It took ninety seven days before Gagarin reached the estimated location of the optical anomalies. They had been discovered decades earlier, when looking at the sky in specific areas sometimes bits of light just… moved wrong. There were many explanations suggested, most mundane, some containing new physics and the most hopeful being the distortion of space produced by faster-than-light vessels. To start with there had been thousands of optical anomaly candidates.
Primordial black holes, unlikely structures of dark matter and dark energy, one by one the anomaly candidates were explained away with conventional physics. In the end there were thirteen anomalies that no scientist on Earth nor Mars could explain.
This wasn’t the closest candidate to Earth, but it was fairly close to four other candidates. If Gagarin couldn’t find anything of interest here they would only have to wait another month or so before they had another anomaly candidate to explore. It was also in the general vicinity of Sirius, and Gagarin stopped briefly there for a reception before continuing on their journey.
This was the worst part by far. Even with the faster-than-light engines that powered the ship the transit still took so much time. Kafando stared at a tablet displaying a page from Dhalgren. This was the fifth book he had read thus far in the journey. The main character spent a dozen pages moving furniture for an unsettled woman. This was supposed to be science fiction?
Chairman Kafando felt the ship move. The air, gravity itself felt lighter, the center of gravity shifted and relaxed. He stepped out into the OIC.
“We have reached the red dwarf, chairman.”
Elden Deimos furiously tapped away at the communications console.
“What’s that?” said Kafando.
“Not sure,” said Deimos, “I think I just detected a wireless data stream. Didn’t seem like random noise.”
Deimos was another Martian in Operations gold. Like all his fellows he was very tall and thin, and he had an ashy complexion. His hair was a dark brown, but he kept it buzzed very close to his skin.
Comrade Miyamoto raised his voice.
“The radar is detecting an object about five hundred thousand kilometers starboard,” he said. He ran through scans on his console. “It’s metallic, seems to be moving in orbit of the star.”
Second Chair Lei smiled.
She said, “Could this be it? Might we finally have evidence of alien intelligence?”
Chairman Kafando said, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
Deimos said, “The datastream is gone. It might have just been an echo, maybe a wireless signal projected out of the ship and reflected off an asteroid. I’m not detecting it.”
“What about the object?”
“I’m trying to pin down the location with higher precision. I think it might have just been a sensor glitch. I can’t seem to find it anymore,” said Deimos.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” said the chairman, “What about the planets?”
Lei said, “Two of them may be habitable, the second and third planet. What do your scans say, comrade Miyamoto?”
He was one of the younger comrades in the OIC. He was thin and pale with wirey black hair. He tapped away at the astrometrics console.
“The third planet has a nitrogen/carbon dioxide based atmosphere, temperature seems unsurvivable. It’s orbit is highly elliptical. The second planet… that can’t be right,” said Miyamoto.
Kafando and Lei stepped up behind Miyamoto and stared at his console.
The console said the planet had a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, which itself would be unusual for a planet in such close proximity to a red dwarf. It’s orbit was extremely close to the star and yet it was not tidally locked, it had a rotation of about twenty-two hours. It seemed for the most part habitable, but also buried under a dense black carbon fog.
“Surface temperatures appear to be scarcely above zero celsius,” said Miyamoto. “And there’s areas of ionizing radiation, out of control radiation, worse than anything seen on Earth.”
“Could that be produced by some natural process?” said Kafando.
“At that distance?” said Lei, “The star could easily bombard it’s nearby neighbors with radiation, but this looks a lot like the product of nuclear fission, and a lot of it.”
“This isn’t the evidence of intelligent alien life I was hoping for,” the chairman said. “Place us in orbit, Lei, you’re in charge. I’m gonna go prepare an away team.”
“Chairman, you can’t do this,” said Lei, “It’s not safe.”
He ignored her. He made his way through the ship to the deck fourteen shuttle bay. Logistics, the Operations sub-team, was already prepping a shuttle for launch. It wasn’t the evidence of intelligence he had hoped for, but it was evidence of intelligence. The crew stared at him quizically as he rushed through the hallways.
“You’re the chairman of the ship. You can’t just go down to a radiation blasted planet,” said Lei.
He turned to face her.
“Lei, you’re right of course,” said Kafando, “It’s dangerous. I have a responsibility to our comrades. But I need this. I promise I won’t get in too much trouble.”
Lei shook her head and said, “I’ll be in the operations center.”
Finally, he reached the shuttle bay. Two engineering comrades were putting the finishing touches on the Shakur as he stepped into the room. Doctor Lawrence from medical, Al Rahman from geology, and Piquot from biology loaded boxes into the sturdy craft.
The normal shuttles were boxier than the ones that had ferried the last of the crew to Gagarin from Earth. They had two large chemical boosters on the bottom, and a single large hatch at the back, which was spun open with a little gantry platform for the load in. The sides were magnetically locked to a rail system that led back toward the portal out to space.
They were joined soon after by Dio, the shuttle pilot.
“Chairman,” he said, and nodded. He was already in his pilot uniform, a little heavier than the normal uniforms, but not as heavy as the environment suits.
While nominally at least Chairman Kafando was a member of Safety, he wasn’t there in a Safety capacity. The mission still needed a Safety representative. The door slid open and Drummond stepped into the shuttle bay.
“You?” said Kafando, “No, you can’t come along for this.”
Lucy jolted at the sight of Kafando.
She said, “You’re coming on this mission?”
“My expertise seems useful,” said Chairman Kafando. “I’m not having this conversation again. You can’t come along on this mission, it’s too dangerous.”
“Actually, comrade,” Lucy said, “It’s too dangerous, that’s why I have to go on this mission. You know my personnel file. How many other safety crew are as qualified as I am? And what exactly is your expertise in this context? Expect to run into any billionaires on this planet?”
“That’s beside the point. I wasn’t happy when I saw your name in the personnel files in the first place,” said Kafando.
“You’re not the boss of the ship. You didn’t get to unilaterally decide who should be on Earth’s first mission so far from our home. Everyone on the crew is the best of the best, and I’m the best of the best of the best, at least when it comes to safety organizing,” said Lucy.
“I’m sorry,” said Kafando, “You’re right. You know I worry about you. I would just rather Serpen or one of the rest would be out there endangering themself.”
He climbed into the Shakur and strapped himself into one of the seats. Lawrence, Al Rahman and Piquot shot a look to each other, then shrugged. They strapped themselves into their seats. Dio and Drummond took the Pilot and Tactical consoles at the front.
The Engineering and Logistics crew still in the shuttle bay made their way out of the room and locked the door behind themselves. The rolling door out to space rolled upward and opened the room to the vacuum.
The Assata Shakur hummed. The air throbbed, then suddenly it shot out along the rails. The rockets fired once it was clear of Gagarin. It ran a wide circle around the outside of the planet.
“Where should we take her down?” said Dio.
Al Rahman said, “Our scanners can’t penetrate the thick smog cover. I really hate to suggest this, but we should duck under the clouds and survey areas near the largest radiometric anomalies.”
“All the shuttles have radiation shielding,” said Lucy, “Environment suits do too, but it’s not as effective. If we leave the shuttle we’ll need a course of antirads. Shouldn’t be too bad, though.”
“Chairman, what should we do?” said Dio.
“We should listen to our scientists,” said Kafando, “I think Al Rahman gave a considered argument. The one thing I would note is that we should prioritize the sun-lit side of the planet. The shuttle scanners are much more limited than Gagarin’s, and maybe we could actually see something.”
The Shakur slid into the atmosphere gently and under the dense cloud cover.
The planet was dominated by the ruins of great forests. They were fairly unnerving in that the trees stood in long, straight queues and evenly spaced. The vegetation had long since perished, but the naked skeletons of trees remained sprawled all around, under a blanket of white powder. They weren’t sure if it was snow or ash.
“This is fascinating,” said Piquot, “There’s so much life on this planet, or there was. It should be very difficult for life to develop near a red dwarf like this. I’m not sure exactly how it evolved here, but it indicates to me some level of geo-forming.”
The shuttle approached the closest radiometric anomaly. From a distance the crew saw small cubic shapes, and as they approached it was unmistakable. It was hard to tell exactly what the structures looked like before, but they were clearly built by intelligent hands. Most of them were completely collapsed but left behind hints of structure. Concrete walls crumbled with rebar reaching to the sky, crushed brick, shattered glass.
The inside of the Shakur was ghostly silent. No one dared say a thing as they passed over the ruined city. This was the first time human beings had discovered concrete evidence of alien intelligence, and it had destroyed itself.
Finally, after they traveled over one of the sides of the city to the other Piquot pulled out his tablet.
“I’m going to bring up the thermoptic scanners,” said Piquot. “Maybe there’s still something alive down there.”
The images on his tablet were all gray and blue. No object was more than two degrees warmer than the surrounding area.
“Check for radio signals. Maybe there’s someone in hiding,” said Kafando.
That also returned no results.
The Shakur circled back over the densest part of the radiometric anomaly. It looked like a vast, circular blast zone. The structures near it were all collapsed completely, without so much as a twig raising into the sky above it. It was hundreds of meters before any structure at all had enough confidence to remain standing.
“The evidence,” said Piquot, “Indicates the detonation of a fission nuclear device.”
The chairman grimaced.
“We should survey another of the radiometric anomalies,” he said.
And the Shakur continued east. The second radiometric anomaly was much the same. The architecture was more recognizable. The buildings that remained were huge concrete slabs, close to the ground, but a few of them were collapsed in on themselves, revealing they were recessed deeply into the ground.
As they examined the ruins there was a curious question. Both towns were built on the side of mountains in the middle of those curiously uniform forests. The cities themselves seemed at least somewhat technologically developed, but likewise the food infrastructure needed to support cities of this size were not apparent. Perhaps the other side of the planet was the world’s bread basket, or perhaps the towns were colonies, or or they were fed from bioreactor factories built underground.
The second town was much the same as the first they surveyed. The crater for this one was carved into what appeared to be an industrial zone against a mountain. They took the Shakur to yet another radiometric anomaly. Another town, another nuclear bomb.
Lucy said, “I’m not sure how much good we’re doing circling around hundreds of meters above this tomb. I think we’ve learned enough that we can put together a targeted away team later that can safely explore the surface closer up, but with better safety equipment.”
Chairman Kafando said, “Let’s do one last pass around the outside of the city. I’m not ready to leave. This feels very heavy.”
Automatically, Piquot continued his thermoptic scan.
“That’s curious,” he said.
“What?” said Lucy.
“There’s a source of heat. There’s a building, it appears about ten degrees warmer than the surrounding area.”
The Shakur floated toward the structure. It was a small, concrete building, clearly armored against what eventually indeed happened. Half a kilometer away was a toppled rocket, collapsed in the direction of the concrete building. A large truck-like vehicle was parked in front.
From closer to the ground they could see everything much more clearly. A metal fence surrounded the concrete building, but it had been partially torn down. There were masses of bodies huddled haphazardly surrounding the building on all sides. There was a hill between the collapsed rocket and the building that seemed like the best place to put down.
Lei stared at the astrometrics display.
“The scans are complete,” said comrade Miyamoto. “It appears there are at least a half dozen small metal objects orbiting the planet. They resemble communications satellites from Earth, but they have been disabled, they’re releasing no electromagnetic data. There also appear to be two larger structures.”
“What do the larger structures do?” said Lei.
“We can’t be sure,” said Miyamoto.
He brought up images of them on the console. The first was a large, boxy greebled mass. It was covered in uneven metal plates with thick arms spread out. One of the arms held a huge rectangular structure. A tooltip on the readout explained that the interior of this appeared to be exposed to vacuum.
The other structure appeared to be the product of an entirely different technology. The metal plates that made it up were sleek and smooth. There was a small dome at one side, one that still contained atmosphere, but the temperature was extremely low, below the freezing point of water.
It was otherwise a long, thin dagger-like structure. It also had arms, but smaller ones. Chemical residue on the surface indicated that it had been exposed to rocket propellant of some sort. It’s surface also indicated elevated levels of ionizing radiation.
“Well,” said Lei, “I would be really interested in the geological process that created these completely natural satellites.”
Deimos had minimized his comms display and had brought up scans of the satellites.
“The computer cores on these appear to have been destroyed with explosives built into themselves,” he said, “Whoever occupied the planet didn’t want someone to get access to their technology.”
“Deimos,” said Lei, “Get the department chairs up here. We need to have a conference.”
Kafando, Drummond, Lawrence, Al Rahman and Piquot got into their environment suits. Dio remained at the pilot’s station. The environment suits were closely fitted. The interior was lined with a silver fabric and the exterior had a matte finish. The back of the torso held a large backpack with life support functions, as well as some limited computer support. The front held a harness that contained tools, many of which wirelessly connected to the computer. The helmet was armored heavily on the back, with a light on the top and hardened acrylic glass window in the front. They were covered in a matte white fabric with highlights matching their division color.
They approached the rear exit of the Shakur. The air lock opened. Lawrence, Al Rahman and Piquot stared at Kafando. Finally he shrugged and stepped out onto the surface. They were about a hundred meters give or take away from the concrete structure. The area between where they landed and the structure was a field of frost, nothing rose up out of the ground until the metal fence.
They approached the fence. It had been torn haphazardly with hand tools. Bits of metal jutted out at sharp angles, but most of the fence had been torn down. They avoided the jagged bits and continued closer.
Just beyond that they found the first bodies. If you didn’t look too closely you could tell yourself they were just drifts of that ashy snow, but any close observation revealed the truth. They looked roughly human. They were not dressed for extreme cold. Their garments appeared frail and incapable of holding much heat in. It was hard to tell what color they were supposed to be, their skin was discolored chaulk gray, green, red and black.
Doctor Lawrence ran a device over one of the bodies. She shuddered.
“What is it?” asked Kafando.
“One point eight meters tall on average, two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes. They’re almost but not quite human. The skull is definitely different, their foreheads… very unusual. Their organs are oriented very similarly in the torso,” she said.
The piles of ash that covered the bodies grew more and more frequent the closer to the building they got. Once they were twenty meters away or so the bodies were piled over each other, three or four bodies high, with their arms knotted around each other.
To get closer, the crew had to climb through the mass of corpses. Doctor Lawrence stayed two steps behind the rest. She couldn’t handle getting any closer.
They stepped around the bodies as best they could. At least they all appeared to be adults. The closer they got, the more they had to step directly over one body.
The edge of the crowd formed a kind of crater, this area had the most bodies piled by far, at least four bodies high all around. Kafando couldn’t get any closer without climbing. He stopped and turned around.
“Comrades,” he said, “This isn’t what I had hoped for. All of these people once lived and breathed, they must have had lives just as we do, and yet this horror has descended on all of them. I don’t know what happened on this planet, but it’s important we figure out their story, find otu who they were and why they died here.”
He continued, “I understand this is likely traumatizing for some of you, I’m deeply sorry to ask this, and it’s all right if you cannot, but I’m going to climb over these bodies and get inside that building.”
Doctor Lawrence shook her head.
Lucy climbed over the bodies as if they weren’t even there. She was the first over the crater. Beyond it, there were a few bodies, but they were facing the other direction. It seemed the front line had turned around when their moment came.
The front door was locked, no surprise there. Lucy walked around the side of the building, then came back.
By then, Kafando, Al Rahman and Piquot had reached the front of the building.
“There’s a small window around this side,” said Lucy. “I’m gonna try and get inside.”
She pulled a hammer out of the tool vest on her front and she raised it high, then slammed it down on the window. It bounced off harmlessly. Maybe it left a small scratch, nothing else.
“That was probably too much to hope for,” she said.
Next, she pulled the stunner out of her tool vest and calibrated it. This was a tool for crowd control, it was designed to fire out a plasma jacket that disrupted human neurological signals. A small blast would be painful, a modest blast would render a target unconscious.
Lucy set the stunner to fire out a plasma jacket with all of its contained energy. She stood back five meters, pointed it at the window, and fired.
The sky lit up blindingly bright. A shockwave and wave of heat pushed her back, and even further away Kafando, Al Rahman and Piquot felt it. The window was gone, along with a section of the wall around it.
Lucy shot a thumbs up to her comrades.
She disappeared inside the building. Kafando, Al Rahman and Piquot waited outside by the front door. Finally, after about two minutes, the door creaked open.
“I think,” said Lucy, “This is some kind of command center. I haven’t gotten too deep inside, but it still seems pretty frozen over. There might be something we’ll find useful deeper inside, though.”
As Piquot stepped inside the building he swept a sensor around, it provided information in a heads-up-display in his environment suit.
“It looks like,” he said, “There’s a source of heat deeper inside.”
Al Rahman, with his own sensor in hand, said, “I’m picking up electromagnetic signals. Not, like, radio signals, transmissions, but the kind of interference electronics throw off.”
Together they made their way through the building. It was still mostly frosted over. The only light inside was cast by dim amber bulbs. There were a few corpses inside, mostly piled against doors panicking, but they didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular.
Finally, they reached a large chamber. This seemed to be some kind of central command. There were a large amount of consoles dotted through the room, and two large mainframes in the back. The computers throbbed with heat. The area immediately surrounding them was devoid of frost, although the rest of the room was still blanketed in it. The roof had a large skylight that a dull gray light shone through.
There was a single corpse laying on the ground. It wore a jacket of some sort with small squarish decorations in crystal and he held a tool of some sort in his hand, a handle with a pipe. He had a large hole in the side of his head.
“This is it,” said Al Rahman. “They’re being maintained by something further underground. Radiometric scans indicate that there’s another, smaller, anomaly underground, so I would expect they’re running off atomic batteries?”
Kafando stepped up to a console and touched the screen. It snapped to life. It showed an interface that he couldn’t understand, with what appeared to be letters he couldn’t identify.
“Try to find data storage of some sort,” said Kafando. “Maybe Albert can interpret the data inside.”
Al Rahman and Piquot scanned around the room and finally settled on a small box hooked up between the mainframes.
“There’s a lot of coherent data inside this box,” said Al Rahman, “It appears similar to ancient flash storage, if I had to make a guess. This is it.”
Piquot nodded.
Kafando said, “Pick up the data and let’s get the hell out of here.”
Lucy squatted close by the one corpse and examined it closely. She hadn’t gotten the best look at the aliens outside, but this one was different. His skin was close to an olive complexion on Earth, and his cheekbones and nose seemed different.
Al Rahman and Piquot fumbled with the box, but couldn’t disconnect it from the mainframes.
Lucy stood up with a jolt. She pulled out a hammer, then swung the prying end into the edge of the box. Once inside the box she pried the side open. She peeled the sheet metal back and revealed smaller boxes snapped onto an array. Al Rahman and Piquot could disconnect these easily enough and stuff them in their tool vest.
They made their way back out of the concrete building.
Outside, they found Doctor Lawrence sitting just outside the fence, just beyond where the bodies began to pile up.
Kafando offered her a hand and helped her to her feet.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m supposed to be the best of the best, a big damn hero to the whole world. But I got here and saw all these people. It got to me.”
Kafando patted her on the shoulder. They walked a little behind the rest of the away team.
“You are the best of the best. I actually kind of think it’s a bad thing that when I walk into a horrible situation and, like, my brain snaps into attention and I’m focused on the task at hand. I wish I could let myself feel all the bad things,” said Kafando.
“I have been in horrors before,” said Doctor Lawrence, “Cyclone Barbaros. I was part of the emergency team that provided aid after that.”
Thus far, the last great mega cyclone. It was bad, because it had been twenty years since the last category 5 cyclone. The people who lived on the coast didn’t remember how bad it was just a couple decades earlier, so they weren’t ready.
“I was sent to Accra, in Ghana,” she said. “So many people, buildings toppled, rubble everywhere, but at least then many of them were still alive. There was still something positive to do. I don’t know how many lives I saved that day. I was running around doing triage, stabilizing people pulled out of rubble.”
“I spent some time there when I was young,” said Kafando. “The safety training center I studied at was just outside there, before I got stuck on Citadel duty. It’s been different since Barbaros, but it’s still there. You did a lot of good.”
Doctor Lawrence grimaced.
“I hope so,” she said.
The department chairs waited in the conference room nervously. Science Chair Grekkel fiddled around with the main display, bringing up new windows with all the discoveries they had made since reaching this planet. Acting Safety Chair Aoki eyed the map of radiometric anomalies. Medical Chair Lewis scrolled back and forth through pages of information about the aliens they had discovered. They were still waiting for the chairman, and Lei was still in the OIC next door.
The door into the hall slid open and Kafando stomped in. He still had most of his EV suit on. His eyes looked more alert and active than any of them had seen before.
“Comrades,” he said, “Welcome.”
Safety Chair Aoki said, “Hope you enjoyed your little adventure. The rest of us were working.”
Kafando shrugged, “I’m sorry, you’re right of course, I shouldn’t have indulged myself like that. But please, let’s share what we have learned and figure out what we should do moving forward.”
Science Chair Grekkel brought up images of the two space stations on the main screen. They were a tall middle aged Martian with pale, almost blue skin and very rigid posture.
“We discovered several satellites while you were down on the planet,” they said, “So far we have discovered about two dozen satellites in decaying orbits, and the orbits have been decaying for about eighteen months. Also, we have discovered these two space stations.”
Kafando pointed at the dagger shaped station.
“Do we know what they did? What was their purpose?”
“That one,” said Grekkel, “Appears to have been a weapons platform. The metal on the surface of the arms have been exposed to chemical propellants and have been exposed to beta decay. There is an enclosed atmospheric area, although we have no indications of current habitation.”
“Likely the source of the fission weapons that hit the planet,” said Aoki.
“The other space station appears to be some kind of cargo depot,” said Operations Chair Varma.
“So this is a colony for some other civilization,” said Kafando.
“There is circumstantial evidence that this is not a naturally habitable planet,” said Grekkel, “It should be tidally locked with it’s host star, it’s warmer than it aught to have been, or at least it was until nuclear dust was thrown up across the planet, it should be hit with radiation storms too intense for biological beings to survive long enough to evolve. We have not found evidence of what technology could have done this.”
“Chemical propellant, fission weapons,” said Kafando, “That seems scarcely more advanced than our own technology, and yet they can geoform planets?”
Grekkel shrugged.
“Well,” said Medical Chair Lewis, “I do have another anomaly that may be related to that. We have been doing over the footage taken from your EV suits down on the planet. The alien beings have two different configurations of differences from humans. The overall shape of the skulls of the aliens outside the base is different from the aliens inside the base. Look at their cheekbones and noses, versus the foreheads on the aliens outside.”
“What I’m getting from all of this is that we should try and ascertain where these aliens came from. They clearly didn’t evolve on this planet. Maybe there’s more of them somewhere, hopefully nearby. And maybe they got the geoforming technology from some other third party,” said Kafando.
Grekkel said, “There is still information to be gleamed from the planet here. While it appears they have destroyed much of their computer infrastructure we may still be able to pick some of their technology apart. We could be moving into a dangerous situation. We should also obtain biological samples from the two configurations of aliens down on the planet. We can’t just assume they’re two species, maybe they have very different sexual dimorphism than humans.”
Acting Engineering Chair Galvin was a round red faced old woman. She said, “We should be careful. If we end up meeting these aliens they might see our obtaining samples as disrespecting their dead. I think I agree with the chairman. Perhaps we should inspect one of the satellites and do a quick away team to one of the space stations. We’ll move our mission forward by, well, moving forward. Finding a new destination and hoping there’s survivors there.”
Kafando said, “We have two proposals, then. Should we prioritize figuring out where these aliens came from and try to meet living aliens or should we remain here and collect further data?”
Aoki and Grekkel voted to remain, and were overruled by the rest.
Second Chair Lei placed the alien flash memory on a computer pad. This was the air gap room. The computer core in here could run a temporary instance of Albert.
A trap door opened up in the computer pad and a little arm slid out of it. Metal fingers snapped into place gripping the flash memory in what appeared to be it’s contact points.
“So,” said Xiu, “What’s in there?”
“Gimme a second,” said Albert, “I’m checking it out now. First I’m testing to figure out what each of these contacts does, checking which ones are for power, which are for data. There, I’ve found it.”
“Well?” said Xiu.
“Ones and zeroes,” said Albert, “A lot of them. There’s data that looks like unencrypted text, but I can’t parse the language. Some data that might be images. And this, I think I’ve found some telemetry data. It’s coordinate points in three dimensional space. I need to figure out the base number system… interesting, it appears to be base ten. There’s paths in it.”
Xiu said, “That’s exactly what we’re looking for. Compare the data points to local stellar objects.”
“The relative positions of these data points match the relative positions of the largest massive objects in the area, stars and major planets. The path data seems to indicate journeys between this planet and a planet the next star over, just under a light year away, a yellow dwarf,” said Albert. “Fascinating.”
“Give me the coordinates to that star system, then analyze the data in the flash memory in depth,” said Xiu. “I have to go to the command center and give Chairman Kafando our next destination. “Gladly,” said the instance of the ship’s computer.