“No contacts detected,” Farley reported.
“Launch two drones,” Ted ordered. Vera Cruz’s other tramline, the unexplored one, rested at the other side of the star. They’d take hours to reach it, no matter what else happened. “If there is any alien presence in the system, anything at all, I want to know about it.”
He waited until they were well away from the tramline, then keyed his console. “Alpha Shift, get some rest,” he ordered. As always, it was a nightmare deciding when he and his senior officers could rest. “Beta Shift will take command.”
Given their location, it would be several hours before they learnt anything from Vera Cruz itself. Passing command over to Fitzwilliam — with a muttered order for him to take some rest himself in a few hours, Ted stepped back into his office and lay down on the sofa. Sleep overwhelmed him within seconds and he fell into darkness.
Piece by piece, the display built up a picture of the Vera Cruz system. James knew, from the files, that the system had never been considered particularly interesting, lacking even a large asteroid belt or a gas giant. Without them, it was unlikely that Vera Cruz would ever develop into a major industrial node. But the Mexicans hadn't cared, he knew; they’d merely wanted to establish themselves as an interstellar power. They’d invested billions of pounds in setting up the infrastructure to take thousands of colonists…
And then lost it all, James thought, sourly. For Britain — or any of the other major interstellar powers — such a disaster would be bad enough, but for the Mexicans it would be catastrophic. Somehow, he doubted that they’d insured themselves… and even if they had, there would be years of legal wrangling before anything was paid. No insurance company had offered a policy against alien attack, prior to First Contact. It was probably covered under Acts of God.
The aliens, it was clear, hadn't been particularly interested in the system either. There was no hint that they’d surveyed the handful of asteroids in the system or landed a settlement on Vera Cruz. It was an empty world, now that the humans had been exterminated; logically, the aliens could have taken it for themselves. But maybe they had good reason to hold off on landing colonists, he decided. After thousands of humans had been slaughtered, it was unlikely that the human race wouldn't retaliate against alien settlers.
Landing colonists on New Russia makes sense, he told himself. Human shields. We couldn't bombard the planet without killing millions of Russians.
He scowled. If there was one thing the human race had relearned over the past two centuries, it was that such tactics couldn't be tolerated. Showing weakness, even an understandable reluctance to accidentally kill friendly civilians, only encouraged the terrorists and insurgents who had fought and died fighting the civilised world. They were evil, of that James had no doubt, but were the aliens? Were they deliberately using the population of New Russia as shields or… or were they utterly unaware of what they were doing?
It seemed impossible, but the aliens weren't human. They might be humanoid, yet their thinking might be very different. It was possible that they regarded themselves as completely expendable, let alone human captives and civilians. Or that they were willing to leave human civilians alone as long as the civilians did as they were told. But the silence from Vera Cruz suggested that the entire planet was dead.
Unless they’ve decided not to risk using radio, he told himself. But he wasn't optimistic.
“One of the drones is entering orbit now,” the sensor officer reported. “It’s still picking up no trace of alien starships.”
“Put the live feed on the display,” James ordered. “Let's see what happened here.”
The drone wasn't as advanced as an orbital recon platform, not like the systems that kept Earth’s surface under 24/7 surveillance. But it was advanced enough to pick out the remains of the colony… and note the places that had once been human settlements. Now, they were nothing more than blackened ruins. Even the handful of farms, carefully primed to feed the main body of colonists when they finally arrived, had been destroyed. One of the analysts dug up the original files from Vera Cruz and placed them on the display, next to the images from the drones. It was all too clear just how badly the settlement had been hammered by the aliens.
“Interesting,” Major Parnell said, through the intercom.
James jumped. He hadn’t realised that the Royal Marine was watching the live feed from the drones… which was stupid, he rebuked himself. The Royal Marines would be very interested in alien conduct on the ground.
“Yes,” he agreed, sardonically. “Why?”
Parnell didn't respond to the sarcasm in his tone. “There should be much more devastation,” he said, instead. “If the aliens took out the colony from orbit, there should be nothing more than a giant crater in the ground. Instead… they seem to have raided the surface rather than simply destroyed it.”
James hesitated. As a junior officer, he had watched targets on Earth being destroyed from orbit… and he had to admit that Parnell had a point. The aliens could have dropped a handful of kinetic strikes and obliterated the colony from orbit, but the evidence suggested otherwise.
“Point,” he agreed, finally. He shivered as he studied the images of the settlement, the old file showing a standard colony arrangement, the newer ones showing destroyed buildings and… he cursed as he realised what was missing. “There's no bodies.”
“No,” Parnell agreed. There was no hint of triumph or amusement in his tone. “Sir, I believe we should attempt to determine what precisely happened to the settlers.”
“You want to go down to the surface,” James said, slowly. “Are you completely out of your mind?”
“This is the first chance anyone has had to examine the remains of an alien attack,” Parnell pointed out, smoothly. “I don't think we can pass it up.”
James considered it, rapidly. The Captain would have to make the final decision, of course, but Parnell was right. There were strong reasons to make a quick examination of the remains of the colony. On the other hand, however, if the aliens returned in force the carrier might have to withdraw rapidly, leaving the Marines completely alone. The aliens would send troops down to the surface to finish them off… or simply leave them to fend for themselves.
“I will advise the Captain that we should make the attempt,” he said. They would certainly need to mine some raw materials from the handful of asteroids in the system. It wasn't something they had dared in the last system, not when there were a handful of alien ships — or drones — hanging around the tramline. “I suggest that you prepare your men.”
He smiled as an evil thought struck him. “Could you take one of the reporters too?”
“One of the experienced embeds,” Parnell said. Surprisingly, he didn't try to argue. But then, the Royal Marines had plenty of experience dealing with embedded reporters. “Not one of the newcomers.”
James sighed. The thought of abandoning the reporters on Vera Cruz was hellishly tempting.
“Understood,” he said, instead. He checked the timer and decided the Captain needed a few more hours of sleep. “Prepare your men. You’ll have to move quickly once the Captain gives permission for you to go.”