Tenacious

9

They made orbit an hour later and began the survey immediately. While Kris intended to pair the ships off and let them swing around each other to give the crew some down, that would have to wait a bit. For now, each ship went into a different orbit, one even into a polar orbit, as they mapped the planet, studying everything they could without touching anything.

The mapping showed a planet that had been hit and hit hard. There was evidence of at least five uses of atomics. These were marked by the residual radiation on the ground. However, even those five areas had been hammered by nonatomic hits with large kinetic weapons at high speeds. When you factored in several places where volcanic activity had been triggered, the entire place was a pockmarked landscape of death.

The mapping did identify a few areas where the original surface material still existed.

Some of the mountains seemed to have been left alone. They still showed where treelike vegetation had stood. The remnant of that vegetation appeared to have been torched before it was left to die without air and water. The oceanic floor also looked like it had survived in some places, particularly the deepest trenches. Those would all have to be studied in greater detail.

Although nothing appeared to be living now, the biologists still suggested that no landing be attempted.

“We know something killed this planet. We don’t know what, if anything, was applied to kill the animal life or vegetation on it before or while they slammed the planet from space. It’s best we keep our hands off the place until we know more,” was the way Professor Labao reported their first findings.

The orbital survey had already identified some kind of frozen substance at the poles. There might also be frozen water in some places underground. That allowed for the possibility of some kind of life surviving. Bitter experience on other planets had shown some of the most stubborn bugs to kill were also the most deadly toward humans.

With enough problems on her hands, Kris was only too happy to steer well clear of any more.

The third day of the survey, the ships gathered in orbit and were finally able to pass cables of Smart Metal^TM between them and swing themselves around each other. This brought a welcome sense of down and improved morale among those who didn’t much care for floating through their day.

That day, they began the ground survey.

Longboats from the Wasp drew the duty of entering the planet’s thin atmosphere and launching balloon surveyors from their open aft ramps. Nine of the ten successfully inflated as they tumbled free. The last just tumbled. When the Endeavor made orbit, before it paired up with the Intrepid, it lased the wreckage on the ground, burning it down to basic atoms.

That would be the future fate of the other nine explorers: their reward for a job well-done. In one of her more reflective moments, Kris found herself wondering how Nelly felt about that.

She did her best to keep that thought to herself.

Nelly, however, was fully occupied going over the mapping survey with an intensity no human mind could match. Jacques had asked around if some of the other space slings might have made a fiery reentry. The question had drawn no interest from the scientists, but Nelly set a goal for her and her children to go over the map, quarter-meter pixel by pixel to determine if there were any new, smaller craters. It seemed to be keeping them busy when they weren’t otherwise at work.

“I’ve found one,” Nelly reported the fourth day.

“Found what?” Kris asked.

“A new, smaller crater. Something that could have been made by the center weight of a space sling.”

“Or by a meteorite that just happened to wander by,” Kris pointed out.

“Yes. We’ll need to survey the landing site.”

“Ask the scientists to add it to their survey.”

“Yes, I guess I will have to get permission before I retask one of the balloons.”

“Yes, you will, Nelly. Now, why don’t you and your kids find a couple more of those slingers? There must have been quite a few to strip this planet of water and air.”

“We are still searching the maps, Kris.”

“Keep it up. Maybe you’ll find one close to where the boffins already want to look.”

Nelly got rather quiet for a long time after that. Kris hoped she was busy and not giving Kris the silent treatment. It had been bad enough for her computer to do that when Kris deserved it.

The scientists tried to keep their work to themselves, but there were leaks. There had to be leaks on ships loaded with sensors and communication equipment and a lot of very inquisitive Sailors and Marines. It was basic to the scientific mind only to publish what they were absolutely sure of. Too many careers had been ruined by premature publicity.

Kris, however, was not against some arm-twisting when she reached the limit of her patience.

After all, this was a fighting squadron, and it was sitting here, in the mouth of the lion, so to speak. If there wasn’t a good reason to keep her people here in harm’s way, she’d take them back where they came from.

Or deeper into the lion’s throat. Depending.

Under pressure, Professor Labao relented and became more forthcoming with the results they were getting and the questions they were chasing.

“The bombardment seems to have taken place in three stages,” he said. “We could see immediately that the area subjected to atomics had also been hit during at least a second strike by kinetics. Our questions centered on whether or not there were just two or maybe three waves of kinetic strikes.”

“You say kinetic strikes,” Kris said. “Don’t you mean asteroids or meteorites?”

“No,” the professor said, and then paused maddeningly to structure his further answer.

“First, let us define our terms. An asteroid is a small solar body, likely left over from a failed planet’s formation. They come in several types: rock or mineral, though some prefer to add a third type, those rich in carbon or organic compounds. Many are covered with a thick layer of ice. Being natural, they tend to defy a single definition.

“A meteorite, on the other hand, is merely a natural object from space that has survived entry to an atmosphere. Since they are what hits the ground, they are often metallic, although some rocks do survive the heat of passage through the atmosphere.

“What is important about all of these is that they are natural, and, in the normal course of travel about a mature solar system, a bombardment like we have here just does not happen. Such, ah, traffic problems are resolved in the early days of a system. Never this late.

“No, the kinetic artifacts that we are examining are either asteroids artificially disturbed from their orbit and placed on a collision course with this planet or artifacts specifically designed to bombard this planet, or others like it.” Here he paused to clear his throat.

“Nickel-steel bullets were constructed for planetary bombardment during the Unity War and again during the Iteeche War. Thank God they were not used on inhabited planets, or one can only wonder where the killing would have stopped.”

Again he paused, as if contemplating the nonempirical question he had asked. Shaking himself, as if to shake off the lack of an answer to that question, he went on.

“It appears to us that similar kinds of bullets were used to hit this planet. Whether it occurred in one wave or in a series of waves, it seems to have followed the use of atomics and preceded the asteroid bombardment.”

Now he paused to study Kris for a moment. “We asked you to collect samples from the asteroids. We need them to test the different strikes to see if the products of those strikes came from this planet, or from the asteroids, or from somewhere else entirely.”

“Do you think you can make that kind of a determination?” Kris asked.

“Honestly, I don’t know. It’s been a hundred thousand years, more or less, since these events happened. Despite the eradication of most water and atmosphere from this planet, it still has weather cycles. There has been a dust storm in the southern hemisphere in just the short time we’ve been here. We may have set an impossible objective for our research, but if we didn’t posit the possibility that some of this attack was from beyond this system, then we would never find it out, even if it were.”

“In other words,” Kris said, “is it possible that some of the bullets that pounded this planet came from the next system over?”

“That is our thinking.”

“If we could make the association, it would certainly connect the two and very likely implicate the aliens of the next system in their first genocide,” Jack said.

“Planetcide,” Penny said.

“Precisely,” Kris said. “Well, Professor, you have our attention, and our hearty support for your survey. Have at it.”

Once that was published, the patience of the Sailors and Marines grew longer. Now they could see the need for a solid, if lengthy, forensic examination of the planet below them.

It was Captain Drago who suggested that their time could be put to some defensive purpose.

“We’re going to want to outpost the next system. If I can express a preference, I’d like to not only put warning buoys at the jumps into that system but also into the ones the next system out.”

“Give ourselves plenty of time to pick up our skirts and make a run for it,” Kris said.

“I wouldn’t have said it quite that way, but yes.”

“It will take more time to collect all those buoys,” Jack pointed out.

“Why collect them?”

“But then, if the aliens come back, they’ll know we’ve been there?” Kris said, beginning to see the answer to her question even as she asked it.

“And the problem with that is . . . ?” Captain Drago said, raising an eyebrow and grinning.

“Hold it,” Jack said. “We’re doing forensic research to discover the origin of the iron bullets that slammed this planet. Do we want some homicidal alien going over our warning buoys?”

“I checked with the engineers who designed these buoys and the factory bosses who turned them out. They are products of Alwa. The metals and silicon are from that system. There’s not one atom drawn from human space. If they go over them, they just lead them back to Alwa. No farther,” Kris said.

“The design is hardly better than the electronics we had when we left Old Earth, but the design has no fingerprints on it. The metals came from stars that burned long ago on this side of the galaxy. Yep. If we leave them, they know someone came calling but not someone from more than, oh, a couple of thousand light-years or so.”

Again, Captain Drago paused. “Do you see a downside to their knowing we know where they lived?”

Kris spoke slowly. “We know where they lived, and we didn’t do a damn thing to their old home. Nope, I don’t see a downside. Let them try to figure out why someone would do that.” Now Kris and Jack were both grinning ear to ear.

The Endeavor and the Intrepid were dispatched to picket the next systems out.

It was Nelly who came up with the smoking gun.