UNIT INTERIM REPORT Executive Summary

Stardate 3200.105 General Progress

The study of Exterminator Artefacts has been slow and dogged by difficulties. This interim report is issued to keep polities up to date on the progress of the team.

The main limit is an understanding of the computer technology and data protocols. The fundamental principles are so alien that even our best cryptographers and analysts cannot yet make any sense of the systems.

We have, however, been able to infer a great deal from captured Exterminator equipment in Q7 and beyond – and this report summarises those inferences.

In general there remain some obviously completely unanswerable questions, such as ‘where do the exterminators come from’, ‘how old are they’ and ‘why do they consider us ‘badlife’. The team will, of course, not be wasting resources on these directions of enquiry.

 Lines of research

Data Technology – examining data communication systems, protocols and processing systems.

Materials Science – the fabric and electromechanical systems of Exterminator equipment.

Linguistics and written language – mainly relating to written signs and language transmission recorded from exterminators.

Operational analysis – examination of known exterminator movements and deployment.

Results Summary

Data Technology.

The exterminator computer systems, at the fundamental electronic level are utterly different from any human system ever devised. We are not even sure that they use a binary code system. Some indications are that their electronics might be based on some sort of analogue electronic state utilising what we are calling ‘fuzzy transistors’. This is so fundamentally different that we are having trouble even understanding the underlying chip architecture let along being able to decode the instruction sets and chip logic. And without that we have a zero chance of even beginning to understand any exterminator datastore.

We estimate that it will take at least another year before we are even close to interpreting their electronics in any meaningful way – they are so alien.

Materials Science

Exterminator materials technology is not dissimilar to ours. They make widespread use of plasteel, carbon fibres, smartfoams etc. In fact in a number of respects, exterminator materials science does not appear to be as refined as ours – the quality of materials is slightly lower.

Their basic electromechanical, hydraulic and control systems (switching systems and the like) seem to be built on similar principles to human designs but remain disturbingly alien. But their equipment functions. They make considerable use of interchangable solid state components, much as we do.

Ships

Reports of examination of the captured VIKING indicate that their ship construction is highly modular, Interestingly it looks as though a VIKING is built to be dismantled or re-structured. It is not certain but from reports of the remains at Flypaper, the surface installations contain many components that are common to VIKINGS – possibly with correlation factors as high as 95%. A working conclusion is that surface installations are constructed out of VIKINGS or their fundamental components – at least in the first instance. It is also possible that the process is reversible.

The construction and mining facilities destroyed on Flypaper indicate that the enemy build a range of modular units that are assembled to make ships, orbitals, installations etc as needed.

Exterminator weapons are broadly similar to ours – they use plasma and laser based weapons almost exclusively – but all their ships have large numbers of these. They do not use armour on their ships – but seem to have an incredibly efficient damage control process.

Clankers

Their robot technology is probably similar to ours. Without progress on the data protocol project we are unable to determine how their clankers are managed within the viking and other installations. We know they use radio and microwave transmissions -–but again where recordings exist they are indecipherable.

 Linguistics

The Peabody Report has provided some clues. There is an 87.3% correlation between scripts found on the internal walls and control systems on Vikings and the scraps of unearthed Forerunner scripts.

Quite why exterminators should need labels on their equipment is unclear, since there is no evidence that clankers ‘read’ using visible light at all.

There is some speculation that at some point in the distant past, exterminator ships might have been crewed by some species, but we have yet to find traces of their actual existence.

There are examples of exterminators attempting to communicate with humanity. These would seem to be based on recordings of human transmissions – they analysis of vocabulary, reconstructed accent and sentence structure indicates that their language analysis software is not very sophisticated. They are, it seems, able to decode human communication protocols in a way we cannot decode their transmissions – albeit in a primitive way. This may be because they have access to a much greater body of free broadcast transmission on which to base an analysis, whereas we have only a handful of broadcast transmissions in ‘berserker’.

Operational Analysis

The exterminator ships seem to use HSD technology in the same way we do, and have similar limits – such as the M25. Their HSD transit and communication times seem to be the same as ours. Their ships seem to be limited to 1g acceleration and from examination of their equipment there is no clear reason why this should be so.

Considerable use has been made of the Gratermass Protocol to analyse the initial stages of the War.

Our analysis indicates the most probable composition and route of Exterminator incursions from 3196 onwards.

This coincides with the results of recent operations – in particular the recent discoveries at RED SPOT and ZHADUM.

Detailed chronology at Annex A.

In short – we estimate that there is a 73% probability that the initial sweep into human space was conducted by 16 ESB operating singly or in pairs.

Exterminator tactics seem to be varied, but they do not seem to respond to human actions very quickly. Apart from wanton destruction there seem to be no purpose to their movements and attacks. It is worth noting, however, that timings indicate that with the exception of one case in Q7 (where we think the ESB’s damage caused it to drop out of hyperspace too early) the exterminators have only visited systems suitable for human occupation.

This gives us no clue as to motivation except that for some reason they are set on the destruction of humanity specifically. Somehow they know where we tend to live.

Recent tactical changes indicate long-ranging hit-and run actions with Vikings, probably in 2s and 3s. Again these seem to hit at random across human space at least as far a Q0. These attacks have died down, it seems, but reports are coming in of a large new force assembling at RED SPOT – speculation is that there may be another change of tactics impend

ANNEX A

Estimated ESB MOVEMENTS 3196-3199

Quadrant 5

Quadrant 6

Quadrant 7

Annex B UNIT Composition:

Project Director

Prof Ali Hussein Akhbar Sirian Ministry of Science and Robotics

Chief military advisor

Admiral Akiyoshi MSN

Chief Intelligence Advisor

Commodore M Minski Union of Xyon MOSSAD

Project Team Leaders

Prof Q, Vadis Sirian Institute of Advanced Cybernetics

Prof J Homme Venerian State University No. 7(Oith)

Prof N Oliveri Imperial Institute of Science

Prof D Grohl Potomax Technical College

Prof M Lanegan School of Linguistics, Xynam

Consultation advice: Professor Gratermass