Page 170 - The Chronicles Ser2 (6-10)

replaced into the recesses and connected up; they found it held an archive of the outpost activities
and many large volumes of research data. Here it was noted the termination of projects and of
citizens that didn’t make the grade.

“Eugenics as a basic principle of society; the only other society I can think of that practiced that kind
of behaviour was the Nazi regime of Germany in the pre Economy Wars era. Nasty business!”
Jennifer said disgusted by the idea.

“They seem to have perfected the practice relatively “humanely”. Though I agree a distasteful
practice; I hope they eventually grew out of that mind-set. I’d hate to think they continued to
practice the idea to this very day, it seems so contradictory, almost insect like in behaviour like the
Gantrax” Hubris added. It later became apparent that the colony had been abandoned long ago
because of internal political disputes and unrest on the Kryst home world. Someone had made
recordings of relayed textual transmissions and had sent it and information back to someone else on
their home world about this colony. Quite possibly one of the factions had a spy in the ranks.

“Thank the Maker we don’t have that kind of activity in the Unity anymore; with all representatives
having an equal say, no one party needs to resort to underhand methods” Tom said when this
information was relayed to him back on board the Veklaar. He had returned to see what had been
done with the data discs found at the main settlement. These seemed to be a record of the colonies
engineering projects. Apparently the Kryst had intended to keep a long term presence here and had
undertaken some remarkable constructions to achieve this. One of which was a geothermal power
generation system situated near to the equator. It could supply the whole moon for as long as the
magma plume below it stayed in the same area. Another engineering project was a twenty kilometre
long twin arched aqueduct to channel natural springs, it being composed of fullerene Nano fibres,
ceramics, and bio engineered honeycomb flexing nodes that adjusted rigidity. The massive span was
designed to flex with rather than resist the effects of the weather etc. Along the coastal areas;
artificial reefs for cultivating a local species of plant rich in protein and starches, fish and other sea
life farms. The Kryst were self-sufficient and appeared to recycle nearly all their waste in some way
or other.

As the work progressed; the team had to keep in mind that She’brakda’s High Summer was
rapidly descending on them. Alongside the excavation work and exploration of the surface
elsewhere on the moon; work to secure their own protection also had to step up pace. It had been
decided to move the Veklaar to a different orbit to be in the “shadow” of She’brakda during this
period; and the deploying of subspace relay drones to provide links to the scattered teams. There
had also been an increase in stellar activity in the corona of P’rada that meant the Veklaar could also
be shielded from the worst effects of that too. Drone craft were deployed to keep tabs on that
activity and to warn of any solar flares or coronal discharges that could disrupt communications and
power grids. The Geothermal grid had been reactivated to most of the areas where the teams were
based. It would be quite a while before any work other than data analysis and collation could be
done. During all of this T’Shon had almost been forgotten, until Maria announced that she had
completed her “Home Movie” and that there would be a showing in the Canteen area in the
evening. Fortuitous timing meant that as many as possible would be there; a distraction from the
mundane is always welcome.

One of the first things that the teams did was to test soil samples for the bacterium that had
curtailed the Untharan dig. It was speculated this could have been the cause for the abandonment
by the Kryst; however, there seemed to be only minor amounts of the organism left and that was in
one small part of the dig site, all other colonies of the organism seemed to have perished, probably
during one of She’brakda’s High Summers. The colony that remained seemed to be in a dormant
state and; when examined at a DNA level, appeared to have been engineered, probably as some kind
of Bio-weapon. With the Kryst it was proving difficult to narrow down just what their society was