At first, everything seemed exceptional. There was actually a star system at the other end of the wormhole, and better yet, there appeared to be at least one habitable planet in the system. This was a spectacular find. At the best, wormholes generally tend to just get you "in the neighborhood" of where you'd want to go. Since space is so incredibly vast, getting a wormhole exit so near a star system was definitely in the realm of "needle in a haystack" and the scientists were overjoyed.

When the first probes were sent, they found a completely habitable planet with a vast ecosphere, but no life forms other than plant. No mammals, reptiles, or insects...nothing. No strange new sentient life-forms. Not even substantially-different microbes. Just plants.

But that particular mystery was nothing compared to the gargantuan alien structures on each of the planet's continents.

The structures stood almost a half-kilometer in diameter and hundreds of meters in height. Three titanic legs stretched up toward the sky, equidistant around a giant platform in the center. A vast energy bubble stretched over it all as if to protect the platform. And there were dozens of them spread throughout the world.

But aside from its scale and scope of the objects was the fact that they were ALIEN.

Humankind had never met anything but themselves in all of their travels. A few hints of some possible civilization were found here and there on other planets, but nothing substantial or accepted as proof. But here were structures that definitely were not built by us.

The Republic had all probes retracted immediately. Humanity was not prepared for an encounter with an alien civilization and neither was their society braced for the shock of Contact. But the Republic's leaders realized that ignorance of a threat doesn't make it vanish. So they began sending in long-range probes.

And found nothing.

The alien structures were still there and clearly powered...but they didn't seem to do anything. The plants were there, and seemed to thrive and grow...but that's all they did...and without any apparent ecosystem to keep them alive.

So, after a cautious period of time passed with nothing happening, the Republic began sending probes closer toward the planet's magnetosphere. Then into orbit. And finally, to the surface to take samples.

And still...nothing happened.

So, after determining there was nothing else on the planet even vaguely threatening, they finally sent an automated probe through the force field of one of those vast alien artifacts. It passed through intact, although it reported that the energy screen was of an unknown type. It investigated the giant stanchions around the platform and found them to be massive conduits for some kind of energy. Since no visible energy sources were available, they assumed the energy was generated on the site, or came from an underground facility. Regardless, they eventually steered the probe up onto the central platform.

It approached a central beam of energy. It entered the beam.

And disappeared.

But a mere split-second later, it began broadcasting again...from a different platform halfway around the world.
It had moved across the world with no perceptible effects.

No inertia, no heat, nothing.

They began calling the devices Warpgates at that moment. They crowed to themselves about how this technology would provide ways to fold space. How the Warpgates must be able to create singularity wormholes where the entire travel distance is one point, resulting in seeming teleportation.

Their military minds fretted, meanwhile, about how badly outclassed they would be if the missing aliens showed up in a fighting mood. If space cruisers could be equipped with similar technology, they could be anywhere at any time. There would be no defense against them. Humanity needed that technology or any encounter with Others would result in Humanity's destruction or subjugation.

Of course, they were wrong about everything concerning Auraxis (the name they gave the planet), but they wouldn't know that for quite some time.