Chapter IX
An unexpected thing happened when Destiny exited FTL, nothing. Nothing happened; the Descendants ship was in front of them a few miles away, they were intact. Both ships jumped and were met with no resistance, no Drone presence of any kind and there was no other type of planetary defences anywhere. The only thing that was there was a massive debris field all around the planet, at some points in orbit it was visible skunks of debris starting re-entry and crashing into the planet. Everything looked extremely dead.
COL. YOUNG: I want an intense scan of the entire area, the drones have fooled us with this tactic once before.
Rush headed towards Brody’s console he want to help, Rush called it help, Brody called it “taking over”. Rush started to press a few button and a lot of information began to be displayed in the small console screen. Brody rapidly found himself been pushed aside by Rush so he could sit in the chair. Brody was becoming accustomed to that kind of behaviour from Rush, they all were, the crew tried not to take offense by that. It wasn’t easy.
DR. RUSH: We are alone. No life-sign no energy reading, nothing.
COL. YOUNG: And on the planet?
DR. VOLKER: There’s too much debris, the magnetic field from the debris is messing with the surface sensors.
COL. YOUNG: Mr. Brody, take us closer to the planet and inform the Descendants that we are about to go down there. Boarding Party, it’s time to meet the Lings.
MR. BRODY: When you get down there you may not be able to contact us. If the magnetic field is strong enough to scramble Destiny’s sensor it most likely will be strong enough to scramble our radios.
DR. VOLKER: He’s right.
Col. Young acknowledged and got up off the commander’s chair, turned around and exited the Bridge. Brody tapped Rush’s shoulder so he would move out of his chair, Rush complied without saying a word. By the time Brody swung his chair around so he could do what Col. Young asked, Rush had already sat in the captain’s chair and Eli, Chloe, Scott and Greer had left with Col. Young, they were the Boarding Party. Jonas asked if he could take one of the empty chairs, Rushed acknowledged. The only people left on the Bridge were Rush, Brody, Volker and Jonas Quinn.
Col. Young, Scott, Greer, Chloe and Eli made their way to the shuttle they were going to use it to get down to the planet. When they got there Greer pressed the large round button that operated the bulkhead doors. The large door opened and they went in. Col. Young sat on the right next to the pilot chair, which was Scott’s seat and Greer sat on the left so he could operate the weapons, like many times before. Eli and Chloe both sat on the passenger area, one on which side. After getting the “all clear” from Rush the shuttle took off.
Destiny’s shuttle and two of the Descendants shuttles met halfway to the planet. The plan was: after they got clear of the debris field and the interference they would determine the most likely place for the location of the central computer and make their way there. They found four possible locations from the planet-wide scan. Each of the shuttles was assigned a location; if they didn’t find anything all three would converge on the last unassigned place and run the sweep together. Scott guided the shuttle to their assign location. From the air it was clear to everyone inside that the Ling Civilization was gone, the all thing was reminiscing of the first time they arrived at Novus; from what they could see most of the erected structures were intact but not a soul could be seen, at least not from the shuttle.
