a little bit more careful. What would people think? He slid into the booth next to Carbon just in time to realize how hypocritical that thought was. He did actually get what Ed had been talking about the first time he had clocked Alex's relationship with Carbon this time, now, which was kind of annoying.

It just hit different when it was your relationship, apparently.