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Burning into Bonner Durchmusterung +42°2508 was a simple matter. It was a typical enough star, a G5 with a class of V and a luminosity of .9129G?8G?506054. It had about 200% of a solar concentration of heavy metals. There were nine planets, beginning at an orbit of about .28 AU's and working out from there. The second planet orbited at .855 and the third at 1.G99, placing it at the cool end of the star's habitation zone. All planets but the third were either dead rocks or gas giants. The third planet was unique in possessing an ecosystem. It had two moons, one almost large enough to qualify as a binary system, the other little more than a large asteroid, with an eccentric orbit that probably meant it had been captured.
There were no asteroid belts. The only place for the damaged freighter to safely hide was the third world. It arrived and was able to land before the Triumph was able to make orbital insertion. Richard let Kazzog handle entering orbit while he activated the comm.
"Teiron?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is that a habitable planet?"
"Yes, sir."
Richard checked his star charts. It was there, but there were no notations. "What level is its civilization?"
"There is none."
"Come again?"
"There is no civilization on the planet, sir."
"It's pre-industrial?"
"I don't detect any sapients on the planet sir."
"None?"
"Not in any large numbers. It will take a while to search the whole planet, of course, but barring some recent die off, I can rule out a native population." That wasn't just odd, it was baffling. Habitable planets devoid of sapient life were extremely rare.
There was no such thing as an alien race. In fact, there were no naturally evolved races. All life was created through forced evolution by a race of creatures known only as the Architects. They created the seven races from seven favored animals from an ecosystem they created over and over again on hundreds, maybe thousands of worlds.
For a world to support life, but have no sapient life, something must have happened to destroy the ancestors of all seven races. Earth in the Helios system was a prime example. Experts thought that Earth was meant to be a planet for oorts or valiesians, until the Yucatan impact killed off the ancestors of both races. Then the Architects had stepped in and nudged Earth on course to evolve the human race.
For this world to have no sapient life, there must have been a similar disaster. Disasters this devastating were rare.
"Then let's see what they are going to do and follow them down."
"I can already answer that, sir," Teiron said over the comm.
"Really?"
"I'm detecting the wake of their drive. They landed on the planet."
"Do you have a lock on their position?"
"Yes sir, I'm transmitting it to your consoles now."
There was a tone as the data popped up in front of them.
"Damn," Kazzog said.
"What?"
"I'm in the wrong orbit."
"How long will it take you to retask the ship?"
"Maybe a quarter to a half an hour. I'll start right now."
"Before he does that," Teiron said, "You should probably see this."
There was another tone and an image appeared on the monitor in front of him. It was a small capsule, perhaps two meters across, tumbling slowly.
"Arluphel, are you seeing this?"
"Just a minute, sir. Yes, sir."
"That's an escape pod, isn't it?" Richard asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Where is it?"
It was Teiron who answered. "At Lunar Lagrange One."
That was the point of equilibrium between the planet and the large moon. "Could it have been captured?" Richard asked.
"I don't think so," Teiron said.
"Was this here when you came through here, Arluphel?"
"No, sir, but that was a year ago. Before I became a privateer."
Richard thought about this a moment. "So it must have ended up there within the last year?"
"It would appear so, sir," Arluphel replied.
Richard looked at the monitor. They couldn't ignore an escape pod, even if they thought it was empty. Interstellar law demanded that any pods be rescued immediately. He wasn't going to be the man who violated that law. He looked at a holographic chart of the system. At least the freighter would have a hard time leaving without them seeing it.
"Well, the freighter probably isn't going anywhere. How long 'til we can get to the Lagrange point?"
"Three and a half hours. Five if you don't want to shoot past." They couldn't use the quantum drive this close to a planet.
"Alright. Take us there."
* * *
"I've got it," Verassus said.
"I'm attaching the tether," T'trrr said.
Kithian waited as she listened to their voices on the comm. She and Arluphel waited outside the cargo bay, which was open to space. They couldn't afford force fields to maintain pressure when the cargo doors were open. They would just have to wait.
"Tether attached," T'trrrr said. "Go with winch."
Next to her, Arluphel activated the winch, playing in the line. The Triumph was equipped with a tractor beam, but it was only designed for towing.
After a few minutes, the pod had been winched and manhandled into the cargo bay. Arluphel reactivated the artificial gravity and Kithian closed the doors, reestablishing its atmosphere.
They entered the bay. T'trrrr was removing his helmet as Kithian and Arluphel began on the pod. He leaned over, looking though its window. "I don't see anyone in there."
"Well, it's still worth salvage," Richard said as he and the rest of the crew entered behind them.
"The pod has nothing. I'll have to hook ship's power into the door." Arluphel set to work and had restored power to the pod in minutes. Kithian keyed the door. It was locked. She pulled out her bypass kit and started work. Escape pod locks were nothing more than a formality, and Kithian triggered the latch in less than a minute.
The door slid open and T'trrrr pushed himself between her and the pod, his weapon ready. He poked something with his gun, then stepped back. "Might be a bomb," he said.
Everyone started moving back as Arluphel looked inside. "It's a recorder, you idiot," he said as he reached in.
"Is the cat toy calling me an idiot?" T'trrrr purred.
"It never occurred to me you'd take offense," Arluphel said.
"Because of my good nature?"
"Because 'idiot' has three syllables."
"Go dust yourself with cat-nip."
Arluphel could say things to T'trrrr that would get anyone else killed. No one knew how he got away with it.
"If you ladies are done flirting, maybe we could see this thing," Richard said from the back of the room.
They carefully lifted the recorder out of the escape pod and set it on the deck. The whole crew gathered round, and Kithian looked back and forth between them, puzzled. She had seen many things in an escape pod before, but never a recorder. She caught the captain's eye.
"I know," he said. "It's damn strange." He looked at Arluphel. "See if you can get it working."
The oort leaned over and fiddled with the recorder, then set it back down and stood back. Some indicators blinked, then a light shone from the top, forming in the image of a man. He was tall with salt and pepper hair. He had impressive, though not exactly attractive, features. He was dressed in survival gear and sat in the chair of a life pod, presumably the pod that they just salvaged.
"My name is Edward Singh. I don't know if I will be able to leave any more messages. The ruins have strange properties. Even the quantum foam has a different, well, 'texture' is the only word that seems right. I think we'll lose all communications once we enter.
"So this is my last message. If the place is as dangerous as Fft'rrrr or Biggs fears, this may also be my goodbye.
"But the place was carved out of living rock 10 million years ago. How can we not knock and see if anyone's home?
"I've placed the planetary coordinates on a subchannel. You shouldn't have any trouble finding the place.
"That is, if it wants to be found.
"Isn't it exciting?"
Kithian didn't notice that she had gone white as a sheet, but the next minute, her friends were all around her, asking her if she was alright. She couldn't think to answer. All she could do was keep repeating his name over and over in her mind.
Taleron Biggs. She'd found him, but was this message a signpost or a tombstone?
* * *
K'Tackle watched as the captain paced back and forth. "This is getting stranger by the minute," the man said.
"That it is," Teiron said. "So Kithian and T'trrr both had people they're looking for in that expedition."
"And my mentor was their leader," Richard said.
There was a moment of silence as they all thought about this. After a moment, Arluphel spoke:
"I can't even begin to calculate the odds against this. This simply cannot be a coincidence. K'Tackle?"
K'Tackle jumped inside his exoskeleton. What had he figured out?
"You're the resident expert on predestination. Any ideas?"
K'Tackle thought about his answer. He didn't want to lie to his shipmates. "It doesn't quite work like that. I think that you are all right. This is a little too much to take at face value. I would not say that this is a coincidence. Something else is at work here."
"There is another thing, sir," Arluphel said.
"What is it?"
"Well, sir, that message was recorded over a year ago."
Richard appeared to think about this for a while. "Didn't you say that you had searched this system since then?"
"I did. There was no escape pod at the Lagrange point."
"I searched the system very thoroughly as well," Verassus said.
"There was nothing here," T'trrrr said.
"So this pod just miraculously appeared?"
"It would seem so, sir," Arluphel said.
There was a long pause.
"So what are we going to do?" Kazzog asked.
"The only thing that we can do," Richard said. "Push on. Kazzog, set a course for the freighter's landing site."
* * *
Richard looked at the sensors. The Jeronans had not fared well. Their landing, if it could be called a landing, had spread the ship over a kilometer-long swath. The ship was more or less completely destroyed, with a 10 kiloliter piece being the largest section left intact. Salvage would have to be piece-meal.
"Looks bad," Teiron said over the comm.
"It looks like you had a kill-shot after all. Congratulations."
"Thank you, sir," Teiron said.
The ship vibrated as the lifters fought against gravity. Kazzog circled three times before spotting an appropriate clearing in the woods. The ship came down slowly through gusting winds. Kazzog fought the turbulence, setting down with a large jolt.
"Sorry about that," he said.
"You did better than their pilot did," Richard said.
"Well, there is that."
They all moved to the hatch and donned their armor and weapons. Kazzog came along after finishing the ship's shut down. After several minutes, they were ready to move out.
"I want T'trrrr and Verassus on point. The rest of us will bring up the rear, not more than 50 meters behind. Keep your weapons ready at all times. Keep alert. Verassus and T'trrrr, you know the signal?"
"Yes, sir," Verassus said.
"Ooh-rah," T'trrrr said.
"Let's head out, then."
This area of the planet was jungle. They started out slowly, the falar and the valiesian cutting their way through the foliage. They had landed a half a klick from the crash site, but it took almost an hour to fight their way through the growth.
Upon seeing their first crash site, most people thought, "where's the ship?" The freighter had broken up. Twisted pieces of metal and shattered molecultronics were scattered as far as the eye could see. The jungle had been leveled in its path, and the broken and shattered wreckage still smoked.
Kithian whistled. "So much for salvage."
"I don't think that anyone walked away from this one," Arluphel said.
"Good. Let's think about which pieces of this wreck are worth carting home."
"Not so fast," T'trrrr growled. He was off to one side, on a knee, sniffing the ground.
"You pick up a spoor?" Richard asked.
"Yes, sir. I've got two oorts, five falar, two kagoth and a xatosian. They came in from all directions and headed off that way." He pointed east.
"They must have ejected," Kazzog said.
"And regrouped here." Richard nodded. "Arluphel. The ruins mentioned in Edward's message . . . where are they?"
"I'll give you one guess, sir."
"Great."
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