Recon

Klaas ran from tree to tree keeping low to the ground and tracing the lines of rocks till he reached a crumbling brick wall which Quinn was crouching behind. Wherever the Firefly had landed, the area was obviously abandoned, which made Klass feel much safer. If there was no-one around to see the crash landing, then there was no-one to point them out.

“Anyone around ?” Klaas asked and Quinn studied an unusual yellow and black striped recorder.

Quinn looked up quite concerned. “Well done, odd isn’t it ?”

“Why odd, just looks run down. Lucky if you ask me.” Klass remarked.

“There is no one around for several kilometres and something is disrupting my tricorder and have you felt the ground or looked at the trees.”

“A bomb ?”

“When you get back, have them check out the air for any trace of radiation or biological weapons, looks like it has faded but we may still be at risk”

“Right. You found anything of use near the ship ?”

“Nothing natural and these buildings look very old, not like a warp civilisation. Maybe from a pre-warp war, few planets have civil wars once they are space-faring.”

“What about that ship, the Black Akira ?”

“Last I heard they dropped it, could be any number of people who picked it up again. Intelligence, Section 31. The President seems keen on improving his shadow weight.”

“The symbol on the hull looked kind of familiar, know anything about that ?”

“Looks similar to something I saw once, just speculation, but we may be in deeper trouble than we first thought. You best get back to the ship, get a scout party prepared, we need to find an urban centre.”

As Klaas turned and ran back to the ship Quinn noticed some rolled up paper in between the bricks of the wall. He pulled it out and saw there were a few paragraphs of symbols written on it in a crooked fashion. He moved the tricorder over it and a translation popped up on the screen.

They say the Northern continents were behind the attacks, they killed the President and the visitors. If we strike at the North’s communes then they say they will leave us. They should never have come, they started this.

As Quinn got back to the Firefly, Klaas was already in deep conversation in Captain Stryker.

“So did you find anything else after I left ?” Klaas asked.

“I found this.” Quinn replied, showing both of them the piece of paper and then the translation on the tricorder.

“So it looks like there was a war of some kind, started by an assassination.” Jack remarked. “That might explain some of the sensor reading we got during our landing and the reason the atmosphere is filled with Kelbonite, especially if someone was using it to create weapons or prevent someone sending a signal off-world.”

“Are we safe ?” Klaas enquired.

“I think so, most of it appears to be in the upper atmosphere, almost as if someone wanted the whole planet shielded from sensors.” Jack remarked. “I’ll get T’Pek to give you both a medical scan.”

“So what else did you get from the scans ?” Quinn asked.

“From what we can tell, there are about a dozen small settlements in the area, the nearest is about twenty kilometres north. We picked up no major energy signatures in any of these areas, which might suggest that what we are dealing with is a post-apocalyptic society.”

“Then you think that there was a war here !” Klass remarked.

“A world war, something akin to WW3 on Earth.” Jack replied. “And if that is true, then this planet may no longer be a warp capable society, which means that we could be here for a long time.”