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We first stumbled across the signal by chance. A mistake at the scanner board caused the sensors to pick up a very faint, exceedingly archaic signal that the operator only noted because of the extreme quiet and boredom of our stellar mapping run. Entirely on a whim, they logged the signal and spent a moment honing the receiver for a diversion, thinking that it was some hobbyist’s tinkering or a museum demonstration of ancient technology.

The moment the radiation interference cleared, they realized it was in no language they had heard before, and a search against the database of all known modes of communication in the Alliance turned up no matches.

A new species! A new language! Such had not been discovered in two generations of High Guardians of the Alliance! Every linguistics devision of the Alliance raced to decipher anything of this looping message, eager to be the first to know what it said, to begin to peel back the shroud of mystery into this new species no one had ever heard before! Every scientific exploration ship tuned scanners and every starmap toward every uncharted sector, racing to find the origin of this message. Every ship wanted to be the first to make contact with a new species after a two-generation span since the latest induction to the database.

Then, after three more High Guardians came and went, and no source for this signal was found, suddenly it stopped. Ship sensors and exploration into uncharted space had finally begun to narrow down a direction that rendered the signal more strong, and the termination after so long of searching and listening to what the linguists were certain was a hopeful call from a species that thought itself alone… to all involved in the search, it seemed like a portent of doom. That something terrible had happened to this species that called out for so long.

The search doubled. Planets that had not sent ships to the search, equipped and sent their fastest vessels to assist. Nearly as one, the Alliance followed every update compiled by the united search fleet. It became the fastest-moving charting arm of the unknown reaches since the first hundred High Guardian cycles.

Every crew member feared finding a planet recently devastated by some disaster, with echos of that same kind of transmission reverberating in the system. Too late to say greetings back to them. Too late to tell them they were not alone.

And then, seven High Guardian’s after the last transmission was heard, a new spiral galaxy was breached, half of its massive sprawl of stars investigated and marked off as void of life, and then one little ship moved to the outermost reach of a little yellow dwarf system, and caught the faintest echo of that ancient, oh so ancient kind of signal caught in the radiation belts.

Every being on that ship held their breath as their ship shot past planet after planet, scanning, scanning, no life signs, no life signs, no life signs… over and over.

As the message spread through the fleet, every ship turned its heading and all power towards this little system.

Live updates shot back to Alliance High Central.

Every reporting outlet turned toward this story and every update.

Six planets, no life signs.

And then, the seventh set of readings came back: so much life! So many technology signals! And the species! The species had so many languages over so many channels!

Across galaxies, celebrations erupted even before first contact, even before the first ship crossed the asteroid belt between the gas giant and the tiny planet before the living one!

Once the asteroid belt gave way to open space again, the research ship gained a new wealth of readings! The species had satellites, they had things all over their own orbit! Their little blue planet was so alive and loud and spinning away around their star with their little moon whirling around!

And then… then every linguist’s jealous dream was realized through the enthusiastic fingers of one communication expert that optimized their ancient set of equipment to send a message in that sound they had received the most of over that frequency in what they hoped approximated a message of good will.

And waited.

Their ship drew closer.

And they waited.

And the little planet’s signals began quieting.

And they drew closer.

And they waited.

And the signals from the planet grew fewer. And fewer.

And their ship drew closer.

And they waited.

The signals from the planet seemed to have quieted by half, and then it seemed that rudimentary scanners reached outward, toward the exploratory ship creeping closer to the blue, blue planet.

And then, a communication signal on that so, so ancient bandwidth reached back out.

The linguist raced their own respirations to translate as much as they could from the tiny, skeleton-sparse reference every comm specialist had memorized in the fleet.

With shaky confidence, they pieced together what seemed to be a request for identification, and a question of motive.

The whole ship erupted in cheers!

The linguist scrambled to form a response approximating the ship’s identification and greeting.

Communication sent.

More waiting.

Then, a steady transmission seemed to open up from the planet, and the comms officer tuned it into their equipment. It was voiced! A voice calling out, in so many new words they had never logged, live over the signal, and the linguist called back in the words they hoped were best, “Hello! What are you called?”

In answer they heard over the scratchy transmission, “We are Humanity, this is Earth.”

The comms officer could not mute the signal quickly enough before the whole station erupted in an excited roar that only lasted until the linguist cursed them all to silence again! The Humans were transmitting again!

“-you read? Do you come in peace?” That little voice asked.

“We come in peace on behalf of the Alliance of Systems. We received your transmissions, and searched for you for eleven generations of High Guardians. Apologies on behalf of the Alliance for taking so long to reach your system. We feared the worst when the transmissions ended.”

Static overtook the open signal for too many respirations.

“You looked for us on purpose?” It did not take a linguistic genius to hear the hesitation over the sound waves.

“We raced to find you. We wanted to return your greetings.”

“I…” a pause. “You said you come in peace?” The voice sounded softer in comparison to what had obviously been a more stressed tone, now that they had heard the difference.

“We come in peace.” The linguist said again, very visibly rocking in their seat in suspense.

Perhaps its because of how we have behaved over centuries of invading and conquering each other, that we assume aliens would want to do the same. That there will always be a pervading cruelty that drowns out the individual compassion we all have.

Why can they not be kind? Searching for our tiny planet in hopes of telling us we are not alone, extending the hand of friendship and knowledge to our civilisation and just as we have reached for the stars, grasping our hands and pulling us up there alongside them.

The story is right - we would be surprised to hear they searched for us, worried about us. To hear the aliens say "We come in peace", to hear in their voices the sincerity that means we are not alone anymore, that would be a shock, because we convince ourselves simultaneously that we alone could hold compassion for other species but also that we alone have too much cruelty to be treated with that compassion.

In every sci-fi story where humanity reaches the stars, there are other civilisations waiting for us. Some sort of something there, some sort of intergalactic collective.

What if there wasn't.

We manage it. We reach the stars, so close we can touch them, and we shout into the void "Here we are! Here we are, where are you? Where are you?

...where are you?"

Because we are the first. Not the first to touch the stars, no-- there are others who have, but only so far as their own suns. We are the first to reach farther. The first to go so far, because, while there is no physical reason to go quite so far (we have terraformed our worlds, of course, and we can survive any environment so long as we live long enough to adapt to it, and there are not yet so many of us that we can't feed or house ourselves in our own system), we can't stop. There is adventure, there is hope, there is the freedom of being star-bound for distant worlds, distant star systems, different galaxies, of exploration and discovery. We are the first to go so far.

Of course, we can't be-- that doesn't make sense. We can't be the first. There must be someone out there, someone who can show us the way forward because this can't be it, we can't be the first, we don't know how to be the first.

But we are.

And so, we do what we always have. We create. We explore. We reach other worlds, touch their stars and skies and the depths of their seas, and build great structures, great cities and empires, but we never find quite what we're searching for.

So we keep reaching. We keep building. We keep exploring, further and further. We fumble and struggle and fall, and we pull ourselves back up like we always have.

For decades, centuries, millennia, we are alone. So very, very alone.

And then, one day, someone reaches back. A young species, like we once were, ravaged by war and so, so very afraid of the vast emptiness that waits for them beyond the light of their own suns.

And oh, there it is. The reason we have explored so much.

We are not alone anymore.

They cry out to the stars, just as we did, "Here we are! Here we are, where are you? Where are you?"

And we can reach back. "Here we are," we say. "Here we are! We are human, who are you?"

And we will show them the vastness of the universe, the joy of chasing a comet just to see where it lands, of crying into the void and waiting for someone to finally answer you.

Then we will build together, explore together, and know that we are not alone. They will fumble, they will struggle, they will fall, and we will be there with an outstretched hand and an offer of help.

And one day, another species --young like we once were, ravaged by war and so, so very afraid of the vast emptiness that waits for them beyond the lights of their own sun-- will call, "Here we are, here we are, where are you?"

We will both reach back. "Here we are," we will say, together, "here we are! Who are you?"

Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks.  Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that?  In the computer core, or the communications hub?  You just lose power.  And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.

If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.

It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost.  Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.

Most fleets give you something, of course.  For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass.  I looked at the vial.

“It’s too soon,” Traav said.

Kvala gestured negation, shakily.  She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now.  Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive.  “You know we’re losing the war.”

They couldn’t deny that.  “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”

“Doesn’t it?  The Chreee have better technology.  Better resources.  And they have their warrior code.  They don’t care if they die.”

“We can’t give up!” Traav protested.  They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told.  “Any heartbeat now—”

There was a clunk.  Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.

“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.

Kvala exchanged glances with me.  The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors.  What was the point, after all?

The Aushkune did.

There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here.  They were supposed to hide in nebulas.

But if there were—

If there were, we were too late.  The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—

Footsteps.

Bipedal.  The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.

And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it.  My first thought was, robot?  That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . .  But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.

Who wore suits?

“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala.  “Urgent treatment.  Evacuation.”

“Who are you?”  Kvala struggled upright.

Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners.  “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain.  Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.

“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?”  Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.

“Not Chreee,” the sound system said.  “You Man.  Soil Starship Nichols.”  The being hesitated.  “Rescue Chreee as well.  On ship.  Will separate.”

“You what?” I said faintly.  Who would do that?

“Oath,” the being explained.

“What kind of oath?  To what deity?”

The shoulders of the being moved up and down.  “Several different.  Also none.  For me, none.  Just—oath.”

I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was.  I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.

The being scanned me.  “Have water,” it said.  “Recommend.”

Raithari have fast metabolisms.  I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.

“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”

“Raithari to Raithar.  Chreee to Chreeeholm.”

“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.

The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad.  Sometimes lie.”

We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?

“And you—what?” I asked.  “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”

The being seemed to consider this.  “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.

Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense.  Did it worship soil?  But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .

Madness.

On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it.  So why not embrace madness and see what happened?

“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.

“Yes.  Soil Starship Nichols.”

This is what took me a moment.