both are tempting....

 

Prompt 633

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The Machine

 

Lt. Geiger's squad of Marines sat in their briefing room of the transport Quantico. In peace time, Alliance soldiers pulled all sorts of duties and this appeared to be no different. When there was something difficult, dangerous and probably deadly afoot, that is when they call the Marines.

 

The twelve men of his squad were neatly arrayed in the chairs. The other five squads of the platoon were all sitting together, looking smart, perfectly on time and wondering what was going on.

 

Geiger looked at his tablet computer and saw that Captain Gearing had sent a message to his squad leaders: "Civilians: what can you do?"

 

Everyone seemed to get the message at the same time. There was a collective sigh.

 

Marines began to do all manner of tasks on their tablet computers. Given a spare minute or two, they would use it for all it was worth.

 

Seven minutes late, Captain Gearing entered the room followed by three other men in in the uniforms of the Alliance Scout Service.

 

Geiger stifled a chuckle. Not all the Marines did. The Alliance Scout Service had an unfortunate acronym but, it suited them rather well in Geiger's experience. The few Scouts that he had met weren't that impressive.

 

The Scouts, as they were more politely called, pulled long, deep missions into unexplored parts of the galaxy charting unexplored space. They were all science and tech types with limited social skills that made them loads of fun at parties. Their small science ships jumped from system to system cataloging, charting and mapping everything their sensors could light up.

 

Gearing said, "Gentlemen, this is going to be a background briefing. This information is all classified. You'll soon discover why. We're about to pull some hazardous missions and you need to know where we're going and what we are going to do once we get there. To get us started, this is Master Scout Zimmerman."

 

Zimmerman was an elderly gentleman wearing the white uniform of the Scout Service with four red pips on his shoulder. Gearing's eyebrows arched as that indicated the equivalent rank of a Rear Admiral in the Fleet.  Zimmerman made a few key strokes on his computer pad and a holographic star display.

 

He began, "For the last three years, the Scout service has been working its way core-ward along these four sectors: 921, 922, 923 and 924. We've cataloged something on the order of twelve thousand star systems. Our crews are professional and experienced and when we lose two of them in the same general area, we take notice. Here in sector 922 we began to find artifacts of an advanced civilization. As we went deeper into the sector, we have found the wreckage of another extinct civilization. This one is big, advanced and not nearly as old as the Sagitta ruins we discovered sixty years ago. From here  am going to turn over the description of the civilization to Dr. Ives."

 

An older female senior Scout traded places with Zimmerman and began speaking, "I am Specialist Sloan. I've been working on the ruins of the Empire for the last year and a half. I call it the Empire because from what I've seen, it appears to fit. This civilization appears to be related to humans."

 

At that, almost everyone in the room was either speaking or stunned silent. Gearing knocked on the table and there was silence.

 

Sloan touched her computer pad and the star map zoomed in. She continued, "We haven't penetrated very far into the Empire yet. We have only touched the fringe. Like we said, These ruins are only on the order of fifteen thousand years old. So far we've discovered that the Empire was destroyed in what we assume was a civil war. We aren't sure about that but, we know for certain that their machines still operate. Our scouts were destroyed in what appear to be minefields."

 

"Here on the map you see one of Empires frontier systems: Gillette 637. We have been able to get in this system and we've discovered quite a lot about them. This outpost seems to have been an industrial colony.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 16, 2017 by jamessavik

Snow Job is calling to me... I see a short soon.