Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ Last Contact ❯ Last Contact ( Chapter 1 )

Last Contact

By Logistikill

It wasn't a remarkable planet as planets go; simply a water-rich blue orb of slightly less than average size, orbiting a warm star. It's indigenous life forms had not yet reached the pinnacle of their potential, and yet, this planet was proving to be of immense interest to certain races.

While some of the other races had visited the planet from time to time, they had not found anything of sufficient interest to make regular visits to the out-of-the-way place. As galaxy-traveling tribes had found countless times before, the necessary time and efforts needed to maintain progressive relationships with each other used much of their time and materials.

That is, until a new threat had emerged. Due to variances in the way that different species measured time, it was hard to pinpoint when the first Interloper had been encountered, but all species had immediately grasped an important fact: the Interlopers were dangerous. And powerful.

When the Interlopers were encountered, destruction and death always followed. Planets fell to them, and entire fleets of starships were annihilated by the beings. It was not long before the highly-advanced races realized that it was better and more economic to avoid the Interlopers than to fight them.

As they were always encountered singularly, a true count of their numbers was more guess than fact, though to date, only sixteen of them had been logged in the shared data of the races and species that traveled the cosmos. Each was different, but all shared a common immunity to weapons of any sort, shielded by an inexplicable phenomenon that protected them from energy beams, kinetic rounds, explosives, corrosive solutions and everything else the races could throw at them.

Then, they started to vanish in the outer arm of the spiral galaxy. Several races had ships near there, and they kept monitoring odd energy readings, unexplainable interference from unknown sources and gravitational and dimensional effects usually associated with tears in the fabric of normal space and abnormal space.

One by one, the known Interlopers vanished into this seldom-traveled backwoods of the galaxy. It had been a standard month since any of the races had seen sign of any of them. While this was cause for celebration within the general alliance of space-faring races, it was also cause for concern in some quarters. After all, the reasoning went, if the Interlopers had been destroyed by something in that star system, then that something was a potential threat to them all, as any species or group that could wipe out the Interlopers could do the same to them.

It was decided that a small expedition should be launched to investigate this concern. After another few months of negotiating, the participating species were selected, the ships and gear was selected, and the protocols were ratified governing what they would do depending on what they discovered in that sketchily mapped chunk of space. While peace was the day-to-day course of the loose alliance, war was not a forgotten art, and if the situation should call for it, it was agreed that the expedition could attempt to destroy whatever had dispatched the Interlopers.

Three ships - one from each of the oldest races - were their fleet, and staffing those three ships were the cream of the research and exploration units from all the races that wished to partake in this endeavor. Overall leadership was entrusted to the K'nohal, the most advanced of the space-faring races. With the agreements in place, the three ships were dispatched to learn what they might of the fate of the Interlopers.

It had taken them a further two standard months to detail map the quadrant, and they were now working on the extrapolated position where the various oddities had been logged. Six clusters had been checked, and yielded nothing. Now, they were looking at a simple star system that was logged in a few of the races' logs as being inhabited. Looking at the enhanced image from the bridge of the lead ship, the crews immediately got their first clue about what had happened.

Images from the last visit to the planet showed a blue world, with the beginnings of a space program in place. The world was now an orange-red color, and a thick belt of crimson formed a ring around it. Where there had previously been one moon, there was now a second, smaller moon, solid black in color and made of a strange substance. Some debate among the researchers and explorers lead to the decision to work inward, starting at the original moon.

It took only a single day to examine the moon, and they discovered that the primitive craft that had been there before was still there, untouched. At another location, they found some signs of an aborted attempt to fashion a base of some sort. Once it was agreed that the original moon was of no further help in their quest, they moved to the new moon.

The small, black moon was in a low orbit, and passed between the ring and the planet, making the close approach of the three main ships impossible. It also defied analysis by the sensors of the main ships, producing alien readings on various instruments used to ascertain its makeup and purpose. Once more, the races agreed that it was time to move forward to the ring.

The ring proved to be unlike any they had ever seen before, being formed of self-contained bio-energy, very much like the Interlopers had been. Still, there were differences in the waveform and energy dispersal patterns between the ring and the Interlopers. Attempts to take samples of this ring proved problematic, as the energy dissipated as soon as it was separated from the ring. The investigation of the ring took another standard week.

Finally, it was time to go to the surface. Extensive probing had discovered that no forms of communication were present in any known frequency, though several of the telepathic races had noted a kind of echo in their minds. It had been suggested that this echo was proof of the presence of telepathy, but the telepathic races clearly stated that no attempt to understand or communicate with the source of the echo had succeeded. It was almost as if the source of the echo didn't want to communicate with them.

During the mapping of the surface, the expedition had discovered a massive hole that matched the black moon's dimensions perfectly in the center of a ruined city. It was decided that this would be where the ground exploration would begin. Selection for the ground group was based on the known conditions of the planet and the well-documented violence of the indigenous race. For that reason, very few were selected for the first ground contact, and all those races selected were bi-pedal and very capable of defending themselves.

Once the atmospheric entry ship had settled onto the ground near the shoreline, the members of the expeditionary force cautiously made their way out into the sunlight. While most of the group could breathe the native gases of the planet, a few required respirators to breathe easily. Fanning out, they began their search.

Early discoveries weren't encouraging. On the beach near the water's edge was the remains of an earthling. Careful examination yielded some answers. The remains were from a female of the race. There were signs of unexplained injuries to her bones, and she had been clothed in a suit of technically-advanced cloth that amplified her bio-energetic signature and ceph-waveform. A careful molecular examination of her remains showed that she had been choked to death.

Which led them to seek the thing or person responsible for her demise. With some technical assistance, they were led deeper into the ruined city, and eventually, they arrived at a crumbling building on the very edge of the destroyed zone. With some physical exertion, they managed to gain access to the building, and following the trail of molecular residue, they finally located the one they suspected had killed the female on the beach.

Finding the other person was a mixed win for the party, as the person wouldn't be giving any information on what had happened; at least, not personally. The decay of the corpse indicated that the male had been dead about a standard week. From the scene, it was obvious that he had chosen to terminate himself. With the obvious question being why, the expedition had discussed it, finally reaching the conclusion that they should look for any inorganic records that might be left behind.

For the next three standard months, they sifted through the remains of a civilization. Tons of material were sorted, and most of it was taken to the main ships for further study at various specie's home planets and the newly-emerging pan-species science centers. One piece of the recovered material found its way into the hands of the leader of the expedition. It was a record recorded on compressed plant fibers, apparently by hand, that was found next to the dead male. Searches over the face of the planet by low-level craft yielded no further humans at all.

The leader of the expedition couldn't read the language, but access to the kind of resources that the united races could produce finally proved too much for the language, and it was translated. Not perfectly, but close enough to tell the tale. And it was that tale that ended the research in that quadrant.

Madness and genius, deceit and honor, pain and pleasure were all there in the tale. Though the account was broken in places and only held one point of view, it told the races more than enough. Humanity slew the Interlopers, but in doing so, they had fallen themselves. Though much was left to speculation and interpretation, some things were certain. Humanity had partially unwrapped the secrets of the Interlopers, and in doing so, they had gained the means to alter their own evolution. In choosing to change themselves, they had fallen prey to the inherent greed of their race, and it had proven deadly to the entire planet.

A little more than a standard year after they arrived, the three ships departed for the universities and learning centers, their holds maxed out with artifacts waiting to yield more pieces of the puzzle. As they crossed the orbit of the outermost planet, the ships released marker that would caution all who approached that the planetary system was a graveyard and shouldn't be disturbed. Entering their long-distance singularity leap, the ships vanished, leaving the system devoid of life.

Over the convening standard years, the races managed to piece together much of the history of the dead planet, and the more they learned, the more fascinated they became, as it was a wonder that the race had survived at all. As a more complete understanding came to be know of the race, many debated the final words of the last of the humans, the one called Shinji Ikari. Entire fields of study and cults sprang up as each tried to find the meaning in his final thoughts before he ended his life. Eventually, the artifact was displayed over the entrance to the knowledge center, though few who didn't study the history of the forgotten system knew it's prominence. Those who did, could quote it, though they didn't grasp it.

I'm so sorry, Asuka. I didn't mean for it to end this way.

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END