"...What is the approximate total population of the descendants of the lost colonists?"

"Many billions: I haven't been keeping up with the statistics for ground-bound population, but CONCORD polices about a thousand systems. This is compared to a total active Capsuleer population of about thirty thousand or so. We're an exceedingly rare breed."

"That's... a lot. It is not larger than the Federation, but it's more than some of the less populous species combined."

"Well, CONCORD isn't a governing body so much as an international peacekeeping force. Empire space is actually administrated by four nations: The Amarr, Gallente, Caldari, and Minmatar. The Amarr and Minmatar don't get along: the Caldari and the Gallente don't get along. I'm Gallente, but Capsuleers as a whole tend to ignore the national divides: we're much more similar to each other than we are to anyone planetside."

"I'd say I should just turn the entire matter over to Starfleet but they wouldn't get here instantly and the wormhole isn't permanent - why are you here, anyway?"

"All the rare-ore asteroids in empire space were captured and refined long ago: asteroid mining there isn't very profitable anymore unless you have a really heavy-duty rig. Wormhole space? No such problem. If I can find a few asteroids with the right material composition out here, it might pay well enough to buy me a Hulk-class hull."

"That makes sense. What do you suppose the other ships are here for, the same thing?"

"Some will be doing the same as me, harvesting interstellar gas and ore. Some will be raiding Sleeper complexes to take their tech back to reverse-engineering companies. Some will be setting up temporary bases for moon mining or more dedicated exploration. Some will be pirates looking to attack and steal from any of the above."

"The wormhole is temporary, right? There's no good way to establish permanent communication between yours and ours if so..."

"Their average lifespan is about a day: my instruments tell me the one I came through has more than a quarter of its lifespan left, but less than three-quarters. The fact that it's bridged to by a wormhole at all suggests that there will be more, though. I haven't scanned the system thoroughly enough to know which of these anomalies my computer's reporting might be a wormhole, but I would bet you a decent number of ISK that the one I came through isn't the only one in-system."

"ISK is a currency?"

"Yes. InterStellar Kronor. Currency of choice for Capsuleers."

"I suppose I can tell Starfleet where this is and they can send a ship to park in this system and wait for a wormhole to open. The Sleeper nest, if there's anything left of it by then, should help with my credibility."

"... Might work, might not. While there will almost certainly be wormholes, I can't assure you that there'll be any traffic through them. You could be waiting for a while."

"Starfleet might be willing to send someone through, which is outside the scope of my own survey. Assuming the wormholes are frequent and traversible in both directions?"

"Yes, but there's a limit on how much mass you can push through one before they start to destabilize: not only that, but finding this particular wormhole system again could be difficult."

"What's the mass limit? And difficult how? Does the same wormhole not always lead to the same place?"

"Only some wormholes are static: others wander. There's a mapping effort in progress, but I don't know which kind the one I came through was. As for the mass limit, give me a second... Low end of about 20 gigagrams per jump, high end of 1,800 gigagrams per jump: but if you do multiple jumps across the same wormhole, they compound. The highest recorded amount of mass a wormhole's been able to transmit before collapsing is in the vicinity of 5,000 gigagrams, but the low end is a tenth of that."

Isabella notes this all down. "I don't suppose you happen to know how to build an ansible and can tell me."

"No, but you can take home one of my scanning probes. They use regular light speed signals for triangulation, but they talk to me via ansible. Your scientists back home might be able to reverse-engineer it."

"I would appreciate that very much."

The capsuleer launches a small probe, which proceeds on laughably-slow impulse towards Isabella's ship.

She catches it in her cargo bay, when it gets close enough.

It turns off its engines and coasts in to a stop, descending slowly to the floor of Isabella's cargo bay as if it were moving through a viscous liquid.

"Received, thank you."