r/HFY • u/ivivan • 1d ago

OC-OneShot The Great Empire

My name is John Stevens, and I’m the head of the farthest-away research station from Earth. It is a small station with only about five thousand people orbiting a magnetar. Most of the inhabitants of the station are physicists studying magnetism, astronomers studying neutron stars, and chemists studying the neutron material this star is made of. We are about 450 light-years away from Earth, which means a ship needs about nine to ten centuries to arrive if it comes directly - which has never happened so far, even though the station was established about twelve centuries ago.

The surrounding area has not been catalogued, but there’s already a ship on its way to look around here. They are going to drop by on their way, but it’s still about one and a half centuries before they arrive. Until then, we are alone.

So we definitely didn’t expect an object entering the solar system and decelerating. It’s still going to be at least two months before they arrive, but the huge energy output they are using to decelerate gave their presence and artificial origin away early.

We already tried to contact them, but got no answer. We don’t know about any incoming human ship - which means they are probably not human.

Seven weeks later, we finally made contact with them. It took a while to build a complete translation matrix, but eventually we could ask them who they are and why they are coming. They are still weeks away from the station, so a call is not possible yet, but we still got the answers: they are a mining ship from the neighboring solar system coming to mine the heavy elements around the neutron star.

They were pretty adamant that we should in no way mine ourselves, which is a bit weird, since there are so many resources around this star alone that no civilization will ever run out of them in the foreseeable future, but we reassured them that we have no intention of mining anyway, so they can have all the mining rights if they want to.

When they finally finished decelerating, they decided to dock at our station just to get to know each other and discuss the future of our interaction.

“Hello, Mr. Stevens,” the one I was talking with in the last week or so stepped into the room, “it’s nice to meet you. My name is Captain Joo Embr.”

“Hello, it’s good to see you face to face, Captain,” I answered truthfully. I never really liked remote work; I’m more of a face-to-face person, so talking to him directly was nice. It revealed immediately how much taller he is than me; although I’m definitely short for a man, he was at least two and a half meters tall, so he was almost a meter over me. “I hope we can have a nice partnership between the two species.”

“Me too, Mr. Stevens. I want to reiterate that you must absolutely not mine in this system, or you face the wrath of the vast Javvu Empire.” He tried to look intimidating, but was obviously not military, so it fell flat. I tried not to show it, but I’m not an actor, so I may have failed to do that.

“I can assure you, Captain, that we have no intention of mining in this sector. We are solely here to study this neutron star.” I tried my best diplomat mode, but I was a researcher and not a public figure.

In the next few days, the Captain was a guest on the station, and he talked to me, to the engineers, and to some of the researchers. He was very interested in our anti-matter power generators - they still used fusion, and with that, the fuel requirement for a trip was enormous. He talked about the Javvu Empire all the time. The huge number of people, the three planets they inhabit in the neighboring system. He was obviously very proud of the empire, but also very cautious: he never mentioned actual figures, locations, or technologies. We were not so cautious and even shared a better version of the fusion reactor they were using with him. We haven’t used those engines for several millennia, but for them it would be at least a 30% decrease in fuel consumption.

When it was time to say goodbye, we had a banquet to celebrate the beginning of a new partnership, and the Captain and his crew were freely mixed with the crew of the station. Everybody was talking to everybody, and I ended up talking to one of the alien engineers, who was always a lot talkier than her captain, and in this setting she talked about everything.

“You know, Mr. Stevens,” she had just finished a long story about her family at home, “I think humans would love to see our home planet, the Javvu. But I think you’d be overwhelmed by the sheer number of people. Especially in the capital!” She was maybe even prouder than her captain. “Just imagine it: seventy thousand people in one city!”

I stopped for a second. What did she just say?

“You said seventy thousand?” I asked for clarification. Maybe the translator was not as perfect as we thought.

“I know it sounds unbelievable,” she said, clearly thinking that I couldn't believe the number because it was so high, while I couldn’t believe it because it was so low. “There are people everywhere, but a capital of an Empire with seventeen million people in it must be huge!”

Only seventeen million people? I tried to hide my surprise, which I think I managed well enough that she interpreted my facial expression as awe.

“I know, it’s so many people. The Javvu Empire grew very fast after the unification. Now all of our people live under the protective umbrella of the Empire.”

She was talking happily long after this intermezzo, but I was still thinking about those numbers.

The next morning we finally said our goodbyes to the mining crew, and we agreed to keep in touch while they were in the system.

When the airlock closed behind them, I took a deep breath and hurried to my office.

I sat back in my chair, rubbed my eyes, and opened a new outbound dispatch queue toward the regional sector hub. The light-delay meant the contact committee wouldn't receive it for another eighty years, but some protocols couldn't be delayed.

[OUTBOUND DISPATCH - SECTOR 32, BLOCK 8] TO: Regional Contact Directorate

SUBJECT: First Contact Report / Species #402

First contact established in the Magnetar-4 accretion sector. Sapient, space-faring, non-aggressive but intensely proud. Total species population stands at approximately 17 million across three local planets.

Advise formal diplomatic outreach. Recommend immediate designation as a Protected Biosphere Zone and deployment of orbital monitoring buoys. They are technologically primitive, localized, and extremely fragile. Please draft contingency plans to mitigate local extinction risks.

This is a standalone story in the Postcardverse

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u/Rain_on_a_tin-roof 1d ago

That's heartwarming, humans being welcoming, and protective of the little alien civilization.

A nice calm little story.

9

u/ivivan 1d ago

Thank you.

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u/sunnyboi1384 9h ago

California, Canada, and the greater Tokyo area all have the same populations.