266 Squadron (The Hunter Imperium Book 11) by Timothy Ellis

Author:Timothy Ellis [Ellis, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-25T22:00:00+00:00

Twenty Seven

We found an archeological team on Giant Prime.

The Trixone had gone up the middle of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm, wiping out everything they found on their way to doing the same in Giant space. The Rawtenuga had come down the core side of the Arm, and that corridor of space was also devoid of intelligent life, and still separated, so when the Renshasa finally started exploring from the Sagittarius Arm, they’d find a limit to how far they could go if they went the same way their Rawtenuga cousins had gone.

We went up the outside of the Arm, just in case the Giants had found a way down the Arm where the Trixone hadn’t been. It took us two weeks of very fast surveying, and all we found were a few emergent civilizations, none of which were within centuries of space travel. All the same, we left comnavsats along that spine, so the area could be monitored.

The squadron had settled into a mixture of exploration mode and the freedom to simply fly. We did flybys of habitable worlds ourselves, and left the outer system exploration to the drones.

It was a huge counterpoint to when the squadron had started in the mercenary world. Then, we’d been doing regular combat missions, and life had been a constant risk. Now, there was no threat at all, although we remained alert for possibilities each time we entered a new system. But this spine had no space dwelling species of any kind, and the only threat flying around was us.

The AIs continued exploring while we ate dinner together, watched entertainments as a group, and bonded as a team. Jones had started our change of clothing, by appearing on day two of exploration, with his suit emulating our original flight suits. No-one said a thing, but during the day we all changed as well. Now it was our unofficial uniform, and in the evenings, we wore belt suit based civvies. The only insignia evident on anyone, was of being an AI. And I’d told them all they didn’t need to. They still did though.

The archeologists didn’t have a lot we could use. The Giants had been very efficiently wiped out, leaving behind only destroyed cities, and wrecked ships. The Trixone had left a lot of ships on the ground as well, and these were in better shape, relatively speaking, for wrecks. But none of them from either species had functional computer systems, or even intact databases.

There was nothing left of whatever society the Giants had once had, on any of their planets. Their destruction had occurred long enough before that no intact bodies had survived, even though they used cemeteries the same as we had on old Earth. Plenty of bones, but nothing to tell us exactly what they looked like.

It took another week to find the jump point heading further up the Arm. The spine we’d followed to get here had ended by looping around into Giant space. The jump point out of their space

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