Ultimatum
Duranium Lord
The bustling world of Cademimu V had rarely been the site of galaxy-changing events. Such events should have disrupted everyday life, brought galactic focus to the world. Instead, the world had remained largely undisturbed for most of galactic history. Today was shaping up to be little different from the usual grind. The sole interest was only known by certain people who had their hands in underworld element on the world. This day, a little-known salvager had brought in strange and potentially valuable objects from Deep Space. The selling of the materials was an anticipated event, and it had been decided, in order to maximize revenue, the salvager would wait a few weeks in order to get work out. Those who worked in such areas would be aware that the sale had become an auction and that an entire building had been rented out for this single event.
This was the day of the event, the salvager, Joshua Hemming was his name according to Cademimu records of Official Salvagers, (and indeed he had worked for the government for a few months before breaking off) had spent several hours pouring over the devices and materials he had collected. He had also seen to the accommodations made for his prime item, the berth that the ship now occupied had been reserved for five weeks for another customer. Joshua hoped, and in fact assumed, that this one job would be sufficiently lucrative to allow him to retire. Once more his efforts to activate any of the strange instruments collected had been for naught. He had unconsciously begun to play with one such device, a cube with a multitude of slides and buttons. Even as he flipped a slide, he watched and waited for something to happen. But there was nothing; its silvery exterior stayed as silently recalcitrant as ever. He placed the cube back on a table and began looking over the starting prices. He dropped the cube's by a hundred credits; if it was nonfunctional, then it was likely to be less valuable.
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But the device was responsive. Beyond the natural range of any organic being, the cube's energy core powered up and emitted a screech. This sound was detected by another machine on another table, a sphere with three lights and a single plug. For a single moment, all three lights lit up, and the device made a faint whirring noise. Then as the cube's power failed, the sphere's lights disappeared. However, the signal had been sent. An internal click might have been heard as the sphere activated its own far greater power cell. The cell sent a message through the walls of the building and over the kilometers until it reached the starship that lay in a berth. The ship responded to the signal by beginning a transmission, as it had been programmed to in this scenario.
Along a frequency rarely used in communication, mostly due to a consensus by most transmission networks to use more readily accessible wavelengths, a message was sent out. It was an edited SOS call, spoken by Ultimatum, with galactic coordinates to the original device and a timestamp placing the message to at least a year ago. Those who had known Ultimatum might have quickly found the message and those that perused the less common frequencies might stumble upon the message. Perhaps, some few people in the galaxy used the same frequency to communicate; they would likely receive the message openly, sometimes disrupting calls or appearing as background noise.
Whatever the reason, it was probably that many throughout the galaxy would have received the signal and might be tempted to arrive. There was mention of a reward in the message....
This was the day of the event, the salvager, Joshua Hemming was his name according to Cademimu records of Official Salvagers, (and indeed he had worked for the government for a few months before breaking off) had spent several hours pouring over the devices and materials he had collected. He had also seen to the accommodations made for his prime item, the berth that the ship now occupied had been reserved for five weeks for another customer. Joshua hoped, and in fact assumed, that this one job would be sufficiently lucrative to allow him to retire. Once more his efforts to activate any of the strange instruments collected had been for naught. He had unconsciously begun to play with one such device, a cube with a multitude of slides and buttons. Even as he flipped a slide, he watched and waited for something to happen. But there was nothing; its silvery exterior stayed as silently recalcitrant as ever. He placed the cube back on a table and began looking over the starting prices. He dropped the cube's by a hundred credits; if it was nonfunctional, then it was likely to be less valuable.
----------
But the device was responsive. Beyond the natural range of any organic being, the cube's energy core powered up and emitted a screech. This sound was detected by another machine on another table, a sphere with three lights and a single plug. For a single moment, all three lights lit up, and the device made a faint whirring noise. Then as the cube's power failed, the sphere's lights disappeared. However, the signal had been sent. An internal click might have been heard as the sphere activated its own far greater power cell. The cell sent a message through the walls of the building and over the kilometers until it reached the starship that lay in a berth. The ship responded to the signal by beginning a transmission, as it had been programmed to in this scenario.
Along a frequency rarely used in communication, mostly due to a consensus by most transmission networks to use more readily accessible wavelengths, a message was sent out. It was an edited SOS call, spoken by Ultimatum, with galactic coordinates to the original device and a timestamp placing the message to at least a year ago. Those who had known Ultimatum might have quickly found the message and those that perused the less common frequencies might stumble upon the message. Perhaps, some few people in the galaxy used the same frequency to communicate; they would likely receive the message openly, sometimes disrupting calls or appearing as background noise.
Whatever the reason, it was probably that many throughout the galaxy would have received the signal and might be tempted to arrive. There was mention of a reward in the message....
