Empyrean Iris Story Collection

First contact

So, I may, or may not have been snooping through Krill's reports while he's returned home for, "mating season" sort of hope he meets a nice hot..... Whatever he is.... What makes you guys attracted to each other anyway...? Is it the size of the inflatable sack or something?

That's beside the point though, I thought you all deserved something from a human perspective. Krill has this tendency to make us sound super freaky. I mean calling babies parasites is a bit much. He makes them sound like monsters who feed of a woman's organs or something like that. I actually think babies are cute, and sure, we eat weird food, but none of us ever get actually HURT by it. The amount of poison in those foods aren't enough to do anything to us, so it's not a big deal.

As for me, it's a little known fact that I was part of the human crew and team that made first contact with E.Ts (Extra-terrestrials). It was the maiden voyage of the USS Enterprise (yeah I know kind of nerdy, but we had to do it. Who makes their first interstellar ship and doesn't name it the Enterprise, it would be sacrilegious). Personally I fancy myself a bit of a Kirk, and Krill could be Spock (Him being the voice of reason and all) you know if Spock had eight legs.... And emotions. Off topic, anyway, I was straight out of the academy had all my limbs and both eyes, and I was chosen as part of the bridge crew for our first voyage.

I was honestly surprised when the thing didn't explode as soon as we went into warp, but we held together, and all of a sudden we are in an entirely different galaxy. It was more intense that I could have imagined. One of our infrared specialists detected hits of a heat signatures on a nearby asteroid, so of course we were going to check it out. I volunteered for the mission first, if anyone was going to see an alien, it was going to be me. So we suited up with a team, and sent a landing craft. Imagine our surprise when we sensed signs of life.

***

"Look at this, Captain, these structures, it's like nothing I've ever seen." Captain Kelly moved over to examine the pillar with the rest of the crew speaking quickly an excitedly.

First Lieutenant Vir ignored them wandering over to the other side of the room to kneel down on the polished stone floor. Through the armored space suit, and full-face glass visor, he examined the walls around him. He already knew what this was, aliens, he was sure.

He glanced down at his equipment glowing softly at him through the visor of the helmet .... Wait, that hadn't been there before.

Atmospheric readings.

But they were in the middle of space..... There shouldn't be atmosphere, and it was a pretty complex one to, sulfur, hydrogen oxygen, and carbon. Still not breathable in those percentages, but... damn.

He turned to get his captain's attention, but just then, a small sound caught him through the microphone of his suit. A soft click, like a rock falling, he snapped his head in that direction, just in time to see a flicker of movement and a dash of metallic blue.

He threw his rifle over his back and bolted after the movement.

"LIEUTENANT."

He ignored the voice and raced after the fleeing figure clambering off the small incline and onto a pathway. He scrambled from his hands and toes onto his feet and followed the creature at a dead sprint. The thing skidded around a corner. He followed slamming into the wall before shaking himself off and giving pursuit.

A moment of pure exhilaration added adrenaline to his run, and he spend closer letting off a gleeful laugh, there were aliens, he knew it, he knew it.

The creature took another hard fast turn, and he raced after it, catching only glimpses as the creature raced forward. It was about waist height, but ran on all fours. It had a tail and maybe.... Six limbs.