A scifi short story with an unexpected twist at the end.
“Research Officer’s Log: Lieutenant Colonel Helg Gasperius of the ICS Calumbear, currently aboard Shuttle 14 with Fieldman Bened Yaird. We are exploring and charting a solar system in a particularly desolate region in Sector 3-5A-α.” Helg then brought her eyes back to the cockpit window. Instead of looking at the information, she wanted to see if she could identify the type of star by just looking at it.
“It… yes, it has a class 5Y star, and initial scans show it to have a dozen spots. It is closer to its next cycle than its previous one.” She paused the log, and looked at her assistant, “Yaird, did you see that?”
“No, ma’am, what was it?”
“I thought I saw something shiny in orbit of one of those innermost planets. That might be a satellite. Let’s slow our approach.”
“Aye, Lieutenant. Slowing to one quarter approach velocity.”
Helg then put a filter on the long range scanner to detect non-ferrous metals and patterned energy signatures. She then continued the log, “Upon closer inspection, it appears that one of the innermost planetoids may have S.O.I.L. We have slowed our approach to gather more information before we get into visual range.”
She paused as she read the results of the scan, and as she read it, her brow slowly creased harder.
“What is it, Lieutenant?”
She paused the log before responding. “Well, what I thought was a singular satellite, is really several wispy thin rings made of space debris. High concentrations of gold, aluminum, and nickel. Definitely evidence that would suggest that it had several terrestrial satellites in orbit. I’m not reading any energy patterns or radio signals. Yaird, increase to full approach velocity.”
“Full approach velocity, aye.”
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Thank you so much for reading. Have a wonderful day....[[|:-)
Interesting read once I got through the technical details. I smiled a little reading that though, since my husband write the exact same way as you and find those things interesting reading as well. Like Tom Clancys’ Red October that I used as night lecture when I had trouble sleeping. Within the first two pages I would be asleep. 😉 While my husband would read it with fascination. Mars and Venus I guess 😉
Anyway, in the beginning you wrote about the third planet and that’s when I had the ending figured. So you might want to concider changing that. I liked the morals of this short story. And it would be nice if you wrote another story to it, where they get to further explore the planet. Could there be some life still left, some technology left that they could get working to see what happened. Could they perhaps find evidence of colonisation of other planets etc.,? Would be good reading.
Nice work!
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