You recall this memory as you catch a chain of radio telescopes sweep past the docking umbilical, occupying at a slightly higher orbit than the station. In the end, your own actions had proved him right. The absence of justification had brought both of you back to Sol, and a new justification made you burn one of her core planets to barren cinders.
<Solstice Overwatch…>
Your attention snaps back to Delta-36.
<…we represent forty three percent of our original cohort, dated upon arrival. Eight percent were lost due to attrition. Forty nine percent were lost over the past two months....>
<Fortunately, no single lineage has suffered total attrition.>
You nod, sharing his relief. To your right, you watch sections of your recovered crew begin to move back into the SOLISTCE for synchronization, guided by their younger clade-siblings. Memory-sharing was a deeply embedded behavioral pattern in every lineage. You were astonished that any of your crew had managed to survive this long without it.
<Identity of invading force?> You blurt.
<…Designs match imperial/triumvirate engineering templates with minor deviations. Crew is baseline human, with certain behavioral inconsistencies. Objective is extraction of ultrapure beryllium, to be shipped off-world. >
He hesitates.
<If I were to…present a guess…I would assume for the construction of macroscale optics. The very thing we once prohibited.>
<Reason for bombardment?> You query.
<Coercive measure. Manned refineries that perform worse than automated systems were bombarded and replaced. Those which met output were spared.>
<Efficient.> You comment. Delta-36 flinches.
<I…yes. It resembles something we could have implemented, had we pursued their goal.>
You knew there was truth in that – an echo of that old moral calculus your captain knew and often reviled. Your objectives were exacting. There was the crew, the ship, the directives, and very little else.
<Location of the other crew?>
He answers immediately.
<After separation, we were partitioned into several dozen sections and spread across the spinward fringe.>
His eyes flash pale amber.
<Nearest candidates are between Twelve and Twenty light years away. The most distant candidates are almost times further. Crew there will expire long before we reach them. >
<However, other members of their lineage may be closer.>
You nod. <Perhaps.>
Delta-36 hesitates again.
<There is another matter.>
<There are surviving colonists on this planet, all baseline human.>
<They were reluctant to accompany us to meet you. But they have been instrumental in our survival. They are not crew, but we have…synchronized…with them to an extent.>
<And I think we…care for them.>
A statement - true - but spoken very much like a request. You feel a sense of familiar disbelief when you see his gaze linger on the red-streaked planet sweeping below the two of you.
