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Jinye Attani Cocoon plots to conquer the Expanse.
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Jinton-ji Su Maurya Veninheim is a competent officer, and in any situation in which she had any clue what was going on, she would be happy to take charge herself. But she does not, actually, want to be in charge for first contact negotiations, and Central Computing gave her an excuse not to.

So she is going to sit back, forward her new commanding officer's orders, and be very grateful there is someone on this ship who has spent the past fifteen years training to deal with the most utterly absurd bullshit anyone in the galaxy is capable of pulling, on anyone, ever, that is not her.

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Okay, they're from the future, or something. That's actually...not that unbelievable? It's not expected under any laws of physics she knows but she's very aware that no one in the solar system has particularly high confidence about what the laws of physics actually are, right now. She does not in fact want to be remembered as the person who fucked this up, possibly even less than she wants to be remembered as the person who let the UN take Medina Station without a fight.

"I'm sorry for the misunderstanding," she replies almost immediately. "We mean you no hostility, if what you say is true, and you don't mean any hostility to us. We don't normally get visitors from, uh, the future or alternate universes, and I'm not sure if that's normal for you or something, but to be fair a lot of weird shit has been happening around here lately" no don't say that, probably anything to do with the Ring Builders is strategic information even if it's going to be a bit hard to hide "—tensions with the Inners are high right now—" possibly also strategic information but who doesn't have high tensions with somebody "—so we hope you understand why we made the assumptions we did, given the information we had. To be honest the main thing you have going for you, as far as me believing you, is that everyone in the inyalowda officer corps has a stick way too far up their ass to make up a story that far-fetched.

"If you'd like to come down to the station and dock so we can talk face to face, I'd be open to that, or if you'd rather stay out of railgun range until we get more things sorted out that would be understandable too, but we would appreciate it if you'd come within, like, half a light-second so we can get a live link up." Mostly she wants them to fire up their engine so she can look at their drive signature, although she wouldn't be terribly surprised if they didn't even use fusion drives.

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Medina Station, seen by the Cor's high-resolution scopes, looks incredibly strange.

Medina Station, once the Behemoth, before that the Nauvoo, was originally built as a generation ship made to carry Mormon colonists to a new star system, commandeered for an absolutely ridiculous mission that left it traveling unmanned into interstellar space at a quarter the speed of light, and somehow, impossibly, salvaged by the OPA and converted into a warship. The golden statue of an angel blowing a trumpet at the tip of its bowsprit is the only outwardly visible legacy it bears of its former life.

The conversion was obviously done by a resourceful but poor civilization; the Nauvoo was never built to be a warship, and there's a small but obviously nonzero chance that the ship might tear itself apart if any of its six heavy railguns were to actually fire. Its torpedo bays have to be muzzle-loaded by drones. It looks highly unlikely that it could execute anything resembling an evasive maneuver; it was built to accelerate in a straight line up to half of its delta-v, coast for a hundred years, then turn around and slow down.

It stands approximately no chance against an actually hostile Earth or Mars battleship, never mind an Attani one, and even the people on board know this, but that doesn't mean they would go down without a fight.

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She laughs politely at "stick way too far up their ass," to put Commander Drummer at her ease. "Of course, apology accepted. The Attani Empire has no hostile plans against the Outer Planets Alliance -" not that she has any idea what that is "- and we have no idea why we are -" (per the hallucinatory glowing star map that her usual hallucination of Central Computing is helpfully annotating) "- far into the past and possibly in an alternate timeline, and would be happy to come into live link range to discuss the situation."

And while she issues the orders, she surveys the situation.

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To Jinye's senses, Central Computing is calmly describing the situation, sketching in the air in front of her with glowing lines of light that harden into clear pictures of useful data; an elaborate triangulation mapping plausible locations for the star behind them and what timelines that would indicate, an elaborate structural analysis of Medina Station and its weapons or lack thereof, analyses of the railguns complete with suggestions of their vulnerabilities, and a start on the technology that the Medinabuilders have based on details of the system.

He's not really doing anything the ship's computer can't do, since he is in fact using the processing power of the ship's computer plus the small amount inside Jinye's skull, but he is giving it to Jinye faster than a human being could speak it, and that is quite valuable.

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What Jinye Attani Cocoon is thinking is that this situation is that she has finally grown up. Did she run any simulations in school about making first contact with a lost branch of human civilization that is - thank you, Ting - two hundred and forty-eight years in the past, and probably in a emperor-be-damned alternate timeline if they seem to be suggesting that a United Nations survived the third World War? No, no she did not. Is she totally prepared to take charge in the event that this happens? That would be a yes. Now all she needs to do is navigate their absurdly-complicated diplomacy, take over and unite the warring factions that in this timeline divide mankind, and either find a way back home or else rebuild the Neo-Attani Empire that she'd always wished she'd grown up in.

"Bring her in closer," she adds, "and see if you can make sense of any of the transmissions coming through those rings. I want to know this place."

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There are transmissions coming through the gates! Mostly through one particular gate, really; there's any evidence of human activity beyond a few of the others, but most are totally quiet, or else have the patterns of radio activity you'd associate with dead stars, not living planets. (A kind of disturbing number of dead stars, actually, based on known statistical patterns of how common those are in the galaxy.) The transmissions from what-must-be-Earth are kind of distorted, as broadcast transmissions coming through the gates usually are, but they're distorted in fairly predictable ways that Ting ought to be able to account for without using too much computing power. Their data-coding formats are still based on standards originally established in the late 20th century CE, so unless the Attani had to re-invent computers completely from scratch at some point in their history, they should be able to decode them with some but not impossible difficulty.

This version of humanity has a presence on almost every solid body in the Solar System, but most of the population still lives on Earth, which is governed by the UN. Based on the flag and the presence of a Secretary-General, it's the same UN the Attani history books speak of, although it seems to have absorbed aspects of the United States government as well. Mars is the second major power. Mars and Earth recently fought a war but are at peace now. The third faction is the Belt, or the OPA (the terms are used interchangeably on Earth and Mars news reports but there are definitely some Belters who don't think the OPA speaks for them), which a lot of people on the inner planets think is basically just a bunch of pirates and terrorists, but most are willing to at least give them credit for trying to become a civilized country. Belters think Inners are colonialists and oppressors. Both Mars on the Belt think Earthers are stupid and lazy (there's some background reference to 80% of Earth's population living on government assistance and doing drugs all the time?)

The Ring Gate system is new—like, within the past year. Humanity didn't build it. There are a lot of mentions of something called a 'protomolecule', which looks like some sort of nanotechnology and is apparently related to the Gates. It's hard to understand much of these news reports—there's a lot they're assuming to be common knowledge.

Most recently, there are finally detailed reports from a colony world called Ilus or New Terra after a long period of near-total radio silence—apparently some sort of crisis was successfully averted. Someone named James Holden is featured prominently. Absolutely no information is given on his background, which seems to imply that literally everyone in the solar system is presumed to know who he is—even the Secretary-General of the United Nations gets that much in front of her name.

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Drummer sends an acknowledgment to the Cor Leonis, and a false-alarm-await-further-communication message to Fred (depending on the relative positions of Tycho and the Ring, which she isn't sure about, it's possible her first message hasn't even reached him yet), and then, with some hesitation, pings Ashford.

It's not, precisely speaking, that Ashford shouldn't be involved in this. She wouldn't be pinging him yet, if he hadn't earned the right to. It's that—this is the first opportunity the new Belter state has had, maybe the only impression it will ever have, to make an impression on someone with no preconceptions of them. Even now Jinye Attani, if she has any sense, is having her crew tune in to broadcasts—inevitably, broadcasts from Earth about how Belters are all just a bunch of pirates and terrorists. She wants to be able to tell her they're wrong.

(Technically, Ashford is a pirate hunter now. Maybe he'll be off doing that.)

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Ashford is, as it happens, on board, and heads straight for the bridge when he gets the ping. Drummer doesn't usually solicit his advice, which suggests this might be somewhat of a big deal.

"Commander Drummer. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

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"You're not going to believe this."

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"I have seen many unbelievable things in my time, and not all of them in the last two years either. Try me."

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"A ship showed up out of one of the rings. Claims to be from something called the Attani Empire, 248 years in the future and possibly in an alternate timeline."

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"The Earther spies have gotten creative. Even I couldn't come up with that one." Ashford laughs. "Offer them a taste of our torpedoes." This last sentence is spoken more-or-less past Drummer at the weapons officer on the bridge.

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"They're not Earther spies." Her voice is very firm about this.

"I went through this already. Threats to shoot them and everything. Like I told them, I don't think Earther spies are that creative, and it's not actually that much more ridiculous than anything else that's happened recently. They claim to have no hostile intentions."

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"Even if they are from the future—'empire' and 'no hostile intent' are not words that belong together. We have two Inner Planets already; we do not need a third."

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"I had thought of that but do not consider myself enough of an expert on the connotations of the word 'empire' in alternate-universe English to throw away the opportunity we have here. This is a pivotal moment for the new Belter state. We are speaking for the system now, but whatever good they have to offer this branch of humanity needs to flow through us."

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"If you're saying to act like less of an old pirate when we meet them, I can do that. But Camina—" he never uses her first name— "why do you assume that what they have to offer is good?"

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"I don't. But I think we have more choice about being friendly to them than we do about winning a fight with them.

"Which reminds me, I meant to get a look at their drive signature." She glances at the monitor showing the scopes' view of the presumably-now-moving ship.

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The ship does still seem to be moving with fusion engines, or something resembling them; whatever the twitch-trick it was doing was, it isn't doing now. Still, it's accelerating at twenty-five Gs. Humans have survived that, humans have survived twice that for brief periods, but no one sane would regularly travel at those speeds unless they wanted a crew with crippling health problems.

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Meanwhile, pacing calmly on the bridge of a ship that (to her eyes) is unmoving around her, ship operating on low power and minimum acceleration, Jinye Attani Cocoon addresses her crew.

"Officers of the Empire, let me survey the situation. We are trapped in an alien universe, in which we are the only Attani - the only representatives of Imperial culture, the only members of our species -" (the colloquial misstatement - Attani are not a distinct species from humanity, no matter how much they might call themselves homo sapiens attani, irks her, but she doesn't let it show on her face) "- and our first mission is to find a way home. Our second mission, should this fail, is to do our best to bring the Attani Empire here. To build it, as best we can, with the people we meet."

She turns to pace. "You are the best of the Empire." You are time-servers who were cleared for important information purely because it was believed you'd keep your mouth shut and report upwards to higher authority instead of spilling, if questioned. "You are the best of the universe." Excepting of course that there are ordinary humans as smart as Janos von Neumann, or the name-dead heroes who built Central Computing. "You have survived the imperial academies, and flourished, and triumphed! You have survived the imperial service, and flourished, and triumphed!" This should not be a hard bar to pass! "In this mission, we have two weapons. We have you yourself and through your works - and the ship that you and yours - Veninheim and Suiyan, Guival and Centaurus - built and have captained, the technologies you and yours have discovered, the strategies you and yours have devised." Mostly yours. Not you, in particular.

"And we have them. I don't want you thinking that we have their weaknesses, though we do. We have the fact that they are, by and large, not that smart, not that strong, can barely see, can hardly withstand acceleration, and need twice as much sleep as any of you." And there are several orders of magnitude more.

"No, we have their strengths. Their ambition. Their intelligence. Their desire to strive. All these things will make them want to live up to the standards of the Attani, and the best of them? Will succeed. They will join us, and they will make our empire greater and stronger than it has ever been before. Our ancestors made the Attani Empire out of humanity. We can do the same. When you look at the men and women of Earth and Mars, I want you to see in each of them what I do - an Attani-to-be, and father and mother of Attani-to-be. They are not our enemies. They are our brothers." She smiled. "They just don't know it yet." Fortunately.

She nods.

"The Empire is born from our strengths, and triumphs through our devotion. If the Attani Empire was not superior, it would not be great. All that we need, we can accomplish."

She hesitates a moment.

"Now. We're going to have some unusual problems to solve, if we're going to achieve either victory condition. Let me discuss our plans..."

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Drummer notes their extreme acceleration, but doesn't say anything about it. Inertial dampening is one of the known abilities of the protomolecule, so if this is a human civilization that developed Gates on their own rather than having it dropped on them, it's reasonable they've figured that out as well. She won't ask them about it immediately; she doesn't intend to seem like she's demanding anything too valuable of them unearned.

While she waits for them to get in range, she sends Fred a longer update on the situation. It still hasn't been long enough for any of his replies to have reached her yet.

When they come within 0.25 light-seconds of Medina Station—it only takes about 45 minutes—she tightbeams them a short message. It's source code for their video messaging protocols, translated into the oldest programming language the station's computer knows. Hopefully this alternate civilization's point of divergence isn't before—1972, the computer informs her helpfully—and they're at least as bad as her own in terms of still having dependencies on centuries-old software.

(Or, though she doesn't know it, they have an AGI that can figure these things out.)

Assuming they manage to run the program, she opens a video link. She's a stern woman in her mid-30s with her hair pulled tightly back. Beside her is an older man with white hair a face scarred on one side as though from severe burns.

"The OPA extends its greetings, Jinye Attani Attani." She doesn't exactly speak for them but someone has to right now. "This is my executive officer, Klaes Ashford." Also not technically true, he resigned a month ago to head the OPA's new anti-piracy effort, but she hasn't replaced him yet.

"I suppose we should start with—how did you get here, and have you tried to return home? If it's possible to open direct communications between our respective commanding officers we should probably do that."

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As it happens, the Attani Empire does not have dependencies on centuries-old software! One of the advantages of an AI-backed autocracy is its ability to handle difficult coordination problems via bulldozer. It does, however, have preexisting software for handling that, because not all of its neighbors have its enthusiasm about bulldozers.

When Drummer opens the video link, she sees the picture of a tall, lanky teenager - or maybe woman in her early twenties - who is either an alien with a very low SFX budget, or an ethnicity unknown to earth, her eyes are large and oddly focused with unusually-large pupils, her skull is slightly oversized for her body, her ears oddly tapered, her skin looking almost elastic, with long black hair. She is obviously in amazing physical shape - the sort that belters have trouble ever getting to, and inners manage only with extensive gym hours - and could pass for an ordinary person with makeup and contact lenses, but is not really trying to. She's wearing a deep blue military uniform with white and red piping and unrecognizable insignia. She's on the bridge of a ship of some sort; they can't tell what most of the instruments do, but they can see that there's several dozen other people on the ship of about the same ethnicity, but if anything more - the same differences she has from inners, exaggerated; stranger skin textures and hair tones, odd ear and nose shapes, all implausibly fit. Jinye, in the chair, has long hair, all the others have theirs cut military-short.

"The Attani Empire returns them, Commander Camina Drummer, Klaes Ashford.

"We passed through an ordinary wormhole, and found ourselves in this unknown space instead of in the destination system, a hitherto unrecorded event. We have not yet tried reversing it, but our sensors are clear that the system behind us was not the one we departed from. I would be happy to speak with your commanding officer, but mine is at least temporarily out of reach." Fortunately.

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She doesn't comment on Jinye's appearance. Lots of people in the Belt go for weird body mods, and human genetic engineering is illegal on Earth but an alternate-universe version of humanity might have decided differently.

"One thing you should be aware of, to begin with," she says, "is that the Ring system is not our creation. It was built by a now-extinct alien civilization, by our best estimates about two billion years ago; the gate connecting Earth to it was built recently, by a—piece of alien technology that we accidentally discovered and activated inside one of Saturn's moons. We do not understand the principles behind it, and our gates...have had incidents where the ships transiting did not arrive at their intended destinations. So far we have not reestablished contact with any of them, so we don't know where they went; I assume, since our universe seems unfamiliar to you, that they did not arrive in yours?" It's a stretch but she has to hope they're still alive somewhere, if the possibility is there at all.

"If your civilization has developed wormhole technology on its own we would greatly appreciate an exchange of scientific knowledge. You should consult with our scientists regarding what we do know about the gates." She wishes Naomi were here. She saw a report that they were headed back from Ilus; she should probably tightbeam the Roci, as annoying as it is to have Holden embedded in every single international incident.

"My commanding officer is on the other side of the solar system, but I'm sending him regular updates. We can certainly arrange a meeting.

"If there are higher priorities I'm not thinking of feel free to raise them now, but I would at some point like to get a sense of what history we do and don't share. Did you have, for example...World War II?"

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Holy shit are you people completely insane ACTIVATED ALIEN TECHNOLOGY is your entire alternate universe OUT OF ITS COLLECTIVE MIND

(None of this shows on Jinye's face. It is almost certainly not Drummer's fault.)

"I know of no travelers from alternate dimensions arriving in ours, but it is not certain I would; the vast majority of our galaxy, even of the habitable worlds in our galaxy, is unexplored." The Attani aren't the only empire out there. "We have independently derived wormhole technology, though not on this ship," a wormhole tunneler is about twice the mass and more than ten times the cost of an escort frigate, "and would be pleased to sell or trade nonmilitary technology for the mutual benefit of humanity."

She pauses. "The presence of aliens, even extinct aliens, is a significant departure from what we've encountered." Single-celled life forms, yes, occasionally, she thinks someone may have found alien algae, but nothing past that. "Information about them would be extremely important; active aliens, here or elsewhere, would be a potentially catastrophic threat to humanity." The Attani had a mere few hundred years' technological lead on Tsirona; a million years lead would mean that they were, so far as the aliens were concerned, algae.

"As for history... key dates in our history would be the First World War, 1914-1918 AD by the Terran calendar, the Second World War, traditionally, 1937-1945, the birth of the internet, usually dated to 1983, the development of practically reversible cryogenic freezing, in 2025, and the start of the third World War, normally dated to 2056. Which of these sound familiar to you?"

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"The first two World Wars, yes. The Internet I'm not personally sure but that sounds approximately correct. Reversible cryogenic freezing of humans exists but I think it was after 2025 and I wouldn't call it a key date in our history." (It's nowhere near reliable enough for interstellar travel, hence the former generation ship she now commands. The few frozen cancer patients that were revived once they had reliable drugs for that suffered from various mental health problems and mostly died of unrelated causes within a few years anyway.)

"There was a world war in 2056. It nearly went nuclear but a ceasefire was negotiated barely in time, as I recall. The settlements that ended it eventually led to the establishment of Earth's current government. Continuous human presence on Mars from 2042, Ep—uh, cheap fusion drives from around 2150, Martian independence of Earth in 2156. Settlement of the outer planets mostly started after that. Current year is 2352.

"The discovery of the protomolecule—that's the alien technology—was something of an unlikely coincidence, I think. Does Saturn have a moon called Phoebe in your timeline? It's a captured extrasolar object; that's where the protomolecule was found. It did, briefly, present a catastrophic threat to humanity, but that was averted. It's quite a long story.

"...additional threat vectors from the same source are, on reflection, probably understudied. If you'd prefer not to be in this mysterious alien pocket dimension any longer than necessary, our solar system is through Ring #0—uh, I'll send you a map—but I think that we would benefit, at this point, from you coming to the station and being able to interact face to face. I think we're all reasonably confident at this point that we don't mean to kill each other."

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