Cambridge Stellar Research, Surveillance Mission #4

[equinosz]

~However it will be necessary to move it to open space and direct it into an ion storm in order to recharge the powercore~

-Oh my... I hate when it does these things. Can't we just reprogram it to communicate with us, before it does anything that important? - The captain was furious about not knowing what would happen.

-I guess he won't allow us to do it. Pasa lo que pasa, I have mapped the whole planet. I found something muy interesante. Please, put the picture B/14 and 15 of my report to the main screen.

Zenon Romano told it to the woman, who was sitting at the nearest computer. She started searching in the report and finally found it.




-Can you tell us what can we see here?

-Sí, senor. On the upper map you can see the remnants of underground facilities. The white lines are some kind of transport tunnels, most likely metros. At the blue dots I have found several smaller structures, most of them utterly destroyed. They seem to be cities or at least less defended places. Not like the red dots. They are a complete system of underground bunkers. Well, four complete systems. Each of these four are completely separated from each other, even the transport system doesn't connect them. Most of them are destroyed too, but parts of them remained intact. Usually the deepest parts. For me it seems like we have encountered a civilization, which was divided in four and they were in war, or at least they didn't like each other.

-But why haven't they remained intact as the one we found?

-Pues... I think it's because of the shield.

-Any idea about what happened?

-Well... Somehow one of the participants had better technology, like the shield. I think they somehow managed to create a superweapon, that would explain the the high concentration of ion particles around the planet. It seems that there's a low concentration everywhere in the system. I don't think this has been caused by the Xaror.

-That makes no sense... Why would they destroy themselves too? If only one had the technology, why aren't they still here?

-And what if something went wrong during a research? Like an explosion? -Henderson was on the bridge all the time.

-Hmmm... Es posible... Es posible...

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Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.