am-books Book 2: Chapter 10: Genocide
Book 2: Chapter 10: Genocide
Book 2: Chapter 10: Genocide
Mario
November 2176
Zeta Tucanae
It took seven years plus change to get from Beta Hydri to Zeta Tucanae, although less than three years ship’s time. I spent almost the entire voyage going over the records from Beta Hydri 4. I didn’t want to believe that someone could have done that. I wanted so much for it to be a natural disaster of some kind.
But the evidence was, if not conclusive, at least pretty damned convincing. Someone had killed off an entire planet and collected all the bodies—literally all the animal life on the planet—then mined all the metals from the entire system. My mind kept playing all the movies where aliens came in and tried to strip the Earth. This was worse. They killed everything, and they left nothing. But how? And why?
I sighed and dismissed the theorizing for perhaps the thousandth time. I couldn’t know without more information. But I wasn’t going to wait. I needed to report this to Bill. The Bobs needed to be warned.
It took a week or so to determine the system layout. The star was a little more luminous than Sol and a bit bigger, but slightly less massive. The metallicity of the system was lower, but not so low as to make things difficult for me—as long as the Others hadn’t already cleaned it out.
“Guppy, I need a full scan of the planet. Set up the drones to do polar orbits, and get the whole surface.”
Guppy nodded without comment and went into command fugue. I sensed the blips as more drones launched. I settled back to wait.
* * *
If I’d been still living, I would have thrown up. As it was, I couldn’t watch for long.
The destruction was total, the devastation worldwide. These, whatever they were, these Others had callously killed billions of sentient beings the way a construction crew would clear the ground before starting to build. And I could think of only one reason for collecting the dead bodies.
When we met them, it would be war.