You sit in in your chair on the bridge of the Night Horse and watch the helmet camera feeds from your midshipmen, the shuttle's exterior sensors, the two eggheads, and the automaton crew. So far there isn't much visible. The three large habitation domes are dark and cracked. The remains of irrigation and hydroponics greenhouses litter the surrounding area for dozens to hundreds of meters depending on the direction. Also present is a cleared area marked by a large number of stone cairns in orderly rows.

“Midshipman Engel to Night Horse, I'm not seeing a shuttle pad anywhere down here. Where do you want us to land?”

“Midshipman Huckle has the shuttle controls so it's his call. I'm seeing the same feeds you are from the sensors.”

“Aff Sir.”

You lean back as a dark though strikes. The cairns could well be graves. You start the Night Horse's computers to counting them and pull up the crew and passenger manifests for the SES Robert Harbird and SES Ann Child. Running a quick tally you come to one thousand forty one people between the two ships. Eight minutes later the computers return a tally of seven hundred and seventy nine cairns. Doing some quick mental math, and then checking with a calculator, that comes to two hundred and sixty two people not accounted for out of the original colonization wave.

“Night Horse to shuttle. Are their any signs of life down there?”

“Nothing yet Sir. The habitation domes do a good job of blocking sensors though, so there may still be people alive inside of one or more of them. No sign of electrical power though.”

“Understood shuttle. Watch yourselves out there.”

“Aff Sir. We're setting down just outside the cairn field. Radiation counters are showing uncomfortably high levels. Suits are already sealed.”

“Do you think the eggheads are capable of setting up a decontamination station for the shuttle and yourselves on their own or will I need to supervise them?”

“Midshipman Huckle here Sir. I've already set a work crew to the task in the shuttle hold. Touchdown in two minutes.”

“Acknowledged shuttle. Keep your feeds on just in case.”

“Aye aye Sir. Touchdown. Setting hatches to make the cargo bay into an air lock. Disembarkation in nine minutes.”

“Good luck away team. May the Gods Below be with you in this place.”

“And with you Sir.”

You lean back in your captain's chair and watch the feeds. An uneasy feeling creeps up your back but you ruthlessly shove it back down. The cairn field is almost certainly a grave site but you are no stranger to death given your service to the Star Empire. As the automatons fan out, followed by the eggheads and your two Midshipmen, the tread of their feet kicks up a fine dust. You blink and squint, for the briefest moment mistaking it for a low rolling fog, but it's just a cloud of dust.

“Movement. Forty five meters directly ahead.”

Midshipman Huckle must have spotted something, but you didn't see anything. The automatons stop and turn their sensor-cluster heads back and forth to scan the area. A long moment later they resume their forward march.

“False contact. Looked like a face in the dust.”

“Neg, not entirely a false contact. Look there. At the stone atop that cairn.”

“I see it. Carved stone, skull form, non human, possibly cervid. Looks like stumps of mental 'antlers' too. Who the hell would put that as a grave marker? And why atop that cairn?”

“The cairn is larger then the others too. A mass burial perhaps? The gap to the others is excessive by comparison. Ten meters instead of the usual two or so.”

“Strange and a half. Think the scanners will have any luck picking out remains under the stones?”

“Neg. Not our hand held units. The orbital ones could but lack the resolution to identify bone from thin, long stone. Marking it on the map and moving on. Egghead two: image the skull from all visible sides. Send the resultant imagery up to the Night Horse for evaluation. Then rejoin the group.”

You study the imagery as it comes in but the symbolism of the the skull is lost to you. Your midshipmen are right though, if the cairn field is a burial ground (and you can think of nothing else for it to be) then why is this one cairn set apart from the others? Why a mass grave when all the others are individual sized? And why mark it with a non human skull? The only reason you can think of is that there is something about the people buried there that sets them apart from the others but you can't think of what that might be.

“Away team to Night Horse, Midshipman Engel speaking. We are approaching the first of the three habitation domes. Main access way is wide open, no lights are on... it appears no one is home. Not unexpected but still disquieting. Deploying a signal relay just in case.”

“Understood away team. Proceed at your own pace.”

“Aff, proceeding. Habitation dome is configure for purely residential usage. High density apartment blocks. I'm familiar with this old pattern, or at least it's close cousins, from Dholma. They are still used for temporary workers quarters out away from town. Seasonal quarters, in effect, for fields worked ion a given season. Sixty beds to an apartment block, six blocks to a habitation dome... One thousand eighty beds total.”

“Night Horse here. The official headcount for the colony ships, passengers and crew both, was one thousand forty one. Not much room to spare even if officers and colony leaders got separate quarters.”

“Aff Sir, my math comes out the same. It would certainly explain the exterior fields and hydroponics installation.”

“Got some names carved into door plates here. Might be acid-etched, might be laser carved, I can't tell for sure. Plenty of age and wear.”

“Aff. Begin grabbing imagery and we can compare it to the old manifests.”

“Can do, but a lot of it is just initials. G. Grisom, E. White, R.B. Chafee, G. Dobrovolsky, V. Patsayev, V. Volokov... at least two ethnic groups here going by the names. Think that may have contributed to anything?”

“It is possible but we can't know for sure without records or recordings. The central spire building looks to be a data archive. The old fail safe backups might have something but we will need to get them back to the Night Horse and power to know for sure.”

“Right, I'll leave egghead one here to direct the work party in gathering names and mapping this place while we head over there. Oh, hey, I've got an open door here. Remains of a bed, stuffed dog toy resting on the pillow, pink sheets. Reminds me of Ava's cot back home. Same dog toy and everything. Weird.”

“Contact, eleven on the clock, high. Third floor window, third one from the left. Motion and a flickering blue light.”

“Eyes on. Looks like an old holo projector with a bad flicker. Where in the names of the Gods Below did the power come from? And why did it activate now?”

“Unknown. Engel to Night Horse, requesting rules of engagement.”

“Defensive only away team.”

“Aff, rules of engagement are defensive only, aye aye Sir. Moving to investigate.”

It is a tense ten minutes as your Midshipmen advance to the room where the flickering light is coming from. Aside from their foot steps, and those of the automatons, the habitation dome is dead silent. Midshipman Huckle is the first one to the door. He eases it open with a boot to reveal a battered one room apartment. An overturned cot lies in the corner and a heavy electrical cable runs to an old holographic projector on the floor. Rising out of the projector is a flickering, wavering silhouette of a male human in a very old pattern of void suit. It turns to face the door but the holographic projector sparks, flickers, and dies with a puff of blue smoke.

“That didn't look scripted.”

“Aff. Someone was controlling that projector. Where does the cable lead?”

“Directly into the wall. What the hell is going on here?”