Contact

"I'm sick of constantly being at your beck and call
"I don't need much in the way of company, but for fuck's sake - Other than the occasional deferential conversation I've had with the staff in all these damn hotels, you're the only person I've spoken to in weeks!
"I'm bored... I'm bored of trailing around after you, doing weird things and observing their repercussions, hundreds of years in the future
"I'm bored... and I'm really, really fucking lonely
"I never thought I'd say this about the fucking hell hole, but I miss my home
"I want to know how my friends are doing - Jade and Kat, and... and Jay, and... and..." Cass petered out "I just want to go home"
"Oh, look at you" Brittany smirked condescendingly "You're all human, aren't you?"
Stood in the middle of yet another hotel suite, and wearing a long black coat, still wet with rain from the 2070’s, Cass glowered at her but said nothing
"Oh, fine" Brittany shrugged "Have it your way; we’ll go and see the Dwarf"
"What?" Cass was taken aback "Really?"
"Sure" Brittany breezed as she strolled past her towards the time gate that twisted into existence in the middle of the room “Coming?”

They emerged, surrounded by a hovering cloud of machines, onto an unfamiliar and cramped starship bridge; the occupants of which, four chalk-white skinned, female humanoids, were hunched in silence over their command consoles
The Blue Dwarf loomed large on the main monitors
"This was while you were all away on Fernando's" Brittany murmured, the sound of her voice apparently going unnoticed by the other occupants of the bridge
"Can they not hear us?" Cassandra asked, nodding suspiciously towards the women "Who are they?"
"They're the results of our efforts a few weeks ago" Brittany smiled "Remember tossing those isotopes into a swamp and the retrovirus we introduced into the food chain?"
Cass scowled in mute disbelief
"And, you're right” Brittany continued “They can neither hear nor see us" she paused to gesture up at the machines hovering all around them "These are seeing to that; they'll also stop you touching the crew, so don't bother trying"
"I thought we were going back to the Dwarf" Cass grumbled
“We said: ‘We’ll go and see the Dwarf’ - It's not our fault you misapprehended us" Brittany shrugged "We're here for first contact – Watch this..."
Holly's disembodied head swam into view on the main monitors
"Orrite dudes?"
The four women exchanged glances, one of them, evidently the captain, eventually taking a deep breath and responding; her weird staccato language translated on the fly by the machines hovering around Cass and Brittany
"This is the Imperial advance scout ship Wind Spear [Cultural significance]; I am Captain Aravays. Please state your business in this sector"
"This is the mining ship Blue Dwarf" Holly replied, actually putting its IQ to use for a change and making a fair stab at responding, at least in part, in the language the Captain had just used, before finally dropping back into English “I’m afraid there’s nobody home right now, on account of the crew all being down on a planet not far from here; but if you want to leave them a message, please do so after the beep" Holly paused for a moment "Beep”
The captain frowned in confusion at the AI's beatifically grinning visage, and turned to glance questioningly at one of the other women, who in turn shrugged and shook her head, her long, thin fingers moving over the control panel in front of her as she did so, pushing a whole host of informational schematics up onto one of the adjacent monitors
Her dark eyes narrowing as she scanned the data, the Captain's frown deepened as the other woman silently highlighted several sections of the incomprehensible swirling text on the screen
“They’re telepathic” Brittany murmured “They geneered themselves nearly five hundred years ago in an attempt to unify their species; they’re having an in depth conversation at the moment"
“And yet they’re not able to sense us?” Cass asked in concern
“We don’t want them to” Brittany shrugged “Watch this..."
“What the hell...? [expletive / no cultural significance]” the captain breathed as she ran a hand back through her short, blue-black hair in evident confusion “Are these...?”
“The readings are accurate” the other woman nodded, finally speaking out loud and earning a scowl of distaste from one of the others "It's near four million years old"
Lapsing back into silence, the captain gesticulated vaguely at Holly’s bobbing head and then at one of the other women, who nodded and turned back to bend over her desk, her fingers sliding across the controls
“What just happened there?” Cass asked suspiciously as the communication channel was suddenly cut and a dull thump echoed through the ship
“Well, they're a long way from home, and there's not much this little ship can do about something the size of the Dwarf; but having finished scanning it, they've arrived at the conclusion that it’s a defenceless, three million year old wreck, with nothing but primitive life aboard it”
Cass glanced at her out of the corner of her eye
“And...?”
“And they just launched a heavily cloaked, S1 plus automated probe which will hit the Dwarf on level three sixty"
“Why didn’t Holly tell me about it?”
“The poor thing never even noticed” Brittany smiled "And the probe had already begun working its magic by then. It’ll burrow in and infect all the shipboard systems with an advanced, sentient virus; the idea being that it'll eventually destabilise the reactor and destroy the ship”
“Pfft. Whatever” Cass sneered “Failsafe should handle it; and even then there are batteries of other less obvious adaptive countermeasures that’ll purge the fucker”
“Then there’s nothing to be concerned about” Brittany smiled thinly "The girls here obviously don't know who they're dealing with"
"Oh, right; they are all female?” Cass asked in surprise “I was wondering..."
"Ha! You're learning" Brittany grinned "The male to female ratio is approximately thirty to one, which is probably just as well - their males are very aggressive. Come on..." she turned to go, a time gate simultaneously opening behind them "We've seen enough. You'll get to meet the males another day"