How long... Fleet Admiral Jason Ryfczinski said. How long ago did this happen?

{Initial scans indicate a range of 30 to 75 years ago, Admiral. More detailed scans will narrow the field,} Teegarden, the task forces AI, replied.

So theres a chance of survivors. Signal the fleet: launch a satellite constellation and put the explorer team on short call. Their orders are to find the survivors of this... this unholy massacre, should any exist. If there are no survivors, I want bodies, the fleet admiral ordered.

Yes, Sir, the flag comms officer replied, then turned back to his display to distribute the orders to the fleet. Satellites deployed, Admiral, theyll be on station in approximately five hours.

Split the fleet, send half of it to Teegarden c. The other half, including the Teegarden herself, is to approach Teegarden b and enter a high equatorial orbit.

Aye aye, Admiral, the flag tactical officer replied. ETA to high equatorial orbit around Teegarden b is eleven hours.

Thus began the exploration of the Teegardens Star system. The occasion was a solemn one, as the planets they were set to explore were in the grip of a nuclear winter, likely caused by an interplanetary war the likes of which no human could imagine.

Nobody knew what they would find, but they knew one thing for certain: whatever was dirtside would most definitely fuel their nightmares for years, if not decades to come.

......

As always, the universe had no fucks to give about what humanity was currently up to and time continued its impassive march forward. For some, the ticking clocks were too fast, leaving them with too much to do and too little time in which to do it, while for others, the ticking of the clock was agonizingly slow, with seconds seemingly stretched out into endless hours.

Six months passed, just like that.

Mars, CENTCOM, System and Monitoring Control Center.

Over the past three months, CENTCOM SMCC had been tracking an object traveling at ten times the speed of light. It was on a direct course from Proxima Centauri and was traveling through a warp bubble that was likely generated by an Alcubierre drive, which made many believe that it was a dispatch vessel from Task Force Proxima. They should have been on station for long enough by now that a dispatch wouldnt be entirely unexpected.

But what had really sealed the deal was the rudimentary IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) system built into all imperial warp engines. One of the discoveries made in Lab City was that all Alcubierre warp bubbles vibrated along certain frequencies, depending on their size, shape, and a few other variables. And by designing the engine along those lines, they were able to kludge together a recognizable signal similar to a transponder, except it couldnt be turned off or modified without a major overhaul, and it only operated while the ship itself was inside a warp bubble.

And whatever was incoming was sending a crystal-clear imperial identification.

A tall, rugged-looking man entered the room in full ARES dress uniform, followed by a much smaller woman in office-lady attire, carrying a tablet and wearing a pair of AR glasses. Any changes in the object? the man asked as soon as he reached the railing separating the entryway from the pit, where the analysts worked at their stations.

None, Sir. If there are no changes, the incoming vessel will come in on course to arrive at the heliopause below the ecliptic. Our projections have it breaking warp directly in line with Sol. Weve sent out picket corvettes and a few destroyers on intercept courses and expect theyll arrive on station to meet the vessel in exactly three hours and thirty-seven minutes, one of the analysts answered, pushing a button on his console that switched the main screen in the SMCC to display a detailed plot of the Sol system.

Excellent. Keep me updated and let me know when they get into comms range, the man said, then turned and strode out of the SMCC without waiting for a response, his secretary fast-walking to keep up with his pace.

Although they had a protocol in place to handle incoming objects, this was the first time they were putting it into use outside of their training simulations. Thus, even though they were almost a hundred percent positive that the incoming object was friendly, they were still using it as a drill for the sailors of the Terran Fleet. And not a single person in the SMCC, or by extension, the rest of the fleet, wanted to fuck it up, by the numbers or otherwise.

Yes, Sir.... The analyst attempted to respond to the man, but had ended up talking to nothing but the door.

Still, he returned to his work with a serious look on his face that showed exactly how seriously he was taking his assigned tasks.

......

Precisely three hours and fifty minutes later.

The meteor-class messenger boat left warp speed directly below the ecliptic in a brilliant display of visible Cherenkov radiation reminiscent of a bird mantling and spreading its wings. The visible radiation was accompanied by a much deadlier invisible blast of ionizing radiation and supercharged particles that spread out in a cone in front of the small automated craft with enough force to strip the atmosphere off a planet, even with a strong magnetosphere around it.

(Ed note: While we cant know for certain, the general consensus among scientists is that any ship coming out of an Alcubierre warp bubble would immediately launch all of the cosmic dust that got pasted to the front of the bubble and approximately all of the radiation ever in a spreading cone like it was fired from a shotgun. Not everything would stick to the bubble, of course, but even if 99% of the dust slides around it, thats still a lot of particulate matter being shot out at relativistic speed.)

A few seconds later, quantum communications were established with the waiting picket ships. They hadnt missed the mark by much, and in a feat of excellent stellar navigation, had come to full stop only five thousand kilometers away from the messenger.

The messenger herself, having performed outstandingly well on her maiden voyage, squawked her ident codes and signaled that she carried eyes-only dispatches for one Aron Michael, emperor of the Terran Empire from his subjects in the Proxima Centauri system and requested an escort to Earth to deliver those dispatches.

Mars could wait. There were more important deliveries to make first.