TADJ22

==Chapter 22 - The Adjudicator==
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The Triad
Tharkad Star System
Late 3159
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[It wasn't what we thought...]
When we set out for Kittery, I expected to find some evidence of Devlin Stone's origin, after all, even with a barrier of eight decades, the chance that all the evidence would be gone was very unlikely, and we've worked longer periods (see: continuing investigation of Dinh Diep).
My Archon, I did not expect to find this.  the total so far are 47,744 men, women and children killed sometime in early April of 3083, we've localized the areas where these people were taken from, and they correspond to several small towns within 150 kilometers of the Word of Blake's prison camp site.
We know who these people were, we know how they died.  we've even isolated the drug used to keep them pliable while being processed for their murder.
Forensic reconstruction shows the majority of civilian deaths were carried out using Sternsacht heavy needler weapons produced in the then-Lyran Alliance and a check of records shows that several thousand such weapons were provided to the Republic of the Sphere both as military aid, and as a result of the transfer of worlds and militia materials from the Lyran state to the Republic under the Republic Treaties of 3081.  These are antipersonnel weapons with no practical use against armored troops or forces, and like the Incendiary Needler systems once fashionable with the Kathrinists during the Civil War, exist primarily as terror weapons against civil populations.
We have verified that the victims included whole families, but that infants and children below the age of 3 were not included in this atrocity-at least, not killed here.  Birth records in the Capitol are incomplete, but there is a suggestion that somewhere between 300 and 1000 infants may have survived in the custody of whoever carried this atrocity out.
The presence of Transfer orders and shipping papers suggests that this was done under cover of the mass relocation of populations early in the Republic's history.  The extreme locality of this atrocity  suggests it may have been an attempt to eliminate witnesses to some critical event, though without context, I can not determine what event that may have been, or how it relates to our current problem.
This wasn't what I thought we'd find.   My liaison officer with the Capellan agencies has assured me this will not go unexamined if we were to leave to continue our mission, right now, I'm kind of stalled on where to go next.
Attached files and reports for analysis includes everything we found here, including analysis of the 'museum' built in the prison camp's site-notably this museum lacks any reference to mass slaughter or similar atrocities, so they didn't expect anyone to be looking, I guess.
Yours in Service,
Lt. Clarissa Ngo, LCN
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Trillian studied the imagery again.  It was haunting. The photographers managed to get the light exactly right on the slabs of broken concrete, showing the death masks of people buried in one of the mass-graves.
She stood and walked out of the office, into the parts of the palace.
She stopped at a framed portrait of Peter Steiner-Davion.  She stopped and looked up at him, the portrait showed him in a crossed-arms pose, boldly looking into the distance as if he were looking grimly into a future.
Next to him, was the portrait of his successor.  she felt the lock in her throat ease, "Did you KNOW?" she asked the portrait.  He couldn't have, of course...
We are still, in part, to blame for this. The feeling nagged at her.
Forty seven thousand.  Such a small number in the grand scheme, but so callously murdered? For what?
WHY were they murdered? For a legend? For a narrative and an ideal?  Was that it? Trillian Steiner-Davion pondered.
She walked through the hall to a balcony overlooking the city.
"Hey Trill." Roderick came up from the west.
"Did you see it?" Trillian asked.
"Yes.  You remember when we were kids?" he asked.
"You wanted to be Devlin Stone, and you wanted me to be Yvonne...in the gardens." remembered Trillian
"Yeah.  I don't want to be him anymore.  Mein gott, he was here. He visited, he had the...the nerve to..." said Roderick 
"I know. We didn't know at the time, Roddy." she said.  "I played host to a monster."
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