The Fermi Object

Regrouped

Spitfire was having a bad day. The gryphons had slipped away in the confusion, leaving behind their boat, but carrying information about the aliens to who knows where. Firelock was most likely dead, but officially only MIA. And nobody could agree on what should be done about the aliens. They probably didn't have much time either. Knowing those two, they would go directly back to the gryphons.

The politicians (the few who knew about the alien survivors) wanted action taken immediately, because this could upset the international community. But they lacked the coordination to put together a statement beyond “something should be done” in any definitive sense. That's why having the princess in power was important: a special case, where an immortal benevolent ruler really came in handy.

The science team wanted an unfeasibly large military action in the swamp to contain, and PROTECT, the aliens. This was something they were not geared for, in a location where aliens could simply wade through swamp waters, and ponies would have to swim. Not only that, but Spitfire knew that before anything could be done to contain them, the military would have to know something about them, to make sure they wouldn't eat through the containment walls and wards, or cast magic over the wards, or outright through them. There were just far too many unknowns there to even count.

The military wanted them exterminated, subdued, anything. Having aliens that were immune to guns, especially modern ones, was a major threat to their doctrine of pegasus mobility, earth pony stability, unicorn superiority. There wasn't any current animosity with the gryphons, but the second they found out about aliens that were immune to guns were on Equestrian soil, there might be. That was the problem, it was this nasty loop of things that were worth going to war over, because they were good to have if one were in a war, but without there being any actual reason to go to war in the first place.

The expedition, by far the smallest and most outspoken of the groups, urged caution on all sides. Chert was the one Spitfire remembered the most, speaking up to both sides.

"They seem highly coordinated, almost a hive mind, with armor strong enough that even if we were to try and trade pony lives for theirs, I would imagine that we would be losing both ways in the exchange."

Spitfire had advocated similarly but for a different reason.

"Somehow, these aliens were able to take out a highly trained pegasus guard, and if they had wanted to, they probably could have hunted down our entire party. They're after something, and we know nothing about what they're after, or what we can do to stop them."

Both ponies had actually been presented as a sort of ace in the hole to try and convince the other that they were completely right. Spitfire didn't even want to think of the logistics problems involved with a large-scale operation inside of a cragodile swamp, but what Firelock showed her indicated that a larger expedition would have even more problems without the swamp's usual fauna getting in the way.

Taking down a hydra was hard enough, taking one down in the middle of a bug-ridden, filthy, muck-encrusted abomination of geography would be a nightmare.

Now they were stuck in a room with the science team, who Spitfire considered actually open to negotiation. The science team was led by a wiry diamond dog named Pablo. Once Spitfire found out who he was, she liked him a lot more for his practical approach to complicated problems.

Pablo was a very thin, floppy-eared diamond dog, with a thin tail that curled up at the end. His fur was brown, except on his forearms, which were white. All of his fur was very thin, just like himself, which gave him an almost emaciated look.

Pablo was also the expert on these aliens, and head of the very well-funded, and also very frustratingly slow-to-progress, research into them. He had actually named them "Riloks" after the first information they had extracted from mostly still intact DNA, or DNA-A as he nicknamed it.

"WAIT!" shouted Pablo. "The first contact with an alien species and you SHOT AT THEM?"

"I don't think peaceful relations were exactly going to happen." Chert said. "They were VERY aggressive. And showed no signs of intelligence beyond coordination. Sort of like ants in that respect."

"But still, this is our first contact with an alien species. What if those had been just mindless scouting drones?"

"It's very easy to say all of this in hindsight, Pablo. You weren't there. They started attacking the second one of us started giving an order. If Firelock hadn't figured that out so quickly, we probably wouldn't have made it back here."

That only made Pablo more angry.

"If I ever get my paws on him..."

"Then I hope you give him a proper burial. It's his sacrifice that allowed us to even know this much about the aliens. All of Dr. Chert's, and all the other scientists’, notes would be gone, and I have no idea how many of them we would have been able to get out of there."

"Yes but, but..." Pablo still seemed angry, but was unable to find a way to argue. "It's just so frustrating for me. We've found out so little about these Riloks from the ship piece alone, that the idea of them just... dying on us, scares me. There is just so much we need to learn from them..."

Pablo slumped into a nearby chair.

"I was the first one to do the Potassium 40 test, you know. That's why I'm head of this department. I'm not even all that great a manager here, I'm just good at finding and thinking up new tests to use on them." Pablo laughed awkwardly. "I guess I wasn't thinking about you guys there. It's just that they've traveled so long to get here that I can't lose them now, not when we still have living specimens."

"What's potassium-40 dating?" Spitfire asked, "I mean, I've heard of carbon dating, wouldn't that be better?"

"Carbon-14 dating doesn't exactly work in space, you see, you need an atmosphere, and to be relatively close to the sun for it to work. Even if it did work, it only goes back a couple thousand years, it doesn't go back as far as we need it to." Pablo seemed to be getting into explainy scientist mode. "Potassium-40 works because it has a much longer half-life, somewhere around 1.3 billion years, and doesn't require an atmosphere."

"I've heard about that. Those numbers aren't true, are they? They sound absolutely absurd." Chert piped in.

"We've tested them for potassium-40 dating so often I could do it in my sleep. Those aliens have been traveling through space for somewhere around 900 million years."

"You're kidding right?" Spitfire said, looking around. "Nothing could live that long."

"That's why I need a living specimen. I have to figure out how the hell they did it. That could be the secret to anything from cryostasis to interstellar space travel." Pablo seemed to have regained a bit of his composure. "You can see why I was so angry at you for shooting at them now. If possible, I want a long, LONG time to study them."

"Yeah, but you weren't there," Chert spoke up gravely before Spitfire could. "As far as we know, they've already killed a pony now. If nothing else, you need to treat them with respect. They are not just test subjects."

"I'm still holding out some hope for Firelock." Spitfire said, having been the one to put him down as only 'MIA' on her report.

Silence awkwardly sat around before Spitfire forced herself to break it.

"OK, so what can you give me to give those military bigwigs and convince them that these things are worth keeping around to study?"

"Surviving 900 million years in space isn't good enough?"

"They think they're enough of a threat that we can get that from them after they're dead." Spitfire said, with some distaste.

"Well, let’s see, we could find out how there are more than one of them now. Find out what alien biology is like. Find out how they digest local plant matter. Find out some definitive answers as to what life on other worlds would look like." Pablo scratched his chin. "We couldn't find out how those scales work unless we captured one alive, since those are an active component. I would like to examine the eye structure of the fliers, as they seem to have very acute eyesight. I'd like to know their social structure, how they seemingly gave and received orders without magic or verbal communication."

Everypony was staring at Pablo, but he wasn't done yet.

"Also, the alien plant life is a complete mystery; possibly a symbiote, or a replacement for hair."

"I think that's enough. Could you write all that down for me though? I don't know if I'll remember all of it and I doubt I could give it the proper scientific terminology." Spitfire emphasized the last few words hoping to imply to Pablo that's what she wanted.

"Oh, uhh, I'm not too confident that I'm the right dog for that."

"Come on, Pablo, this is just like renewing your grants. You've done that enough to know what you're doing in that department." Chert spoke up. "That's what we all have to do, and if you can't do it then you shouldn't be leading this project."

"All right, I'll see what I can do."

Later, Spitfire had to meet with her military superiors, none of which were too happy.

For the moment though it was only General Destrier, who was named after an ancient general. Spitfire felt a lot of tension in the air between them for some reason.

"So." Destrier hadn't turned back to actually face Spitfire. "You don't think we should wipe out these aliens."

"There are too many unknowns. We don't know how many there are, and the appear to be immune to small arms, even without any sort of armor." Spitfire didn't like the atmosphere Destrier was giving off. "If they have any amount of intelligence behind them at all, they would be able to ignore a great deal of the Equestrian military."

"So you don't think we'll be able to beat them on equal terms then?"

"Not in a swamp like they are now. Even if we had the terrain advantage I wouldn't put it past them to have another surprise for us."

“Not confident in magic eh? I've never met a beast who didn't recoil from a good fireball.”

“It's a swamp, they're probably too damp to burn. Even then I don't want to go in with magic as our only unverified hope. It didn't work on the Windigos there is a distinct chance it won't work here.”

“But you don't know that.” Destrier shot back.

“Exactly. Neither of us do. I'm strongly advocating that we try and find out, it's cheaper in both lives and bits.”

Destrier finally turned to face Spitfire. He almost didn't look like a pony, if Sombra himself met that gaze he may have recoiled himself. Spitfire had heard of ponies who had broken fighting terrible things like quarry eels and hydras that nested with Equestrian borders, but she had never seen a pony remain stalwart and tempered in the face of such adversity. The fires had left behind only hardened steel, even down to his looks, down to his missing ear and nasty tooth-mark scars on both sides of his face that left little pockmarks of skin, as if something very large had bitten directly onto his head.

"So, what do the eggheads say about this?"

"They want to stand back and observe. I agree with them there. We may be able to single one out for study, or find some weakness."

Destrier looked at her for a long moment with that harrowed look. Finally he spoke.

"Very well. We're going to stand back and let your scientists do their work." Destrier held out a hoof to shake. "Thank you for your counsel here, I'll make sure the word gets through."

Spitfire decided she should just accept that she got what she wanted and leave, but before she could, Destrier spoke up again.

"I've been told you have my son's rifle..." There was another long pause. "I would like to have that back, it's a bit of an heirloom from my father."

It took a second for Spitfire to put the pieces together in her head.

"You're Firelock's father?!" Spitfire knew he came from a military family, but for it to be one this prestigious was unexpected.

"Yes, we hadn't talked in years before now. We barely even wrote." Destrier paused again before finally asking another question. "Did he go out honorably at least?"

"He grasped the situation faster than anybody else and saved the life of everybody on that expedition."

"That's... good to know." Prechetov Destrier turned back to the window to glare back at the swamps again, as if he could destroy them with his mind.