The Triumvirate was a equipped with a few reusable low earth orbit satellites. To deploy and scan the world would take 3-5 days. The trio was sure they shouldn’t take that long at this stop, after all, it was the first of many.

  So instead, they few a few light hours away from the planet, scanned for faint signals, finding none, they moved a few more out, repeating until they finally found the signal. They then triangulated it by repeating as they moved closer and closer to the planet.

  Auberje stood atop a windswept plane on a planet about 1.1 times the size of Terra. The gravity was just slightly more than normal and while it bothered him, he was sure he could get used to it in time. Thankfully, they wouldn’t be staying long enough for that to happen.

  He was staring at a bizarre object. It was three feet high, and bright blue light was emitting from it. It was round at the top and diamond-shaped at the bottom. It was made of stone or metal. He wasn’t sure which. The scanners told them the signal was some type of timed, raido wave pulse. There was nothing else on the planet—nothing of man’s creation and also no nature. The rest of the planet was lively, with dozens of species of small mammal-analogs and thousands of plant types, probably tens of thousands but they were almost all uncatalogued.

  This fifteen-kilometer wide plain at the start of a mountain range in the central continent was very different. There was nothing here. No radiation, no stray seeds, no flying creatures. Nothing. It was peculiar. He wore the suit the headmistress had given them. It was an incredible iconography forward look, he thought. The helmet was shaped like a jaguar helm and his whole suit, colored green and grey by nanobots to blend into the surroundings of the lower part of this world, was covered in ancient Mayan runes and imagery.

  He held no connection to the ancient Mayans but the suit obviously did. He shrugged in the powered armor.

  “I guess there is nothing for it, guys,” Auberje’s voice came through the Triumvirate’s speakers clearly even though they were a dozen kilometers above him, “I am going to see if the device can be picked up or deactivated or something by touching it.”

  Riley bit her lip, “I don’t like this at all Auberje, be careful!”

  She watched his head cam nod up and down. He approached the three foot tall device. He wasn’t much taller than it himself. She held her breath. She could not hear Helos’ breathing either. She looked at him and he was biting his lip in anxious anticipation.

  Auberje stepped forward again, reaching the device. He put his gloved hand on it slowly, apprehensively. He felt a slight flow of energy from the object to the glove. “Oh, I don’t like that,” Auberje said stepping back even as the blue light focused clearly on his suit, like a pulse scanner. His HUD displayed warnings of unknown scanning. The suit’s limited AI-like decision engine suggested running away.

  He stood his ground.

  The pulse scan lasted only seconds, and then the device split open, revealing a blue and white crystal. “Some kind of memory or activation device?” Auberje muttered as he stared at the two-foot tall, slender crystal. It was about as thick as his wrist which was only a few inches across. It looked almost as though it were some kind of anime sword of glass, one side was definitely tapered to be a handle, the other was thinner and slightly wider with one edge sharpened. The end, as he pulled the object out was definitely a sharp point.

  “Why would we be sent here to pick up some kind of crystal sword?” Helos asked, “Looks cool and all, but doesn’t it seem a little strange.”

  “Maybe it isn’t just a sword, but a key,” Riley started bringing up the requirements of their scavenger hunt/route, “yes!” she exclaimed excitedly, “I see there is a vault we have to open on the next system. Maybe this is the key for that vault?”

  Auberje stood there, holding the blade, feeling rather badass, when he noticed the blue light from the pulse scanner and object reemerge, forming a solid figure. The figure solidified from feet to head as if 3-d printed by the light. It was a feline creature though nearly a meter and a half tall.

  A sword and small buckler, of the same crystal material as Auberje’s formed in the cat’s hand. A hissed, meow click click, of the creatures tongue and the blue light faded. Before Auberje stood… an Alien! “are we recording this,” he whispered into his suit’s mic.

  “Hell, yes we are,” Helos’ voice was a whisper too, “are you going to have to fight it?”

  “We can’t fight it!” Riley and Auberje spoke at the same time, “This is potentially first contact!”

  “I don’t think it is, I think this is like what you guys found during the last Greathing… our school created this as part of the test,” Helos’ voice was now a regular level.

  “I hope so, because it sure looks like it wants to fight,” Auberje changed the grip of the sword he held, pointing the blade at the cat, so that he was matching the stance it had changed to. Instead of just standing idly while Auberje, Riley and Helos talked, the cat thing was moving.

  His suit spoke to Auberje, and through the connection to the Triumvirate to the other two children. “Congratulations, you are the first of your kind to meet a Tembre in twenty-five millennia. Humans were once studied us, and we studied you. Now we view you as rudely enslaving your domestic cats, who we resemble too closely. We mean to find out if they are our ancestors or not. If they are, all humans will die. If they are not, we may yet be friends.”

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  The voice was… not unpleasant but damn well sounded like a cat’s, Auberje thought. He nodded without taking his eyes off the Tembre. The headmistress had described these cats to them before. So he was certain this was like the last Greathing. “Are we to fight?”

  “Yes, little human, to the death. Your death!” The Tembre struck at him with its blade and swung the buckler around to bash his head at the same time.

  Auberje was an excellent fencer, his father had tutors for Auberje from age 3 on teaching martial and physical fighting forms. He was small, though, and relatively weak being only 7. This was going to be tough, except, he was also wearing powered armor.

  Envisioning what he wanted to do, the suit’s near limitless power source leapt forward. He struck back at the unprotected cat’s fur, ignoring the crystal shield and blade coming at him. He knew he could end this with a single thrust.

  The Tembre couldn’t arrest its own motions, its sword went to the right of the green and grey armored blur as the Tembre felt it’s chest punctured by the crystal sword the human held.

  “Arhhg,” red blood sprayed into the alien world’s air. Auberje stood still, perfect form of his thrust held. It was a heroic pose, and yet he felt sad. He killed this lovely Tembre, a being with the potential to be the friend of mankind, to walk worlds with him. This was such a waste. He would have rather befriended the being.

  The Tembre smiled at his jaguar shaped head, “even your power armor looks like our race. Goodbye for now, young human. My name is Nawarj, I am on Hebrian Prime 205t. You may yet meet me again. Beware the Harx!” As he had come into this world, so did the Tembre leave, head to toe the light seemed to suck from the object and pull the fatally wounded Tembre back into light. Motes of the cat’s blood were struck by the blue light and they too were sucked back into the center of the short pillar.

  The Tembre was gone. Auberje straightened, looking down at the sword at his side. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but this certainly was not it.

  “What the hell just happened?” Auberje asked the open air of this distant, alien world.

  “I think we need to rethink some of our assumptions,” Riley replied from on high, “some of our fundamental first principles.”

  Helos started screaming in joy, “We are not alone! We are not alone!” He was dancing in a circle in the Triumvirate’s command center. Riley saw it, she and Auberje heard it. Their reaction to not being alone in the universe was… not the same as Helos’. This was maybe good. But if the Tembre were real, and could teleport into the Milky Way, into their neck of the woods. Were other races of aliens real too?

  What was this scavenger hunt Greathing really? Auberje thought miserably, did I just kill a real Tembre?

  “I don’t think you killed Narwarj,” Riley said after they had brought Auberje back aboard ship. They were sitting at the small mess table they set up to eat their meals. The crystal sword lay on the table between them. Auberje had just confessed his fear and disgust at killing the Tembre.

  “I think he was set there to meet us, to understsand something of our strength. And we were to understand something of him, maybe simply this,” Riley held Auberje’s hands urging with her soft, sweet voice and firm hands, to look up from the table, to rise above his shame, “The Tembre are real. We are not alone.”

  The way she said that struck Helos as discordant with his earlier elation. There was an undercurrent here he wasn’t undertsandign. “Why are neither of you as excited to not be alone, as I am? What am I missing?” His analytical mind was running through the different scenarios but he couldn’t get past the optimism he felt.

  “The Harx, for one,” Auberje said quietly, “and their unending hunger secondly.”

  “Oh,” Helos was stunned, of course. “I can’t believe I was ignoring the potential threat.”

  “It is exciting, Helos,” Riley took one hand from Auberje and placed it on Helos’ shoulder, looking him in straight in the eyes, her face earnest and honest, “I am thrilled to learn we are not alone in this universe. I am also scared of the consequences, and the reaction of our fellow man. I am also worried that those ‘theoretical’ classes the headmistress taught us were entirely non-theoretical.”

  “We have to ask her,” Auberje stated, sounding glum. “I don’t want to, but I think we have to. And we have to keep going, keep learning more along the path. We can’t let this one little thing lead us to the conclusion. It could be like the Greathing. It could be some experiment by our headmistress and faculty. Perhaps, they created the Tembre.”

  Riley shook her head, but then stopped, nodding. “Yes, it could be. I agree. We have to hurry to our next objective. We have to do them all. Let’s see what the point of all this is.”

  “We can contact the headmistress now,” Helos said, standing to use the wall based communication node, “do you think we should?” His hand hesitated to press the touch panel.

  Auberje looked at him, considering, calculating. His face was robotic, his mind a computer. “No, I don’t see any gain in asking now. She will prevaricate or vacillate until we can get more data. We need conclusive evidence. More than this sword, my HUD capture. We need a living alien and we need an alien civilization.”

  “I agree,” Riley stood, “let’s go to the vault and see what lies within.”\

  “In the meantime, I’m going to check into this sword. This crystal is something I have never seen before. I checked all our known materials across all the different human worlds. Not one of them is capable of creating a single, seamless piece of material as strong and as light. When I thrust, it even gathered weight so the strike had more heft, mass to it,” Auberje eyed the sword with distrust but also eagerness. He was a boy through and through. Helos looked bummed, “I call going to the next planet. I want a sword!”

  Riley, “We can make you one in the fabricator, Helos, but what are you going to do with it?”

  “Wear it, use it, touch it!” Helos replied instantly.

  Riley rolled her eyes, “I’ll get you one with a scabbard then, any preference in style?”

  “You will? No, no. I don’t really know how to use a sword all that well,” the commoner boy admitted. His parents hadn’t trained him from birth in the use of an old and largely obsolete weapon.

  “A gladius then, Riley,” Auberje spoke with the authority of youthful fancy, “I believe it will be the easiest and safest route for Helos to use in a fight. Just thrust with it, Helos.” Auberje demonstrated with a blade made of imagination.

  Helos nodded, “I will study the manual of arms for the gladius. Good idea, Auberje.”

  Riley rolled her eyes as she strode away. While the boys were playing with blades, she ordered the fabricator to build dozens of missiles, a trio of small lasers and three 9x9 rocket pods with fittings for their powered armor. Next time they went out of the Triumvirate, they would not be easy pickings. And they would have modern weapons as well as the boys swords. As she finished the order to the in-ship fabricator, she added one last item, something special for herself: a titanium saber with a diamond edge. Just a little something every girl should have, a few diamonds…