The Lost Colony Series: Omnibus Edition: All Four Volumes in One by Andrew C Broderick

Author:Andrew C Broderick [Broderick, Andrew C]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2017-01-07T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Present Time

“The task we have before us is nothing short of monumental,” Captain Weber said. The night had brought cooler temperatures to Serenity Bay, and the morning was still overcast. The eighteen men and women stood in a circle in Newton Square, at the head of Main Street. “Close inspection of their landing site shows that the ground was blasted by some extremely powerful engines. Nandi flew over the site with a drone earlier, and these engines were arranged in a circle some fifty to sixty meters across. No way to tell how tall their ship was, of course, but from that measurement we know it’s in the same class as Hercules and Atlas. We’re not talking about a flying city, we don’t think, but we’ve no idea where they went. It could be somewhere else in Tectonia, or it could be dozens of light years away. The reason I think we shouldn’t rule out other points on Tectonia is that if they did live here one good way to throw us off the scent would be to use a spaceship instead of leaving tracks over land, but that’s the least likely scenario.”

“If they’re in space, they can’t be that far away,” Haruka said. “Else they wouldn’t have known we were here and been able to pounce in the exact time period between Hercules arriving and having her tanks refilled enough to evacuate.”

“I was thinking along the same lines,” Weber said. “They somehow have eyes on Epsilon, even if they don’t live here, and were watching our activities over the years. They deduced that we were going to have a human presence here, not just robots, and they were ready.”

“Which means they know we’re here, too,” Michael said.

“Yes it does. There’s nothing we can do about that. It’s a risk we take, since we, voluntarily, jumped into the same situation the CM-1 crew found themselves in. I do think we ought to stay on Atlas whenever we’re not actively searching, and we also should post a watch twenty-four seven. Atlas’ tanks are full, so we can leave with as little as a half hour’s notice.”

“Captain, what if we used our presence here to draw them out somehow?” Grace said. “Hope they come after us, and be ready for them? Assuming they don’t blast us with orbital or super-long-range weapons, we could see where they came from and maybe follow them back to their base.”

“That’s good thinking. So good in fact, that I don’t think we should venture more than an hour from the ship. We have to explore, of course, but we should balance it with the very real possibility that we might have to leave in a hurry, either to escape or to pursue. What range would that give us with the vee-tols, Jake?”

“Maybe 125 kilometers round trip, Sir.”

“I suggest we do new orbital surveys of the whole of Tectonia too,” Grace said.

“I agree, Grace. You take charge of it.”

Her face lit up. “Yes, Sir. I’ve always wanted to program a fleet of orbiters to do a large-scale survey.

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