[snip]

Once Kord had left, the First turned to regard Glen. =/\= So....Captain Glen was it? =/\= She paused obviously struggling to pronounce Glen’s night right but mostly getting there in her language . =/\= How far from your home are you? As I mentioned we had suspected other intelligent life was around us but we had till not not met anyone or heard of anyone. =/\= She asked.

“Yes, I am Captain John Tiberius Glen of the USS Merrimack,” replied Glen. “I represent, not only my own planet, Earth, but a united federation of planetary governments based upon the principles of universal liberty, rights, and equality. We share knowledge and resources in peaceful cooperation, scientific development, space exploration, and mutual defence.”

=/\= A fascinating and no doubt complex to manage bout of cooperation..=/\= The First said in reply clearly amazed and wanting to learn more.

Glen continued, “However, we have a policy of non-interference with the normal development of any alien life or society, which means that even if we had known of your existence before now, we would not have contacted you. Our threshold for first contact is a society that has become capable of, discovered and utilised faster-than-light spaceflight. We call the speed of light, Warp speed, so we call these civilisations, Warp-capable civilisations, and you have just joined that very select club with this spacecraft here.”

=/\= Hmm....that could be a wise policy to not interfere with other races. I would say our efforts with this ship would qualify us, though I am curious if you had found one of our earlier sublight cryo vessels stranded like this would you have left it go or helped too? =/\= She asked.

Glen continued, “We are a ship of exploration, so far away from home for long periods of time. We divide our Milky Way Galaxy up into four quadrants, and Earth is in the Alpha Quadrant, the only quadrant that we have fully explored. We are now in the Beta Quadrant. We picked up your radio transmissions first at our monitoring stations. They showed to be at least 10 years old, so that’s 10 light-years away. So, your ship would take 10 years to reach Federation space.”

-Glen, CO

The First seemed to consider the words a moment by the UT before replying =/\= The Milky Way is what you call this galaxy? Hmm…we refer it to as The Abyss or Great Beyond. Different unknown word/reference, perhaps a cultural word/reference* =/\= The UT chimed to Glen =/\= for different people =/\= She finished.

=/\= Your own words of your ship though are fascinating, it implies your means of ‘warp’ drive are much faster than ours. It took us in a round trip almost a year to explore three systems previously until this point on our way to our home system. You mention radio transmissions, those were probably done by the Tri-Council leaders about 12 of our years ago when we sent out our first cryo sublight exploration ships to nearby systems. Sadly those same ships were lost with all hands in actuality our exploration of three systems prior to here were to look for signs of them. Sadly we found nothing, I do not suppose you have picked up anything? =/\= She asked hopefully.

GM CockRoach