The volume he indicated sat alone on the middle shelf. He took it down with both hands. The sides of the book were hard, almost like wood. There were characters on the spine but none on the front or back. Slowly, carefully, he opened the cover.
"Wow! Will you look at that?" There was writing on the first page, not printed, but written by hand in the alphabet they had seen all around. The pages were thicker and stiffer than Terran paper.
"A dedication?" Ballard asked. Greg looked at the writing for a long moment, then pointed to the end.
"Same characters as the nameplate," he said, matter of fact. He then opened the second page and found two printed columns of characters. There was a small column on the right with a single grouping, then a larger set of characters to the left. He stopped and stared at it, as did Gabrielle and Jack.
"I think it's a dictionary. Dear God in Heaven, I never thought we'd be this lucky."
Jack turned to leave. "I gotta call this one in." As he walked back outside, he selected the ship's frequency. "Antares this is Ballard. Need actual."
"Roger actual, stand by." There was a pause while the Comm techs found Terri Michael and got her on the line.
"Actual," she said.
"Two words, Commander. Library. Dictionary. I think Cordero is in a trance."
A hundred thousand kilometers above, Terri Michael was intrigued. "Roger that. Bag the Webster's and bring it back."
Ballard smiled. "Yeah, I don't think I could get him back without it anyhow."
"Very well, Lieutenant."
He walked back into the house. Cordero was slowly turning pages in the dictionary.
"OK, Doctor, Noah is coming back with us."
Cordero didn't seem to hear. After a few moments, he turned to Ballard and Este.
"Do you understand what this is?" he said with intensity. "This is better than a Rosetta Stone. If this really is a dictionary, their whole language might open up to us. If we can link even ten or twenty words to their meaning, we may be able to bootstrap the rest. Then we can read their books, understand their culture." He ran his gloved fingers down the column of words. They were no longer just collections of symbols to him, devoid of meaning. They were now words, he had but to work them out.
"This is way beyond anything I could have dreamt. I love these people. They are just like us. They practically are us."
Behind her isolation suit visor, Gabrielle smiled at his sense of wonder. "Greg, this is great, but we need to keep looking. If there was some kind of picture book, like a child's dictionary..."
"Yes, Gabe, you're right. That would be huge."
They pulled two more large volumes off the shelf. They were full of dense text, but neither of them had any pictures. Finally, Greg pulled a thin book off the lowest shelf and opened it.
"Pay dirt!"
"What?"
"Pictures, Gabe, just like you said." Greg turned a few pages, trying to understand what the book was. The first page had a picture of a person — they couldn't think of any other word — with what looked like a title and a description. The person was lighter-framed than the one in the portrait.
"Is it just me or does that look like a female?" Jack asked.
"Well, it does look thinner than our patriarch over here," Gabe said, pointing to the portrait. "But for all we know the lighter and thinner ones are the males and the more solid ones are the females."
"Or, this could be like Inor where male and female don't really apply."
Greg turned the page and found an image of an animal that looked much like a round=headed goat. It might have been a little smaller than the Earth-bound animal. Again, below the image was what looked like a title and then a block of text which they hoped was the description.
Gabrielle left Jack and Greg to peruse the picture book and went back into the main part of the house. Looking out the windows, she noticed for the first time a stone-rimmed fire pit in the courtyard, with rusty metal remnants of some kind of frame laying across it. From this vantage point, she couldn't tell if there were ashes in the pit or not. She took note of the frame, photographing it for reference, and moved on. She knew what she was looking for: a kitchen, a bedroom, a toilet, probably a bath. But nothing looked familiar. Not that she expected to find flush toilets and fired clay dinnerware, but there should be a place for waste elimination and some kind of food preparation space. The aliens' body layout was similar to humans, so she was expecting recognizable, but likely very different, systems.
She turned with some surprise as she heard Sergeant Jackson reenter the house.
"Doctor Este, ma'am, something outside I'd like to show you." She followed the tall, quiet Marine back outside, where he walked around to the back of the house.
"There's a building over there," he said, pointed to a structure in the middle of the block, "that might be a latrine. There's holes in the floor —"
Gabrielle didn't let the man finish but sprinted, as best she could in an isolation suit and a SLUG and nine percent more weight, the fifty meters or so to the structure. Sure enough, there were paths worn in the masonry on either side of openings in the floor. She could imagine the Beta Hydri people walking in, finding a spot, taking care of business. She clicked her intercom.
"What do you guys think about a communal toilet?"
Jack answered her first. "Sounds gross."
"But we have them, Lieutenant Ballard," Jackson reminded him, "in every barracks, every office building."
Gabrielle looked around at the houses. "Jack, we're exactly in the middle of the block. Two streets, six houses on each side of the middle. This, uh, facility, would service twenty-four houses."
"Still sounds gross. But Jackson is correct. We do have shared toilets on Earth but not in residential areas."
Gabrielle and Leon Jackson walked out of the toilet house and paused, Gabe looking at the surrounding neighborhood.
"Jackson," Gabrielle said, "We need to look at more houses."
"Well, Doctor, I have three Marines with not much to do. We could crack some doors and take a look around for you."
"I like that idea!" Gabrielle jumped as she heard Jack Ballard's voice said over the comm. She'd forgotten they were all on one link. She turned back to Jackson.
"Start with the houses on either side of this one, then the ones on the opposite street."
"Sure, ma'am."
"You've seen what the inside of this one looks like. I expect the rest to be similar, so let me know if you see something new."
"Will do, Doctor."
As the four Marines went off to explore other houses, Gabrielle went back into where Jack and Greg were working and continued exploring the rest of the residence. After a few minutes, she came back to Ballard.
"So, Jack, what's missing?"
"Dunno. What?"
"There are no bedrooms and no sleeping furniture that I can see. There are chairs, sort of, and tables, again sort of, but nothing flat that looks like a bed."
"That's strange."
"Yeah, maybe they slept sitting up?" she offered.
"Or maybe they didn't sleep at all," Jack said. "The Inori sleep, which made most folks think it was a universal trait of a complex brain."
"No kitchen, either. Don't tell me they didn't eat."
Jack shrugged. "Maybe they didn't eat inside? You saw the fire pit, right?"
"I'm all for a barbeque in the summer, but what did they do when it was cold outside?"
Jack looked at her for a second. "Low axial tilt, Gabe. They don't have seasons like ours."
"What?"
"The planet spins almost upright compared to the plane of the orbit. No tilt, so no seasons. That's also why the polar caps are like twice the size of Earth's. There's no polar summer to melt them down."
"So, no seasons at all?"
"Well, the orbit isn't perfect, but it's almost as perfect as Earth's, about two percent eccentricity. So, there would be some minor variation in how much solar warming they get, but nothing like what we
see back home."
"Strange."
"Yeah, it is. Inor is kinda the same, really, but it revolves on its side, and only a small area is habitable."
Gabrielle and Greg looked over the bookshelf and chose two more large volumes to take back, along with the picture book. They took pictures of the books in place and made sure the shelf labels, if that's what they were, appeared in the images. They put the books in sample bags.
Gabrielle searched the house, taking mental note of what she wanted to explore again later. They had spent several hours on the surface by now, and the SLUGs and the gravity were starting to wear on all of them.
With the help of the Marines, they got the door closed and headed back for the shuttle. Cordero took a long look at the house before he left. He was reluctant to go, as if leaving behind a new-found friend.
"Time to go, Doctor Cordero," Leon Jackson said to him. Greg turned to see the Marine waiting for him on the street, nodded sadly, and started walking away.
"A good day, Doctor?"
"Oh, yes, Sergeant, a very good day."
Big Blue
The Battlefield
Saturday, October 8, 1078, 0730 UTC (Midday Sol 65)
James George set the shuttle down on a side-street just off the battlefield. Captain Barnes was the first off, leading his squad out to secure the area before he would permit the others to leave the shuttle. Joe Bowles had convinced Antares's physician Marcia Sota to join his expedition. George watched from the cockpit as Barnes' small force scattered. The original site itself was about two hundred meters square, but as they moved about, they found more remains outside the central area.
A young female Marine called back to Barnes. "Captain! There are a lot more under these trees."
Joe Bowles had heard enough. He tapped George on the shoulder.
"Open the goddamn door, Commander. I can't do anything sitting here." James verified that everyone aboard was ready, then reopened the shuttle hatch. Bowles came out at full speed, Carol scrambling to catch up with him, with Marcia Soto right behind.
"Who just called with the new remains?" A smallish white-suited figure about fifty meters away waved at him from under a group of trees.
"Here, Doctor Bowles." Wayne Barnes beat Bowles to the spot by a couple steps. Together they walked around the small grouping, photographing, and correlating them to the open battlefield beyond. Bowles kneeled to look more carefully at the skeletons, then abruptly stood up and looked around.
"We aren't outside the battlefield, Captain. It's all around us."
"Sir?"
"These people aren't defending the field over there," he said, pointing.
Barnes followed Bowles' finger, then turned back to the victims in front of them.
"They're holding a different position?"
"Yes."
The site was bordered on the west by the main north-south road that ran the entire length of the settlement. The wide white sandy beach was a few meters west of that. The ground rose to the east, ending in a five-meter ridge just off the edge of the killing field, with another five-meter rise close behind. They had cut the ridge to permit the road to rise gradually to the east, much as is done for roads on Earth. There were trees along the road and extending to the south in a sparse wood, something less than a forest but denser than a park. They could now see many more skeletons under the canopy of trees, skeletons they could not have seen in the original overhead imagery. Barnes walked a few meters away to look at another group, then back.
"Doctor Bowles?"
"Captain?"
"No kit, sir. No helmets, no body armor, no uniforms; just these little rifles and what looks like ammo cartridges."
"Interesting. That probably says something about the culture. Make sure you mention that to Professor Este." Bowles moved around to face the five skeletons, then knelt down. "Why, my friends, why are you here?"
"They're here to defend something worth defending," Carol said quietly.
"Well, Lieutenant Hansen, I think we already know that," he replied with no small amount of sarcasm. "The question is why are they here." He pointed to the tree for emphasis. "And there, and there..."
Carol let the sarcasm pass. "Yes, Doctor, I see."
Bowles knelt there for a full minute, looking at the bones, and looking past them to what was behind.
"They hit the middle one first — there's a hole burnt right through the front of the skull. The rest are lying on top of him. Then the one on the right, same wound." The officers and Marines around him followed his white-suited finger. "They hit this one on the left in the chest. Look at the charring on the sternum. And the last two took chest shots as well."
Wayne Barnes watched Bowles carefully. "All kill shots, Doctor. They weren't wounded."
"Go to the head of the class, Captain. This is precise, well aimed, lethal work. This is not a ground force we should underestimate. These bastards know what they're doing."
Barnes knelt down to look at their weapons. They all seemed to use the same model. It looked like a small rifle, but the butt design was unfamiliar, and there wasn't an obvious trigger. He pulled a large sample bag from his pack and carefully inserted one. "Looks like a hunting rifle."
"Possibly." Bowles turned to Carol. "Take a couple Marines, Lieutenant, and see what's on that ridge. There were remains up there if I remember the photographs correctly."
"Yes, Doctor, there are," she responded. "I'll see about it."
"Do that. And, Lieutenant?"
"Sir?"
"I was rude before. I get that way sometimes when I'm trying to put a picture together. It's not personal, but I do apologize."
"Thanks for that, Doctor, but I understand."
Barnes sent three Marines to meet Carol on the ridge.
"Anything in particular you want us to look for up here, Doctor Bowles?" Carol asked over the radio.
"I think they came across the ridge and through the road gap. I was hoping there would be some artifacts to support that."
"OK, we're looking." They found spent cartridges from the defenders, but nothing they could not identify. The defenders had all fallen along the road cut and the higher ridge. As they looked further back from the cut and below the crest of the ridge, there was nothing.
"I keep looking for footprints, or some kind of track, anything..." one Marine said to her.
"Yeah, me, too. But it's been a long time since this happened. I doubt we'll find much."
"One more thing, Lieutenant..."
"What?"
"There are no enemy remains, ma'am, none. What does that mean?"
"I wish I knew, corporal. They cleaned up after themselves at Inor, and they've deorbited whole ships into a star to keep from being taken."
"So, you think they took their dead home?"
Carol shrugged, a gesture hard to see under the SLUG and isolation suit, but clear in her voice. "If there were any, yes, I think they picked everything up before they left." Carol clicked on her microphone. "There doesn't seem to be much up here, but next trip we should scrub this area with a metal detector."
"Good thought, Lieutenant," came Bowles' reply. She led her small detail further east, down the far side of the ridge that ended steeply at the battlefield. The Marine came to stand next to her again.
"One more thing, Lieutenant Hansen?"
"Sure."
"They took their own dead back, but they left these people here to rot in the open? How does someone do that?"
"We wouldn't. Even in our worst wars, we got around to burying the dead, whatever side they were on."
"I thought I hated them before, but now..." Carol looked at the young Marine shaking her head at what she was seeing.
"But now it's personal?"
"Yes, ma'am, exactly." Carol nodded her understanding and headed back to the west, towards the main field. As she reached the crest of the ridge, she took in the view. The field before her was green, the ocean a deep emerald in the distance, lighter in the shallows
near the shore. It was a calm day, with only small white caps as the waves came lazily ashore just beyond the battlefield.
"You know, Lieutenant, this is kinda a nice place."
"It sure is. Now, if I could just lose those twelve or thirteen pounds I just gained..."
"And drop the SLUGs..."
"It would be fine, just a fine place to be."
They worked their way down the front of the ridge, a slope which was gentle enough for them to side-step down. Marcia Soto was surveying the dead, counting and cataloging the visible wounds. Barnes and Joe Bowles were standing near the center of the field, Bowles drawing on a pad. He looked up as he drew, then pointed to the left.
"I think there's something over there. The enemy split the defenders' lines somewhere along here," he pointed to an area near the road. "But then they continued to try to hold on both sides, the shelter we saw in the drone imagery and something in that direction."
They walked towards the shelter that the circles of skeletons seemed to be defending. As they got closer, Marcia stopped.
"The bodies are getting smaller, Joe."
Bowles nodded. "You're right, Marcia, they are. Shorter and less massive."
"Females? Adolescents?"
"Possibly, but we don't know the gender setup of this species yet, so —" At that moment he came to a smaller skeleton with a fatal head wound like many of the others, and three small and incomplete skeletons laying where the abdomen would have been.
"Shit," Joe cursed with an intense clarity of recognition and anger they had not heard before.
Carol caught up to them and followed their eyes to the remains on the ground. "Oh, my God."
Bowles paused only a moment. "OK, let's keep going. We have a job to do here."
As they approached the shelter, they found more pregnant mothers. They also found small individuals, presumably young. Some were very small, and they agreed those were infants. The mothers were all killed with head or back or chest shots. The children likewise, right down to the infants, whose wounds were so massive as to leave very little bone material behind. They saw weapons that resembled knives near some remains at the entrance to the shelter.
Silver Search Page 15