It was a somber group that watched as the image of the screen swept through what had been a city at some time in the past. Now, it was in ruins. It wasn’t obvious what had happened to it. Nothing in sight was intact, and not even nature had moved in to reclaim the land. What little vegetation existed was stunted and looked dead.
“So, what did this?” Tomiko asked. “Was it war?”
Rev shook his head. Not in disagreement but rather signaling that he didn’t know.
“Do we even know how long ago whatever happened, happened?” Kelly asked.
“We will soon enough,” Rev said. “Once we process the data. But I’m betting we’re talking a decade or two at least here.”
It had been five days since Clyburn had done her flyby, and the debate had been heavy as to what they should do next. The safe course would have been to recall the pilot and get the hell out of Dodge. If the planet had been attacked and destroyed by an outside force, that force could still be in the system. But Clyburn had scoured what she could and found no sign of life anywhere, so the decision was made for the Galaxy Explorer to jump in. With her far more powerful and varied types of scanners, she’d be much better able to determine what had happened on Planet 5 than a simple Navy fighter could.
The Galaxy Explorer had dropped into the system at the outside edge, then kept up her speed, ready to jump into bubble space at the slightest whiff of danger, as she approached the planet.
Rev had agreed that they needed to enter the system. It was important that they understood what had happened there. If it had been an enemy force, then Rev wanted to know that.
But the mass of junk that had been cities didn’t give much of a clue as to what happened. It was going to take more than mere visuals.
“I think they poisoned themselves with their own waste,” Strap said. “The atmospheric readings Clyburn sent back prove that.”
“They’re better now than the ones we got from a couple centuries ago,” Kelly said.
“Of course, they are. That’s because they killed themselves off, and that stopped the polluting. Now, the planet’s trying to recover.”
“Poisoning the planet wouldn’t cause the buildings to collapse. Entropy doesn’t work that quickly,” Rev noted.
“That’s assuming they built things just like we did on Earth.”
“That looks like war to me,” Tomiko said. “Check out all of the destruction.”
Rev had to agree with his wife. The big question was had they killed themselves off, or had they been attacked?
When a human force scoured a planet, there was utter destruction at ground zero, with everything obliterated down to the bedrock. The farther away from ground zero, the more survived, even to looking much like what they were seeing on the feed now. But the best they could tell, the entire planet looked like that. There was no noticeable location where there was complete destruction.
Humanity had also observed another kind of planetary destruction. The Sia had destroyed the Naxli homeworld, but the result had been an utter and total annihilation. Nothing had been left that could still be called a planet.
“So, what now, Sergeant Major?” Tsao asked. “Do we go down?”
“To walk on a dead planet?” Kelly asked.
“I’d like to know how they were all killed. I think going down there gives us the best chance to find that out.”
They all looked at Rev, waiting for him to weigh in. But until he discussed it with Njuguna and Nyad, he didn’t have anything to say.
“To answer your question, Tum, I don’t know. We’ve got a lotta data to analyze before we can make any kind of decision on that. I’ve got a meeting of the Three Musketeers this evening, and we’ll try to come up with a course of action.”
“We can’t just leave an unanswered question and go,” Tsao said.
Rev was somewhat surprised at her insistence. Staff Sergeant Tumeric Tsao was a Perseus Union Platinum Nova holder and a truly professional Marine. One who Rev would trust to cover his six any time. But she was hardly aggressive in a social setting, preferring to listen rather than speak.
He briefly wondered if being a mother now had surfaced more protective feelings, but he sure wasn’t going to voice that question. She’d always been wickedly smart, though, and she had a good point. Leaving questions behind could open a door to a vulnerability.
Rev took a moment to scan the chief’s mess. It had become the de facto SNCO Club, in a way, a place where they could gather when things were happening. (It didn’t hurt that the mess famously had the best coffee on the ship.) Except for Tsao, his Marines and Over-sergeant Nunt seemed more interested in the mystery of the planet than in any potential danger.
He stood, stretched, and said, “I think I’ll head to CIC to see what the analysts have come up with. I’ll let you all know something as soon as I have it. And don’t forget your troops. Make sure everyone’s up-to-date on where we are.”
Tomiko raised her prosthetic hand as Rev walked by. He brushed it with his with a quiet “Sibs in Steel.”
Not unobtrusive or quiet enough. Tsao and Kelly raised their prostheses as well, and Rev had to do the “Sibs in Steel” with them as well. Rev tried to avoid their little IBHU greeting when around the other Marines. It was bad enough that each of them had as much firepower as a squad of non-IBHU Marines without trying to make it seem as if they were a special, elite group.
Even if we are.
* * *
More data was gathered over the next three hours, and Rev made a pest of himself in the CIC, questioning everyone he could while he waited for his meeting. Slowly, a picture was being formed. First and foremost, perhaps, was that there was no sign of life on the planet that the Galaxy Explorer could detect. Zero. Even what looked like vegetation was dead.
But there had been life at one point, and fairly recently at that. From the current models, the planet had been full of life just over fifteen or twenty years ago. Of course, with the ruins, that pretty much had to have been the case, but the readings were pretty conclusive. Not only that, but it had been carbon-based life.
And whatever had befallen the planet, it had happened over a period of time. Using readings from six different locations, all life had been extinguished over the course of two Earth months.
What wasn’t clear was exactly what happened, but the indications leaned toward a war of some sort. There were still chemical signatures of explosions, as well as radiation that could have come from weapons of some kind. Rev didn’t think that was all, not given what he’d observed. Maybe there had been a biological agent employed, but they might have to go to the planet’s surface to confirm that.
And if there had been a war, what kind? There wasn’t any evidence that could point to one thing or the other.
Or was there?
As the ship’s AIs were manipulating the petabytes of data that were being fed to them, something specific that Clyburn and her Shrike had picked up had been analyzed. In the outer system, there were traces of ions that matched those that had been ejected from the BGs ships.
It could be coincidence. Physics was physics, and a specific impulse drive could have been developed by different races. But Rev wasn’t a big believer in coincidences. He was convinced that, at some point, the BGs had been in the system.
That didn’t mean they’d been part of whatever had happened on the planet. In fact, the indications were that the ions had been injected more recently, perhaps in the fifteen-to-twenty-years time frame. But still, if they’d been here, Rev wanted to know. They’d already lost too much to the alien race, and he didn’t want to face them again.
Rev waited until the last minute, afraid he’d miss some vital piece of information, but finally, he had to break away and head for the CO’s stateroom.
Only it wasn’t just the Three Musketeers. Tata Eleven was there as well, making it the four of them.
Captain Nyad was subvocalizing into a throat mic, and he motioned for Rev to take a seat.
“It’s good to see you, Sergeant Major,” Tata Eleven said.
“You too.”
“And how is your AI doing?”
You should know better than me. He spends more time on your side of the ship.
“I think he’s still adjusting. But I guess that’s to be expected.”
“We did foresee a period of adjustment.” She paused for a moment before adding. “I’ll admit that we may have underestimated the severity of the issue. We were basing our projections on the early Deimer data, not on a Perseus Union construct.”
I could have told you that. But no, you knew better.
For the thousandth time, he wished the Genesians hadn’t brought the whole sapience thing up. But the genie had been let out of the lantern, and it wasn’t going to be shoved back in.
“We’ll continue to give your AI support as we can.”
For a group of people who were so adamant about fighting for Punch’s rights, they still referred to him as Rev’s AI. That made no sense to Rev at all.
Nyad tapped his throat mic, then turned to the other three. “Well, this has certainly gone in a different direction than we expected. But we’re fluid, if anything.”
“Has Titan sent anything?” Dr. Njuguna asked.
“We managed to get out a text report on what we’ve found today, but we’re waiting for a response. I’m not expecting any changes, though.”
“And a message torp?” she asked.
“I’m going to wait until we’ve got all of the pertinent data gathered. No use wasting a torp just to give them a temporary update.”
That made sense to Rev. A torp could carry more information than they could possibly gather, but they had a limited number of them. It was better to get as much as possible into one before it started on the long journey back to the home system.
Njuguna seemed about to argue, but she bit her lip and nodded. The torps belonged to Nyad, after all, and it was his decision on when to send one back.
“Are you getting all of the data, Yollie? Any issues?”
“It’s being sent over the minute we’re getting it,” she said.
Her team had set up a civilian version of a CIC, so every bit of data gathered had two teams analyzing it.
The next few minutes were spent comparing analyses. At this stage of the game, there really weren’t many differences, which was to be expected as they picked the low-hanging fruit. It would be further in the process before there might be divergent views.
Rev had heard all of the Navy analysis already, so he sat quietly while the other two leaders compared notes. Tata Eleven sat quietly as well.
Finally, Captain Nyad said, “We seem to be on the same page for the moment. There’s a lot more data coming in that could change that, but the question remains, what next? Do we stay here and continue, or do we take a more aggressive approach?”
Njuguna and Nyad gave Rev a measured stare. It was his call on whether they went down to the planet or not. Njuguna was transparent in her desire to go. Nyad was keeping his cards a little closer to his chest.
But it was the Genesian leader who spoke first. “We’re going to the surface,” she said, before adding, “after you release the transport, of course.”
Rev wasn’t the only one surprised at the comment.
“Is this why you asked to sit in this meeting, Tata?” Nyad asked.
“Isn’t this the logical place to tell you of our plans?” she asked.
“Well, yes,” a clearly flustered Nyad said. “But why do you want to go? We haven’t even determined if it’s safe down there, much less if there’s a reason to step foot on the place. Something killed all the people on the planet, and we don’t know what it was.”
“There is no life on the planet and no toxins that we can detect. There are areas of radiation, but we, as a race, are ideally suited to handle that.”
“Why do you want to go, Tata?” Njuguna asked. “Like you said, it’s a dead planet. You can’t be thinking—”
“It is a dead planet. But we can live on its detritus.”
It was only then that Rev realized what she was saying. It was an open secret that the Genesians were looking for a new home, one far away from the rest of humanity. But that had been an abstract to Rev, and now he was being slapped across the face with the reality.
“This is . . . I’m sure there are better . . .” Nyad started.
“Our numbers are small to be starting from scratch again,” Tata said. “On the planet’s surface, there are refined minerals and other building blocks of civilization. We wouldn’t have to mine and refine. We wouldn’t have to create. We can scavenge, saving us many steps as we build anew.”
“But, Tata, we don’t know what kind of, uh, materials are down there or if they are even in usable condition,” Njuguna said.
“Which is exactly why we’re going to the surface. That’s the only way we can be sure.”
She turned her dead eyes to Nyad. Rev could see the gears turning in his head. He controlled the shuttles, and without them, the Genesians were stuck on the ship.
“We’ll consider it, Tata,” Captain Nyad said.
“There is no consideration. We’re going.”
Command Master Chief Umman’s warning of being outnumbered by the Genesians surfaced unbidden in Rev’s mind. The Genesians could take over the ship if they wanted, and there was nothing the rest of the humans could do about it.
“We’re going, too,” Rev blurted out. “You can send a team to accompany us to see if the planet suits your needs.”
Tata swung around to Rev, who stared at those eyes and wished he knew how to read into them.
Rev hadn’t said that they could stay on the planet—not that it was his call. But he’d offered a compromise of sorts. And she was willing to accept it.
“That would work,” she said.
Rev didn’t bother to look at Njuguna. He knew she wanted to examine the planet from the ground. It was Nyad who mattered.
Whether he agreed or not, Rev could see he wasn’t going to buck the other three. But he didn’t like being outmaneuvered, and he wasn’t going to completely surrender. He still had to put his stamp of command on the situation.
“Let’s spend another two days in orbit and continue to gather data. If nothing pops up that would preclude a landing, we can send down our ground team after that.”
Once again, Tata acquiesced. The Genesians had the unspoken power, but she was willing to play along.
The meeting dragged on for another hour without anything of note being decided, and finally, Captain Nyad brought it to a close. He motioned for Rev to stay behind as the other two left.
“I don’t appreciate you backstabbing me,” he said as soon as they were alone.
“I didn’t backstab anyone. It’s my call, and I decided that a landing was appropriate.”
“But you didn’t have to announce it like that, Sergeant Major. We could have discussed it.”
“Tata Eleven was not ready for a discussion. She’d made her point, and I thought the discretion was called for.”
Nyad glared at Rev for a full ten seconds while Rev stood there with a blank face. Rev might be in charge of ground landings, but he really didn’t want Nyad as an enemy.
The best defense is a good offense. I might as well go into the attack.
“I spoke with Lieutenant Zybar just before I came to the meeting.”
Nyad’s eyebrows scrunched together at the change of tack.
“And what’s that got to do with the gennies giving us an ultimatum?”
So, he does understand their power position after all.
“Nothing. But he told me that all of our scanning efforts are down to the planet.”
“That’s what we’re here to do, Sergeant Major. And that’s not entirely true. We’re watching the system in case somebody enters it.”
“Like the BGs.”
“Yes, like the BGs.”
“Who were here in the system before.”
“WHAT?”
“The BGs. You know, the ones who smashed our expedition.”
“I know who the fucking BGs are, Sergeant Major. What’s this about them being in the system?”
“They were here. We discovered traces of their ion drives.”
Nyad’s glare intensified, and after a moment, he tapped his throat mic and started subvocalizing. He was good at it, never moving his lips, so Rev couldn’t tell what he was saying. But if the captain’s expression and gestures were any indication, he was glad he wasn’t on the receiving end of that.
He tapped his mic off and stewed for a moment before saying, “That might have been sixteen years ago, Sergeant Major.”
“Sixteen years ago is nothing in the grand timeline. If they were here once, they could come again. We need to divert some of our efforts away from the planet and toward the system as a whole. We don’t need any surprises while we’re down on the surface.”
Captain Nyad was angry, both at Rev and for not knowing that important piece of information. But he was a professional, and he knew Rev was right.
It must have killed him, but he said, “You’re right, Sergeant Major. I’m heading down to CIC now to get that underway. Thank you.”
“I knew you’d want to know, sir.”
And with that, Rev turned and left.