9 Returning to the Andromeda Galaxy (2/2)
”Shit!” Ivan cursed as one of the fish scales dropped off his body. He watched as it fell from the ship and slowly dropped back into normal space.
”Don't mind it! It is completely lost in space now.” Mazur said through gritted teeth.
Ivan continued to watch the blue star in the distance which gradually became brighter through the hours. Several other smaller blue stars of varying shades also appeared in the distance, but none nearly as large or luminescent as the central supermassive black hole.
The Poseidon gradually got closer before entering the sea of stars. Ivan waited till they were truly within the galaxy before slowing the ship down and dropping out of hyperspace.
Looking across the three-dimensional surface of the universe, Ivan and Mazur could see that they were truly back in the Andromeda Galaxy.
”Where in the galaxy are we?” Ivan asked Mazur.
”The computer has logged our position according to the surrounding stars. We are in the Gamma Quadrant, close to the border of the Delta Quadrant where we left from. This area is unexplored though so no other information other than our position on the star map is known.”
Ivan nodded in understanding before coming to the decision to move to a solar system that was only several lightyears from their position to settle down and search for food.
A quick jump through hyperspace and Ivan and Mazur made it into the solar system.
”The short-range radar is picking up objects orbiting the fourth planet in this solar system,” Mazur reported while glancing over the monitors. ”It could be some small asteroids in orbit around the planet, but there's far too few for it to be an asteroid belt. We should move a little closer and have a look.”
Mazur had calculated the positions of the planets in the solar system, and the one that they were looking at was the right distance from the sun to support life. They just couldn't tell if it has an appropriate atmosphere from the outskirts of the solar system, so they had to approach it to find out.
Ivan and Mazur were carrying enough rations from the fish corpse to survive for several weeks, but the Symbions had eaten all their food and could only survive for another week at most. Ivan thought it would be a massive waste to let creatures worth millions of credits each die, so he had wanted to find a life planet to see if they could eat the vegetation. If not, they could only try to chemically tamper with the food to make it compatible or rapidly jump through solar systems to check for another life planet.
There was no need to manually control the ship as the automated guidance system was working in conjunction to the short-range radar. Once Mazur input the coordinates of the planet the ship automatically flew toward the destination.
The Poseidon only needed to be a light minute away from the planet to be able to get a visual, but unfortunately all the external cameras had been broken during the escape from the Galactic Fleet battleship.
They flew at only a tenth the speed of light and arrived quickly. At close range, Ivan and Mazur gazed outside the ship and were stunned. The asteroids that the short-range radar had picked up were in fact communication satellites.
Ivan had ignored the possibility of them being man-made objects as encountering a developing civilisation seemed impossible to him. Mazur had also ignored it as he knew exactly how unlikely it was to come across a civilisation on a life planet, especially one this technologically developed.
”Would the Andromeda Federation have an interest in this civilisation if they found it?” Ivan asked with a mind full of curiosity.
Mazur squinted his eyes in scrutiny at the communication satellite and shook his head. ”No, interaction with civilisations before they reach the stage of being able to leave their solar systems without external aid. This solar system is in the territory that hasn't been properly explored, so it's highly unlikely they know about it.”
”Their radars and telescopes can't discover them?”
”No, only short-range radars would be able to discover this. Light is far too dispersed to be able to pick it up in photon telescopes across the galaxy, and no gravitational lensing or similar techniques would be able to tell there is any life here. They would have to physically enter the solar system to find out.”
”Well, we need to build a foundation in the fourth dimension, which can't be done with just the two of us. The main purpose is to arrange a stable source of food and method to store it. I'll use this foundation to also start my business. These people can be my first employees.”
”So how will you get these people? To them, we are aliens, do you think they will just sign up for some dubious job?”
Ivan looked at Mazur with hint of disdain, ”You're not much of a people person, are you?”
Mazur held his silence and snorted in reply, but it only looked amusing with his cat face.
”People can be bought, Mazur. Money, food, authority, or power. There are always people with these desires, and you can use these desires to control them. Lead them to a better life according to their desire and they will even give you their loyalty.”
Mazur could only agree with Ivan in this regard. In the field of the sciences, almost nobody in the entire galaxy was his equal, but Ivan had far more experience in dealing with and manipulating people.
The Poseidon descended upon the planet from the night time side, that way nobody would be able be able to simply look up and spot them. Mazur estimated that the civilisation had already spotted them, but there was also the chance that they hadn't.
Deep in the night when all the diurnal species were asleep, Ivan and Mazur silently descended and landed the Poseidon in an ancient forest on the outskirts of civilisation.