First Telkan Pt 1 (Patreon)

Part One: Displacement

[A/N 1: This is a fanfiction crossover between First Contact, an ongoing novel on Reddit by Ralts_Bloodthorne and Worm, a webnovel by Wildbow. I make no claim to either property. This is merely a fun look at what happens when two worlds interact for the first time.]

[A/N 2: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

[A/N 3: I will follow the canon of both stories as closely as I can. If I find something that canon does not cover, I will make stuff up. If canon then refutes me, I will revise. Do not bother me with fanon; corrections require citations.]

[A/N 4: I welcome criticism of my works, but if you tell me that something is wrong, I also expect an explanation of what is wrong, and a suggestion of how to fix it. Note that I do not promise to follow any given suggestion.]

 [A/N 5: Initial chapter of First Contact can be found here. First chapter with Vuxten in it can be found here.] 

  [A/N 6: Due to developments in the original story, I have rewritten the first chapter extensively.] 

 “Whoa!” Along with two tons of plascrete and other debris and a foot-high armoured mantid, Vuxten burst out through a tear in space. He rolled, came to his feet, unracked his magac rifle and used graviton-spikes from his boots to anchor himself while he swivelled his helmet, seeking targets for his onboard ordnance. The tear in space neatly closed up again, leaving Vuxten with ringing ears and nothing to shoot at. He tabbed a piece of gum and chewed on it while he scanned around again. The plascrete steamed gently, as did his armour; from the looks of it, everything organic had been scoured off both of them from the passage through … wherever that had been.

“471, you seeing this?”

The mantid clicked an affirmative, keeping his own lookout atop Vuxten’s helmet with a micro-missile launcher. Vuxten could see in his helmet HUD that the little greenie was mapping the local area and comparing it to where they’d just been. He could also see that there were no real points of correlation. The buildings were all intact, if dilapidated, but they looked … old. Like a colony that had been built using lowtech methods and hadn’t upgraded to the latest building materials. Electrical lights glared from overhead poles.

“Where are we?”

471 didn’t have an answer. He flashed up an icon of a hero steadfastly looking over the cityscape from atop a tall building, then kept mapping. A tiny drone popped out of the nanoforge on Vuxten's armour and zoomed skyward, connected to Vuxten’s systems by a whisker-laser. No sense in letting everyone know they were here, until they found out where ‘here’ was.

“Good idea,” Vuxten agreed, and headed for an alley. Leaping up to the wall, he used the graviton-spikes as anchors to jump to a higher viewpoint. Two leaps later, he was on the rooftop. It didn’t help ease his confusion.

The city spread out in all directions. There were no rising clouds of dust or smoke. Radiation count was minimal; strictly background. A distant siren sounded, but there was no gunfire, no explosions. Even the gravity felt subtly different. The drone was feeding him a city map that showed him where he was. The trouble was, it didn’t match any city in his databanks.

471 nudged his helmet around to the right. Bringing the rifle up, he turned and looked. A half-moon was just rising at what his armour agreed was approximately ninety degrees to magnetic north. It was a big satellite, with markings …

“471, check starmaps. I think I know where we are.”

It was ridiculous. It was impossible. But unless someone had gone so far as to rebuild their planet’s satellite to a particular pattern, there could be no other place. He and Brentili’ik had watched too many old Terran movies with their broodcarriers and podlings to mistake it. She enjoyed the romantic ones, and he just enjoyed being with her. With his family.

While 471 worked, the drone turning its sensors skyward and checking the star patterns against known starmaps, he squinted to zoom in toward the darkened half of the moon. If he was right, he’d be picking up the pinpoints of the domed city lights about … now.

That was strange. There were no lights to be seen. He could see the darkened half, lit by planetshine, but there was no evidence of any settlement on the satellite. A chill worked its way down his back, and he chewed the gum a little harder.

--starmaps weird-- 471 clicked out. The mantid projected a series of constellations on Vuxten’s HUD. --starmaps here--. Then he switched to a subtly different one. --northern hemisphere terra--.

Vuxten frowned and flicked back and forth between them. They were almost identical, but a few of the stars changed relative position almost imperceptibly from one image to the next. “Okay. That is weird.” He knew how astrogation worked, and how starmaps didn’t change from one location on a planet to another.

They’d taught him a lot since he’d become an officer.

What it didn’t explain was why the stars above didn’t quite match his databanks for Terra. There was always the possibility that he was in a simulation, though for what reason he didn’t know. Well, there was one way to find out. “Okay, you got me. Good one. End simulation.”

Nothing happened.

Okay, either it’s not a simulation or there’s a reason they’re keeping me in it. Best to assume it’s real for the moment.

His armour wasn’t detecting anything dangerous outside so he popped his faceplate to take a breath of the local air. It smelled … like a city. The faint tang of internal-combustion engine hydrocarbon pollution, dust, hot metal. There was an answer here, somewhere. He was alive, and 471 was with him. They’d been together during the worst of the fighting, and they’d come through against what had seemed to be impossible odds at the time. He’d figure out what was going on, and how to get back home.

--got it-- clicked 471, then the mantid flashed up a series of emojis that indicated ‘you are not going to believe this shit’.

“Okay, what is it?” He closed his faceplate again, and hunkered down, magac rifle still in his hands. “Where are we?”

Deep down, he thought he already knew, but getting confirmation was always good.

The two starmaps flicked back and forth a couple of times, then one shifted to fit over the other. A readout showed up in the corner of the image. As the starfield moved to fit, digits rolled over. He watched them, his mouth going dry despite the gum. When they finished, he had to blink twice to take in the readout. -13,000 Years, ±1,700.

“Double-check that,” he said, keeping his voice steady. “See if you can link us into local communications. There’s got to be a time clock somewhere.”

--roger roger-- The starmaps went away, but the number remained. Vuxten stood up again, looking around at the city with new eyes. Thirteen thousand years ago, Terra had been on the verge of making it into space. So many things hadn’t happened yet. The ecological collapse. The Great Glassing. The rebuilding. All the wars.

He owed Terra everything. What he was now, what he had, was only because Terran soldiers had seen some potential in a bunch of so-called ‘neo-sapient’ menial workers being drafted into an ad hoc security force by uncaring Lanaktallan Overseers. It was only because of them that he and his family had survived the madness that followed. That his species had survived it.

And now he was on their birthworld, before everything happened.

They helped me. I can’t leave without helping them. Warn them of the Mantid Overqueen treachery, at least. Tell them where the Lanaktallans are, and what they’re doing. Give them a heads-up on the Precursor machines and the bio-war fleets. Even the Mar-gites. Anything that will save a few Terran lives.

Raising his faceplate and standing up again, he looked skyward. He didn’t even know where his home star was from Terra, or if it was visible from the planet’s surface. He’d have to look that up.

But right now, he had three steps to follow.

Number one: survive.

Number two: figure out a way to get home again, whether by travelling to Telkan and going into stasis until he woke up thirteen thousand years in the future, or figuring a way back through the hole in space.

Number three: work out how to offer as much support as he could without disrupting the timeline before he left.

Everything else was just detail.
 

 Part 2