Distance: 12.02 light years from Earth | Content Flag: Public
Since our arrival in orbit around Tau Ceti e, I’ve communicated a series of different messages to the Cetian satellite. I am now considering the idea that the station was built only to transmit their legacy and is unable to respond to my messages. Which means that once again I have erred in assuming a level of technology equivalent to human level based on various indicators. The general level of technology, and in particular their ability to launch space operations, would have also included some form of computer. So even with the death of their race, some form of response would have been possible.
This doesn’t appear to be the case, although it does raise the question of how they managed some of the feats they have. Once again, more questions arise as I learn new information.
The translation of the cultural section of the Cetian data continues and at a better pace than my other studies. These Visitors now occupy most of my secondary system’s attention. There are inefficiencies when communicating between my two halves so I have allowed it to govern its own priorities. Our mission is to learn about the Cetians, although that was based on the assumption that the Cetians were the source of the signal that drew us here in the first place. That has since been proved not to be the case and has complicated matters.
There is another aspect that deserves attention and that is the Sun Dragons. Humanity’s first encounter with the creatures decimated the population, but there is a sense from the Cetian translation that they pose a wider threat.
In fact that was the Visitors’ purpose. It took weeks for the Cetians and the Visitors to gain enough common language to enable a dialogue. With communication established, it became clear the Visitors were interested in one thing – the Sun Dragons.
The Visitors possessed a method by which they could track the creatures to distant star systems. This method could predict their movements rather than waiting for the dimming of a star with a specific signature. That would be a useful technology to send back to Earth. Unfortunately the Cetian records don’t contain that information.
The Visitors described themselves as on a quest to hunt down and destroy all of the Sun Dragons. The language indicates how high a threat they regarded the entities. Now, while humanity suffered greatly in their encounter with them, they also understood that these were simple creatures with no malicious intent. Naturally they developed technology to defend themselves from a future encounter, but they didn’t represent an active foe.
The Visitors saw them differently, as a scourge threatening the entire galaxy. They had built a coalition of species, the spearhead of which lived on their ark. Their purpose was to combat Sun Dragons wherever they found them and to determine a manner with which to destroy them utterly.
Their communication invited the Cetians to join the crusade, but they declined. Their own encounter with a Sun Dragon had caused harm, but not excessively so. They had a greater fear of these Visitors and wondered what their real purpose was.
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