"Good Morning, Patty," Davenport said.
"Hello Connor, Ron," she said cordially, acknowledging each in turn, "What do we have?"
Davenport handed her the text of the Antares message.
"Wow, streets - a fourth intelligent species?"
"Maybe," Ron cautioned, "I mean, this could be the enemy homeworld."
Cook looked up sharply from the paper. "Do you really think so?"
"I think it's possible — I didn't mean to say that I think it actually is or even that it's likely."
"But you're reminding me, again, not to assume or jump to conclusions?" she asked, some humor in her voice.
"That is my thankless task, yes," he replied with a smile.
"Well, as usual, you're right. Still, either way, it's an exciting prospect."
"So, what do we tell Commander Michael?" Davenport asked.
Cook looked at him.
"She is in possession of much more information than we have here," she said. "So, I think we need to trust her to do what needs doing."
Ron agreed. "From an Intel point of view, I can't tell her what to do because, much as you are saying, I can't see what she sees. Jack Ballard is first-rate, and she has a couple of bright stars there in Hansen and Lewis, too."
"And Jim George," Cook added.
"Indeed - an inspired choice on her part, I'd say," Ron finished.
"Stole him from right under my nose," CINC pretended to complain.
"Which you agreed to!" Cook pointed out, drawing a smile from the CINC.
"I did, I did, once she started asking for stuff I couldn't stop saying Yes!"
Ron smiled at CINC's self-deprecating manner, but then moved the discussion back on topic.
"Back to the issue before us. My recommendation is to advise caution but let her proceed as she sees fit."
The Admirals agreed, and CINC drafted the message
PRIORITY 207806020700 UTC
TO: ANTARES
FROM: CNCFLEET
CAUTION ADVISED BUT PROCEED OWN DISCRETION.
NOTIFY HQ OF SIGNIFICANT FINDS.
END
"Terse, sir, but I agree with the sentiment." Admiral Cook commented after reading Davenport's draft.
They each headed back to their beds, but there would not be much sleep this morning, as each fretted over what Antares might find. It might mean trouble, or not. It might be dangerous, or not.
Ron regretted that there was no more he could offer ship commanders in these situations, but he wasn't there, and there was really no other choice than to let them do their jobs. The low bandwidth of SLIP communications was a recurring annoyance for him. He wanted to see what they had, have his team see it, and then give Commander Michael some solid advice. Just telling her to do whatever she thinks best seemed pretty lame to him. He hoped Terri Michael would understand.
He was the last to leave the Operations Center. As he walked out, he decided to pass on Security's offer of a ride and walk the half mile to his house. It was good to clear his head a bit, but it still felt like a long walk home. He snuck in quietly, but Meredith was up, rocking in the living room, reading a book. As he came in, she set it down, took his hand, and led him down the hall.
ISC Fleet HQ
Ft. Eustis, VA
Friday, June 3, 2078, 2020 EDT
It had been a typical day for Fiona, an early start followed by long hours. She lived less than a mile from Fleet HQ, and when the weather allowed she would walk or jog it. This evening, it did not, and so she accepted a ride from one of the Fleet security techs that guarded the entrance. There were several senior officers that either came in early or left late, or both, and they kept a vehicle handy just in case.
Fiona rode the short trip in silence, speaking only to thank the young driver that brought her home. Annie was it? Anna? Abby? Shit, she thought as she walked to the door, I need to pay closer attention. As she opened the door and stepped into the silent house, she heard the Jeep-equivalent pull away. They were always careful to wait until she was safe inside, and that was comforting. She flipped on the hall light and headed for the bathroom for relief, then she headed back into the kitchen to see what was available for a meal.
She and 'Big Jimmy' Collins had separated a long time ago — over ten years. He had loved her best he could, but somehow, he just couldn't figure out how to be a one-woman man. Fiona finally gave him the boot after coming back from a week on her ship and finding him entangled with another officer's wife. They never did divorce. For Fiona, it just didn't matter since she had no intention of re-marrying. The same was true for Jimmy, but for vastly different reasons. He was fun at a party, that was for sure, but really not much more than that. Sometimes in quiet, solitary moments she regretted not having children, but she was honest enough with herself to accept that she loved the fleet as if they were her children, and she would defend them with an intensity, a ferocity, any mother would recognize. Besides, they would have been Jimmy's children, and that thought was usually enough to clear her mind on the subject.
She had consumed a coffee or two too many today, which left her with mild heartburn and just a little edgy. Sorting through the refrigerator, she selected one of the prepared meals she kept on hand. She tossed it into the warmer, which read the barcode on the meal and took over the cooking. It had been a huge breakthrough when someone invented meals and an appliance that could selectively heat different foods at the optimal temperature. When Fiona later opened the package, her salad was still crisp and cold, but the turkey and gravy were steaming hot.
Meantime, she poured a generous glass of Pinot Noir and flopped on her small sofa across from the flat screen. She was completely comfortable as a confirmed, unrepentant career Fleet officer and her small quarters looked it. She had just enough furniture to support the limited amount of time she spent there. On the infrequent occasions when she had out-of-town family to visit, she paid for their hotel, and they dined out. She started up the flat screen but the news these days was just too infuriating, so she picked a favorite classic movie and settled back, trying to quiet her head and relax. Dinner would be ready in a few minutes.
Joanne was only gone a week or so, but Fiona missed her like a sister who had just married and moved out. Intrepid would be leaving soon, she knew. There was a job Fiona and Ron wanted Joanne to do. The first twenty Sentinels were ready for deployment, and Intrepid would be delivering the first batch of six. It was a different mission from the search vessels since there would be no time at each star examining the system and looking for the enemy. For this job, Intrepid would come in, establish the correct orbit, power up and validate the Sentinel, then push it overboard and leave. They didn't want to be there long, and they would not be sending the usual status messages. That worried Fiona a lot, but Joanne would not hesitate to call if they got into trouble. The longer Intrepid was silent, the better the mission would be going. But it had a strange feeling to it, and it made her nervous that there was some scenario she and Ron hadn't considered.
She was also in early dread of Ben Price's leaving. They had kept that quiet from the rest of the team to stave off the inevitable disruption it would cause. For now, the team was adjusting to the loss of Commander Henderson and Ben was a big reason they were doing so well. She needed that to continue for another few weeks when they would have to break the news to the staff and accept the dislocation that will follow.
She was just starting to feel the wine when the dinner-ready signal went off in the kitchen. She sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor, eating from the container as she sipped from her refilled glass and watched The Martian for at least the twentieth time. She felt a strong connection to the captain, her difficult decision, and wondered whether she could have done the same. The rational, command-oriented part of her knew she would, but the Fleet-mother part had serious qualms about it. Movies have a way of mangling a happy ending; but in real life, Mark would have been dead in a few months, and it would not have been pretty. This evening, she was a
sleep before he made it to Pathfinder.
Antares
Beta Hydri
Friday, June 3, 2078, 2000 UTC
The message from Fleet HQ came back in just over 76 hours, meaning that they had taken only a couple hours to consider what she should do.
PRIORITY 207806020700 UTC
TO: ANTARES
FROM: CNCFLEET
CAUTION ADVISED BUT PROCEED OWN DISCRETION.
NOTIFY HQ OF SIGNIFICANT FINDS.
END
So, Fleet HQ had decided she should do whatever she thought was advisable. That was fine with her. In the time since Terri had signaled CINC, her team had patiently completed the system census and determined that there was no detectable enemy presence.
They watched the blue planet with the long-range telescope and determined that it rotated in about 47 hours and was perhaps 10 percent larger than the Earth. The planet's axis had only a small inclination. There were large ice caps both north and south. That they were larger than Earth’s and nearly equal in size was another bit of evidence that the rotational tilt was small.
The towns were clearly visible now, but it was not possible to detect traffic from their current distance. Jack Ballard pieced together a few pictures and was starting to get an idea of how large the culture was. But, in the time since discovery the planet hadn't even rotated twice, so he had limited imagery to work from.
The officers met in the wardroom late that first evening and Terri decided to move into orbit around Big Blue, as they now called the planet. They would come in about halfway between Big Blue and its largest moon, smaller than Earth's and now nicknamed Little Gray. Little Gray's orbit was around 500,000 km, a little farther than Luna, so they would come in at about 250,000 km, minimum EMR set, and see what they could detect from a sun-synchronous polar orbit. There were two other small moons about a tenth the size of Little Gray, plus perhaps a dozen small rocks that they had detected so far. It was a surprisingly busy little system, Ryan Lewis thought, one to make the astrophysicists scratch their heads.
The approach was uneventful but nerve-wracking for the crew. Every Surveillance tech was on some sensor feed or another. The computer was post-processing every source, with the Intel staff watching for alerts.
Carol had Antares ready to fire. As they got closer, she wandered over to Ryan Lewis, standing behind the Surveillance workstation. He greeted her silently, still watching the feeds displayed on the large monitors above. A tech looked up.
"I can see the streets, Lieutenant. They're just coming into sunlight."
"Zoom that as close as you can," he replied. "Dawn would be a good time to get shadows and see if anything is moving."
The image grew large enough for all of them to see the grid. They thought they saw structures along the streets, and long shadows crossing, but no motion.
"Maybe they're late risers." Carol deadpanned.
Ryan suppressed a laugh and stuck to his monitors. The techs cracked up - it helped break the tension. After an hour of observation, Terri looked at Ryan Lewis.
"I need to know everything that's around us. Get the radar up and see what else is out there."
"Yes, ma'am."
She walked over to Weaps and pulled Carol aside.
"I've turned on the radar. Things may get a little hairy, so be on your toes."
Carol nodded her understanding.
"We're ready to shoot, ma'am, as soon as Surveillance designates a target. I took the liberty of swapping in four Spartans - we can still attack if we want but I thought we should be ready for defense."
"That's fine. All Lances?"
"Yes."
Terri moved back over to the Surveillance station. The radar picture was showing satellites in low and high orbits.
"If any of those satellites maneuver, I need to know right away. We'll have to decide whether to smack it or bug out."
"Yes, Commander will do."
The Surveillance station phone sounded again.
" Lewis. Yes, she's right here. OK, Jack, we'll be there." He turned to Terri.
"Ballard would like to show us something back in Intel."
Terri looked around the Bridge.
"Hansen! Take the conn."
"Yes, ma'am." She spoke briefly to her techs then walked to the command position.
"Nav, I have the Conn."
"Very well Lieutenant."
She sat down, wondering what was happening back in Intel. A call from Ballard and a quick exit by the CO, XO, and Surveillance Officer was worrisome. She was quickly back down and standing at the Surveillance station, watching the feeds with the techs.
Antares
Beta Hydri Big Blue
Friday, June 3, 2078, 2115 UTC
As Terri, James George, and Ryan Lewis entered the Intel workroom, Jack Ballard was just finishing his analysis. With a few (dozen) keystrokes he had it up on the large wall monitor.
"Captain, I've been grabbing frames every minute since we got close enough to discern the streets as the star rose. Watch this."
He played the two-hour sequence, which only took a few seconds. They could see the land lighten as the frames sequenced, the shadows getting shorter. He played it three times. Finally, XO George looked away from the monitor to Ballard.
"OK, Jack, whatever I'm supposed to see I don't see it."
Ballard smiled. "Well, Commander, in a way that's my point. There's nothing. No motion, no vehicles, nothing on IR, nothing on UV. If this were Earth, there would be motion on the roads, there would be IR plumes in the homes. Maybe some UV from lighting."
He turned back to the display.
"We should see pedestrians, not well, but we should see that someone is there. There's nobody."
He paused.
"And one more thing - put that shot by the open field up, Stan."
A picture of an open area near a large city appeared.
"You see the buildings, then there is an open area maybe a couple hundred meters across, then there are these shapes, they're white, but I can't resolve what they are yet."
Terri looked at Lewis.
"How close would you need to be to be able to tell what those are?"
"We're at 250,000 kilometers now...I asked Nav, and the synchronous orbit for a planet like this is around 63,000."
Terri turned back to Ballard.
"How far off the equator is this place?"
"Oh, 15 degrees or so. A synchronous orbit over the equator at the same longitude at 63,000 would work nicely I would think."
She picked up the ship phone.
"Conn...Hansen, this is the Captain. Get with Surveillance for the position of this, uh, settlement and then put us in a synchronous orbit over it...yes I understand...proceed immediately."
She turned back to Ryan.
"You said there were high satellites. How high?"
"There were some at that general altitude. We'll be tracking them as we move closer."
"Please don't hit anything."
Terri sounded like a worried mother giving her teenager the keys to the car for the first time.
"Yes, ma'am we shall try our best to keep our distance."
"Yeah, please. I think whatever plan you had for exploration is shot to hell, Ryan."
"Yes, Captain I agree."
"Soon as we get down to 63K let's get a shuttle out and get a drone over this area. Keep it above 5000 meters - if there is anybody there, they won't see or hear it at that altitude."
"Will do." she turned to James George.
"Commander George, I'd like you and Lewis to fly it down. I can't have any screw-ups."
George nodded.
"It's just an hour plus past dawn now, and it will take us four hours to get down. Do you want it delivered today in full daylight? It might be better to wait and launch it before dawn tomorrow." Terri thought a second and then shook her head.
"No, let's not wait that long. As slow as this thing rotates there's still plenty of daylight. Deploy it high and offs
hore, and we should be fine. Maybe we'll have some convenient clouds to hide behind."
Antares
Above Big Blue
Saturday, June 4, 2078, 0200 UTC
Now that they were at a much lower altitude and hanging in orbit just south of the coastal settlement, the quality of their images improved drastically. The white shapes were now in clear focus, and as they came to the realization of what they were looking at, a somber quiet slowly spread over the workroom. Where a minute before there were as many conversations as there were people, now there were none. They all watched as Jack nitpicked the image into complete clarity.
"Holy shit," he finally said, almost under his breath.
Carol Hansen, now off Bridge watch, was helping the Intel techs scan through the images. She also stopped what she was doing and fixed her eyes on the picture Ballard had put up on the main monitor.
"Unbelievable. You should probably--" Carol said quietly.
"Yeah, on it." Jack interrupted her as he picked up the ship phone.
"Captain...yes ma'am could you come back here? We have something to show you."
Terri was back in Engineering talking with the FPI engineers, so it was a couple minutes before she made it forward to the Intel Section. Jack just left the image on the monitor. Terri walked in, saw the image, and stopped in her tracks.
"Are those--"
"Skeletons, yes, ma'am, they appear to be."
At first, Jack said nothing more, letting her just take in the image
"The drone imagery will be better, but from here they seem to be partially buried in the overgrowth." He tapped and swiped, and a different image appeared on the monitor. Green and tan invasions marred the straight lines of what were now clearly streets
"With the better resolution, we also went back and looked at the main part of the city. The city is also partially overgrown - there is vegetation that seems to be encroaching on the streets. The lighter tan color is probably dirt or sand or something like that."
"Still no motion?"
"No. Nothing visual, IR or UV. We could see a match from this distance, Captain. There's no one there."
Silver Enigma Page 25