Under the Moon
It began with a repeating loop of an atonal composition. Annoying, very annoying. It was meant to be. Fire Kossan had written it herself, a long time ago, as something guaranteed to grab her attention no matter how deep in contemplation she was. Speaking of, how deep in contemplation had she been, anyway? Hard to know how long she had been sitting here, thinking. Fire's biological processes didn't require a lot these days, and without that interruption it could have been... maybe half a solar cycle? Not a full one, she never let a full one go by without doing a performance.
No one bothered with clocks anymore, here in the Rest Home. No one but the Home itself, which meticulously kept track of time and matched it against a duty schedule so that it would know who to call when something came up requiring the attention of a sapient consciousness. Which is exactly what that tone meant.
Fire tapped a random place on the wall (nearly any surface in the Rest Home could be a display) to see what was up. Ah. It was a starship of some sort, poking about the system. The design didn't look familiar, but it would be strange if it was. It had been nearly a couple of hundred solar cycles since the last time a ship had visited the system, and that one had stayed barely any time at all. Just poked around a bit, realized that there was no life and nothing of obvious use, and left again. Fire hadn't even heard about it until some time after, as she'd been busy and set her messages to queue.
With a few short commands Fire had the Rest Home notify all the other Residents in case they cared, which they probably wouldn't. She considered following up with the Rest Home, double-checking the machine's cloaking and detection avoidance protocols, but to her own surprise realized there was something she wanted to do instead. The ship, it was... kind of pretty. It made her feel inspired to do some original composition.
Soon enough she was in one of her music rooms. Two hands held one of many stringed instruments she had mastered. The lower two hands rested on a keyboard. She spent the next while playing around, trying to recreate in music the feeling that ship had given her. Eventually this pleasant past time was interrupted by another loop of the atonal composition.
Annoyed, Fire gestured at the wall with her lower left hand. She spent a long moment looking at the resulting display, then did something that she hadn't done since well before the ship she was looking at had been built. She cursed. The interlopers were orbiting the Rest Home, or at least the moon under which the Rest Home was concealed. With over 200 moons in the system there was no way that was a coincidence.
A period of frantic data inquiries later, and Fire Cossan had her very unsatisfying answer. The Rest Home's cloak was near perfect. It was capable of hiding them from even temporal vessels, the tachyons acting to blur cross-time scans. There is no such thing as system proof against fools, though. A load of solar cycles ago one of her fellow old fools Halt Baccano, had gotten it into his fool head to request a gate to the system's star so that he could get freshly fused elements for some kind of crafts project. He had never bothered shutting it down, and it had left an imperfection in the cloak that resulted in a tiny, unnoticeable, EM leak. Well... not unnoticeable, apparently.
Of course if Cossan had bothered to check all this when the ship had first entered the system, she could likely have shut down the leak before they noticed. Something she was sure her fellow old fools would point out. At length. Well, there was no help for it. She'd have to call a Resident's meeting and decide what to do.
The Residents all gathered together physically, something they rarely did anymore but if there was yelling it would only be polite to do it in person. There was yelling, though Fire thought it was mainly for the satisfaction of an excuse to yell about something. A few wanted to order the ship destroyed, or at least spanked sufficiently to make it clear it should go away and leave them alone. Fire found herself arguing against this strenuously, mostly because it was a very pretty ship. And because it would be immoral, of course.
They had the Rest Home crack open the ship's data banks and take a look at what they were dealing with. The Rest Home scanned the data and gave them a quick download of the high points, which was that this was apparently an exploration ship from a multi-species coalition. Nice kids, from what they could tell. (It later occurred to them that the Rest Home probably could have taken control of the ship's systems and forced it to deliver false sensor reports, but nobody thought of asking in time.)
By the time the radiation bombardment began, Fire thought a rough consensus to invite the kids down had been achieved. By which she meant that the holdouts had marched off to their quarters and asked not to be bothered. She wasn't fooled, though. They'd poke our their noses eventually for something this interesting.
Their cloak wasn't going to be able to hold out, so Fire had the Rest Home null it and gave the
Courageous a call. (She had, by virtue of being the one on the duty roster, been assigned to do all the work of this visit by the kids.)
"If you're going to make that much of a pest of yourself up there, you may as well come down before you do something stupid."
The response came back quickly. "This is Captain McAdams of the United Federation of Planets Starship Courageous. With whom do I speak?"
"Someone too old to enjoy long comm calls. We've lit a beacon on one of our shuttle bays, come fly down." Fire cut the call and chuckled meanly to herself. She had better get prepared for visitors. Clean up and everything. They'd probably like it if she wore some clothing too.
===
Lt. Buce na'Masharr tried to control his excitement. Captain McAdams had picked him for a First Contact mission. Him, who hadn't done nearly anything worth mentioning in his short career. He thought he was doing a good job of concealing his emotions as he piloted the shuttle down towards the beacon, but Captain McAdams patted him him on the shoulder.
"Steady on, Mr. na'Masharr. Remember, we train like it's the real thing and then do the real thing like it's training," said the Captain. She turned to Commander Devereaux. "Any more information now that we're closer, Jeanette?"
The Commander shook her head without looking away from her screen. "Nothing, Captain. All we're getting is the inside of the shuttle bay, and I can't even guarantee that. We're seeing only what they want us to see. This technology has to be far in advance of our own."
The Captain hmmmed wordlessly and sat in silence, seemingly placid as ice on a windless day.
There was the smallest of bumps as the shuttle set down, and Commander certified the atmosphere as breathable and the temperature as within acceptable range, if a little warm for an Andorian like na'Masharr. The three exited the shuttle together, the Captain's right hand resting casually near her phaser.
Waiting for them outside was a humanoid woman. The first thing they noticed was her skin, which was gold and had a shiny, almost metallic gloss to it. Her hair was a reddish pink and fell to her shoulders, with slightly pointed ears visible between the strands. Despite the remark over the comms about being 'old', she showed no particular signs of age, though neither did give an impression of youth. She wore a tight suit that outlined her body, which showed sex-specific traits consistent with what was considered 'female' for the majority of known humanoid races. Oh, and she had four arms.
The woman's lower two hands rested on her hips while the other two were crossed beneath her breasts. She regarded them in silence, apparently feeling no need to be the first to speak.
Captain McAdams got on script. "I am Captain Rosalee McAdams, commander of the United Federation of Planets Starship Courageous, which is the vessel orbiting overhead. This is Lieutenant na'Masharr and Commander Devereaux."
The gold woman nodded. "I'm called Fire Kossan. I don't hold any rank here, but it's my turn on the duty cycle so the others dumped the job of supervising your visit on me." She waved them forward with her upper right hand. "Come on, I'll take you to see the other Residents and explain things on the way."
The Captain gave a brief nod and fell into position to follow Kossan's lead. Buce hurriedly followed.
"We had the Rest Home- that's what we call this place. We had the Rest Home take a look through your ship's computer and give us a summary on your United Federation of Planets, so I think I've got the basic idea on where you come from. You seemed nice enough kids, so we got a consensus on inviting you down," said Kossan.
"We've had no indications of our ship being scanned, much less our computer's security being breached," said the Captain carefully.
"Ah well, you wouldn't. I supposed I should get this out of the way right now. If you're thinking you've contacted a new species you haven't, not really. My species has been gone for a long, long time now. There's just a couple of dozen of us left here in the Rest Home, whiling away the time until the end of our very long lives. The Rest Home takes care of us, and it has enough of our old technology to do things like check out new ships in the neighborhood and hide from them. Usually. We got a little careless with you, I suppose. Well like I said you seem nice enough, and a visit will provide something to talk about for the next few hundred years."
As Kossan finished this extraordinary statement, they turned a corner and emerged into a large room. Scattered around lounging on various pieces of furniture were twenty more gold-skinned humans, both male and female. To Buce's surprise though, all of them had only the two arms of the standard humanoid model.
"I am sorry to hear that your species is gone. It's our loss to be unable to meet them. May I ask, how long have you been alone?" replied the Captain.
Kossan turned and tapped the wall, which lit up with a display. She looked at it carefully. "Translating into your units... Seven hundred and thirty thousand years, 28 days, and thirty-two minutes. More or less."
==
Fire had to spend some more time answering questions, but finally she seemed to satisfy the human captain enough that she reported back to her ship, then let her people spread out and start properly mingling. Everyone wanted their turn talking to the alien visitors, even if they pretended like they didn't.
To her mild surprise the blue one with the antenna swung back around to talk to her. "I hope this isn't offensive in any way, but I was wondering. Why are you the only one with four arms?"
"You're Lieutenant na'Masharr, right?" asked Fire to make sure she had the name right.
"Yes, my personal name is Buce. Buce na'Masharr."
"Well, I had a couple of extra arms stuck on a long time ago so I could play this instrument that required it. Got used to it, and never really got around to having them taken off again," explained Fire.
"You're a musician?" asked Buce earnestly. Fire decided she found it endearing. Like he was a pet she wanted to cuddle.
"We're all musicians and everything else around here, cycling through hobbies and such. But I suppose I stick with it more than anyone else," answered Fire fibbing slightly. Truthfully she loved music; had never been able to stay away from it for more than 200 years at a time. Impulsively she added, "I was composing a piece about your ship. You want to hear it?"
Before she knew it, Fire was playing her half-finished piece for Buce back in a private room. His obvious enjoyment made her feel very satisfied, and they chatted.
Everyone was young compared to her, but Buce felt young even by the standards of his own kind. The Courageous was his first posting, which was apparently something of an honor by his culture's standards. He talked about how excited he was to be out here exploring space, and how he hoped he was making his grandmother Rear Admiral (ret) Thana sh'Masharr proud.
It was probably around that point that Fire made her decision, even if she didn't realize she had made it.
==
The Courageous's visit to the Rest Home was winding down. More of the Courageous's crew had been allowed to visit and interact with the Resident's, but the gold-skinned inhabitants had seemed to grow more and more weary, many retreating to their private quarters and not coming back out. No one had told Captain McAdams she had to leave, but she got the message. Besides, there was more exploration to be done and the Courageous couldn't tarry forever.
She informed the woman supervising their visit, Fire Kossan, of their intent to depart. To her surprise, she received an unexpected request in her return.
"Take me with you. As old as I am, you lot make me feel little younger. And to be honest, I think I'm in love with your ship," said Kossan.
If Rosalee had been a Vulcan she would have raised an eyebrow, not sure how literally to take that last statement. She temporized. "It would be unusual, but I do have the authority as an Explorer Corps captain to take an 'indefinite guest' aboard the Courageous if I think it's in the Federation's interests."
"Oh, I know you do," replied Kossan. She continued, "Don't worry, I'll be worth your while. I've got more life experience than everyone on your ship combined, and it hasn't all been spent in the Rest Home. Don't let this sting, but I've forgotten more than you ever knew about more things than I can count. Some of it even matters. I'm sure I can give you some useful advice now and then. When you need it."
"It may be a long time before you're able to find a ride back this way- yes, I'm sure a long time to me means something different than it does to you." As was her habit and skill, McAdams made a swift decision. "All right, you can travel with the Courageous. On one condition."
Kossan made a palms-up gesture with all four hands.
McAdams leaned forward and lowered her voice. "You and all the Residents here have been very vague about what happened to your species, but whatever it is you can time it down to the minute. What is it that you don't want to tell us?"
"Oh, you're good, finding a price that actually means something to me. All right, I'll tell you on the condition you don't put it in your official logs. Tell Starfleet if you must, but at least make sure the message doesn't get read by every curious looky-loo that wants to know."
Captain McAdams nodded.
"My people didn't so much die as... ascend. Change. Pass on to another state of being. Higher dimensions. Made of energy. You get the idea. Some of us didn't want to go, for our own reasons. We were the remnant, and here in the Rest Home is the remnant of the remnant. So my people didn't so much die as leave. Don't worry, though, you won't see them. They have almost no interest in this small galaxy in this small universe anymore."
Captain McAdams opened her mouth to ask a follow-up question.
Fire shook her head. "That's all I have to say about it." She covered her mouth with all four hands.
"Very well. Welcome aboard the Courageous, Fire Kossan." McAdams extended her hand.
"Glad to come aboard, dearie. You have a real cute ship." Kossan shook the Captain's hand and winked.
Notes: When I read the log this originated from, it seemed like a great chance to get a Guinan-like character aboard the Courageous. It would be cool if she showed up on a log sometime, @OneirosTheWriter. I know you wanted to do more of the 'special character' thing for the Explorer ships. Also note I may have based her a little on a character from Ian Bank's Culture novel Hydrogen Sonata.
