Future History: Level-3 FTL travel - part 8a by max-
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Various
Various elements of 3D art, clipart and AI art integrated, AI enhanced and manually retouched.
Description
After returning to Stellarion in orbit, the away team, minus two Marines, joined the Captain and other key personnel in the briefing room where the extraordinary events at 'Merlin’s Find' were discussed in detail.
An hour later the Captain began his concluding remarks:
"Considering that there's no protocol for this specific situation we encountered, let's sum up our options,
Option 1 - We tuck in our tails, run back home as fast as possible, and let the bureaucrats deal with all this, even though my gut tells me they will screw it all up.
Option 2 - We run back home, lucky to still be alive, convince the superiors that a potential deadly threat to humanity needs to be eliminated, then return with a fusion bomb and vaporize the entire site of 'Merlin’s Find'. My gut tells me there's a chance this could be the best and safest option, but only a very small chance.
Option 3 - We give the robots a ride to where they wish to go. From our AI's interaction we learned a few things: That planet, which they call Kalai, is 114 Ly from here -- reaching it would take us 8 days, quite manageable as we have plenty of food and fuel. Would we be taking a risk? Of course; but if we're averse to risk, then why the hell did we even take this job? And keep in mind, we're the first to discover not only extra-solar alien tech, but intelligent alien life as well, and if we manage to return alive, we would become new record-holders of deep space exploration, plus we'd have free access to any treasures that 'Merlin's Find' might still hold."
After a good meal and some rest, the Captain, in spite of objections from one intelligence officer, made a choice -- he chose option 3.
Comments (5)
I admit I'm not a bold space adventurer (or polished writer), that said I imagine my priority would be to know what the war they fled was actually about and who the conflicting parties were (are?). For all we know these machines started a genocidal conflict against their organic creators that didn't go as expected. And as a single source of information on the struggle how could any intelligence they provide be expected not to be biased? For all the Merlin expedition knows these machines could be leading the crew into an ambush so they can continue their practice of stealing spacecraft. In the military you are tough to respect and when possible assist the natives, as long as you never forget you may have to kill them at any moment. Before I went any place with these fellows I'd want to know I had the equipment that would accomplish that goal if it became necessary (aka the Marines need some better shoot 'in irons).
Can't argue with your points -- they're all excellent.
I suppose I should have added more details, but it's not easy 'keeping it short' and 'elaborating everything' at the same time -- such as:
During their interaction, the AI assistant acquired quite a bit of info from the robots ... like 400 pages worth ... and calculated a very high probability of the robots being truthful. The Captain also realizes the robots are far more advanced than Earth tech and will find other ways to minimize risk beside brute force.
Cool !
Fun story. Nice artwork to go along with it. - Bob
Glad you like it, Bob:-)
Has to be option #2...standard practice for our species...don't know what they are or want but they drew 1st blood and now we must use excessive force to remove the threat forever and then we get a TV series showing the stupidity of or ways and ending up enslaved but fighting on as only the underdog can...lol
Great to see this and catch up on the story, off to the next panel :)
LoL ... yup, that's what the bureaucrats would say, and sweep the full truth under the rug -- that the Marine's round left its chamber 400 microseconds before the robot's beam flashed out and neutralized him.
(Half-truth is often more damaging than a lie)
Well, keeping in mind that we have a few GBU-57s left over, we could try option 3, and let the AI keep an eye(?) on things during the journey. We might be able to get a trade deal going with the Kalai, assuming we gave them a break on the tariffs. You never know...
Great continuation, and killer artwork!
My take is this: If I'm not dealing with sociopaths I'd never use force, or sanctions, or any sort of deception on them, deal or no deal. But if they're sociopaths then anything goes.