TA18

==Chapter 18 - The Armada==
LCS Discovery
Beagle Class Exploration Cruiser
Uncharted Star System
Deep Periphery
December 25th, 3167 CE
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[18 months Anti-Spin of the Lyran Commonwealth...]
Christmas of 3167 saw them in orbit over another murdered world.
The damage was older. There weren't the murder nanos, just layers upon layers of post-fusion and post-fission byproduct in the soil.  This world would never be safe for human life, but it was in its own way recovering a form of life.
The ruins were decayed, degraded, eroded, but definitely here-and enough materials were present to sample about how long ago this world was slaughtered.
"One thousand, ninety nine years, give or take a decade." Mike said, "About the time men were landing on Luna for the first time.  Nobody had fusion rockets, but they were being dreamed of.  Faster than light travel was a fantasy. The most powerful weapon mankind had ready access to was the atomic bomb,  all of humanity was in one tight basket. They were dumping radio flux out to distances equaled only by pulsars.  We should all thank god for the speed of light, because this could've been us."
There were enough remains in good enough condition in places that could be found, to reveal what the natives of this world must have looked like-and it was a lot like a man.
A couple of extra vertebrae, true.  One opposable thumb, three narrow fingers with an extra joint at the end on two hands, bilateral symmetry, brain-case was located in the head...
A lot like a man, but slightly different.v
They'd gotten as far as chemical rocketry, radio (and radiotelescopes), and primitive satellites.  Twentieth Century maybe.
Vice Admiral Michael Hogarth could walk on the planet, the fallout was done enough.  There were stone structures that must've been ancient when this world was alive.
Said stonework bore a resemblance to techniques mastered by humanity, using materials very similar.
The pyramid was five-sided, with a rubbled entrance. It was positioned kilometers from a river-valley that was mostly natural. The glass-bottomed lakes nearby marking where it likely wasn't.
They'd huddled here. They were likely starved or choked or puked to death in radioactive dust after their world was savaged.
Some left graffiti scraped into the granite blocks.  Pictograms and what might be design-lines or might be markers of time, or might be written names, hard to say.
The bodies had weathered because there was nothing to eat them. Nothing to decay them except temperature and erosion.
"You know what this means, right?"  Mike asked.
"No sir, I don't." Star Commander Tseng answered.
"It means we're getting closer to where this began." Mike stated, "The methods have been getting less refined with each one of these we've found."
"Closer to the enemy?" Tseng asked
Mike nodded.  "Closer to whoever's responsible."
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