Who Will Remember the Incolae?

Who Will Remember the Incolae?

“The best way to heal a world is not to break it in the first place.”

—Captain Arthur Landsman, exploration cruiser Daniel Boone

Horsehead Bay, Planet Honor, Honor Prime Star System

Mission Day 7

0846 HT (Honor Time)

Mika opened her eyes to light shifting through the canopy—paler, more amber than the sunlight she remembered. Her vision settled on a leaf above her. Broad. Olive-toned. Wrong in a way that made it right.

For a moment she didn’t move. Then memory returned. Honor. Different sun. Horseshoe Bay. The archaeological site.

Something brushed the back of her hand.

She turned her head. A long, narrow insect clung there, its muted green matching the leaves overhead. Not in the database yet. She’d started calling it a spindle bug. As mission chief scientist, the name had stuck.

Harmless, as far as she could tell. Shoreline dweller. Predator of smaller insects. Maybe an analog to an Earth dragonfly. Or maybe something entirely different.

Beyond the trees, the bay moved—slow water folding against the broken shoreline in a restless rhythm. Above, the morning breeze rustled through the canopy leaves—a different resonance than trees on Earth.

She glanced left. A small campfire burned, an old-fashioned coffee pot hanging over it. Close enough now that she could catch the scent of the coffee.

Not Arthur’s dark roast, but it would do. She smiled. All his fault. Two months of marriage had been enough to convert her from tea.

Earth felt very far away now—all the flooding, firestorms, rationing, the slow unraveling they’d finally managed to stop, now forty-six light years away.

She pushed herself up, remembering she’d skipped dinner. No breakfast on the fire. She reached for her pack and pulled out a half-eaten ration bar. Dry. Dense. Functional.

Her neural implant chimed. “It’s Arthur,” Zinny said, her implant’s Personal Artificial Intelligence.

His image resolved in front of her—square-jawed, dark gray eyes set deep. “Captain?” she murmured.

He raised an eyebrow. “Still that formal? Is that how you address your husband?”

A faint smile touched her lips. “It is when he’s captain of my ship.”

His expression shifted. “Then this is a formal call. A trash can just came in.”

The words landed. A data drone—travelling forty-six light-years from Earth.

Arthur laughed. “Nothing really important. Just a reminder that they are anticipating our clearing this world for colonization. After all, they have the Braum data that says everything is great.”

As part of a treaty of cooperation, the Braum, humanity’s first contact with a space faring species, had offered Honor as a consolation when both species agreed that the planet Meyer should not be colonized in order to protect two proto-sapient species discovered there.

Mika frowned. They had already found flaws in the Braum data—these ruins were one example. Apparently this drone had been dispatched their own trash can arrived with the news of the flaws in the Braum data. This can was just more of the government’s “Hurry up! We need this world.” Same urgency to develop that always got us in trouble.

The spindle bug drifted across her vision. Will you, little one, and your brothers and sisters, survive us? Right now this big, beautiful bay is likely where it will all begin.

Horsehead Bay, Planet Honor, Honor Prime Star System

Mission Day 7

0858 HT

She sat on a high hill overlooking the bay, coffee mug cradled in her hands. She turned away from the rising sun, just finishing her quiet greeting to Wi, the bringer of new beginnings. She inhaled the breeze blowing in from the bay—a hint of salt and unfamiliar organic scents carried on the damp air. At least, no rebreather in the way of her feeling this world.

Horsehead Bay. A huge island filled its middle stretch to the ocean, giving the bay its horseshoe shape. Visible from orbit, it had stood out from even 36,000 kilometers up. Almost like an LED flashing sign saying: “start here.” Naturally, they had named it Horseshoe Bay.

And then their drones using LiDAR discovered the anomalies.

Circular pools—buried by underbrush and sediment, but visible to LiDAR. Too many. Too regular to be natural. Then what looked like a larger pool at the western end of the island with something unusual at one end. She was going to find out today if that was a structure. If so, that would change a great many things.

The bay itself was perfect for a first colony. A planetary capital even. Sheltered waters. Clean approaches. If maritime commerce ever came to this world, this is where it would begin. The surrounding waters held life that looked—so far—safe for human consumption. The island offered high ground, stable footing. A spaceport would fit there easily. Government structures beside it.

She winced. Her mother would’ve accused her of thinking like a surveyor, not a steward.

But then isn’t that what her job was now? Earth needed this world and she had helped deny them another one to protect two proto-sapient species. Images of flooding and dust storms on Earth returned. That mustn’t happen here.

Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ. Lakota words her grandfather saying over the small fire beneath the wide Montana sky. We are all related. We are all connected.

Those words had shaped everything as she became an ecologist—and eventually an exoecologist. The natural world as a system, not pieces— Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ.

She looked back out at the bay. Right or wrong… Earth still needed this world.

If nothing else, as a reminder of what Earth used to be.

She set off down the hill toward the pool. Something birdlike began to sing but the tone sounded slightly off. She smiled. A different world, different tonalities.

The Boone’s hydrologist and geologist had tied themselves in knots trying to come up with a natural explanation for all these pools. Not unexpected since they had just come off the Meyer mission that had denied the Earth development of that world. If those pools were made by an intelligent species then this could become Meyer all over again. Would Earth stand for that?

She came around a bend and there it was. A near-perfect circle. They had cleared away the brush that had overgrown it. The water was a bit low, exposing part of its inner walls. A semicircular ledge, about a meter below the rim, ran around the western end as if it been designed as seating to view whatever that thing was on the opposite end.

A figure emerged from the bushes off to the side, a short stocky woman with curly hair and a weatherbeaten face wearing work khakis and boots. The ship’s new paleoarchaeologist, Eva Bainbridge, had been added after the Meyer mission. The Boone’s scientific team was still small, only eight scientists. For missions down on the planet they typically used the Marines for physical labor, supplementing five anthropomorphic robots and two robotic carriers. Not much of an archaeology team to determine if there was a civilization but sending people across forty-six light years was not cheap. So you made do. Plus there was Scila—Boone natural science AI. Scila could reduce and analyze data in minutes that would have taken humans days.

“Mika,” she said. “Glad you could make it. We worked all night and you have to see what we found. Follow me.”

Mika didn’t say anything and followed. She wasn’t yet sure what to make of Eva

They didn’t speak as they rounded the pool. Mika stopped. Any question of whether the anomaly was natural was moot. It was an obelisk, maybe five meters tall, apparently constructed from some sort of brick, and mounted on a raised platform. As they grew closer, carvings on one face of the obelisk facing the pool became clearer. Obviously not random or manufacturing marks, but much more artistic.

Mika inhaled. The picture formed in her mind. A gathering place of some sort—maybe the equivalence of an amphitheater. And it was damn well not natural. The ledge. The obelisk. She had to shield her eyes from the sun to see it. The amphitheater, or whatever it was, was facing due east.

This changed everything. A community? Abandoned or long dead.

Two figures standing a few meters ahead turned toward her: Daniel, the ship paleobiologist, and Sachi, the ship’s general purpose biologist with background in both botany and zoology.

Sachi almost ran to her and spoke excitedly. “Mika, we found skeletons. Full skeletons, not pieces. We identified them with Scila’s help. Closest Earth relative is an otter, like the ones that live off the U.S. northwest coast. Scila estimated a roughly 73 percent morphological similarity to Earth otters. We’ve tentatively named them the Incolae Sinuum—the people or dwellers of the bay.” She waved her hand toward the smaller pools. “Kelp gardens—our best guess. There were also remains of consumed fish.” She paused breathlessly. “Do you believe it? An otter civilization. Scila ran a preliminary carbon-data analysis. Roughly four hundred years old.”

Mika smiled. “Deep breath, Sachi.”

The zoologist blushed. “Thing is, there are so many complete skeletons. And no sign of bodily harm like a natural occurrence or a war. We were able to pull a few DNA samples and Scila’s going through them.” She stifled a yawn. “Sorry, up all night.”

Mika put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I know this is exciting stuff. Get some breakfast and rest.” She turned to the whole team. “And that’s an order. I’m sure Scila can fill me in. Besides, I want to see this stuff myself without all of you buzzing around.”

Horsehead Bay, Planet Honor, Honor Prime Star System

Mission Day 7

1019 HT

She leaned back against a tree, its bark not quite the right brown. One of those birds sang tunelessly overhead. Different insects drifted lazily through the humid air.

She had a mug of coffee in her hand. There had been a thermos left on one of the portable tables around the site and she decided to help herself. It was lukewarm and not the same dark blend she was used to.

The whole scene reminded her of a cemetery. Clearly a dead city. She could find nothing that disproved what Sacchi had told her. She had spent time with Scila and it only gave her more confidence that this was a dead city.

“Scila,” Ezzy whispered.

“What do you have?” she said subaudibly into her implant, though she could have spoken aloud. The team had retreated to the camp to rest, following her orders. So there was no one around to hear her conversation. Except the dead.

“Two things,” said Scila in her clear contralto. “First, probability of epidemic event is increasing. We’re still isolating the virus, but we have narrowed it down. Second, I’ve reexamined the LiDAR surveys. No additional signs of habitation or civilization have been detected anywhere else on Honor. This civilization was confined to the bay.”

Mika stopped with the mug midway to her lips. This was their whole civilization. She shuddered. Bad for this world. A whole civilization gone. Good for the Earth—now open for colonization.

“One more thing. Probability that the remains date to approximately four hundred local years ago has risen to 85 percent.”

Four hundred Honor years. Three Earth centuries. So close. We could have helped them. She sighed. This place was not just a cemetery for a city. It was one for the whole species.

“Pulse me the report and I’ll look at it.”

“Roger that,” Scila said. “Sending. Scila out.”

“I have it,” Ezzy said.

“Open the summary,” she ordered.

Text immediately floated in front of her eyes at about forty centimeters. She slid down to the soft ground, sat cross-legged and began reading,

A few minutes later, “It’s the boss,” Ezzy whispered.

Arthur’s visage replaced the report. He looked relieved. In their relationship they had decided to be formal when doing work, even in private implant-to-implant conversations. “You heard about what they found?”

Mika grinned. “I’m sitting under a tree about twenty or thirty yards from the obelisk. I was reading Scila’s report.”

“All our scans with the towed arrays and the drones have come up negative. No sign of fire or any civilization anywhere else,” Arthur said. A smile and an exhale in relief. “This is not going to be another Meyer. And the bay will be cleared for colonization. I need you to get me a list of what needs to be preserved. I’m thinking a museum near where you are. We build it early so we’re sure to preserve the right items.”

He stopped, seeing the look on her face. “What’s wrong? This is a big win.”

She shrugged. “That we both feel relief that this is a dead civilization so we don’t have to deal with the colonization issue. And there’s something else I don’t know yet. There’s part of me that is uneasy with all this but I haven’t sorted my emotions yet.”

He nodded. “I understand. It’s sad that a whole species may have died like that. But you know, this could have happened if we had come in contact with the protos back on Meyer and hadn’t take proper precautions.”

“All I can think, hon,” she responded, slipping into an affectionate name, “is that we’re four centuries too late.”

His face grew sober. “I know. That’s the shame of it.” He paused. “Think about what I asked you about preserving parts of the city.” He signed off.

She sat back and glanced blankly at the report that reappeared. She thought about the Lakota and their sacred sites. At least, on Earth there was someone to mourn them.

Footsteps approached from the direction of the camp. She looked up. It was Corporal Jae Park of the Marines. They had spoken a few times. He was also from Montana and they shared a love of the old science fiction, with the greats like Dickson, Heinlein, and Norton.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. He held out another thermos. “Sara thought you’d want one of these. It’s got your dark roast blend in it.”

Sara, the ship’s AI, always seemed to watch out for the crew.

She took off the cap and inhaled. “Arthur’s dark roast,” she murmured to herself. “Thank you, Jae.”

He nodded. “Came down on the morning shuttle.” He glanced over and eyed the obelisk. “This whole place is spooky,” he said with a sweep of his hand.

She merely nodded.

“My father would never let us live near a cemetery,” he added. “I could never live here. How can you honor a place if you desecrate it?” He turned back to her. “Enjoy your coffee. The Captain certainly has the good stuff. By your pardon, I need to get back.”

“She nodded. “Thank you.”

She watched his retreating back. “Out of the mouth of babes.”

She closed the report. “Ezzy, get me Arthur.”

“What’s up?” he asked.

“You’re not going to like my answer. Paraphrasing what my mother used to say to me: ‘Honor will remember what we forget.’ Young Jae just came over and asked me how we can honor a place if we desecrate it? This is what has been bothering me. My people watched the desecration of their sacred sites for mines, for condominiums, for roads. We can’t allow that to happen again.”

Arthur shook his head. “We need this world.”

“Hon, you once told me the best way to heal a world is not to break it. How can we begin Honor with a scar like that?”

“I said we would preserve a few of the places and build a museum. To honor them.”

She shook her head. “This isn’t a graveyard with a few bodies,” she said quietly. “It’s an entire civilization. Maybe an entire species.”

She looked toward the bay.

“We’re taking their world. The least we can do is leave them this place.”

“But the bay is perfect.”

A sad look in her eyes. “Harvest Bay is only a few hundred miles down the coast and it has access inland through tributaries to the Southern River. It’ll do fine. We’d be giving up a little to honor a species and keep our souls clear. You’re the man who stood up to the Deputy President of the Planetary Government and told him that Meyer should not be colonized to protect those two proto-species. Just because these people are dead, it doesn’t lessen our obligation. We’re going to be taking over their entire planet. We should honor them for that. Besides, it’ll be hundreds of years before we may really need that piece of land.”

Arthur looked up at her and shook his head with a tired smile. “Damn you, Mika. You’re my conscience.” He exhaled softly. “I’ll amend the recommendation to start the colony at Harvest Bay.”

His image disappeared.

She sat back. The bird sang tunelessly. A spindle bug fluttered by. Beyond the ruins, the bay rolled gently against the shore.