Admin97

==Chapter 97 - The Administrator==
Laboratory Module 183
Tharkad Shipyard
Gasthaus station
Tharkad system
Lyran Commonwealth
3150
"This is it."  Admiral Ngo said, gesturing to the open doorway.  "Everything we had as of six months ago, archived."
"It violates your personal space limits, I see." He said.
"It's not my property." Sharon said.  Stone floated through the hatch, followed by Yori Kurita and Daoshen Liao.
"Then whose is it?"  Yori asked.
"Nobody's, everybody's." she answered hollowly, as Julian Davion followed them in.
There were boxes of survey reports lining the walls, collections of evidence, bagged and tagged with Kowloon's Coast Guard Marine evidence seals.
''
"Everything from the crash site that could be retrieved and catalogued."  Sharon added, "Except the stuff that's still in analysis."
Yori lifted the gold disc, eyeing it carefully.  "Analogue?" she asked.
"Parts of it." Sharon said, "Figuring out how to play it took some work back at Spider Moon.  It's just like the ones our ancestors put on probes back in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries."
"All from an alien civilization?"  Yori asked.
"That's what we're still trying to determine." Sharon told the Coordinator.  "It could be a hoax, it could be a prank...except for the bodies."
"Where are the bodies?"  Stone asked.
"Down one level." Sharon said, "Indefinite in every way, except for being dead for a very long time."
"You've been sitting on this?" Julian Davion demanded.
"Evidence." Sharon said.  "Is it evidence of aliens, or evidence of a hoax?  How much is it worth to even bring it up?"  she seemed less dynamic.
"This is everything from six months ago? what has happened since?"  Devlin Stone asked.
''
"My uncle authorized a mission to trace it back to the point of origin shown on the disc there." Sharon said, "It will be six months from now before they get there...and I'm stuck here, waiting for word, like everyone else."
"Did Trillian authorize this?" Devlin Stone asked.
Sharon stared at him.  "Would it matter if she didn't?  She didn't even wait for me to authorize it.  There's no guarantee they'll even find anything."
Julian held a confused look on his face, and Nikol Marik, who entered last, said, "You're afraid of what they're going to find.  Why?"
"The best Coast Guard OCB can determine, the crash wasn't an accident." Sharon said, "The remains of anti-shipping missiles were uncovered on some portions of the wreck.  If it was real, the aliens were shot down by the Star League Defense Forces.  If it wasn't, then who fabricated an alien hoax, and why?"
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