Sixteen: Wandering's End
The Gultanr were the first to contact them, because of course they were. When Audacity had last skimmed past their planet and downloaded all the data from their orbital probe, in roughly 60,000 BCE, they had been on the cusp of their species' Industrial Revolution, which had in turn forced the Fleet to stealth said orbital probe.
Of course, they were smarter about it than humanity had been (and would be). The Primas Uperbia had challenged every Gultanr to stick their heads down a factory exhaust pipe and try to breathe in the ash and smoke without coughing or choking, and then she challenged them to imagine all of that waste filling the atmosphere. How long would they or their descendants be able to survive in such an environment before it began to adversely affect them?
As a result, they only briefly used fossil fuels on their planet, just long enough to jump to greener technologies like solar and wind farms, and later nuclear energy, once they were satisfied with safety.
'It is to be expected,' said Ferial, pleased, 'We might not have quote-unquote "true foresight", but even so we still play the long game. We look toward the horizon, rather than down at our feet.'
[Was that a jab at my species?]
'Perhaps. But it was not directed exclusively at you, Commander. There are many, many others who are guilty of the same.'
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The Gultanr achieved interplanetary travel about five hundred years after their Industrial Revolution. Their home planet - which they called "Corasetii", an ancient word that meant roughly "Cradle of Life" - had two moons, and they built settlements there first, then spread out to the rest of their system. Their world was the fourth in the system, and the third and the fifth could be terraformed, and were, along with several moons around the gas giants further out.
Their society wasn't entirely peaceful, of course; there were those who used their gifts for greed, for anger, for hate. There was war and oppression and famine and plague, same as everywhere else, but slowly they grew past that - or mostly past it, at least.
And then they finally achieved Slipspace travel.
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John wasn't sure if it was intentional or not, but the very first Slipspace-capable Gultanr ship dropped back into realspace essentially right next to Audacity. They were in orbit over a gas giant in a neighboring system, the ship skimming gases from the planet's atmosphere; it was powered by vacuum energy and virtual particles, but its occupants needed something more real, and the ship could break down and reassemble the gas into a flavored food paste for them to eat.
Even as just a paste, it was surprisingly tasty, and a huge step up from MREs.
The Spartan was actually reading a Gultanr novel, waiting for the skim to finish, when a shiver went up his spine. Even before Dream Chaser signaled for his attention, he looked up - and saw the dragons' ship through the viewscreen, sliding into a parallel orbit some distance away around the gas giant. It was primitive, relatively speaking, but much better than anything humans would have in the early days of interstellar travel.
[Silver-Moon, you're up.]
'One of these days we're going to get you involved in politics, Commander.'
[Absolutely not.]
The Builder appeared on the bridge, and John pushed off from the display, his hard light chair zipping to an out of the way corner as she took his place. "Dream Chaser, do they have visual input for communications?"
"I'm afraid not, ma'am."
"Unfortunate. Audio-only, then. Find me a compatible broadcast channel, please," she said, then switched to the Gultanr's current language. "Greetings, people of Corasetii; may your sight ever be clear. I am Silver-Moon-of-Fortitude, and you gaze upon our science vessel Audacity. We are pleased to meet you at last."
"Greetings, Silver-Moon-of-Fortitude," a female voice returned after a moment, "I am Qairves, on the exploratory vessel Hope, and we are glad to meet you as well."
John listened quietly as the Builder nearly effortlessly politicked her way through their very first first-contact. Of course, he hadn't really expected it to be hard, not when they'd been watching the bipedal dragons - and everyone else - for the better part of forty-one thousand years. They knew what to avoid culturally and how to respond to the Gultanr's own first-contact plans. For now, it would just be radio transmissions and they wouldn't return to the Corasetii system unless invited, but perhaps in a year or so, they would do a face-to-face contact.
Unless the Gultanr offered first, which they did. It seemed that their predictive resonance told them that the Fleet wouldn't hurt them, which was true.
There was an Earthlike planet further in the system, habitable for all of their respective species. Once Audacity finished restocking, they broke orbit and set off for it, talking intermittently the whole way.
Audacity and Hope landed about five hundred feet from each other on the largest continent. John elected to stay back and guard the ship, but he still listened in as the groups met midway and greeted one another face to face - or as close as they could get, anyway. The Gultanr seemed to know of them, much to their surprise; there weren't very many Forerunner "artifacts" on their planet, but even so, the first Gultanr after the Firing of the Array had handed down stories of the Forerunners and the Fleet. The Fleet had known as much, but it was still a surprise to see how little the tales had changed.
And then, of course - "Hey Commander! Come get your worms!"
"There's halgengei?!"
The Gultanr laughed, and Qairves offered some of the worms in question as they all sat down to share a meal. The diplomat - or rather "diplomat", because she was actually a psychologist-slash-"anthropologist" - confirmed what they suspected. "We still have old stories about the Great Sickness and the Trials, and the 'Star-Land in the sky'," she said, "Our historians say the tales are about as old as the great mausoleums in the mountains."
"Mausoleums? I wasn't aware they had all actually buried themselves."
"They are not really mausoleums. It is more that there are mass graves in large caverns in pretty much every mountain range on Corasetii, but someone clearly performed funeral rites on all but a few - probably the last few - and all of them died at roughly the same time, spread out over a period of a few years or so, some forty thousand years ago."
"That sounds about right," said Ambience, "It would have been infeasible for all of them to have just died. The disease and environmental pollution from all the bodies would have been immense."
"You know of these times?"
"We lived them," Silver-Moon said softly, and explained. The crew of the Hope listened eagerly as she told the story of the Flood, and what they had had to do to stop it. "The Sickness you speak of is the Flood, and the Trials - Ferial, the Last Primas Uperbia before the Firing, says that your people competed amongst yourselves with your gifts to decide who would live to fight the Flood. And I believe the 'Star-Land' you are referring to is the Ark, where your people lived safely away from the Flood until the galaxy was cleansed of its taint. It looks like this." She gestured, and Dream Chaser pulled up a general hologram and projected it from her armor.
"And the Black Ships?" another of the crew, the mechanic-slash-engineer Chyrvan, asked, peering eagerly at the hologram and everything else.
"The Black Ships?" Ambience repeated, frowning.
"The Fleet of Shadows isn't actually black," John said between worms, "But after so much time, it's an easy mistake to make."
"You know of them?!"
"They are them, if I am not mistaken. They wear the mark of the Black Ships, engraved in the Cave of Stories by our ancestors." Qairves gestured to the sigil of the Fleet, a combined form of the symbol for "Reclaimer" with the one for "Flood", with Blue Team's eagle-and-stars at the very heart. "Why have you not returned until now?"
"I cannot say that we really have a good reason," Silver-Moon answered, "save that once we thought it our right to rule over the galaxy, to shape and reshape life as we saw fit. Our creed said, 'Guardianship for all living things lies with those whose evolution is the most complete.' But we were wrong, and far too many paid the price for our folly. So even though there were things we might have done, we withdrew to let the galaxy evolve naturally without us, and to let others meet us as equals in their own time, if they wished. Truth be told, we did not expect you to do so, so soon."
"How many other races are there?"
"Hundreds, perhaps thousands. Even we do not have a full accounting. This galaxy is small compared to the universe, but it's still a big place."
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They stayed for a time, long enough to warn them of plants and animals that were most likely toxic, then gave them the relative coordinates and vector for Maethrillian and invited the Gultanr to come visit them someday.
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Corasetii – Core-uh-set-eye
Qairves - Care-vehz
Chyrvan - Churr-vahn (Churr like Churros)