Chapter 10
“War demands sacrifice of the people. It gives only suffering in return.” Frederic Clemson Howe
As promised, Con apologized to Aqila. In fact, they proceeded to exchange heartfelt mutual apologies and mark their reunion with some enthusiastic make-up sex. A few days later, they ended a romantic evening together in the hydroponics gardens; they’d scheduled their date to celebrate Aqila finishing up with the Burangasisti and the Lovelace once again being on its way, following the trajectory UDC scientists had mapped out for them months before.
The bench that they were snuggling on was near the bank of lettuce boxes and there was a faint green glow all around them.
“You know, the first time you suggested coming here….” said Con, looking up at Aqila, his head nestled in her lap.
Aqila laughed. “You thought I was out of my mind, didn’t you?”
“Well, I thought you were reaching.” He closed his eyes and enjoyed the feel of Aqila stroking his hair. “Maybe I should ask, though, how you knew one of the secret make-out spots on this ship.”
“You think you’re the only man in my life?” she teased.
He opened his eyes and gave her an affronted look. “I did.”
“Oh, relax. You are. Bly told me about it; she brings Evelyn here.”
“Wow, I didn’t realize Scientific had conquered so much of Tactical with their irresistibly romantic ways.”
“Yes, you tough guys really have to watch out for us lab rats.” She leaned down and kissed him.
Just then, the nearest VICI unit buzzed and Con cringed knowing what was coming next. Or so he thought. “Commander Lateef, report to the bridge. Priority situation.”
As Lateef acknowledged the message, Con raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I was sure that was gonna be for—”
“Lieutenant Kennedy, report to the bridge. Priority situation.”
“I knew it.”
Minutes later they were both on the bridge while Lateef looked over the long-range scan data that had prompted beta shift to send out an alarm. They had detected signs of Eternal technology on a verdant moon that circled a nearby planet. Aqila was saying, “Yes, those are the metals found in their troop and command ships, for sure. No life signs though.”
Ricci asked, “What about eprion?”
“No, none of those either. Not much energy activity of any kind, really.”
“Well, we need to check it out thoroughly. It may hold clues to where we should head next.” He turned to Lindstrom.
“Commander, please assemble a team. I want as much information as possible. When the Eternals were last there, what they were up to, and most importantly – how long ago it was that they left.”
“Aye, sir.” The first officer quickly assembled a team of both tactical leads, Lateef, and one of her most experienced science specialists, Lieutenant Mars Kaplita, as well as tactical corpsman José Abello.
***
The shuttle landed near the highest concentration of Eternal technology. Their scans of the abandoned equipment showed that there hadn’t been an Eternal presence there in some forty to sixty years but before that they had definitely been using it as a base of operations for a long time.
The deserted complex consisted of dozens of admittedly beautiful buildings and over-grown gardens. All of the low-slung buildings, which were still intact, were made out of a substance that looked like marble but scanned as being a thousand times more durable. Decker swung a hand lightly at the structure saying, “Wow, they sure built ‘em to last, didn’t they? It seems like the Eternals were planning on staying…and then they just…didn’t.”
“Only one problem with that,” said Kaplita.
“What’s that?”
“According to my scans, these buildings are approximately five to seven-hundred years old.”
Kennedy mused, “That would mean the Eternals are way older than we thought. Or—”
Lindstrom broke in, “Or they didn’t build them. So, who did?” He looked around at the team. “Okay, spread out. Scan for other life signs or indications of an older civilization.”
For the first hour, the team diligently searched the central buildings. However, they found no trace of anything that looked like, or scanned as, non-Eternal technology or remnants. Kaplita and Abello went to check out the maze of smaller rooms while Con and Aqila started scouting what had scanned as the oldest building in the complex center. Deck and Kay went to inspect the gardens and scan the grounds. Lindstrom split his time between the three groups.
In their building, Con bent down to view some of the carvings in a doorframe while Aqila looked over the items in the cabinets. “It makes sense that the Eats didn’t build these,” he said. “They never seemed to go in much for aesthetics.”
Without looking up from her work, Aqila asked, “What’re you basing that on?”
“Those old holo-vids we have of the inside of their Lead Ship.”
“How did we get those?”
“From when Deck’s mom went over there. Apparently, there was a live feed right up until…the end.”
“Oh, God.” Aqila stopped suddenly and her hand flew to her face. “You don’t suppose Deck has ever watched that?”
“She has.”
“Found anything in here?” Con and Aqila both turned to find that Commander Lindstrom had joined them.
“Not yet, sir.”
They went back to work while Lindstrom checked something on his hand-held. After a few minutes, Lateef said, “Look at these!” She had what looked to be an actual book in her hand. “I think these are records of some sort.”
Lindstrom and Kennedy joined her. There were dozens of the items. “Are they made out of paper?” Con asked.
“No, more like thin sheaves of leather…or something like it.” She was paging through one of them. “Not making anything out of this…writing, I guess it is.” She stopped on a page with a full-sized image. “Oh, do you think this was them? The people who built these buildings?”
“What? Those bundles of sticks?” Lindstrom asked.
“Yes, look, there are protrusions from the bottom which could be like feet - or short legs, I don’t know. And if you look closely at this one figure, you can see that the bundles can separate into what could be like limbs.”
Just then, Lindstrom’s comms link crackled, and Decker’s voice could be heard saying, “Commander, Kay and I might have found something…uh, significant in that pit we were checking out.”
“Ok, on my way.” He turned to Lateef and Kennedy. “You two get recordings of a good sampling of those books. Who knows? Maybe Sasaki can make something of that gibberish. I’ll go see what Decker thinks she found.”
“Yes, sir.”
While they worked, Con said to Aqila, “This is kind of cool, isn’t it?”
With a smile she answered, “Yes, I’ll make a scientist of you yet.”
“Scientist? Probably not. Explorer? Hell yes.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“That’s why I signed up,” Con admitted. “I thought the war would be long over by now and we’d be out exploring the galaxy. Every time I talk to my mom, she asks me what I’m still doing in the UDC - and I’m starting not to have a good answer for her.” He put his scanner down and turned to Aqila. “I never intended to be a permanent soldier. If I’d known that was my fate, I think I’d have stayed home and helped my parents run their restaurant.”
“Your parents own a restaurant? I didn’t know that.”
“Well, my mom sold it after my dad died but yeah, they did once.” His voice warmed as he said, “Next leave, you should come home to Uniterrae with me.” Aqila murmured a pleased agreement while he continued, “I have to warn you though, my mom will feed you until you cry for mercy.” He chuckled. “Mom tried that with Deck, but she never complained.”
Lateef and Kennedy’s comms links came to life at the same time; it was Lindstrom sending out a team-wide message. “Team, Decker has discovered the fate of the indigenous population here, about three hundred meters outside of the complex. I’m sending the coordinates to your handhelds. Please report here immediately.”
***
Lindstrom hoisted himself out of the pit using the rappelling line Decker had set up and stood next to Kay who was watching Decker’s every move; she stayed behind and continued recording scans of the area. Kaplita held his scanner out over the pit, asking, “What exactly are we looking at here? It’s definitely organic material but—”
“It’s a mass grave,” Decker responded, without looking up from her work. “The remains all date out to the same time period. They were killed within weeks of each other.” She stopped her scans and faced them. “There’s a dozen of these graves.” The pit was filled with remnants of those “sticks” Lindstrom had seen in the image Lateef found, the sticks undoubtedly being the skeletal structure of those aliens.
“This is obviously what happened to the indigenous population,” Lindstrom explained to the group.
With varying degrees of horror and shock at the find, the team watched as Decker nimbly rappelled up and out of the hole. She reached the top, and dusted her hands off, expounding on the discovery, “It looks like the Eternals exterminated these people and pushed their corpses into open pits; they didn’t even bother covering them up.” As she pulled the rappelling line’s anchor out of the ground and allowed the line to telescope back inside, Deck said, “I don’t even know if Kay found them all. There might be more, further out.”
“We have enough evidence to answer the captain’s question about this site. It was obviously their base of operations for the attacks against the Burangasisti and others but has been abandoned for decades. It’s also clear that the Eternals gained this settlement by…force.” Lindstrom nodded at the group. “Wrap it up. Let’s get back to the Lovelace with our report.”
On the way back to the ship, Lindstrom listened to Kennedy checking in on Decker who was piloting the shuttle. “You okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “We knew they were murderous bastards, right? That sort of thing shouldn’t even come as a surprise.”
“Still, finding and viewing a dozen mass graves is different than just knowing.”
Decker leaned back in her seat. “Yeah, it ain’t gonna be the highlight of my week, that’s for sure.” She turned towards Lindstrom. “We’ll need decon after that trip, right, Commander?”
“Yes, put it in shuttle bay-1.” The exit to shuttle bay-1 led directly into the decontamination air showers. As each person entered the showers, they were met with a blast of high-purity air, which scrubbed them of all particulate matter and foreign microbes, washing the undesirables into the capture area under the perforated floor. The individual then proceeded into the airlocks where a scan confirmed that the decon had accomplished its goal. Only then was the returnee free to rejoin the general population of the ship.
Everyone exited the decon area without trouble until it came to Decker; in the airlock, a warning buzzer sounded, the over-head light flashing red. VICI’s voice said, “Decon insufficient. Long-term decon necessary.” Long-term meant an extra twenty minutes under the air shower.
“Ah, shit. Probably from being in all those graves.” She existed the airlock back into the decon area and used the intercom to say to the group, “You guys go on ahead. Kay will keep me company.”
However, when Lindstrom, the last to leave, took his turn in the airlock, the same warning sounded. “Looks like I’ll be keeping you company, too, Lieutenant.”
They sat on the benches in silence for a while; Lindstrom looked over at Decker who was leaning back against the wall, eyes closed, looking drained of energy. She was idly stroking Kay who sat next to her on the perforated bench. “Sobering day,” he offered.
“Yes.” Decker sat up and faced him. “But then we’ve both had a lot of those – fighting the Eats, haven’t we, sir?”
“Indeed,” he answered, thinking of the twenty-one years of war that had aged him in body and spirit.
“What was her name?”
“Who?”
“Your sister. The one who—”
“Ilse.” He hesitated, wondering if he wanted to talk about this but then found himself continuing, “She was on the command ship Taranto, lost right at the start of the Yanzu encounter.” Nils smiled sadly. “She was five years my junior. She followed me first into the UDC and then into Command Operations.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re to blame.”
“Of course not,” he said briskly, getting up to pace around.
“But you do – blame yourself.”
The spike of annoyance he felt at her insistence was tempered by her obvious compassion and the fact that she was right. He nodded at her, conceding her point. “You see much at times, Lieutenant.”
“I can….” She cocked her head at him. “Once I got my head out of my ass.”
He bestowed the tiniest of smiles on her and said, “Good job. With that - and finding those graves and recognizing them for what they were.”
“I didn’t want to believe it at first but then I remembered who we were dealing with.”
Recalling what he’d heard from Kennedy about the video of Decker’s mother, Nils said, “I suppose you would know better than most what perfidy they’re capable of.”
“You mean killing someone who was under a flag of truce?” When Lindstrom nodded, she said, “Yeah, but it’s not like that never happened with humans.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“My grandfather even said, afterwards, that my mother should have remembered Mangas Coloradas.”
“Who was that?”
“He was a Chiricahua chief who went to the N’daaɫigánde…uh, white soldiers that is, under a flag of truce.”
“They killed him?”
“After they tortured him. Then they cut off his head, boiled it clean, and sent the skull to one of their museums.” She must have taken his look of dismay for disbelief because Decker added, “It’s all true. You can ask VICI about it, if you want.”
“No, I believe you. Man’s inhumanity to man has a long history.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have found it so hard to believe that they came from us.”
Once again, Lindstrom couldn’t deny her perceptivity. “Maybe not.”
Just then, the timing buzzer sounded letting them know that they were free to try the airlock again. Both came out clean this time, or rather, clean of what an air shower could wash away.