"No one left alive, anyhow," Terri responded quietly.
"Also, we can see some craters, some other damage. Again, it's preliminary but I'd guess they got the RFG treatment before whatever this scene represents happened."
He paused, changing subjects.
"We started a larger area survey, and we can already see that this was a highly organized society. There is a regular sequence of larger concentrations, towns, or small cities I guess. I can't tell exactly but I'm guessing they occupied over 1500 klicks along the shoreline, and a good distance inland as well. We're working on a set of survey images we can get more specific and build a map."
Hansen pointed to an area inland of the towns along the coast.
"Look here," she said, "Outside the cities, there are grids just like back home. Those have to be farms."
As they enlarged the area Carol had indicated, they could indeed see a lattice of fields, formed by roads, and within each square, there were structures along one side.
"Farmhouses," Ballard finally said.
"Or the equivalent, yeah. I'll bet the grids are oriented north-south-east-west, too." Carol replied.
A tech spoke to Ballard and pointed to another monitor.
"OK, we have the margins, finally." He swapped the ugly view of skeletons for a larger view of the entire coast. "We caught a break on the weather - clear and dry for quite a distance. The structures span about 2000 klicks along the shore, and 400 inland. There is a large city, I guess it's a city, don't know what else to call it, right in the middle. Then smaller structures and then concentrations every 75 klicks or so. We're guessing a little on the distances, ma'am, but give us a day, and we'll have a pretty good map for you."
"Where are we on the drone?" Terri asked.
"It's deployed and working its way down," Carol answered.
She pulled up a display showing the view from the front of the drone, its altitude and speed.
"The XO and Lieutenant Lewis should be back aboard shortly."
"Jack, what have you and Ryan discussed about the drone?"
"Well, ma'am, we both feel we should stay clear of the larger cities for low-level investigation. Seems more likely to us that the higher density areas might be watched while the — suburbs I guess — would be harder to monitor, if only because they're so much larger. The footage the Snooper will get is even better than we what can see from here, so we felt the Peeper would be better used to look at more common structures, residences, some buildings in the smaller concentrations, that kind of thing."
Michael nodded her understanding and agreement, then looked at the images of the skeletons for a moment.
"They died there for a reason, Jack. Those lines of skeletons mean they were defending something. Something important. Something worth dying for. I want to know what it was."
"We'll see what we can figure out, Commander."
"Fine. How much daylight is left?"
"About sixteen hours left in what we're calling Sol 1, Commander."
Terri thought for a moment and then looked around at the Intel crew. Now that they were over the initial shock of the skeletons, their discussion became animated, with plenty of opinions and pointing at new images. She looked at her watch. It was after 0230. She was surprised that it was that late and realized the excitement of this discovery was having an effect on all of them. But there would be mistakes if they went on too long, and then a mental crash when they all ran out of gas.
"Can you all keep this up that long?" she asked.
They all said they could.
"These forty-seven-hour days are going to suck. Get some breaks - cat naps or whatever - but as soon as the sun sets, get a full twelve hours off - no cheating - and then see what you can accomplish before it rises again. Lieutenant Hansen, you're with me."
They stepped outside just as Lewis and George were returning. Lewis went on inside, George remained with the two officers.
"How long have you been up?"
Carol looked at the Captain quizzically, then checked her watch.
"About twenty hours."
"OK. James, get Lewis out here."
Ryan joined the impromptu conference in the passageway.
"I want you both to go get some sleep. Come back here in ten hours or whatever if you want. But when the sun sets down there we're going to switch to a low altitude polar orbit. I figure in twenty-four hours we can get maybe twelve or so orbits in. We will use that time to map the rest of the planet and to look for the enemy. If they did this, they might have left something behind to sound the alarm if anyone shows up."
"So, you need us loaded and ready in sixteen hours?" Carol asked.
"Correct. This - " she pointed to the Intel workroom, " - has to be primarily an Intel job. I appreciate you both helping Ballard out, but we have to get our regular jobs done too. This is no less true for Commander George and me."
Lewis looked at Hansen and responded.
"We understand, Captain. We'll be ready."
"Very well. Good night."
Antares
Big Blue
Saturday, June 4, 2078, 2000 UTC (Local sunset)
It had been hard to sleep, but Carol was learning the technique of getting what she could when she could. She'd always been a sound sleeper but used to a regular schedule. Her time in the Fleet was starting to change that, and she found herself better able to get to sleep, but she was also more easily awakened. Just part of the business, she thought. After a few hours helping out in the Intel section she was again on the Bridge at the Weapons station.
The Snooper had been busy over the last 16 hours. They had deployed it near the largest city, now called Capital City. Since the aliens lived on a more or less north-south axis along the coast, they had decided to name the cities and towns by direction and order. So, First North Town was the small concentration just north of Capital City. First City South was the first larger set of structures south of the Capital.
The ideas of ‘north’ and ‘south’ are just arbitrary choices, so they established Big Blue’s directions based on the pole around which the planet rotated counter-clockwise. Said another way, they made the planet rotate to the east, so the sun would rise in the east like Earth, giving them familiar directional references.
Terri stood at her command station. She had held a quick conference with the staff, so they knew what she had in mind, and they were ready when she called for the changes.
"Comms, send the message."
"Sending, Captain."
PRIORITY 207806042000 UTC
TO: CINCFLEET
FROM: ANTARES
BLUE DOT SHOWS EVIDENCE OF POSSIBLE ENEMY GENOCIDE
RFG CRATERS SEEN
EXPLORING WITH SNOOPER ETC
NO ENEMY ACTIVITY DETECTED
EXECUTING LOW POLAR ORBIT BEGINNING THIS TIME DURING SITE
APX 24 HR LOCAL NIGHT
FOR MAPPING AND SURVEILLANCE
END
"OK, here we go." She looked over at Surveillance.
"Surveillance, secure the radar and stow the antenna. Conn, set minimum EMR."
"Radar is off, Commander."
"Minimum EMR set, Captain."
"Nav, give me a 1500 klick orbit. Proceed."
They dropped quickly into the new orbit, arriving in an hour or so. They had started at 250,000 km, then moved to 63,000 km and now were only 1500 km above the surface. Terri thought about that altitude for a moment, then made a decision.
"Nav, roll us head down to the planet. Conn, open the Bridge windows."
The windows opened and there passing over their heads was Big Blue. There was a lot of ocean and, so far, minimal land. But there were clouds and storms and obvious weather fronts and large areas of clear sky through which they could see the emerald blue of the ocean.
"It's such a beautiful place," Terri said to herself quietly.
"Yeah too bad everybody's dead," the Conn officer next to her responded.
Terri turned as if to scold
the young ensign, but she stopped, knowing the ensign was right. The beauty of the planet only compounded the evil of the genocide by comparison. Why, she asked herself, why did they do this? And Why Inor? The question weighed on her mind, as it did on others, but the lack of good information precluded any real conclusion. Bringing herself back to current demands, she stepped down and went to the Surveillance station.
"Lieutenant Lewis, what's the status on the Snooper?"
Ryan picked up his tablet, then poked and swiped his way to the data.
"Short answer is 'pretty good', Commander. We dropped the comms when we maneuvered and set it to slow speed and minimum power use. It will wake up about an hour before local sunrise and start listening for commands."
"What's the power situation?"
"Also good. We used zero fuel cell power the last day and with the charge on board we don't expect to use more than five or ten percent overnight."
"So, we can count on it for five local days, maybe more?"
"Maybe, ma'am. That might be a bit optimistic. Even moderate winds and bad weather would reduce that time. Today was almost perfect for us, clear skies and very low winds."
She knew she was pushing the edges on the drone's capabilities, but this planet needed significant observation time. If she had to send the shuttle down to retrieve it and deploy another, that would be fine, too. But so far, it was working out well. She suddenly remembered Dean Carpenter smiling across the Bridge at her during an exercise when some plan of hers had come up a little short. He was almost laughing as he said 'It’s a play-it-where-it-lies world, Commander. What now?' Yeah, Dean, it is, she thought to herself. She realized that it had been a while since she had thought of Carpenter, specifically. The loss of Liberty was a still-present wound in all of them, something they shared but almost never spoke about. She felt a familiar pain in her chest as she thought of them, but she was better now about keeping that grief under control. She knew how to manage it and keep on working. She had to. She had a ship of her own now, one she cared deeply about, a ship carrying many who shared her feelings for Liberty, and Dean Carpenter.
After three orbits they could see that Big Blue was almost a water world, with only about ten percent of the surface area dry land, in three continents all about the size of Australia and a few small islands. Terri wondered what strangeness they might find in the depths of that immense ocean.
The largest continent was in the southern hemisphere, perhaps a third of the way around to the west. The weather was less clear but with IR to correlate with the visual spectrum data they got a good picture of snow-capped mountains and difficult terrain. There were no apparent roads or other signs of advanced culture, just masses of thick vegetation at the lower elevations.
A third continent, the smallest but really not all that different in size to the others, was on the opposite side of the planet from the cities. It, too, had no evidence of occupation and from their distance appeared to have mostly scrub vegetation consistent with the tundra of the north on Earth. Unrelated to 'grass,' Terri expected, but a similar evolutionary response to a similar environment was hardly a surprise. Then again, she thought, a completely different response probably would not have felt like a surprise either - maybe I should be surprised that it's similar? Terri was beginning to wonder if her flexible thinking and adaptive responses to these alien worlds was getting just a little too flexible and adaptive.
She shook off that thought and looked at the Surveillance display, watching as they methodically found, evaluated, and categorized any object within their view. The universe seemed to orchestrate an infinite set of variations on familiar themes when it came to the small bodies that orbited the stars they visited. The Surveillance techs would find something that looked a little like Ceres, or a bit bigger than Io, but wait, it's different because it has or has not some minor attribute or another. They would bicker, argue, point, shrug, nod, and shake but eventually agree on how to classify a body, smile a little, and then move on to the next object in line. Jack Ballard's Intel processes were running ahead of this manual operation, looking for the tell-tale spectrum of an enemy ship, or anything else that looked suspicious. How Jack had taught a computer to be 'suspicious' Terri didn't know, but if it was possible, she figured Ballard could make it happen.
She maintained a nagging sense that the enemy might be here somewhere, in some form. If they did this, she thought, surely, they would leave something to tell them if someone else came around. There should be a tripwire or burglar alarm. Or, she thought, maybe they don't care who sees this. Could they be that shameless? Willing to be so flagrantly criminal? Her mind went back to the first quarter of the century when so-called Islamists openly murdered thousands in the name of religion. Or, further back, the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition, or the Crusades. All of these were public, plainly viewed examples of death in the name of something, or someone, they worshipped. They certainly weren't hiding anything at Inor. Could the enemy religion be at the core of all this? Could this be some kind of pogrom? She made some notes in her personal journal, planning to bring it up with Fleet Intel when they got back. She would not saddle Jack Ballard with it, as he had plenty to think about already.
ISC Fleet HQ Communications Station
Ft. Eustis, VA
Monday, June 6, 2078, 0321 EDT
Mark England was pulling yet another overnight. They played hell with his social life, but he enjoyed the work, and it had only become more serious over the last couple months. His supervisor, Chief Diana Aviles, did her best to keep the rotating shifts fair, but for Mark, they seemed to too often conflict with the off-duty days of a particular data analyst in the Operations section. But, there was a war on and when on duty he was part of the central nervous system of the Fleet. That meant something. Right before he was to take his lunch break, the SLIP receiver's subdued incoming-message tone demanded his attention.
PRIORITY 207806042000 UTC
TO: CINC
FROM: ANTARES
TOP SECRET
BLUE DOT SHOWS EVIDENCE OF POSSIBLE ENEMY GENOCIDE
RFG CRATERS SEEN.
EXPLORING WITH SNOOPER ETC
NO ENEMY ACTIVITY DETECTED
EXECUTING LOW POLAR ORBIT BEGINNING THIS TIME DURING SITE
APX 24 HR LOCAL NIGHT FOR MAPPING AND SURVEILLANCE
END
He sent it to the Operations Center and forwarded it to Admiral Davenport. He picked up the direct-line to Operations Center.
"Torres"
"Commander Torres, it's England in Comms, sir. There is a priority from Antares you should probably look at."
"You read everything, England?" Torres asked, an edge of disapproval in his voice.
"At this time of day, we read everything above ROUTINE, Commander, in case it needs attention before the morning."
"Very well. I'll check it out."
Torres scowled as he hung up the phone. Something rubbed him the wrong way about Comms reading messages not addressed to them, but, as he thought about it, someone had to be there to handle these kinds of issues. He pulled the message up on a monitor.
"Dammit," he said to himself as he picked up the phone.
"CINC."
Connor Davenport was now staying in the BOQ most days, partly to be close to the HQ and partly to keep the middle-of-the-night disturbances away from his family. His phone rang.
"Yeah, Davenport," he answered sleepily.
"Harold Torres in Operations Center, sir. There is a priority message from Antares you should probably read. I can wait if you like."
"No, Commander, I'll look at it and call you back."
Davenport clicked off the voice connection on his phone and switched to the Fleet Messages utility. There was the message from Antares.
"Genocide? What the hell..."
He sat looking at the message for a minute, reading and re-reading it as if he could extract some additional meaning from the few cryptic lines in front of him. He had full confidence in Terri Mi
chael and her crew. But what should they do? He quickly changed applications again, setting up a priority meeting with Intel, Operations, Plans, and Public Information at 0800. Normally Noah Peters would do this for him, but he felt no need to wake his aide up in the middle of the night to do something he could easily manage himself. Antares was 36 hours away by SLIP, and a few hours to get his best minds together was time well spent. He called Operations Center back.
"Torres."
"Yes, Commander, I've set up a meeting at 0800 with the senior staff. Nothing more to do until then."
"Yes, Admiral. Shall I call you if we see anything more from Antares?"
"Only if it is something critical. If Antares follows up with more information, we can handle that in the morning."
"Very well, sir."
"Good night, Commander."
"Good night, sir."
ISC Fleet HQ - Office of the Commander in Chief
Ft. Eustis, VA
Monday, June 6, 2078, 0800 EDT
The coffee cups on the CINC's big conference table varied in color, size, shape, and contents, but not in urgency. The thirty-six-hour communication delay from Antares to Earth was frustrating all of them. Ron Harris knew Antares was on to something important. A fourth inhabited world! There were a hundred questions he wanted answered. What were they like? Is this an enemy world? He and Fiona Collins had met several times to discuss redirecting additional ships to Beta Hydri after the initial report of a new culture. It would mean deviating from their carefully structured search plans, but maybe, in this case, they could justify that. Then came the bombshell message this morning. CINC arrived, placed his own barrel-sized coffee mug on the table, and called the meeting to order.
"Good morning. You all have the message from Antares. I'd like to hear your thoughts about what Commander Michael says."
He sat back in his chair, cup in hand. Chief of Operations Cook spoke first.
"So, we don't know how they came to that conclusion?"
Ron Harris leaned forward to answer.
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