SWNOVELS Chapter 5
Admiral Reshma Shan’s basic idea for the Pluto-area mystery was to have the planetary space station Watcher 5 send over one squadron with Captain Modune’s team and have the squadron divide up in two—that way there was a team to investigate the situations in station Watcher number 6; the other half of the squadron go to Watcher number 7, which was on Pluto’s moon of Charon; and leave the main job of the station on Pluto for Modune and his crew.
Modune and his crew were one of those special operations assets that military space powers relied on when they needed a vanguard to check out a situation and to triage whether or not it was worth said-space powers to expend a more serious presence in the outer region of the Sol system.Aside from the government of the Sol Governance, even private space powers had adopted such philosophies…and the situation that The Justifier crew had found themselves in, definitely needed some serious triaging!
Captain Modune had the crew land Justifier down in Pluto’s craggy mountainous region nicknamed ‘the Snakeskins.’Over the years of developing the planetoid of Pluto, the Sol Governance had learned that the series of mountains were a good hiding place, given that the region’s surface would often breakup various signals!And if Captain Modune was right about the house-sized, distance marker in the Kuiper belt region being some kind of Trojan deception, then Justifier’s crew would fight fire with fire…he left that task to his second-hand; Commander Jaimee Box.
In the meantime, the Captain had to set off with a smaller party to go to the Governance’s Pluto base where Director Morelli Tuun and the entire Tombaugh Municipal had not been heard from for several days!Deep down inside, Captain Modune doubted that Admiral Shan would have approved of him splitting up an already small special ops team and sending one fraction to the small city of Tombaugh and the rest hiding in their ship within the Snakeskin mountains—waiting for Commander Box to spring whatever trap awaited them in the Kuiper belt… but Joden could not see any other way of tackling the events in the Pluto region.
Captain Modune’s auxiliary team’s tiny speeder craft, chevroned in shape and flat, sped into the small city-base of Tombaugh; named after a then-American astronomer whom discovered Pluto 287 years previously.To call the municipal a “city” was actually artistic.Tombaugh was really just a large base comprising of clusters of domes and roadways…the biggest structure in the town was Tombaugh’s main, towering dish communications system the size of one of Erth’s high-rise buildings.But of the approximate population of 5,000, not a single person was in sight; walking around in their space suite, driving along the utilitarian road system, or otherwise!Captain Modune reminded the 5 others in the speeder what Captain Ward had said earlier about the recordings of the three bases.And how the holographic records simply stopped and station 6 was simply abandoned.
“This is just weird,” Corporal Eric Esstint commented as Captain Modune piloted the speeder to a landing platform within Tombaugh.
“Do you think it’s possible they willingly left,” Sergeant Beatrice Pfilster speculated as she and the others gathered their gear.The team was already suited up in their space suits and were filing out of the ship.They were communicating via their suits’ comm system.“May be some kind of political dispute?I’ve seen in the media how there are more independence movements within a lot of these outposts beyond Mars and the Asteropia Belt!”
“But how would that fit with the holo-recordings and the 2-D backups all stopping at the same time,” Lieutenant Nolla Massett, the second-in-command of the auxiliary team, asked with incredulousness.
“If it were some organized effort, I could see that,” Sergeant Chris Sheets added, as the whole team stood and thought things through; yet by the parked speeder.Sheets’ point had resonated with the rest of the team as they all nodded.
“Alright,” Captain Modune finally said, after waiting to see if anyone else in the team had any other input, “since Tombaugh is such a small locale we’ll go ahead and split up in 2 groups…Nolla, why don’t you take Sheets and Esstint.Pfilster; Utan, that leaves the three of us…”
The 2 groups headed in different directions within the base.
“Everyone’s suit charged up in case we need to use our jets,” the captain said over the comm as the team went on with their mission.
“Charged, Sir,” came the unison response over the comm.Joden merely nodded to himself…
A few hours had passed by and the auxiliary team found nothing of significance, outside of more of the same abandoned space-ghost town they had already seen:like what Captain Lance Ward’s crew had found in space station Watcher 6, the base on Pluto had no signs of struggle nor force; civilian items simply left in place, not dropped or anything; and yet no people!Even more, all of the known Governance-issued vehicles were parked in their respective docks or platforms.Modune’s team were able to tell this given the solar system-wide government had standard procedures for stowage of ships and other crafts when they were not in use.
It did not take long for the auxiliary team’s 2 groups to search the entire outpost, given its size.All 6 were back in the mid-section of the town, congregated by the towering dish communications structure.Then Captain Modune’s comm chirped.It was Commander Box calling from The Justifier.The rest of Modune’s team glanced about as he took the call.
“Jaimee,” the captain said; a bit anxious, “have you started that mission with the distance-marker yet?”
“Yes, Sir…about an hour ago, actually.”Modune and Box were visually connected.He was using his com that was embedded in his space suit on his left forearm.“I’m patching you all to the live-feed.It’ll just be a few more minutes before the decoy reaches the proper-space of the distance-marker…if that’s what it is!”
“Great,” he said as he looked around at his small team; indicating that they needed to link onto their own visual com to watch as well.“We got nothing down here, Jaimee…heard from Ward or Liz’Beth?”
“I heard from them, Captain.But it was the same as you:still no signs of any of the personnel on either Watcher 6 nor Charon!”
There was nothing else for them to do at that point but wait for the secondary mission to proceed.Captain Modune glanced at his team to gauge their unspoken opinions…mostly there were shrugs.Corporal Thomas Utan was the only one with a question.
“Decoy, Sir?”
“Yeah, the Commander and I thought we’d test the waters and see if that marker is a trap—“
“This Trojan Horse you spoke of?”
“Only, we’re sending something out to check on the ‘Horse’ before us,” Sergeant Pfilster remarked; nodding her head with approval of the tactic.
“Yep,” Modune said.“We had an exploratory pod to spare, so Box had Cadet Mohadeen retrofit it with fake life readings…Alright, we’re going to wait here while we monitor your mission, Justifier; just in case there’s some kind of action that may implicate Pluto’s base…”Now Modune shook his head; still bewildered of the situation.
Commander Box was watching The Justifier’s main screen at the head of the command suite’s room as she spoke.“The decoy should be entering…now.”
On everyone’s monitor, the live feed from the decoy-pod displayed the floating, rectangular marker—having 6 sides; which typically were glorified, 5-storied electronic boxes that displayed information about the local space-region should any space craft had broken down and lost main, electronic functions.In a word, distance-markers were basically floating information traffic signs for space-traffic, and served as emergency stations.They were prevalent in the Sol system’s inner-core region with all of Humanity’s permanent space-traffic.And they were big enough to house a small ship of people with nefarious intentions…definitely not big enough to conceal a battle ship, but, again, in the Greek legend of the Trojan Horse, all it took was a few men to open the gates…