Kraikiran-Rissan Event [@Keyguyperson]

From the coldness of space, a massive nestship floated by a gas giant; for more than a century it had been lonely, and the inhabitants within dreaming of a better tomorrow, though unbeknownst to them it was overdue by 140 odd Earth years. As the nestship travels by the ring of the gas giant, ambling along with only auxiliary thrusters, explaining its sluggish pace, asteroids on a collision course were immediately shot down by the ancient Asteroid Defense System batteries still in operation. The ship was built to last and last it did, for even after floating in the hazardous void of space for much longer than anticipated, it was still relatively intact.

Out of the 16 ADS batteries, only 3 had been knocked out, two by asteroid impact while the last one seemingly by energy discharge. Had a Kraikiran Krii xenobiology professor examined it, he would have flown around Niven and back again, for it was definite proof of life outside of the Kraikiran system. That said, whatever that tried to approach the massive nestship did not make it on board, fought back and... Their fate and face was unknown. Their only chance was that the mass drivers were, by now, outdated, if their technology was up to par. Since the Kraikirans had never met aliens before and the general consensus on intelligent alien life around the time the sleeper colony ship was built was that such life was rare and probably never to be found outside of Kraikira, the ADS batteries were programmed to fire at anything but shapes recognised as Kraikiran spacecrafts.

The hull of the ancient sleep ship was scratched, dented and scarred. The symbols denoting its name, the UAUKASCSP Kraig Ukasen (as would have been translated) was barely legible. The ship was silent, for the racist separatist rebels who sabotaged it had done a thorough job in disabling all shipboard communications systems and hacking the crisis management AI, preventing it from taking action to repair the damage. The distress beacon that would have started broadcasting in the event of such a problem was nonexistent. What was worse was that the computer governing the cryogenics pods housing the colonists to be released at their destination was disabled, and so they will sleep forever, and dream until the end of time, or when the systems keeping them in their hibernation breaks down... which the most talented Kraikiran engineers believe would happen five centuries and fifty two Earth years later.

Should the colonists wake up and discover that numerous Kraikiran lifetimes had passed since they froze, they could at least rejoice in the fact that the team of radical saboteurs who precipitated their time travel were dead; the plan was for them to live out the rest of their lives on the ship itself, their final act of sabotage was to eat through as much supplies as they could. But upon receiving a communique that their comrades back on Trigen were cornered and forced to dissolve, they had lost their only line of communication to their home system. They had years to stew in their forlorn, go insane and depressed, and finally, to commit suicide. For more than a century, their bones lie on the bridge, like ancient fossils.

However, the colonists weren't without hope, for the very aliens they denied was possible were at their destination. Should they get past the probes to be sent out, the ADS batteries, the Kraikiran alien constructions and language, should they find it in themselves to open their mind, yes, there would be hope, yet.

Ah yes, the probes. The sleeper ship was programmed to go into orbit around the prospective planet on its own. There, it would deploy flocks of ground and air probes that would survey the planet and send useful data back to the crew when they wake up, though in this case they may not. What would be a shame, however, was the fact that these probes were programmed to collect organic samples. The scientists, engineers and programmers in charge of them, however, did not program them to account for intelligent life that wasn't Kraikiran. Under supervision from the crew, the probes could easily be instructed to cease and desist. However, without a crew, these probes would simply collect as many samples as possible, large or small, before scanning them and bringing them to the sleeper ship for the scientists on board... Who in this case would remain in cryogenic suspension due to the sabotages.

Kraikiran-Irodien Event [@eemmtt]

The same test awaits the empire of the Irodiens. Perhaps through luck or strange design of this coalition of saboteurs, another sleeper ship, the UAUKASCSP Vchika Kris was heading in the direction of the Irodien homeworld.

Kraikiran System, Niven, University of Scheki

"Therefore, based on our latest scans of the stars surrounding these distant planets lightyears away from our exoplanet colonies, I suspect that the odds are higher than previously anticipated that intelligent life is to be found. It is only a matter of when." A prominent Kraikiran Krii professor chirped his song. He was standing on an anti-gravity platform and facing another professor on another anti-gravity platform facing him. He and his rival was surrounded by thousands of audience. "And I believe, based on our rate of development and the FTL drive available to us decades ago, the time is now!"

"Let me remind you that the first recorded instance of astronomical observation was 7500 cycles ago. What we have achieved in the past century or so is but another droplet of water in an ocean. So what if we have the FTL drive, and ships that travel a few light-years away? So what if we now have cities built on planets other than Niven and Trigen? Our distant ancestors were probably just as elated and excited as we are now that life like us are sure to exist in the stars." A rather large and menacing Kraikiran Eii countered, but the Kraikiran Krii was not cowed, "You are optimistic and hopeful; a rare gift indeed, but plenty say that it is a curse, from those primitives who were just as elated and excited as us when they realised what those points in the sky were, to many today."

The debate continues unabated. The balance of power had wavered from time to time; for the past few centuries, the school that thought that intelligence was nowhere else to be found held sway, but in recent years, the opposite was slightly more true. Little did they know that what would happen from this point on, from systems very far away, would change the course of Kraikiran history forever.