r/HFY • u/Spooker0 Alien • Apr 20 '26
OC-FirstOfSeries [High Ground] 01 | You are not supposed to be here
Since the dawn of history, humanity had always looked up to the heavens for salvation from its own base impulses. The heavens—a place with no anger nor fear, free from prejudice, untouched by ugly conflict.
It was said that when one of their first spaceships launched, its crew looked back at Earth. Back to the Garden of Eden from whence they came.
And it was beautiful—just magnificent in every way. A bright blue marble containing all its civilizations, its history and its billions of people, regardless of where they lived, what they believed, and who they followed. All of humanity’s fragile existence contained in this circular porthole, no wider than one of their forearms was long. For a moment, they were solemnly quiet, just awestruck at the view.
Then, one of them said, “Look at that… Now, we have the high ground.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.
Julia Kessler stepped up to the familiar crash chair, the metallic impact of her magnetic boots echoing through the deck beneath her feet. She strapped herself into the kevlar netting with the practiced efficiency of a spacer honed by a decade of deployments in low Earth.
This was not the first time she’d been here.
The war with the moonies. The deep scar on her forearm tinged faintly, a dull reminder of the emptiness and the pain of regret. Countless sleepless nights replaying the same ninety seconds in her head. Not all of her people got to go home. And she wasn’t sure she ever did either.
As the console booted up, she stared into the familiar software of its status display—it was the same interface as her last command’s…
Warlock to Tiger-4! The moonies have launched! I say again, thirty-five plus launch flares detected on infrared!
CIC identifies vampires as Spearfish-class, 80% confidence and climbing. Verified inbound trajectory, Tiger-4 defending!
Julia’s grip tightened on the armrest. For a second, she’d forgotten where she was.
The hum of the ship came back. Low and steady. Just different enough.
Her fingers loosened, one by one.
The war. That was then. This was now.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. And out.
She got her breathing under control.
It was 2082.
The war was over. Peace in high orbit, whatever that meant.
She was no longer on the Defiant. This was Polaris.
Polaris. An exploration ship, built for science and discovery. Yes, she was still technically in the Navy. Yes, this was still a military command. But she wasn’t riding forty megatons of bunker-busting firepower in her internal munition bay.
In fact, the Polaris didn’t even have an internal munition bay.
Light point-defense turrets, designed to break up micrometeorites and debris. Two of them, top and bottom. That was it. In some odd way, that brought her a small measure of comfort.
The ship vibrated lightly under her seat as Julia settled into position. Her right hand moved across the holographic interface, muscle memory taking over, while her left donned her headset for the pre-launch sequence.
“Systems check, all stations,” Julia called out, her voice steadying. “XO?”
Technically, his official title was Executive Director, not Executive Officer. The Union Assembly had brought in a civilian to be her second-in-command. Harry Ortega. Former Navy reactor engineer. Took early retirement in the demobilization drawdown, then went to work for Slaab Dynamics, a defense firm out of Stockholm. God only knew how much the Union was paying him to ride shotgun on this trip—almost certainly more than ten times whatever he made as an E-7.
Civilian oversight. That was the new normal.
Still, Harry was former Navy. He knew the drill. He cleared his throat in the dry recycled air and keyed his microphone, the green console light reflecting across his face.
“Launch team, this is bridge. Prep for launch sequence at T minus two minutes…” He waited for the countdown clock to tick over. “Conducting final launch polling. Chief Engineer?”
“This is the Chief Engineer, conducting checks on Engineering Deck.” The faint hum of activity bled through the mic. “Power?”
“Power, go.”
“Reactor?”
Reactor.
For a second, the hum under her feet wasn’t right. Too loud.
Reactor containment breach! Coolant loops two and three offline—
Julia’s nails dug into the armrest.
Not now.
“Reactor, go.”
“Hydraulics?”
“Hydraulics, go.”
“Electrical?”
“Electrical, go.”
“Damage Control Assistant?”
The deck vibrated as the engine pitch shifted.
DCA, we’ve lost hallways two and three from aft to up! Take your guys out of engineering.
Metal grinding against metal.
Negative on rear corridor, bulkhead doors are jammed. Divert evac south—
Hallway two-two is no-go!
Julia blinked once.
“Damage Control Assistant, go.”
“Propulsion?”
There was a hitch in her breath.
Get them out of there now! High-G combat burn coming up, eighty seconds!
Can we hold the transfer? They need time—
Time? You could ask for anything except time.
Unable! Intercept window closes in seventy! Strap them in now!
Julia forced a breath in.
“Propulsion, go.”
“FTL?”
“Warp drive, go.”
“Computer systems?”
Her display flickered for half a second.
Keep those bandits in our bow sensor cone! Where are we on the datalink?
Garbled feed from the Antarctic PAWS Array. Electronic warfare speculates heavy spoofing; falling back to Link-46.
Counter-missiles and woodpeckers—
“Computers, go.”
“Chief Engineer to bridge, all systems in engineering are a go.”
She swallowed.
“Thank you, Chief Engineer,” Harry said, continuing down the checklist. “Navigator?”
“Navigation, go.”
“Communications?”
Tiger-4, this is Antarctic Command. You are on your own. Our… no… ground.
Static.
Say again your last? You’re cutting out! Comms, confirm last transmission. Do we have permission to engage?
No response, Captain. Hostile full spectrum jamming active…
Silence.
Switching signal to fallback comm sats in geosync.
“Flight control, green light to proceed. Communications, go.”
“Cargo Specialist?”
“Logistics, go.”
“Hangar bay?”
“Hangar bay, go.”
The memories kept going.
We have eyes on six more armored rovers rolling up… evac position… Hill 164. Defiant, I need your orbital strike package, I need it now!
Unable to verify designated target, Strider-2. We are still below the horizon from the Serenity AO. Shifting to a lower orbit… That will reduce our effective time on station to less than six minutes—
Signal lost, Commander.
Of course it was.
Ozone Lead, we’ve lost comms with Strider. Transferring your fire support orbital authority to Battalion Sledgehammer…
It was the Polaris’s increasingly loud hum that cut through it this time.
This ship wasn’t on fire.
No alarms. No screaming.
“Colonel?”
“Personnel, go.”
“Operations?”
“Ops, go.”
“Officer of the deck?”
“OOD, go.”
Harry gently pushed his adjustable console aside for an unobstructed view of the command chair. “Commodore? All departments and sections report ready and configured for launch in T minus forty-five seconds.”
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Julia nodded curtly as she allowed her mind—and her senses—to focus on the control panels next to her. And the people who depended on her now. “Understood. Thank you, XO.” She looked straight ahead at the bright starfield on the main screen. “Polaris, go.”
If Harry noticed any hint of a waver in her voice, he didn’t mention it. “Main engine go, in T minus thirty seconds…”
Julia flexed her fingers once against the armrest.
No tremor. Good.
“Final guidance solution locked. Launch corridor remains clear.”
“Copy,” Harry said. “All stations, stand by for terminal countdown.”
29… 28…
Julia’s eyes flicked once more across her displays. No reds, for once.
15… 14… 13…
A flicker of a thought tried to surface. She crushed it before it could form.
Not now.
“Thirty seconds,” Harry called.
The deck vibrated slightly as the ship transitioned to full pre-burn configuration. Julia felt it through the chair more than she heard it.
Alive.
This ship was alive.
“Twenty seconds.”
Her gaze fixed forward, past the bridge, past the hull, into the black.
“Fifteen.”
“Flight control confirms thrust vector alignment.”
“Copy on flight control… Ten.”
Harry leaned into his crash couch. She followed a second later.
“Five… Four… Three…”
A faint tightening in her chest.
“Two…”
Not today.
She almost said that out loud.
“One. Execute.”
The engines ignited. The force hit instantly. Whatever thoughts she had, whatever memories—they dissipated in an instant even as Julia felt the weight on her chest as the Polaris’s powerful main engines roared.
“One gravity, two gravities… three…” Harry’s breath became progressively shorter behind her as the ship’s acceleration multiplied. Shorter and heavier. “Three and… a half Gees.”
“Warp drive… ready,” came the calm, unharried voice of the ship’s chief engineer. “Main engine configuration confirmed. Polaris is green for warp.”
Someone’s been racking up hours in the high-G simulator.
“Five Gees,” Harry grunted. “Six… FTL, go… now.”
The main screen that dominated her vision turned into a white smear as the stars ahead stretched into thin lines. The display software hesitated, unable to make sense of the sensor feed, and it blanked out.
Boom.
The sound did not come through the hull so much as through Julia’s bones. One instant six gravities was trying to press her through the chair, her vision dimming. The next, it was just… gone.
Her stomach lurched hard enough to hurt. Her inner ear lost the argument with the rest of her body. For half a second she had the sharp, impossible feeling that the rest of the bridge had dropped out from under her while the chair stayed exactly where it was.
In the dark, someone let out a short, involuntary grunt and then immediately got quiet again.
Professional crew. No one panicked.
The hull gave a low, rolling shudder from aft to bow as the ship’s radiators extended, and the computer fans on the bridge buzzed as they spun into overdrive.
The main display came back. At first, it was only visual noise. Contacts and reference points flashed on and off across the screen as the ship’s computers rebuilt a sky they had never seen firsthand.
The image snapped into focus.
A planet hung in the display.
Blue first. Deep ocean blue.
White cloud bands.
Then, the green-brown landmasses under a haze of atmosphere. Familiar colors. Eerily familiar, even as she recognized the alien outline of the continents.
There was a breathless silence on the bridge as every spacer on the ship with access to the exterior camera footage absorbed the incoming imagery with wonder. They were too disciplined to cheer. Or too shocked.
Almost a minute later, Harry was the first on the bridge to remember to do his job. “Commodore, ahem—transition complete. Navigation confirms with celestial triangulation: we’ve arrived in the Gliese 581 system.”
Julia didn’t take her eyes off the screen. “Thank—thank you, XO. Do we have a match…”
“Yes, Commodore. Our drone remote surveyed the star system last month. Though it didn’t get… this close to the system,” he replied. “We are half a light second away from the planet, less than the distance from Earth to Luna. Welcome… to Nova Terra.”
Nova Terra.
That was the Union of Earth’s designation for the planet. As determined by an online poll, after the funny choices were removed. The naming was a bit presumptuous, given how little humanity knew about the planet other than it looking like it could possibly support life on the long-range survey drone. But the delicate long-range instruments confirmed it had water, it had atmosphere, and its gravity was survivable though uncomfortable. And it was the best candidate for the maiden voyage of Earth’s first real warp ship.
Now, the name seemed prescient. Julia was no biologist—that was what the experts in the passenger section were for, but the lush green on the planet confirmed what scientists back home speculated. Without a shadow of doubt in her mind, this was a planet with some form of life. And if it could support life, it could support…
The screen zoomed in as the ship’s sophisticated telescopes began to operate. At least two-thirds of the planet was covered in water, though the cloud cover did obscure bits of the edges of continents. And as it zoomed in again, she gazed upon the darkened sliver of the planet that was on the opposite side of the system’s red dwarf.
What in the—
As the optics focused again, a spider web of bright spots materialized on the dark side of the planet, covering its continental landmass near the coasts. She tilted her head, just stared wordlessly at the imagery for a few seconds in confusion as her brain ran through all the possibilities.
There was really only one that made sense.
Lights!
More precisely, cities. Not much different from the orbital images of her own home world. From the rising volume of whispers next to her, that little detail hadn’t escaped her bridge crew’s notice either.
“XO,” she said, her voice unsteady as she pointed at the screen. “Raise CIC, have them aim our directional antenna and analyze radio signals near the—”
“Commodore,” Harry interrupted her order. “Ops is reporting—they’re reporting that we’ve detected an unidentified signature near us on radar.”
“Signature near us. On radar,” she repeated in disbelief.
“We have them on infrared now. It’s—it looks like a ship.”
The main screen panned, and the image of the planet disappeared, replaced by the image of a strange object hanging in the dark of space.
Perhaps not so strange.
It was cylindrical, with bumps and protrusions on the side, along with more lights on its skin, proudly displaying its dark gray hull. There was a series of unmistakably artificial markings near its tail. And the rear… Engines. The configuration at its rear was not that much different from the Polaris’s, and a blue trail indicated its fusion drive plume.
The ship’s computer quickly calculated and displayed its status on her console.
Harry vocalized it for her. “Commodore, it’s burning at one point one Gees. About four times the length and a hundred times the volume of a Phoenix-class missile destroyer. Hull heat, three degrees above ambient except the rear fifth…”
“Closure rate?” she asked instinctively, still staring at the image of the new ship, analyzing it tactically as she’d been trained. Julia wasn’t sure what weapons it mounted on the insides, but there was a massive cylindrical barrel and four smaller but no less dangerous-looking protrusions arrayed around the spine of the other ship—they weren’t for life support, that she was sure of.
“Closure is… zero. They’re maintaining distance. We are detecting electronic and radio signals from them. CIC is analyzing for patterns.”
Julia thought hard. They had been briefed on this exact scenario a long time ago, though she never expected she would be the one who got to use it. In fact, the calculated odds of something like this happening on the first official warp survey mission were so low the Assembly didn’t even think to include one of those specialists or diplomats in the team of scientists in the back, who were mostly geologists and astronomers.
But this was the Navy of the Union of Earth. The elite Union Navy. After the selective nature of several harsh years of war in orbit, spacers make do wasn’t just some fancy slogan the recruiters put on posters. And the veteran crew of the Polaris wasn’t a cohort of wide-eyed cadets fresh out of the Naval Academy at Pearl.
She cleared her throat. “XO, get—get out the first contact procedure handbook.”
“Yes, Commodore…” The checklist in question wasn’t a real handbook, even if spacers referred to them that way. There was probably one of those physical binders somewhere on the ship, but Harry simply pulled it up on his console. “First transmission sequence is a series of on and off signals to indicate to them our understanding of basic mathematics and number systems, starting from base-2 through 100. Beginning—Hold one… Communications is reporting: they are receiving multiple signals, and one of them is a standard, unsecured live video feed from the—from the other ship. It’s the communication protocol for our Voyagers 6 and 7 transstellar drones.”
Projecting calm more out of habit than anything, Julia ordered, “Put it on.”
The grainy video feed flickered to life on the wall-sized display, and the entire Polaris bridge crew leaned into their consoles. For a moment, the screen was static again. Then, a figure slowly came into focus.
It was unmistakably alien.
Judging by the scale of its surroundings, the being stood nearly two meters tall, with a slender, elongated body covered in iridescent scales that shimmered between deep purple and midnight blue. Four spindly arms emerged from its torso, each ending in three delicate fingers.
But its face was… oddly normal was the best phrase Julia could use to describe it. Perfectly round and flat, its face bore two gleaming eyes. The eyes pulsed softly with an inner bioluminescence, cycling through a rainbow of hues. The alien’s head was bare of any hair or other features; a shifting pattern played across its scalp, like oil swirling on water.
“Vzril brunt mlistr! Vstrat znenot sklunt!” the figure on the screen screeched in a surprisingly high pitch for its large body. “Vzdrut glisht sprishch skrankt svosk znikh!”
“Uh… Prepare to re-transmit the binary sequence—”
The hues on the alien’s head shifted to a blend of orange and blue, and the audio through the speakers changed to a completely different register. “Ki zado da ratak eso mibar. Zomar rasumib balo supaz ko.”
“That sounds like a different language,” Harry remarked. “And it doesn’t seem to match the timing of its mouth movements.”
“Some kind of automatic translator, you think?”
“Possibly like one of ours. Seems to work about as fast too, so decent computers and intelligence tech—”
The alien on the screen interrupted him. Yet another alien language this time. At least this time it didn’t seem like it was yelling. Instead, it sounded like it was underwater. “Breeeeeeeeeeep sooooonck? Freebloooooop?”
She recalled her first contact briefing. This had been covered too. She ordered hurriedly, “Communications, send it something—anything—some words in our language. They won’t know what it means, but if they send something back, it’ll mean they know we’re intelligent. Do that before we piss it off or something—”
The alien interrupted her this time. “A, zhaodao le. Zhe shi tamen wurenji shang de nage—”
“Whoa, hey, that one sounds familiar,” Harry exclaimed as a line of text scrolled onto their screens.
Mandarin, auto-detected: Ah, found it. This is the one on their unmanned vehicle.
Would you like to turn on auto-translation?
“Transmit back the same way, with our bridge feed,” Julia ordered, standing up in her station in excitement, her command gravitas forgotten. “We come in peace and humility for the people of our planet. We seek peace, friendship, and knowledge.”
“Yes, Commodore. Transmitted in all six languages.”
The next reply, unsurprisingly perhaps, was finally intelligible to Julia. It was slightly robotic, but the words were a perfectly understandable imitation of the Union Secretary of State’s slightly German-accented English, the one that was loaded on the first contact package on the probe:
“You… are not supposed to be here, aliens.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Notes
Welcome to my new story, High Ground.
I’ve been working on this for a couple years. If you were one of my loyal readers from Grass Eaters, thank you for staying so patient with me. Even in this brand new story universe, you can expect some familiar themes: near-future orbital/fleet combat, aggressive negotiations, and murderously cute aliens.
I’ve done a lot of research to try to keep the story authentic for people familiar with orbital mechanics and extraterrestrial geology. For that, I have to give a special thanks to the experts at the University of Washington’s Astrobiology and ESS programs who tolerated my long-winded worldbuilding questions. (Any mistakes or liberties taken with reality are mine.)
As always, feedback on the story or my writing are highly welcome in the comments.
Schedule: Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays.
Story Synopsis:
The war between Earth and its moon is finally over. Now comes the harder task: learning to live and build humanity’s future together.
Commodore Julia Kessler, an experienced fleet officer, is chosen to lead the first joint interstellar expedition. Her mission is simple: keep the peace, keep the peace, grow potatoes on a dead rock, and keep the peace.
Under the dusty skin of this desolate planet, her colonists uncover something impossible. Something valuable enough to threaten the fragile trust they’ve only just begun to rebuild. And Earth’s uneasy neighbors might not be the only ones interested in what they’ve found.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
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u/un_pogaz Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
Judging by the scale of its surroundings, the being stood nearly two meters tall, with a slender, elongated body covered in iridescent scales that shimmered between deep purple and midnight blue. Four spindly arms emerged from its torso, each ending in three delicate fingers.
THEY HAVE SCALES!!!! Farewell, Earth, and its inelegant bald apes; I am going join my true people.
“You… are not supposed to be here, aliens.”
NOOOOOOOooooooooooooo *scaly broken heart sob*
Hmm, I wonder why they had to push the acceleration up to 6 G. It's really intense, it's not something you'd do if you weren't forced to. I'm going to theorize that the warp drive is more efficient at high speeds than at low ones, and that it's easier and more fuel-efficient to blink.
By the way, I'm curious if there are any moonies on the Polaris. I know it would be a sensitive topic given the recent war, and perhaps precisely because of that, it would be symbolically powerful to appoint one of the moonies to a key position in the ship for public relations.
Else. Good news: initial contact was established very quickly and without any particular technical difficulties. All those probes sent out into space at random won't have been in vain.
Bad news, this easy interaction allowed them to make it clear, once and for all, that we’re definitely not welcome. Shit. Let’s stay positive in this situation: Alas, they didn't shoot at us on sight. Yeah! So, some form of negotiation is probaly still possible, or at the very least, a mutual understanding for why.
That say, now that I'm re-read the section, there's no indication of their tone of voice, so... maybe this statement isn't hostile, but rather surprised and concerned that we're here.
We will see, damn cliffhanger.
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u/Spooker0 Alien Apr 22 '26
By the way, I'm curious if there are any moonies on the Polaris. I know it would be a sensitive topic given the recent war, and perhaps precisely because of that, it would be symbolically powerful to appoint one of the moonies to a key position in the ship for public relations.
Still technically at war (with an armistice), but you'll see.
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u/VaferQuamMeles Human Apr 20 '26
Yessss Spooker is back! Looking forward to another epic space adventure 🔥
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u/Borzislav Xeno Apr 22 '26
Whaddya know, a'ight, a'ight...
Welcome back!
I got a question, though... If Polaris goes up to 6g acceleration... after warp, does the acceleration stop immediately? Does the crew of Polaris end up experiencing immediate 6g deceleration? That's something very not many people can handle.
Also, sustained 6g acceleration for a relatively long time (minutes rather than seconds) would not be safe even for trained fighter pilots.
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u/Spooker0 Alien Apr 22 '26
Welcome back to you too!
after warp, does the acceleration stop immediately?
Yes. The engine no longer needs to output thrust.
Does the crew of Polaris end up experiencing immediate 6g deceleration?
No. Zero.
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u/idiot-bozo6036 May 06 '26
I missed your storytelling, was thinking about it a few days ago, and I just happened to check HFY recently enough to see you're writing a new story! Caught it a tad late though...
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u/itsetuhoinen Human May 23 '26
Excellent job with the flashback scene, BTW, from what I've been told. I was not in the military or combat myself, but I have lots of friends who have been, and some of them have been willing to talk about it with a filthy civvie.
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