Star Light and Song c2

Chapter 2: More Chuck Berry, Please
Korrza Rahn took a moment for the interior suit pressure to equalize, feeling his ears pop gently as the suit  seals hissed and finally clamped down. The helmet's interior displays fluttered to life, running diagnostic code down as each system came online and flashed a ready green. "Comms check, ACe can you hear me?" A small video display to the left lit up, showing Korrza a ceiling view of the cockpit. "Loud and clear sir," ACe responded. "Good," Korrza said, "now remind me why I'm the one going out here again?" ACe seemed to twitter as he made final calibrations on the ship's interior grav-plate units. "Because I'm not able to sir," he responded casually. "My Mobile Suit Explorer isn't designed for space walks. Every gyro and joint would freeze up in mere bits before I could do anything...productive beyond screaming that it was cold out here." "Hmmrph, that sounds like an excuse to stay safe and warm in the ship," Korrza mused. "Oh it is," ACe shot back, "but seriously, two maybe three bits and I'd be frozen solid. I'm designed for planetary exploration, not the potentially dangerous and suicidal trip you're attempting to make...."

"Wait, what?" Korrza exclaimed. "What do you mean 'potentially dangerous?'" ACe peered out to the view screen as the ship began to parallel orbit next to the probe. "Well, did you even stop to think that maybe the probe might be booby trapped, sir?" "No. Not until you just mentioned--" "You'll be fine, sir," ACe interrupted as the ship finished its maneuver and settled. "Any last words before I shut off the grav-plate units and open the airlock?" ACe seemed to tease him. "Yeah," Korrza nervously said, "maybe this isn't such a good idea after all." ACe's voice suddenly went serious. "You'll be fine," he said. "I already scanned for any potential threats. Shutting grav-plate power down in three....two....one."

Korrza suddenly felt his body lift, the weight of the artificial gravity plates under his feet powering down and giving him the sense that he was free falling. It was almost the same sense he'd felt when he was planetside in the Abborian deep space simulation unit, in that giant and dark tank of icy cold water, having no sense of up or down, top or bottom. Just the quiet black nothing. The cold. That almost dizzying sensation of loosing every sense that your body had relied on since birth; touch, hearing, sight and smell. It was both amazing, and yet terrifying all at once.

"Ready to open the airlock whenever you're ready, Protectorate," ACe responded, now that soft spoken and all-business program. "Is your safety tether secure?" Korrza looked down to the side of the suit, flicking open a small metal box and pulling out a silver-looking wire no thicker than a spider's thread. At the end was a dime-sized electro-magnet synced up with the ship's plating. With a simple flip of the power unit on the box, the mag lock would attach and hold on so tight you could put five of Korrza on the other end and it wouldn't let go. The tether wire, on the other hand...Korrza made the connection and flipped the power on, feeling the small tug at his side as it latched onto the hull. "Ready,"  he said.

ACe moved to the airlock control panel. "Releasing clamps. Opening airlock outer door in three...two...one." The door slid out, almost touching the alien probe ahead of Korrza. Even with suit compensators in place, the full brunt of spacial vacuum hit Korrza like an arctic blizzard. "Wooo that's cold," he muttered. "You're doing fine, sir," ACe tried to reassure him. "All vitals show nominal, for now." Korrza placed his hands on the outer doorway frame, taking a moment to orient his body for that gentle push forward towards the probe's hatch. "Here we go," he said before pushing off.


Korrza and ACe looked down at the small round disk as it floated gently above the grav table in the ship's tech lab, ACe trying to take every possible reading and scan that the ship's various instruments had. Korrza sat retentively in his seat, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped gently together. As soon as his hands had pried the probe's hatch open there it was, reflecting golden under the ship's forward lights. It was still remarkably well preserved considering the probe's age. Various pictographs written in some strange dialect adorned the small disk, and after holding it to the light a little closer, he could see small circular grooves of some kind cut into the disk's surface.

After a few minutes, ACe's camera arm retracted, moving across the ceiling of the ship's tech lab and pulling close to Korrza's face. "It's a recording of some kind," he finally said. Korrza's forehead wrinkled gently. "Of what?" he asked. "Well, after finally figuring out the archaic playing device that's required to make it function," ACe said as he swiveled back to the gold plated record, "I can holo-code what's required and....well, we can both find out what it is." ACe turned the camera and waited. Korrza simply nodded, giving ACe all the permission he needed.

The record suddenly stopped spinning in the air as a hard light holo-code construct began to materialize around it. ACe had created a box-like image with a circular top, a small thin needle resting on the neck of some swivel arm. The circular top base began to spin, the swivel arm and needle slowly lowering towards the small grooved disk. As soon as the needle made contact with the record, both Korrza And ACe nearly gasped in shock. The plate had somehow imbedded various pictures of the probe's homeworld, various buildings of glass and metal, images of plant and animal life, silhouettes of two bipedal figures, one more muscular than the other, the other more sleek and curvacious.

Sounds of various....Korrza could only guess as the planet's wildlife; a soft chirping thing, a harsh squawking something, punctuated by what sounded like a booming, grinding wail. "What is that?" Korrza asked. ACe glanced over at him, "If I had to guess, the pitch and the way it's giving off a reverb," he said, "I'd say it's a very, very large underwater animal." Korrza nodded, "It sounds a lot like--"

Music. Soft and gentle music suddenly rang out across the ship. Light and slowly rhythmic, it seemed to convey a time in the species culture of more....refined eloquence. ACe leaned forward, "Oh I like this. It sounds so pretty...I wonder if th-" The music faded, shifting between various instrumental influences, some light and lofty, others more fundamentally primal. It all finally ended in something that neither expected to hear. It was an electrical, high pitched song. Fast and yet oddly fluid. Catchy, if a bit loud. Neither one could make out the dialect being used, but the tempo, the song's beat seemed to catch Korrza's attention the most. Despite himself, he found his foot tapping gently on the floor as it played out. "I like this one better," Korrza said with a grin, "sounds more modern than the last few." ACe seemed to shrug (if you could call it that), and continued to listen. "Sounds like nothing more than twangy noise to me. But to each his own I suppose." Korrza grinned and nearly chuckled. "Wonder if they have any more of that?" ACe shifted and seemed to slink down a little before he muttered quietly to himself. "Creator I hope not....."


Korrza and ACe stood around a large 3D holo-display that the two had managed to piecemeal together back in the cockpit of the various amounts of information they had been provided, using the probe's trajectory line and triangulating the region's various pulsars the disk had provided to show the exact star the planet in question was now orbiting. It was still just a speck of light in an otherwise massive sea of stars, but the two had a rough road map of sorts on how to get there. ACe magnified the star, still extremely blurry in the pictures with the ship being this far out, and pulled up the various bits of information the disk provided. "Two sexes, abundant plant and animal life, one natural satellite, roughly fifty dominant dialects I'm still running through the translation matrix to try to make any sense out of," ACe  listed off. "The only way we're ever going to get a visual of the planet is by either going there or by slip spacing a probe to take readings," ACe's camera turned to glance at Korrza, "which is something I would suggest doing first. Going in headlong towards a remote and potentially hazardous planet blindly is not something I'm comfortable with doing."

Korrza nodded, even though his interest was piqued, erring on the side of caution never hurt. "How long would it take for us to get preliminary data back?" he asked. "Oh, probably about.....ten, fifteen ticks," ACe responded. "It'll be patchy, the probe's sensors can only send back so much data at one burst. But it should give give us a nice idea of what this uh.....Earth should look like." Korrza glanced at ACe for a moment. "Earth? How do you know it's called that?" he asked. ACe pulled up the entire disk's spoken dialog data into one large block text on the holo-monitor. Several of the words were highlighted, each one looked exactly the same. "This word is repeated roughly twenty-seven times on the recording. I doubt they'd do that unless they were trying to tell the listener that 'Hey, this is the name of our planet.' So for now, unless I'm incorrect, we'll simply call it Earth." Korrza shrugged, "Fair enough. Let's go see what it looks like then." ACe seemed to brighten a bit, moving to the command consoles. "I'll get the probe ready, sir."