Contact Report

It is my sad duty to report the following events which occurred over the last 2 cycles, in pursuance of Order 3-AT/8, as directed by yourself, and in accordance with Directive 9; and following discovery of the alien artefact and information contained thereon which led to aforementioned Order. I do so humbly submit this report as a true statement of fact: free of error, obfuscation, fabrication and downright lies. And so, begins:


Your Eminence,


Having been given the honourable and worthy task of establishing contact with the dry-land race calling itself 'human', I made approach to their home planet (an eminently watery place), with the intention of arriving in a manner befitting of our great race. I therefore gave instruction to my crew to that effect.


Unfortunately, my pilot, whose admirable enthusiasm for displaying his skills in spaciobatics, overlooked the fact that the planet, which the inhabitants somewhat erroneously call 'Earth', was surrounded by many hundreds of Orbiting Hardware Objects. By the time this mistake was noticed, several of said Objects had been destroyed by the ship's autonomous defence x-ray lasers in order to prevent a collision that would have otherwise blemished our humble craft's exterior iridescence-shell.


Regrettably this action caused some upset to the local inhabitants, a fact that was probably exacerbated by our enthusiastic entry into the planet's atmosphere at some 300 times the speed of sound, and the use of a full-burn deceleration tactic to place us exactly 150 standard tentacle lengths above the target continent's capitol building.


It would appear that unlike our other (sea-dwelling) contacted brethren, the dry-land 'humans' of Earth do not react well to supersonic shock waves and white hot plasma ejecta, and our attempts to apologise fell on deaf ears, which unfortunately may in itself have been caused by the manner of our arrival.


In hindsight, our delivery of formal greetings / apologies / regrets by an atmospheric-resonance broadcast powerful enough to cover an area of two-thousand square kilometres was too ambitious, and perhaps the chosen language to mimic that of 'whale' was not appropriate in this case. I humbly suggest a review of the disc recovered from the artefact by a less saline-focused group of scientists...


Having created such a kerfuffle, we paused to consider how we should proceed, when my weapons officer reported an alarming turn of events. It transpired that we had in some way triggered a retaliatory response completely disproportionate to the minor fuss and material damage caused, and the full arsenal of much of the planet was now focused, launched, directed, aimed and heading for my humble craft!


My pilot, still smarting from the rebuke I was forced to administer for his botched approach, then confessed that the safety systems had tripped on the main engines, due to them having ingested something called a 'Boeing'. Therefore, the Itsereuphool was not able to depart the gravity well until repairs were complete.


I take the opportunity at this point to include a transcript of the bridge voice recorder, which illustrates the ineptitude of my given crew:


Ship-Master Clobrule: Well, Parsendue, have you anything to say for yourself?


Pilot Parsendue: Sir?


Ship-Master Clobrule: That travesty of a planetary insertion, Parsendue. What part of 'make our arrival something of an event' did you take to mean 'deafen and destroy as much life and property as you can'?


Pilot Parsendue: It was a [system message: voice recorder threshold not achieved]


Ship-Master Clobrule: What? Speak up man!


Pilot Parsendue: It was a display-standard insertion manoeuvre sir.


Ship-Master Clobrule: It was a disaster, is what it was.


Pilot Parsendue: ...perfectly executed...


[system message: transient noise interpreted as that of a tentacle paddle impacting on an adult Octranought head-mantle]


Pilot Parsendue: Ouch!


Ship-Master Clobrule: Have some respect for your master, Parsendue! Gods my life, you youngsters have no notion of how to treat your elders these days!


Using thrusters alone, we manoeuvred away from the somewhat scorched city, intent on heading away to calmer waters, when we were met by a shoal of small, but surprisingly feisty craft which gave us a moment of difficulty, following which the lower and forward hull close-defence rail guns and shock-mortars were depleted.


Narrowly avoiding several small but irritatingly persistent missiles that tried most ungraciously to insert themselves into the dorsal thruster housing, we headed out over the ocean. There, while planning how we should avoid a number of incoming intercontinental fissile-carrying missiles, we were taken by surprise when a submerged vessel fired such a device at us from directly underneath.


Once again, I take the opportunity to make reference to the voice recorder:


Ship-Master Clobrule: Well, Parsendue, you managed to get us away from that mess. Thank goodness for small mercies. Now, Embolizm, what about these missiles?


Weapons-officer Embolizm: Sir, between fifteen and twenty ICBMs are inbound, ETA ten minutes.


Ship-Master Clobrule: ICBMs? ETA? What drivel is this? Speak Octran you moron!


Weapons-officer Embolizm: Sorry Sir. Got carried away. Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles, sir. Now nine minutes thirty-five seconds Estimated Time of Arrival, sir.


Ship-Master Clobrule: That's better. Now. What do we do with them?


Weapons-officer Embolizm: Throw them at the mainland, sir?


Ship-Master Clobrule: Cretin.


Weapons-officer Embolizm: Sir?


Ship-Master Clobrule: Between you both you've managed to start a war already, let's not make it an inter-solar incident. Think of the consequences - I wouldn't be invited to any regimental soirees for months if this gets any worse - be quiet Embolizm! - the Shoal Leader would have our hearts pulled out through our siphon if it... what is it, Embolizm!


Weapon-officer Embolizm: Sir! Something's heading for our bottom!


I rest my case.


Fortunately, I had - with particular foresight - taken the precaution of instigating a threat-reaction protocol with our wormhole generator unit, and the device was grabbed and displaced away from our immediate location. To my utter dismay, I discovered that the target delivery point of said displace had been set by my weapons officer to that of the capitol building we had just left.


I decided then, that the best course of action was to leave, quietly.


At that point, an opportunity presented itself for escape that, at the time, seemed like a good idea. Near the planet, at a distance of 1.3 astronomical units, was an asteroid approximately ten billion tons in mass, just right for our ship's wormhole field unit to grasp and use as an anchor to lift us safely away from the planet's gravity well.


By using this mass to lever ourselves away from the planet, we narrowly avoided destruction, and made our way to a safe, distant, orbit. We are no worse for the ordeal.


Unfortunately, the planet called Earth is not. Much to my regret, the asteroid we used to achieve our current orbit was displaced to a new orbital trajectory, and our ship is calculating a 99.3% probability that it will impact the Earth within the next fourteen rotations.


As our wormhole generator unit subsequently failed in the escape, we are unable to do anything about this, and by the time this signal reaches you, the event would have already happened. I do so therefore humbly, and most regrettably, apologise for the total extinction of land-based life on Earth.


PS. Pass my regards to our Shoal-Matron. And if I may humbly suggest, the oceans of this planet are most agreeable....