TADJ18

==Chapter 18 - The Adjudicator==
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Former Word of Blake Prison Camp
Kittery Star System
Late 3159
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As nice as it was here, it was early local winter.  The coordinates had been included in reports from the Liberation of Kittery, as well as being listed in tourist guidebooks less than twenty years old.
Clarissa's over-uniform for this was a Coast Guard Winter-Dress overcoat, or 'sealskin' worn by sea-branch crews doing arctic monitoring on Kowloon. It covered her utility harness and coverall, while providing a somewhat 'dressy' appearance, especially here. She chose the Coast Guard 'slouch' hat to keep the rain and sun at bay.
The LCN personnel mimicked their commander in dressing 'down' with Coast Guard uniform items over their skinsuits. Which it gave both a military appearance and suggested this was a civilian expedition with military support.
Well, unless one is a fan of ancient media involving pirates and buried treasure or holodramas set in pre-spaceflight focused on submariners.
The first radar pass had suggested a subsurface structure below the compound. Based on disturbed reflections and evidence of nonuniform fill. There were four other sites nearby that might also be structures or filled in with debris.
The scanning teams got to work, while Clarissa entered one of the remaining buildings to look for clues.
It turned out to be a display area with an attached gift-shop, left mostly untouched since Kittery had been retaken by the Capellans. It offered a slice of what life may have looked like to Kittery's residents before the Republic fell in on itself after Gray Monday.
The quotes on the walls were all famous quotes cited in a thousand sources. The pictures on display in the hall were the same ones everyone who's seen the Comstar specials has seen.  The story told was simplified, reduced and de-nuanced for children to see on tours.
In a sense, it was like Kowloon's museum commemorating the atrocities of the Amaris regime, only...somehow trivialized.
Especially when one considers what went on here.
"This is not the memory of a tragedy for a people." she noted aloud in the silent exhibit room, "This is someone else's sanitized interpretation of a distant event."
The idea rang true. The people who set this museum up never saw what happened, never heard dark rumors or lived with grim uncertainty.
She stopped at a mannequin dressed in Word of Blake robes, "They evacuated the locals here first, didn't they? The people who set you up only heard about it third hand, isn't that right, Adept?"  she patted the statue's cheek.
"Um, Lieutenant Ngo, you need to see this." said one her assistants.
She walked out of the building and followed the signal to where her scanner crew were set up.
"What is it?" asked Clarissa
"We've identified four mass graves. The mapping radar images on approach showed the remains of a town to the south of here. Buried enough that you can just make out where the streets were."
"How long?" questioned Clarissa
"Based on what we saw? couldn't be more than a century or less than fifty years, ma'am. I sent McCrory to get samples, which he says the ferrocrete portions are burned and glassy.  Some of the litter in the undergrowth dates to prewar... I'm kinda thinking you won't find any witnesses when you go into the town that's actually still there, mum."
"We'll see what we see. I'll inform the Capellans, see what they have to say." she said.
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The local Colonel (she wouldn't bother trying to pronounce the Chinese version of the title) brought two companies of infantry and airlifted earthmovers in when he was told about the mass graves.
They hadn't known about it.
The surface burden over the first mass grave had a thin layer of concrete poured over it, but the other three didn't.  It was this layer that spoofed the radar into suggesting there was a bunker down there.
They had dug three meters down, and then 'crete was cracked & removable.
Cranes lifted a larger chunk, which it was like a frieze on the underside.
"Suitcases. Oh god. suitcases."  someone from the Coast guard unit said.
Clarissa dropped into the excavation pit, and walked up to the tilted up concrete section.
The outlines of faces looked back at her, and she could smell the residues of decay from the grave.
she tabbed the comm channel to the Capellan military authorities, "You need to secure this area and bring in...whoever you have. Archaeologists. investigators...and evidence containers.  LOTS of evidence containers...Jesus, this...this is a crime-scene."
In the oncoming twilight, she could see strands of hair embedded in the poured stone.  "These people weren't relocated, they were murdered." stated Clarissa.
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