Jupiter was the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet in the Solar System.
In the SEED world, it was here that humanity had discovered the fossil of a winged, whale-like extraterrestrial life-form.
That discovery seemed to have weakened the influence of organized religion throughout human society. In turn, it allowed Coordinators, a new form of humanity created through artificial intervention, to break free of traditional taboos and come into existence.
Now, a warship nearly five kilometers long had reached Jupiter at sublight speed. The journey had taken almost an hour.
"Those are old probes."
"And those are survey vessels."
Several people aboard immediately recognized the human-made objects drifting near Jupiter.
For decades, humanity had been sending intermittent survey missions to the region.
The fossil had shown humanity that it was not alone and that it might one day venture even farther into the cosmos.
But until they determined exactly what the creature had been, no conclusion could be considered final.
It might bring disaster to humanity. It might also bring hope.
Now, most of them were leaning toward disaster.
After all, humanity had faced a different apocalyptic crisis in most parallel worlds. It was hard to shake the impression that some invisible force was steering humanity in every reality toward extinction.
The YoRHa was now approaching the fossil's original discovery site and scanning the surrounding area.
"I just hope they really were nothing more than animals, like whales that happened to swim through space," Luna murmured.
She could only hope the creatures possessed no true intelligence and were fundamentally no different from animals on Earth. The only difference would be that they had never lived on Earth.
All she could do was pray that the ship's scanners would not find anything horrific.
"Please..." Cagalli whispered.
She, too, hoped the scans would not uncover anything terrifying.
Everyone watched a holographic display with a mixture of hope and unease. It showed the radar readings of the surrounding region, rendered as CT-like cross sections.
An icon on the hologram marked the fossil specimen humanity had already excavated.
The system was using it as a baseline and comparing it against every anomaly detected in the scans.
"Uh... you've got to be kidding me."
"Those points just keep lighting up."
"Don't scare me like that."
The faces of several former members of the Le Creuset Team steadily darkened.
Each new reading seemed to indicate that the system had found another matching target. In moments, dozens of glowing dots had appeared.
Once the system tagged them and resolved them into clear CT-like images, cold sweat broke out across their faces.
They really were whale fossils. Some were so enormous that the very sight of them made everyone's eyelids twitch. Several measured more than two hundred meters long, comparable in size to their own space warships.
More lights spread across the display as the scans penetrated deeper and revealed still more.
It was almost as if the moon itself were a nest for these creatures.
Then another image resolved on the scan, and the entire room seemed to stop breathing.
"This... this has to be a joke."
"Something that big..."
Tad Elsman, an expert in molecular biology, felt his heart sink.
The object lay too deep for the scanners to reveal its complete form. Even so, extrapolating from the exposed section suggested that the fossil was nearly three kilometers long.
The thought of how much matter a three-kilometer organism would have to consume just to remain active made his skin crawl.
Without warning, the YoRHa launched several warheads. They resembled deep-penetration missiles, designed to drill beneath the surface and give them a clearer look at the interior.
But that carried a dangerous possibility. Some of the creatures might still be alive.
If so, the missiles could awaken them, draw their attention to humanity, and trigger a catastrophe.
The expedition had, of course, been approved by a formal vote.
Opportunities to bring a warship like this to Jupiter were rare, and its sublight drive allowed them to investigate the region quickly.
Even if they awakened something, the YoRHa carried a single special warhead capable of destroying the entire moon.
Besides, if any of these creatures remained alive, years of research into their fossils had at least given humanity some idea of what to expect. They still did not fully understand their anatomy, but they had managed to infer certain performance limits.
These creatures truly were capable of traveling through space. At their estimated top speed, however, crossing the distance between Jupiter and Earth would take at least three hundred years.
That upper limit had been inferred through genetic analysis.
The massive specimen they had just discovered would presumably be much faster. Even when they revised their original theoretical model to account for its size, however, the journey would still take at least ten years.
Ten years was enough time for a great deal to change.
Their ally from World Zero had promised to provide starship technology. Given the industrial capabilities of the SEED world, building a vessel like the one they were aboard was entirely possible.
With luck, it might take only a few months. That, however, assumed all of humanity could unite behind the project, and that would be difficult.
Still, it was hard to imagine that they could not build one within ten years.
By then, they might even have fully mastered and refined the technology, allowing them to construct starships better suited to their own world.
"It really does look like a nest. But this nest..." murmured Siegel Clyne, Lacus's father.
One of Siegel's fields of expertise was astrobiology. He had spent years theorizing about the ecology of these creatures.
Now, the scans were offering some troubling answers.
First, the nest was remarkably symmetrical. It appeared to have been deliberately constructed by an intelligent mind. Simple animal instincts could never have produced something like it.
The nest also bore signs of external damage. Something had attacked it.
It appeared to have suffered a massive impact that had crushed much of the structure flat.
As a more complete image took shape, Siegel grew lightheaded, his consciousness almost slipping away.
"This structure..."
"Is this really a nest?"
Several others had noticed the same thing. Their voices trembled, rough and hoarse.
Now that the system had mapped more of its overall structure, the object no longer looked like a nest built directly into the moon. It resembled a rocket-shaped vessel, a biological warship capable of interstellar travel that had plunged headfirst into the moon.
That possibility revealed an even more terrifying truth.
These extraterrestrial creatures might not be native to the Solar System at all. They could be an invasive species from beyond it.
Further analysis confirmed that the object had burrowed through the moon's surface from the outside. It had not built its nest from within.
Then the scanners registered a metallic signature, and every face in the room changed.
It did not appear to be natural ore. It was a manufactured metallic material.
The system quickly isolated the signal inside the abdomen of one of the fossilized "whales." Whatever lay there had been digested almost beyond recognition, yet enough remained for them to draw a chilling conclusion.
It, too, had once been an extraterrestrial life-form.
More importantly, it appeared to have belonged to an intelligent alien civilization.
(End of Chapter)
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