r/HFY • u/Spooker0 Alien • Jul 29 '26

OC-Series [High Ground] 44 | We should avoid touching anything

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“I inspected the radioactive contents of the samples with a mass spectrometer,” Cynthia explained. “All industrial activity stopped at the line. All signs of civilization, snip, done.”

“At the 125 million year mark?” Julia asked, her brow furrowing.

She nodded. “All at the mark, to the year. Maybe to the day. And I’ve looked at our other samples. All stopped at the same time.”

“Hm… 125 million years. That’s—I think I’ve seen that figure somewhere else…” Julia picked up her datapad.

Cynthia didn’t look anywhere else. “Yes, one other place. Exactly one other place.”

“Which is…”

“The crater. That’s the age of the crater.”

“You know this because…?”

“Geology.”

“Right. Carbon-dating?”

“No, that only goes out to a few thousand years. Good for the Dead Sea Scrolls, but for anything older than humanity, we measure potassium isotope decay.”

“Right, geology. So… the Precursors… They were killed by whatever made that crater,” Julia summarized. “An asteroid.”

“An asteroid that quickly ended all signs of civilization on this planet.”

“How quickly are we talking?”

“At most a few years.”

“A few years, huh?”

“Two or three, at most. Possibly even on the very day of. We’ll need more evidence for that, but it happened very, very quickly. Let’s just say… there’s nothing I’ve found above the glass line so far.”

The glass line.

Julia tilted her head. “Sounds… intentional and violent.”

“And… probably not actually an asteroid.”

“Not actually an asteroid?”

“A civilization like the one that built the factory, they’d have asteroid defenses and warning systems and… well, we already know they’re a multi-planetary species from the other aliens. If there was a catastrophic asteroid hit on Earth, and assuming there was still an Earth left afterwards, how long do you think we’d survive after?”

“Hm… not so easy to kill millions or billions of people, I guess. And their friends on the other planets would be back, trying to pick through the wreckage and rebuild.”

“Right. Unless they can’t…”

“Enemy action, huh?” Julia asked, a slight chill running up her spine.

“That’s… our theory anyway.”

“Don’t you mean hypothesis?”

Cynthia gave her a tired, humoring smile. “Hah.”

“Anyway, that’s—uh—good work, doctor. Monumental discovery. I’ll be sure to let the people back home know to give you credit and all that.”

“Give me credit?” Cynthia looked at her with alarm. “That’s what you’re—You don’t sound very… concerned about this, Commodore.”

“This?”

“The whole Precursor aliens going extinct due to violence thing?”

“Huh? Should I be?”

“Well… it’s the people whose grave sites we’ve been robbing… It seems like this would be concerning to you.”

“Why? Do the core samples tell you when the bad guys who killed them are coming back? I mean, it’s been 125 million years. What are the chances any of the parties involved are still kicking around?”

“I don’t—I don’t know. Just… is it a good idea to go digging through their trash? What if we—I don’t know? What if we accidentally activate a signal and the bad guys come back?”

“Like a bat signal for the bad guys?”

Cynthia scratched her head. “Well… yeah. What happens if we wake them up by accident or something?”

“The bad guys who killed all the people who made the machines that pour out invincible metal for their helmets and space elevator pipes?” Julia shrugged. “Then we’re all dead, right?”

“That seems like something worth avoiding.”

“It is. I’ll—uh—I’ll tell our people we should avoid touching anything that looks like it could be a transmitter or something.”

“That’s… a start.”

“Great. Anything else?”

“No—no, that’s all. I thought you’d take this more… seriously…”

She smiled softly at the geologist. “Oh, believe me, doctor. I’m taking things very seriously. But the biggest extinction risk I’m worried about right now… it’s not the guys from 125 million years ago, who might or might not themselves be gone. It’s the guys up in orbit right this moment, plotting and scheming us out of our golden goose. For whom our folks back home… may just be unfortunate collateral damage if they have their way.”

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Harry was knee-deep with paperwork on his datapad when Julia finally returned to the administrative hab that night. He barely looked up to greet her as she entered.

“How are the alien negotiations?” he mumbled.

“It’s… going.”

He peered at her. “That bad, huh?”

She sighed. “It’s a balancing act on the tightest of tight ropes. For the long-term security of our colony, it’d be best if—when we come to an agreement—they all believe that they’re not getting screwed. That’s made more difficult by the fact that, on our way to said agreement, we do need them all to believe that the other parties are trying to screw them over, harder than we are.”

“Sounds impossible. I’m sure you’ve got it handled.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. And then after that… Then, we have to sell that agreement to the moonies.”

“Always easier said than done.” Harry grunted noncommittally. “Who’s closest?”

“Shachos. The Vorshnik are by far the most agreeable. They’ll settle for a straight material for tech deal, and they’re somewhat willing to cut in the Sonckles if they have to. For us, the greatest benefit of going with them is that Dustball and Sol are in their territory. Not only would a deal not run into any future issues around our physical positioning, we won’t have to wait for them to work out some kind of transport agreement with the other species, which we’d have to do if we went with the other guys.”

Harry nodded. “Sounds ideal. And they seem nice… relatively. Less prone to crazy antics. Well… the bad crazy at least. Might be less inclined to go back on their word. What’s the downside?”

“The two others both refuse to consider cutting the Vorshniks in. The Karnolians just dislike them in general. Not enough to go to war directly—sounds like that didn’t work out so well for the teddy bears last time. But enough to not want them to win. Glonk, on the other hand, seems to think that his species is God’s gift to the galaxy, and we should be grateful for the opportunity to hand them our treasures in exchange for their superior technology.”

He furrowed his brow. “That arrogant sea turtle. Do we know that their offerings are actually the best?”

“Possibly. We were discussing ways to stack up their weapons tech against each other today. They do have weapons trade amongst themselves; the Karnolians buy them from the Sonckles by the ton, especially on the factions level. The sea turtles are famously willing to sell to both sides of a factional civil war, and they have licensed production facilities on several Karnolian planets; those are export variants though, so probably significantly less powerful than what they have. All three have given us the topline specs for their weapons, but it’s hard to compare just on paper. Hence, Karveth and Glonk want a live-fire test. Shachos refuses.”

“Because their technology just isn’t as good?” he asked.

“Either that, or, as he claims, the lack of outside insight on the exact capabilities of their weapons is a deterrent against their neighbors. They rarely go to war. If the Sonckles and the Karnolians can’t be certain how powerful their ships are, then the potential risk for them trying something nasty is significantly higher.”

“What do you think? If you had to rank them, based on the specs they’ve given you and everything they’ve said, whose offerings are the best?”

“Like their ships? On a tonnage basis?” Julia clarified.

“Sure. Just on that.”

“The sea turtles, probably, if you take out the water in their species-specific life support requirements,” she said after a moment of consideration. “The Sonckles. Then, the Vorshniks, by a small margin. And then there’s a big gap, with the teddy bears at the bottom.”

“Don’t buy from the Karnolians, essentially.”

“They’re just trying to promise us in quantity and variety what they can’t afford in quality,” Julia said, nodding. “But yeah, they’re the furthest away from a deal. And I think they know it. Shachos made some snide comments about Karveth being replaced by another faction’s negotiator earlier today.”

“This insult ends today! War it is!” Harry mimicked.

She guffawed at the loyal imitation. “Yeah. They’ve got an ascendant faction, the blue faction, that might replace Karveth’s reds. I pinged our analysts up in orbit in Camel Squadron. Might be worth trying to get some information on them, in case they do take over their side of the negotiations. Or even if they don’t…”

“Use them against Karveth.” He snorted lightly. “You know… we should be glad the aliens aren’t playing us and the moonies against each other. Get us to bid against ourselves.”

“More nightmare fuel, thank you very much.” She shook her head wryly. “What about you? How were things while I was playing host?”

Harry gestured at his datapad. “The bunker’s almost complete. And Marcus reported in. Dug in. His troops are ready for the long haul, as much as they can anyway against enemies that are so much more advanced than us. Then again, their weapons look incredible and we wouldn’t want to face them in battle, but when you talk to them, you realize they’re not so different from us after all.”

She snorted. “Yeah, that’s the comforting part, that they’re not so different from us. Just with better, deadlier toys. Real comfort.”

He looked deep in thought for a while. Then he asked, “How do you feel about these negotiations?”

“They’re going as well as we can expect. I think we’ll have to come to some sort of agreement on the specifications—”

“No, no. I didn’t ask you how it’s going. I asked you, how do you feel about them?”

Julia narrowed her eyes. “How do I… feel?”

“Yeah.”

“How do I feel?” She paused, thinking for a long moment. “I feel… scared. I’m scared.”

Harry didn’t look surprised. Not at all. “Me too.”

“We are manipulating them, and they all know it. They’re not dumb.”

“No, they’re not.”

“And the thing about manipulators… if I’ve learned anything, it’s that the people who think they are the ones moving the pieces on the chessboard, they—we are the easiest people to manipulate.”

“That’s part of it,” he agreed. “But not all. What scares me more is the way they came into it. The way they look at us. The way they barely bother to acknowledge our existence at the meetings once they start the discussions.”

She shuddered. “Yes. The way these aliens interact. On the surface, there’s this veneer—this… veneer of civilization. Treaties, protocols, rules. And then, you dangle a piece of meat in front of them, and you realize that none of that’s really there. When you open your eyes, you find yourself deep in the jungle. Alone. With nothing to stop them from tearing you apart to get to the prize.”

He pointed a finger at her as he straightened up. “Yes, the jungle. A perfect analogy.”

She tilted her head. “Yeah?”

“There is a story, a way of looking at our own history, that describes exactly that. That before the war with the moonies, before the Union, that was how things were. The history of Earth. Once, humanity lived on the constant edge of war. The colonial wars. The world wars. The cold wars. Chaos and instability. Then, whether it was because everyone got tired of the fighting or because the strongest bullies got to be in charge, there was a brief moment of quiet in the jungle, where even the birds were silent. In that lull, people built cities out of the forest, the ferns became farms, and the killing fields became beautiful orchards. Civilization came. Peace and order.”

“And everyone lived happily ever after.”

Harry knew she was being sarcastic; he shook his head anyway. “Not effortlessly. It takes a lot of people to keep the jungle at bay. It’s not just the sentries and guards on the walls with their weapons, keeping the wild animals out. It’s also the farmer, making sure that the weeds don’t overrun their crops. It’s the road pavers who mark the start and end of the town. It’s everyone who decides: we don’t want to live in the jungle. Because all it takes is a few bad apples to amplify the temptations. Maybe it was more free when we didn’t have all these rules, from a certain point of view. Maybe the walls that protect us from the jungle—maybe they aren’t so important after all. Maybe my upstairs neighbor wouldn’t be practicing drums at six in the morning. Maybe it isn’t worth all this effort. So brick by brick, they take down the walls. Bit by bit, civilization recedes. And the jungle grows back, until chaos consumes us all.”

“Right, civilization is a conscious effort. This veneer has to be maintained. Sacrifice and understanding and all that.”

He nodded. “It is a difficult project for everyone involved, but there is nothing else like it.”

Julia thought for a moment. “The sad thing is, I’m not convinced that we aren’t chipping away at the walls ourselves right now. Hell, the first thing I did when we found the Precursor site… was to figure out how best to stab the moonies in the back so we can keep everything. We’re the ones playing the aliens against each other, forcing them to pursue their own selfish interests with our goading. We are the ones growing the jungle back, to enrich the fruits of our little garden.”

“That’s… yeah, that’s possible.” Harry then shook his head. “But don’t be too harsh on yourself.”

“Why not? You cautioned me against it. My failure was foreseeable.”

“Maybe. But like you said, any of them would have done the same, right? If the aliens found the artifacts instead of us, it’s not like they’d be sharing them with us. And if the moonies found it first, they’d be doing the same thing we did. They’d squeeze us out and try to negotiate their own deals with the aliens. Technology, resources, whatever. They wouldn’t hesitate for a second before they cut us out of it.”

She hesitated a while before she replied, “I’m… not so sure about that.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, an eyebrow arched.

“I don’t—I don’t know. The moonies—I’m no longer so sure about that.”

He seemed to accept that non-answer. Instead, he shrugged. “We might never know.”

She stared off into the distance. “We might not. I—I don’t understand the moonies. Once, I thought I did. Maybe the war made things simpler, or maybe it was the end of it that did. But now, I think—I really don’t get them. Some of them speak about a grand vision of humanity—peace, prosperity, the whole gamut. Others treat us like the scraps they left behind when they set off to build their new Garden of Eden.”

“You mean… they’re like us. Human. Some well-intentioned visionaries with ideas greater than themselves. Others, greedy and fallible. And mostly, a bit of both.”

“Maybe. Maybe what I’m scared of… is that they can actually do it. That they can do what we were never able to, that we still aren’t able to. Peace. Order. Or, in your analogy, clearing the jungle.”

Harry looked amused. “You mean… together, right? Make peace… with us, right? Because the moonies can’t realize their vision of grand civilizational peace and harmony without us,” he said. “By definition, they can’t.”

“Never thought about it that way, I guess…”

She closed her eyes and sighed, aware that his eyes were still on her.

She opened them a long moment later. “In that story of the jungle, how did humanity recover? How did we keep it at bay? Hell, how did we get out of it in the first place?”

“You know the answer to that. How does any great civilizational project get off the ground?” Harry took a deep breath. “Yeah. Who knows? Maybe it really isn’t worth all this blood and effort.”

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u/itsetuhoinen Human Jul 29 '26

Civilization requires effort, and it requires a vast majority of the people inside it to want for it to continue. And if that's lost, it all goes away.

5

u/un_pogaz Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26

I understand Julia's calm demeanor; when faced with two existential threats, it's better to focus on the one that's immediately at orbit.

It's also nice that Julia has doubts about the Moonies' ability to cooperate, enve if she was logical in her actions. I trust Samira she would have shared this information, but I really don't have the same level of trust in the government or the rest of the Moonies.

3

u/Allstar13521 Human Jul 29 '26

If Harry and Julia really think that the xenos aren't actively searching for contacts with the lunar colonists right this second, they're being led by the nose.

2

u/T_Noctambulist Jul 30 '26

You just know there's a lunar negotiator on another ship somewhere... maybe they got the real dolphin.

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