Outrim 1

If it hadn't been for Shiegenoi and Kent, humanity would have suffocated. Back in c21 we were sitting on a pressure cooker of ecological collapse and failing economies. The old USA was stumbling, hard, and China was still trapped under the thumb of old Communism. Europe was drawing in on itself. The first space elevator was still just a pipe dream.

Then Jacob Kent and Dr. Shiegenoi stumbled across the KS effect. They cracked gravity. Antigravity was born in 2034. It existed as a curiosity, significant only in scientific circles until, three years later, practical small scale fusion reactors came online. Overnight, reaching orbit went from a price-per-pound in the thousands of dollars down to the hundreds.

The first space elevator dropped that price further still. The cost to reach orbit dropped to the single digits, and the first exodus began. National space programs received another infusion. Governments that lacked access to the equatorial elevators (kept guardedly by the nations of Nauru, Kenya, andL Ecuador) utilized KS-drives to reach orbit. Once there, the solar system was the next step.

Mankind spread through the solar system. The pressure came off Earth. At first, the new frontier meant freedom from government and corporation, but it wasn't long until the crumbling nation-states and business interests reached out as well. Humanity had received a reprieve, but it would not last forever.

The years of the first exodus were a return to exploration and adventure. Any person with the will and a bit of cash could stake a claim on Mars or aboard one of the Venusian aerostats. Asteroid miners pulled resources from the belt into the inner system, feeding a hungry economy back on Earth, and a booming colonization effort on Mars. 

The politics shifted, too. China and the US found themselves uncomfortable bedfellows standing against a resurgent Russia and the rising star of United Subsaharan Africa on the world stage. Europe found itself between two global alliances. South America formed a union modeled on the old EU, while Australia formed the center of the South Pacific Treaty Organization. These blocs became the new political unit as the solar system was tamed, with military cooperation gradually transitioning to diplomatic intimacy, and cultural blending on the frontier. The world stood at peace for nearly half a century, the interests of humanity turning outward.

World War Three never touched the world. Our first war out among the stars saw the casual use of nuclear and fusion weapons and worse. The Sino-American Alliance went to the mat with Russia. The SPTO lost an orbital colony in the first months to a derelict American Cruiser, The Los Angeles, when it's KS-drive was destroyed. Spun into a deliberate attack by the SPTO media, it joined the war on the Russians side. 

Neither side ever secured Earth orbit for itself. That was probably for the best, as it ensured that neither side would be free to undertake bombardment. Rather, the war was fought on the shipping lanes. Commerce raiders - frequently converted freighters themselves - would board and scuttle inbound resource haulers. Standing engagements were rare, as both sides navies chased one another through the asteroid belt and beyond. 

There was a ground war. Mars was the new center of the solar system. The Chinese and the Americans had made the planet their primary colonization concern, and it showed. Armstrong City covered a land area half the size of Los Angeles back in the c21. Two million people called it home. Prospectors, scientists, and hydroponic farmers along with a contingent of American Marines and Chinese specops. 

Russians tried dropping an asteroid on it. Would have succeeded too, if the Xingyun de Shiji, a Chinese asteroid hauler inbound from the belt hadn't run across the rock. The Xingyun put out a distress call to the Sino-American navy with the asteroids telemetry. The news that came back revealed that no other ship could intercept the object - the Xingyun was it. The vessels captain ordered nonessential crew aboard their shuttle, allowing them to continue along the present vector. The Xingyun attached itself to the asteroid and began a hard burn.

It was around then that the ore-haulers communications ceased. No one knew it then, but the Russians came in after the Xingyun. ECM systems on the Russian warship blocked the haulers transmissions. They had the civilians dead to rights until the crew of the shuttle pieced together the situation. They sacrificed themselves in a suicide run against the Russian warship, crippling it. The Xingyun's fuel tanks sustained several hits in the interim. They had enough fuel to yank the asteroid onto a new course, away from Mars, on a trajectory that would carry it out of the solar system.

Carrying the Xingyun with it. The hauler had already been running on a light fuel load on it's way back to the inner system, and the skirmish had only worsened it's situation. Altering the asteroids course had placed them in an untenable position. They lacked the fuel to escape - and the new course would carry them out into the oort cloud over the space of a year. They were moving faster than any humans had in recorded history.

All of this played out on live (speed of light delayed) media. The story played out over a space of days. Starting with terror at the prospect of an asteroid impact on inhabited Mars, it transitioned to a triumphal tone as the success of the Xingyun was revealed. Then shock and horror at their plight. The war trickled to a stop as the Xingyun raced through the inner system. The ten crew members on board acquired a morbid celebrity - dead men that gave interviews. Doomed to die and drift out into extrasolar space.

Rescues were planned - including a high profile mission by a Russian trillionaire. One by one, they failed. The haulers speed was too great, it's course taking it well beyond the reaches of any ship that would have the capacity to return. Gradually, the tragedy of the Xingyun faded to updates regarding its position and quotes from the crew. The peace brokered between a chastened Russia and a relieved Sino-American alliance was an equitable one. Russia's star had fallen, however. Several clauses in the treaty forbade the nation from utilizing asteroids as resources, citing the Xingyun disaster.

Life returned, for awhile, to normal. The Xingyun slipped from the minds of most. It wasn't forgotten, precisely, but it had been accepted that there was little to be done for them. Several men aboard commited suicide. Three of them placed themselves in suspended animation. Five opted to remain, awake and working. They had food that would support them for several years. They had water, mined directly from the asteroid that doomed them. They performed voluntary scientific work for Armstrong University, using the haulers sensors for an 'up close' look at the Oort cloud. 

The crew, two Americans, Two Chinese, and a lone Canadian, were the first humans to leave the solar system. Two years after their sacrifice, the Xingyun entered the Oort cloud. The hauler was gradually decaying, losing power as the light of the sun grew weaker and components began to fail. 

Then they found It.

It was a sphere. It's diameter was around a kilometer, and when the hauler first picked it up on sensors, the crew assumed it was a comet or an undocumented dwarf planet. At the behest of the university in Armstrong, the Xingyun focused it's last dregs of power on scanning the object.

It scanned them back. Then it moved, accelerating faster than anything before seen. 

When the news reached the inner system, it exploded across the net in a matter of hours. The Xingyun was back in headlines. Over the space of hours, It approached the Xingyun and matched velocities. Then, a conversation of sorts began. The crew endured frostbite as heating systems shut down to keep communications up. The object, after being dutifully pinged and inspected by the haulers systems, transmitted a heavily compressed file to the hauler. Several days later, the communications engineer - Adrianna Gutierrez - unlocked its formatting. She discovered that the message was a dense set of text - a sort of Rosetta stone, translating English and Chinese into two other written languages. 

Two shorter messages were also attached. The first was "Welcome. Your ascent was faster than expected. We bring peace. We are the Majir, and we are your neighbors. If you allow us, we seek your friendship." An image was attached - it depicted a humanoid creature, standing around two meters in height. For an alien, it's appearance was shockingly human. Their hands and feet bore six digits. Their eyes no iris. The hair on it's head was thick and not hair at all - rather a complex bundle of nerves extending from their scalp. Their skin ranged from grayish to pink. Images of their homeworld followed - another Earth. This one with an orange sun and purple-black plants, but another Earth nonetheless. It lay startlingly close, just eighty-five light years from Sol. The message ended simply - "Estimated Time of Contact - one year."

The second message was smaller, shorter. It read "Do you require assistance?"

The Xingyu was saved. It was a probe, a gatekeeper to the space outside the solar system, sent to monitor humanity until it left the cradle. According to It - or rather, the AI running It - the object was just under one hundred years of age, and perfectly capable of hauling the stricken ore carrier back to the inner system.

The net exploded. Humanities first contact happened well outside any government control. The message was transmitted to all of human space by both the Xingyun and radical elements within Armstrong University. The year that followed was filled with the best and the worst humanity had to offer - the UN became a resurgent force, seeking to unite humanity in name at least, before the projected arrival of the Majir. Two months after the major alliances signed the Oregon protocols, uniting them as a loose confederation, the Nauru space elevator crashed to Earth as a result of newly energized fundamentalist terrorism. The impact devastated the south Pacific, and several lesser attacks followed.

Despite the setbacks, humanity found itself united. Sometimes grudgingly, but united nonetheless. The message from the Majir was one of benevolence, but human history had aptly demonstrated that even the kindest of smiles could conceal a dagger. The union was partially a sign of goodwill on the eve of first contact. 

It was also a military alliance, should the worst come.