Two and a half months later found a very frustrated Niomi. Who was frustrated at how long everything was taking. The Development Center sat unused and mostly unusable. She had thought it would come with a Support AI that it needed but it didn''t. For the last two weeks, she had been trying to figure out how to use it to do anything without one. She could modify the blueprints of everything she had access to all the way down to and beyond the screws used. Yet without any actual knowledge about what she was doing she couldn''t be sure if any modification would help. The most she had managed to do was add some paint to the structures, and a logo on the side of them. It was amazing to see when the Builder hub updated each of the structures with the logo after she had upgraded the Builder Hub with the Maintenance Drone upgrade.


    When Nomi asked Manual about the situation and how to get the Development Center operational it just said a Support AI or Servitors were needed. Yet she had not come across either yet, in fact, she didn''t even know what Servitors were yet since information on whatever they were was locked, or so Manual said.


    In the meantime, she had expanded what she could build. She now had six Asteroid Ore Miners, four Gas Collectors, and two Volitiles Harvesters. She also had four Refineries, two Builder hubs, the Transport Hub, the Complex Core, seven different types of storage facilities, and the Development Center of course.


    The Complex Core was interesting though since it had room to run programs on. Not that she had many to run, but as an experiment, she loaded a copy of the Mindscape program and told it to create a virtual environment identical to the local area, and she spent a day or two just walking around her base. She figured that if she observed the way the technologies worked maybe she could figure out how to change and modify them and maybe improve them. Every day she also read from the extremely complicated documentation that was provided for each structure.


    It was during the third time she was walking through her base when she suddenly and unexpectedly found herself back in her control room. She found a young man waiting by her desk. She stared in shock for a moment but the person didn''t seem to react to her appearance. Pulling up the metadata on the man she learned that this was the representation of the Senors system on the Class Three Probe. She found that this relieved her greatly to know that her mindscape hadn''t been invaded by some stranger, yet also somewhat disappointed that she wasn''t actually meeting someone new. It was a few months since Niomi had spoken to anyone and she was starting to get a little lonely.


    As soon as Niomi sat the man saluted and held that pose. She was a little taken aback by this, she could remember none of the other NPC programs doing this. She was at a loss for words for a moment before saying the first thing that came to mind.


    “Report?” Nomi asked.


    “Yes ma''am! Seven sensor anomalies have been detected, these readings are consistent with wormhole apertures ma''am.” the man declared.


    “Wormholes? Well, the literature said they were pretty common between most star systems. Wait you said seven?” Niomi asked.


    “Yes ma''am!” he said with a gesture to the large holo-projector in the center of the room. The Projector came to life and showed a map of the solar system with the star in the center. Icons representing the base on Homerock and the various craft she had moving about the system were shown. Then she saw two different groups of icons, two on one side system. If she used Homerock as the zero point, which she decided she would. The first two icons, which were pulsing concentric circles in blue, would sit at the edge of the system at about 205 degrees. While the second group of icons, also blue pulsing concentric circles, sat at 40 degrees. When she focused on the icons, plots indicating speed and direction appeared, and as she watched they changed in both speed and directions.


    “Wait is this data current or are you updating it as detected?” Niomi asked. One of the instructional videos she watched over the last three months dealt with space combat and introduced her to the concept of light-lag, or sensor-lag. Depending on the form the sensor took, and the medium it used sensors were limited in the information they received. It took time for a signal to travel across a star system. Even light takes a long time to travel across a solar system. Light from the Sun takes around forty-three minutes to reach Jupiter, and if you were waiting for a return on that light it would take another forty-three minutes to return. Meaning anything you saw on Jupiter to an observer on the Sun was forty-three minutes old already.


    “This sensor data is real-time ma''am” the man which she decided to name Eyes said. “Zero-Delay”


    That was impressive, but then she knew the Probe used some pretty advanced Liiri Tech to scan the solar system upon arrival too, and it had marked all the resources in the system. She had no idea how it did it but having real-time information about anything entering the system would give her a huge tactical advantage. Then she remembered she only had some miners and a small refinery base, with a still useless Development Center.


    Niomi looked up from this thought as saw the plots change again, the first pair, swinging over to bring their path closer to the star, where it stopped on an intercept path to the first world in the solar system. It looked intentional.


    “Eyes, are these ships?” She asked with a small note of incredulity.


    “Both groups sensor profiles are consistent with spacecraft ma''am” Eyes reported without turning around. As she watched the second group''s plot changed and swung over to rest on the second planet, Ares. Niomi stood and walked over to the edge of the platform looking down at the twenty-eight people below the railing of the walkway that represented her forces such as they were.


    “Ok everyone, Go Dark!” Niomi said using a term she had learned in the same video about sensor-lag. “No unnecessary communication. Shut down all operations and reduce all emissions to the minimum.”


    The NPCs turned back to their stations quickly seemed to power down everything. To Niomi this looked like they powered down their stations and then faded from view until they were ghosts sitting at stations that were off.


    “Feels kind of creepy” Niomi muttered to herself. Then with a panicked thought, she turned back to see Eyes still standing facing her desk without moving or fading. With a sigh, she returned to her seat.


    “Eyes can they detect any of my structures or ships?” Niomi asked


    “While we retain in QEC with each of the structures, they should not be able to detect them after the next hundred forty-six minutes barring direct visual observations. Also, our emissions to this point have been very low and should go unnoticed as part of the normal solar variance unless their sensors are much in advanced than their evident drive technology. Both the Communication relay and the Probe are covered in an advanced Liiri Stealth generator, and are difficult for Liiri Sensors to detect, and should remain undetectable regardless.”The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    That was more information then she asked for, so she checked his data again but didn''t learn much more but she suspected this NPC was actually an AI or as one of the documents she read called them Lower Order Intelligences or Expert Systems. Not sentient like a Support AI or AGI but capable of advanced reasoning all the same within their area of expertise. None of the other NPCs she had created showed any initiative yet Eyes was created by the system and was able to force her return.


    Yet this was something she was sure she could look into later. As it turned out she ended up having plenty of time to look into it. Space is vast and ships slow, these ships seemed much slower than her own miners taking well over a week to get to their respective worlds where they stayed for some time. Eyes reported that he detected radio emissions from both groups targeting each other. Yet it was too scattered and he lacked any encoding information to decode it. Or at least that''s what Eyes told her on more than one occasion when she asked. However, they did learn that there were three types of ships.


    The first group, the one consisting of two ships, were both similar in size and shape. Both were rounded cylinders three hundred and sixty-three meters long with a beam or diameter of fifty-five meters. Both ships seemed to carry a host of smaller craft which they used extensively exploring the first world. Eyes categorized them as heavy cruisers using some scale that the Liiri used that included both the mass and size to determine its category. Niomi didn''t really care either way since to her their role determined its category, not its size.


    The second group of five ships was one large disk-shaped ship three hundred and forty-three meters across and forty-nine meters deep at the edges and ninety-eight meters deep at the center. While the four smaller ships were also disk-shaped eighty-four meters across and seven to fourteen meters from edge to center deep. The smaller ships would dock with the larger ship in slots that went all the way through the hull. The smaller ships seemed to be able to land on Aries just fine and spent a lot of time flying around the planet.


    After the first few days of panic and then diving into the Liiri provided documentation for another few days. Niomi slowly calmed down when nothing happened. And then more nothing happened. By the third week, Niomi was using the Time compression utility a lot before finally setting it to alert her if there were any changes in the behavior of the ships and effectively going to sleep while they did whatever aliens did when exploring a system. Both groups spent close to a month at their respective planets before moving to exchange places.


    This changed on the fourth day of the second month the aliens were in the system. The group of two which Niomi has been calling the Twins suddenly and unexpectedly changed course while passing through the first debris disk or asteroid belt on the way to the second planet. Eyes confirmed a moment later that the two ships were on an intercept course for one of her Ore Miners. After a day the second group which Niomi had been thinking of as the Mother and Daughters, also changed course to intercept the same rock in space.


    When Niomi asked Eyes how they detected the Ore Miner, he told her it may have been the higher than normal albedo of the asteroid caused by the exposed ore. This was fancy talk for saying the asteroid was shiny. The fact that both groups seemed to be coordinating meant they were on friendly terms with each other. But the fact that they seemed to be in the process of duplicating each other''s survey may mean they don''t actually trust each other. Niomi really wished she could ask someone about this, Manual would only repeat that it lacked any information on the topic of alien interaction other than the general warning to avoid it.


    When the Twins were about half a day away when they slowed significantly much more than they needed to if they were moving to intercept the asteroid and the miner coming to a stop relative to the asteroid. Eyes and Manual had no explanation. But from the high amount of radio traffic between the Twins and the Mother and Daughters told Niomi that they had detected the Ore Miner after all, just not at first. The Twins waited a few light seconds away from the asteroid Niomi started to refer to as The Shiny. Light seconds, minutes, and hours it turned out were how the Liiri and many other civilizations in space determined distance, although every civilization called them something else. In Niomi''s case, it was taken from the Earth time scales, rather than some Liiri source. This she learned was to prevent any civilization that might capture her hardware and it was implied herself, would be unable to figure out where the bulk of the Liiri Collective was from.


    When both groups were a similar distance from The Shiny they accelerated and intercepted the asteroid, taking up positions on either side of the rock in space. For the first time, Niomi had a good look at the ships visually. By this point, she more or less memorized the various ships'' dimensions and capabilities, at least as far as had been shown up to this point but she had to admit the Twins were beautiful to look at.


    While the various sensors showed the dimensions of a ship and told her how fast they were moving, how much energy they radiated, they didn''t show her how a ship looked. Each Twin was decorated or painted with swirling patterns of various colors, one with blue and orange swirls mixed with some green and white. While the other was black and white with blue and green mixed in. It reminded Niomi of Celtic art she had seen in the past with flowing curving repeating lines.


    The Mother and Daughters were interesting to look at, although they looked more generic to Niomi. Flying saucers had been done to death in Scifi. Yet the hulls of all the ships had an interesting with an almost organic look to them covered with an iridescent sheen. Eyes would tell her when she asked that it couldn''t determine the nature of the hull on those ships without a direct sample.


    For three and a half days a stand-off seemed to play out with radio messages lighting up the spectrum over and over as the two groups seemed to discuss or maybe argue over what to do. Or so Niomi imagined that''s what was happening. Then on the third day, a small group of ships from the Twins approached her Ore Miner. These ships were delta-winged craft that Eyes classified as space planes, able to go to and from orbit by themselves on efficient if lower power ion/plasma hybrid systems. Like the main ships, they came from they also were painted. White and Black from the similarly colored ship and Blue and Orange the other. They were fairly small at twenty-eight meters long, Eyes suggested they could probably hold about six adult humans.


    Then one of the smaller flying saucers approached and small drones came from an opening near the center and crossed the distance to examine the Ore Miner. At least Niomi and Eyes both thought they must be at only three meters long. To Niomi they almost looked like they were beetle shaped. A few hours later they too returned to their mother ship.


    Nothing happened for a day after that, aside from near-constant communication between the two groups. Then both groups send more people to investigate Niomi''s poor Ore Miner. Niomi for her part was not taking the stress of not knowing what is happening well. She wanted nothing more than to do something, anything, to change things up and make something happen. This is what all those shows back on Earth got wrong she supposed, First contact isn''t always a handshake and universal translator away but a slow arduous process.


    “Ma''am the Twins seem to be landing a crew on our Ore Miner.” Eyes spoke up startling Niomi from her introspection well into the second hour of the second visit.


    “Crews? We can see them?” Niomi asked.


    “Yes, three individuals, approximately one hundred twenty-five to one hundred thirty-five kilograms.” Eyes said bringing up an image in the holo-display in the center of the control room. Three Individuals indeed floated from an airlock onboard their ship towards the middle of her Ore Miner. Niomi remembered there was indeed a compartment meant for maintenance access near the middle of the craft, its access hatch was clearly marked on the hull too. Then it occurred to her, they were humanoid. Two legs, two arms, and one head, their suits colored in the same swirling patterns as their ships just on a much smaller scale. One was black patterned with white highlights while the other two were patterned in green and blue.


    “What do you think the colors mean,” Niomi asked aloud.


    “Insufficient data to make a judgment” Eyes responded in a deadpan. Niomi sighed, it had been a rhetorical question.


    As she watched the trio, slowly approached her Ore Miner.