Admin43

==Chapter 43 - The Administrator==
KCGS Edward Vanh
Shore Party
Uninhabited System, "Big Mars"
Lyran Commonwealth
3144
They used a lander-a modified Mark VII space craft with a little electric rover to reach the signal source. "Well, what do you think?" Vien Van Trau heard over the common suit channel. 
"It's a crash site for certain. Refined titanium, iridium Aluminides...some of these alloy combinations are a little odd."
The wreck wasn't hard to spot from orbit, it stretched nearly a kilometer across the southern hemisphere, at the end of a couple hundred kilometers of impact skid.
"Well, someone had to have survived, Come on, let's see if we can find them." The Chief grabbed a salvage pack and Corpsman Berrie grabbed her medical pack.
up close, it wasn't a small ship. "Is there anything in the databases?"
"Nothing identifiable, no, could be too much was destroyed when she crashed."
Of course not.
The standing bulkhead loomed over them. "No recognizable markings, could be scorched off when it entered atmo..."
"Radio source is very close, repeating prime sequences. Maybe automated."
"Who would automate that, humm?"
It took them a while to find a gap large enough for a man to enter, that wasn't blocked by pipes and conduit.
Once inside.
"Holy Jesus."
Glass-or-a-glasslike substance, shaped into cylinders, were arrayed up the interior bulkhead.
Inside, were bodies.
"Corpsman, are you seeing this?"
"I am. Stand aside, chief."
The corpses were desiccated, life support and moisture wicked away long ago.
Vien looked closer, as the ship's medical officer opened a cannister.
"They're not..."
"They aren't human." Corpsman Berrie said, "Definitely not human."
"How can you be certain?"
The Corpsman showed him the image from her portable X-ray. "Too many joints in the arms, too many vertebrae, layout of the organs is almost right but, see? Too many hearts, one stacked atop the other."
"How long do you think they've been here?"
"Hard to say. We'll need to do isotope scans and radioactive dating, and we don't have much baseline, but given the desiccation? Could be a few months, or a few centuries, or a few millennia."
"She sent us to do some science...I think we're going to need a bigger team."
"Too right, that..."
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Dreamland, Big Mars crashsite
Uninhabited System, "Big Mars"
Lyran Commonwealth
July, 3144
Secretary of the Kowloon Coast Guard, Nicole Minh, stepped off the ramp and into a black-site. "What have you got for me, Caroline?"
"Ma'am, we may have decrypted some of their language data and we've found something in the wreck Her Grace may want to see, but..."
"But she's back at Tharkad and earlobes deep doing the job she tried to strong arm me to do on a smaller scale. I got that. show me."
Captain Caroline Nghien 562 was, for all intents and purposes, the commander of a full garrison base. Only instead of a Quarantine team, or regular enforcement and patrols, she had to be the mayor, and sometimes Sherriff, of a bunch of academics, scientific specialists, and carefully vetted security personnel.
She led the Secretary into a pressure-hut erected under a fragment of the alien starship's wreckage.
"This."
It was a gold disk, imprinted with textured grooves less than a millimeter apart.
"Solid gold?"
"Yes, Mum. It was somewhere close to where we think their command was. The grooves are data-"
"Music. My god...and I bet there are information and sounds of their homeworld, as well...sent out, with a crew, as explorers from somewhere out there only to end up here?"
"That's the running speculation, Mum. The core fragments we found are similar in composition to early jump core technology, pre-TAS Pathfinder alloys."
"She'll want to see this." Nicole said, "Sharon will want to see it all."
"Mum, the crash team found one more thing."
"What did they find?"
"Unexploded ordnance, mum, in one of the larger sections, White Shark casing, undetonated warhead, but definitely Star League origin, and the manufacturing marks indicate origin at the White Sands Boeing Facility, circa year Twenty-Seven-Oh-Three."
"Someone killed these aliens?"
"I think it's likely, mum. We don't have SLDF records to search..."
"Means someone knows about this besides us...or knew about it." Nicole sighed, "This is a crime scene then. Process it as a crime scene. We need to know everything that might be evidence leading to the perpetrator and everything that might be evidence leading to the victims' families...if they even had families."
"Aye Mum."
Nicole sighed, "I need to get back into space, contact the Ducal Regent and Her Grace for instructions."
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