The approach continues without any sign of awareness from the alien ships. No active scans, no change in behaviour, no sense that they have any awareness of you whatsoever. Interestingly, there also doesn't seem to be any communication chatter - nothing on radio, no wireless signals, nothing on the electronic spectrum at all. Absolute silence, lending an uncomfortable credibility to the idea that psionics might be in use... right up until a close observation of one of the docking ports is made. There is a sequence of rapid direct blue laser lights blinking on the edge of one of the ports, sending a tightly focused beam at one of the incoming spheres which blinks back a rapid signal of its own. So: these vessels do communicate each other over direct optical transmissions. It's possible that they have some technology which enables complex communication over these links, but from here it looks eerily similar to a combination of morse code and 19th century naval signal flags. 

Decoding the basics of this cipher is trivial. A whole host of basic navigational signals will take mere hours of observation for the brain trust back at xenolinguistics, but the simplicity of the codes also implies that they can't be assumed to be permanent. With a simple code system like this it's entirely possible for a force to rotate its codebooks, potentially extremely rapidly. Still, though, compared to the encrypted military communications of an AI-enabled species this is frankly amateur hour. Aotrs signals intelligence will have essentially no trouble decoding these communications...

[i]If[/i] they have a direct visual on the emitter nodes. And that's where an interesting problem in the core-and-orbit system of the alien ships becomes evident. These nodes are all over the ships and the ships are in constant motion. Without a 360 degree visual on the alien craft it's possible that invisible exchanges may happen on the 'dark side' of the ships. There are also great numbers of these emitters and it's possible that they might launch massive bursts of decoy signals, with the 'true' communications only known to the aliens. These are ultimately extremely low-tech solutions, though: the aliens are foregoing all high quality data transmissions between their ships and all ability to communicate complex information. There may even be severe problems issuing basic commands to fighter wings performing combat maneuvers just because of the difficulty of 'hitting' them.

For a species to adopt a system of communication like this implies firstly a massive decentralization of authority, and secondly a massive concern about being in a hostile information environment. Similar systems are most commonly seen in species that have endured an AI uprising or are engaged with a civilization with enormous hacking power. Direct laser communication is as unhackable as a typewriter.


As this observation is taking place, one of the destroyer-spheres performs an unusual action. It detaches from the rest of the formation and begins to accelerate its orbit around the planet. This occurs without any engine spikes or thruster activity - it just slips seamlessly from a geosynchronous orbit into a rotational one, directly around the planet's equator. More unusually, the speed of the vessel seems to adjust up and down without any sort of electrical activity. 

It's an eerie motion. This is [i]not[/i] how spaceships should move. But, combined with the observations of the rest of the alien craft, suggests that Stab had the right idea. This is a gravitic drive. 

Many species utilize various artificial gravity systems for their starships so the concept is not unthinkable. The idea is, simply put, that you arrange those artificial gravity systems externally to the ship. With such a system you could change the direction of up and down as far as the ship was concerned, making it 'fall' in certain directions as its primary propulsion. Further, by increasing or reducing the effect of gravity on the vessel, it could be made to speed up or slow down. An interesting blackboard theory, but not one that ever seemed worth the time or money to develop at the expense of conventional thrust drives.

This alien species seems to have thought differently; this is gravity-control technology taken to a state of absolute mastery. Though the top speeds of these ships seem to be slower than an Aotrs ship, their turning circles are ridiculously tight, making even the larger ships seem as maneuverable as starfighters. Of course, the great theoretical problem with grav-drives has always been [i]"What happens if you fight outside of a gravity well?"[/i] The further these ships get from a planet or a star the more sluggish and unresponsive they will become, and in deep space they would be essentially becalmed. But here in orbit around a planet they move with an eerie grace, and if they operated around a gas giant or star they would be blisteringly quick.


The last observation of interest, then, is what exactly the destroyer is doing. When it slows down at regular intervals around the planet it releases a cloud of glittering crystals. It seems to be quite deliberate about this, taking the time to carefully target their orbital positions, and then moves on to the next point after half an hour at location. Like much of what these aliens do, this is a coherent action expressed using bizarre means and technology: This is clearly some sort of parallel to establishing a network of satellites around a planet. But what purpose these odd crystals serve - if they are some sort of mine or other weapon, or if they serve a role in communications, or some stranger or more mystical purpose - can't be determined without acquiring some for study.

Estimates are murky, but the destroyer seems to have launched over a thousand of these crystals, most smaller than human sized. If you weren't there to observe the process they would have seemed just like random space debris. At the end of its orbit, it resumes its position orbiting around the cruiser.