Split

"Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say" was an old axiom any space monkey off the trawlers knew from the moment they adjusted their first thermo dial. Whether it was true or not he couldn't definitively say. Looking at the carnage before him Captain Janus Silvecki hope it wasn't true. If it was true, the mute anonymity of the universe's cruelty just made a sad situation even sadder.

The vette was torn to pieces like it'd been hit with a sonic torpedo. Parts lay compressed in scattered bundles waiting to be measured and analyzed by Forensics. What was left of the vette's occupant was compressed in the back seat with the remains of a lavish cocktail bar and sound system. Once the vehicle's shell had been comprised by the sonic burst out here on the lunar plain Mother Vacuum had done the rest. If he victim had even survived the sonic blast any screams they might have got off before a gruesome death would have gone unheard. Even Chaplain Captain Silvecki was given pause as he took it all in. This was no accident. Violence of a determined and premeditated type had been carried out here. You didn't have to be a twenty year veteran with Beings of Mercy Lunar Patrol to recognize that fact.

Chaplain Silvecki hung back and let the Fire Squad do their thing in making the scene safe. The site was scanned for open radiation sources, electrical fires, infrared triggers and other fun things while scouts fanned the area on foot and in bug copters looking for trouble of any kind. Assailants, snipers, nosy journalist, or anyone else who might be waiting to make use of the vette's unusual demise were just a few possibles. Not everyone was a fan of the Beings of Mercy and their mission. All standard procedure.

Silvecki's presence wasn't at all standard, but here hew was trying to stay out of the way and find some way to be useful. The order had come from the top. Mercy command wanted Chaplain Captain Janus Silvecki on site with the first team.

Usually a chaplain was brought in to help with shocked civilians on site while being the kind face of Lunar Patrol for the on looking masses. Those masses of Earth and it's moon who were likely watching live from their news feeds right now would take reassurance that Beings of Mercy were on the job and keeping the peace. But there was nobody here in person just a mangled sports model with bits and pieces. Janus accessed his heads up display curious to see what they looked like on the news.

But he was wrong. There was no live feed of the incident. Not on Vroom!, not on Space Monkey, not on any of the top news feeds and media. At least not that he could find. He kicked back to the comm link with his local patrol.

"Holy shit!" broke out loud and clear startling Janus. The bosses had a strict policy against profanity over live wires so something major must be going on. Janus drifted closer to the Forensics teams set up.

"Language, people!" came the clear, professional voice of the squad commander. Trenton was her name, Janus remembered, admonishing her troop.

"But, sir! It's just that, well, it's not, I mean. Take a look at this!" the frazzled Forensic tech threw up a data profile on everyone's heads up. He'd obviously decided that a picture was worth a thousand words.

"Hoe!" sounded off Trenton in their ears. Janus could almost feel the boss trying not to let loose expletives of her own, Janus didn't blame her. "Are we looking at what I think we are?!" It took Silvecki only half a beat to grasp what they were all seeing. 'Holy shit,' indeed thought Janus as the data scrolled down the heads up screen.

"Yes, sir. Unfortunately. H2 DNA. Microscopic sample. I mean, we're talking 2 or 3 pico grams, at most, but it's there." The whole comm was quiet for a full second. The inter solar can of worms had just opened. Now who knew this would be here pondered Janus. This was why he was there, he was sure of it. Someone wanted Silvecki there because that same someone knew an H2 was involved.

The pause broke. Disbelief and conjectures abounded. "Keep it together, people!" broke in Trenton over general comms, "this just means we make double sure we do it extra right. Don't skip protocols, no short cuts, no conjectures." After everyone got back to work Trenton dialed into Silvecki's frequency. Each Patrol member had their own band for moments like these. "Janus. What do we need to do different with the remains, if anything?" She meant the pico grams of H2 DNA. "Anything come to mind?"

He knew why she asked. He was considered, rightfully or wrongfully, depending on who you talked to, as one of the foremost experts and liaisons with regards to the H2.

Of course H2 wasn't their real name. H2 was Earth based slang dating back to First Contact in the twenty second century old Earth calendar. Back then most of the world took a lot of convincing that the H2 were bona fide. For after years of searching the skies, colonizing the moon, then Mars,and finding no one else around Earth based humanity had started to get comfortable with the idea of being alone. Alone in Sol's system and likely alone in the surrounding parsecs had become the accepted.

That all changed one day in the late twenty second century. Right around the big cluster of holidays that espoused gratitude and peace a space ship with a broadcast message showed up in low Earth orbit. Visible as a new satellite with the naked eye and clearly visible as a space ship through any binoculars the visitors could not be hidden from the public. The visitors then hijacked every frequency they could find to say "Hello brethren" to the people of Earth. The greeting had come through in ancient Sanskrit, Nahautl, and Sumerian, but no one recognized it at first. After a few days of tense silence and fingers over buttons to long range nukes the greetings came again. This time the greeting came in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but wasn't received before one of the nukes got loose.

Tempers flared on both sides, but the people of Earth were embarrassed to find themselves out gunned and out smarted. Peace was forced on a poorly united Earth and suspicions ran wild. Who were the H2 really? Where had they come from? Why now? Questions that were never really answered. The H2 called themselves the "People of Lot" and left it at that. That mysterious title and the fact that aside from a few amino acid differentiations the H2 were fully human only added to the mix. Human, yes, but not of Denisovan, Neanderthal, or Homo Sapien origin. And now H2 DNA was showing up at what becoming categorized as a crime scene. Whether the unknown child of Lot was victim, perpetrator, or bystander was too soon to say.

Trenton waited for Silvecki to weigh in on her question. Trenton was seasoned enough to know full well how this could blow open parsecs wide if they didn't follow proper procedures. Even then there were no guarantees. At best this would be a tremendous scandal, or at worst a start of a conflict.

Before Janus could speak his mind on the subject all hell broke loose. The comm link blared jarring the chaplain. His heads up display went crisis mode. Trenton shoved Silvecki into the rid wall as everything exploded. He rolled to his stomach weapon out scanning the area. The Beings of Mercy were a friendly lot but they weren't stupid especially when engaged in vacuum.

But there was no one to shoot at. The vette, or what used to be left of it, was the only casualty. The pieces that Forensics had been scanning were totally disintegrated. Chatter over comms filled Silvecki's ears as Trenton directed the perimeter. All foot patrol and bug copters reported all negative for intruders. That meant whomever it was had hit them from orbit figured Silvecki. Janus slowed his breathing and shook off the adrenalin spike while Trenton called it all in to command. They were to hold station and patrol while Lunar Dome 1 shut down traffic to the surface.

Janus rang Forensics, "any chance that DNA's still there after all that?" He didn't really think there would be, but he'd learned from experience not to assume details. Especially details out of his area of expertise.

"Gimme a rescan full res, half speed, Qwan," barked Trenton. She didn't even bother to chastise Silvecki for talking to her techs without her. She was that rattled. She busied herself next with queries of the perimeter even though she'd done that just minutes ago. All was still quiet. She pulled perimeter watch i two klicks. Not a space trawler, not a rogue space surface, not a moon fair in site. Nothing was moving or showing any heat signatures. They'd been hit by a ghost, or at least a once flashy corvette had been. Janus ran it around in his mind while the techs rescanned the site.

It all just didn't add up, and it didn't add up in a convincingly, artful and fabricated way. Why destroy the vette then destroy it again? Why strike twice at the same scene? Who knew the H2 DNA was here? How could they know when the Patrol team had just found it themselves? Even the old adage of the criminal returning to the scene of the crime didn't fit. Another crime had been committed on the exact same spot. This time in an even more spectacular way; firing from orbit. Definitely something a lone perpetrator could not have accomplished.

No one private could afford orbital strike capabilities. Not from Earth side anyways. Space ships and shuttles just cost too much to keep and operate. Paying everything from the cost of fuel to achieve breakaway on down to the salary of every space monkey on board made space travel too pricy to go it alone. All Earth origin space capability was government and conglomerate owned. It just didn't add up in the good Chaplain's brain as he kept scanning his heads up display, tuning into Patrol comms and thinking. The H2 involvement was a given; they'd all seen the display of the pico grams sample. But why would the Sons of Lot destroy a vette and its occupants on Earth territory, which the Moon still was? The H2 certainly had the technology to be way more discrete if they wanted to rub someone out.

Captain Silvecki would almost bet there was a message in all this. What that message was and whom it was for he had no clue. Plus, he couldn't forget that someone had wanted him there on site as an expert on the H2. As his gran used to say, "If the fishing stinks, so do the fish." Silvecki's mind chewed over the limited data while the techs finished their re scan of the impact site and the surrounding area.

"Boss! I've got something," said Qwan. Trenton closed the distance. Janus could tell they went to Qwan's private frequency based on how long it was taking.

"Chaplain Silvecki. Please, join us? Comm protocol 204, gentlemen." This made their conversation private and encrypted among just the three of them. Janus put in his authorization codes.

"I completed the rescan as directed," explained Qwan, "and, no, I found no trace of the DNA we had earlier. The blast took care of that. I did find something at 19 meters out. " The file Qwan had made of the infrared scan fluttered open on Silvecki's display. "It was on a pillar 4 meters up." Qwan zoomed in on the image.

"Any idea what it might be, Janus?" asked Trenton.

Chaplain Captain Janus Silvecki was frozen to the spot. He knew that symbol. Things had just got worse.