The tan tents of the excavation site, which looked more the size of a colony, spread before them. Straight ahead to the south were massive tents, and beyond they could see excavation equipment and hills of the grayish brown gravel and dirt that riddled the rest of the moon they had seen. To their left were smaller tents, but still quite large, perhaps community tents for dining and many smaller tents behind that. The Doctor, though, headed straight for some permanent buildings to the right.
"Doctor," Amy lay a hand on his arm to slow him down. "How did you know this was a dig site?"
He marginally slowed and spoke in her direction, "Who else would be here in a place they don't belong, digging up a past that is none of their business?"
"You really want me to answer that?"
"Amy, the people who were here died for a reason, and whatever it is may still be here, and they are trying to find it, no doubt. But my more immediate concern is why no one is up and moving this late in the morning."
At that, they caught sight a young man exiting one of the permanent structures pulling a cart that contained what appeared to be cooking ingredients. From his dirty white apron he was likely the cook's apprentice.
The Doctor charged forward and approached the young man, now fairly bewildered at the sight of the strangers.
"Good morning there!" He greeted as he proceeded to sonic the man's forehead and search his face for general fishiness.
The young man leaned back at the Doctor's forward investigations, "Uhh, who are you?"
"I'm the Doctor" as he continued to visually peruse him.
"From out there in the desert?"
"Yes a nomadic doctor. Just making sure you're not plastic."
Rory came to the rescue as he saw the Doctor somewhat drowning in his own social ineptitude. "Uhh yes, we're travelers and came across your camp. Can you tell us what is going on here?"
Now somewhat relieved it seemed two thirds of the strangers were fairly normal, his thoughts turned to getting back to work before the head cook saw he was gone too long. "This is an archaeological investigation. I don't really pay attention to what they look for on these things, though. Usually old stuff no one really cares about."
The Doctor patted the young man's shoulder, "Haha see I'm not the only one. Can you tell me who is putting this on?"
"It's set up by the Historical Antiquities Department of the Terra University, they hold classes here and most of the tents are their students. But it is in conjunction with the ISSA. I think they are paying the bills, really. Sorry that's all I know, but I have to get going before they notice me gone."
"Wait," the Doctor's words caught the now impatient young man. "What is the ISSA?"
"The Inter System Security Agency." And with that he turned and left with his cart toward one of the dining tents.
Amy followed the young man with her gaze and turned to the Doctor. "And I assume whatever that is makes this whole thing more interesting, huh?"
"What it means, Amy, is that there are a lot of people besides us interested in this little rock, and what is going on here."
Adrian Sulivan was pissed off. The last thing he wanted to wake up to is an emergency transmission to his comm patch. And a close second was his young, albeit virtuous, apprentice on the other end telling him that she was out running amok and fell across a group of travelers heading toward camp.
It was hard to be upset with her when she was so damn good at what she did. And like to any father figure, a beautiful young girl was hard to really discipline. But what she needed now was responsibility, to be trusted, and a mentor she could in turn trust who could at least keep up with her. When she was assigned to him by the program directors it was both an honor and a curse, he knew, but how could he refuse? She had become what the agency strove for in their fledgling agents. And he had become somewhat of a black sheep for his unorthodox methods, and outstanding mission success rate. Handling this one, though, was proving to be a challenge.
River had been in the program since the age of 5. 16 now, and all she claimed to carry with her of her life before were vague memories of her mother, and what he had told her was in her file about being adopted by the Agency. She was discovered in an orphanage on a far off colony she didn't remember. When she scored off the charts on their field assessments the scout more or less bought her on the spot. And she had yet to disappoint them.
Having been in the program for more than a decade and not killed or washed out, she held an unbeatable success rate in completed missions. As the program's golden child, though, she had been paired with the best mentors and had absorbed like a sponge the craft of espionage. Not to mention her ediec memory made her a gem among stones. She could research any field, be inserted into any location and pull it off, many times flawlessly.
At her age, though, she was bypassing her usefulness as a child agent (they say the best cover for a spy is childhood) and her current mission had her here as a young student of archaeology. A tad young, as most of the other students were a decade older, but as usual her research and adaptability had paid off. Oh her professors will indeed be disappointed when they find their star prodigy was a calculated insertion.
He often wondered why her previous mentors parted ways with her apprenticeship. It could have been fear, jealousy, frustration…he could see how a child like River could cast fear into the most stable of teachers. Especially those who were close to the program. He, on the other hand, was not, and had never worked with the children trained by the youth program. Perhaps that was why he was chosen. But a quick scan of the teenager's file revealed a dark underbelly that should have caused him to shy from the whole assignment.
Intensive physical training, mental fitness evaluations, exercises, and mind games that stretched the bounds of ethics, tactical training. Scary were the whole years of nothing in her files. And then you get to her field records.
One thing the Agency uses to defend naysayers with regards to using children as spies, besides them being highly trained and proclaimed 'mentally fit for the simple tasks of reconnaissance,' they are all implanted with audio visual monitors. You wouldn't notice them; they are so small any evidence of it can be covered by a short head of hair. But every second a child is on mission he or she is being closely watched for information they may miss in their reports, and for their safety. If a child is in any way compromised, he or she takes precedence over the mission, and they are quickly extracted. At least they claim.
River, however, proved the monitors quite unnecessary; in one of the more enraging chapters of her file an attempt was made to rape her while she was in the field. The bastard was a teacher in a school she was inserted into to help with simple information gathering for a private benefactor. Needless to say the reaction time of the people watching her monitor wasn't fast enough to save his life. They burst into her bedroom to find him with a slit throat, and River in the corner crying. Although this was just a few years ago she claims to have no memory of this, but the next year and a half of her life is not accounted for in her file.
And I suppose that's why I took her on, he muses. I want to admire her, pity her, love her, protect her—she has never had any of that, at least not from someone who cares. Maybe helping this young woman find a better future will make up for whatever indirect affect he had in creating her past. He keeps referring to the Agency directors as 'those bastards' but really, he is one of them too, and has been for years.
But whatever sticking it to the man he hopes to accomplish with River, he has more immediate problems at hand. Who are these people that seem to have materialized out of the desert, and who sent them?
Sulivan finished buttoning his outer robe and squinting walked out into sun. He set off to go meet his young agent at their rendezvous point, hopefully before she blows their entire mission.
River waited for her three subjects to enter the camp, and snuck around to the side alleys between the rows of tents. She stayed low in the early morning shadows although she used her perception filter. Always loving the challenge of stealth, she often made a game out of besting friends and superiors, and today was no exception. Around the corner she spotted Sulivan, always dependable, waiting impatiently exactly where he said to meet—in the alley between the permanent offices and housing units.
She definitely liked her new mentor. He was attractive, in a older, seasoned way. But what she loved was how he played her game. He was guarded, yet played off her youthful flirtiness with tongue in cheek acknowledgement. He seemed to know when she needed space, when she needed to be pushed, and when she needed to be cared about. She was starting to become more comfortable with being touched. Before she started with him, a friendly pat on the back would turn her into the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof. But instead of giving her space like everyone else, he pushed it, and now a hand on her shoulder is no big deal.
He also seemed to genuinely care, and had at least marginally earned her trust. River, however, had learned early that the love of a teacher was fleeting; they always got orders to leave you behind. Now that she was older and out of the academy she was supposed to have more stability in her studies, but it was not the case. She hoped that at least this apprenticeship would be a lasting one, as being passed around so much was not the norm. She was starting to take it personally, and wonder what she had done to put off so many mentors. Perhaps it was these silly games she liked to play? Well this time Sulivan was likely already cross with her, no hurt in having a little fun.
She crept up behind him and lightly touched the sandy hair just behind his ear, eliciting a quick turn in her direction which was easily countered. Now behind him again, she then touched his opposite ear, this time she got a twitch of his head in response.
"River, I know it's you."
She turned off her perception filter revealing a slightly sideways smile. "Of course, always."
Looking both directions, he took her by the shoulder into the shadows between the buildings and began to chastise her in a hushed voice. "I have nothing to say to you about this that you don't see coming. Look at you! And you're armed no less. What were you thinking?"
"Well I THOUGHT I would be back in my tent by now getting ready for class, which I will be late for if I don't hurry."
"Very well. What do I need to know? Quickly, we cannot be seen together."
"There are three of them, they look actually pretty harmless. One they call Doctor, but I haven't heard his name. He seems to be the one they follow. I think he may not be human, but I think the other two are. Interesting, I think they are here on accident, but know there is something going on. I don't think they really know why we're here."
"Good work, despite that you will be the end of me, child. Please go on to class before you're missed. You should get word from me soon about this recent development. Keep your com patch on and for the love of God get out of those clothes and hide your weapons."
River mockingly looked down at her black tights, thermal black top and her hiking shoes. "You don't fancy my workout gear? I thought these made my butt look good." She turned to inspect her own rear.
"I said get out of here," Sulivan couldn't help but give her a chuckle, and got a sly smile in return, as River turned and activated her filter. He could still see her, as he knew she was there, and watched his young lioness stalk off before heading off to find out about this Doctor and how the hell he landed on Ganymede without anyone noticing.
River shortly made it to her bunk tent, and arrived at the dig site with the rest of the class. No one noticed she had not been present during breakfast. But you don't realize how much the average person exists in their own little world until you start studying such things. The rules of going unnoticed were a skill River prided herself in. But unfortunately those rules didn't apply where an old man from Gallifrey was concerned.
Well if this security agency is in charge here, they sure are doing a terrible job at it, the Doctor thought to himself as they headed toward what they assumed to be the tent covering the dig site.
"Doctor, why has no one stopped us? The way that young chap back there looked at us it was obvious they don't get many visitors," Amy said.
The Doctor smiled to himself. He was often charmed by Amy's ability to stay on the same page as he. "Can't say. Maybe they don't care."
Rory looked behind him briefly and turned to the Doctor. "Or they're waiting to see what we do. I've felt like we've been watched all day."
"You are so paranoid!" Amy said to him as she rolled her eyes. "Anyway, if so it's our turn to do some listening in."
They came upon the huge tent and were met with organized chaos. The area seemed divided in sections, in front of them was a bit of exposed earth with what seemed to be lights set up along two sides of it, creating somewhat of a grid. There were shallow, square holes dug out here and there. But toward the back of the tent was another, larger area that looked dug down nearly 2 meters. Along the side to the left of them were tables set up with what looked like excavated materials as well as equipment apparently used for analysis. Further to the back of the tent was what looked like a meeting area, where most of the people were congregated who were not busy digging or going through artifacts and whatnot on the table.
The Doctor, with his odd swagger, made his way to the table and proceeded to pick up a piece of rusty metal and sonic it. Amy and Rory followed, but they diverted into the direction of the small group in the back of the tent. An older woman wearing a grey lab coat type overcoat was addressing the group of what looked like students, although they seemed to range greatly in age.
"And so the extremes in environmental exposure have made this investigation unusually difficult. Whenever the basic ecology is at all artificially manipulated, like in the case of the creation of the moon's atmosphere, everything else seems to go out of whack without artificial support. Like in the fact that we're at the mercy of a massive field generator to keep it warm enough to melt the accumulated ice and of course allow us to function here on the surface. As you all know, after the colonists disappeared the generators they installed failed without an artificial energy source (of course the technology we have today did not exist then) creating an ice sheet, albeit small. Nothing compared to the vast glacial sheets that we know existed here before the great melt. But definitely enough to make our job here very difficult.
"In essence, everything that existed on the surface was destroyed, either decayed with time, or swept out into the inland sea when we melted the moon again."
"Ma'am, a question." A young man seated with the group interjected. "How do we know that evidence of what it was that killed these people is here with the colonists? I mean maybe it was here before. If it is indigenous it could be anywhere, especially if it is a pathogen."
"Because there was nothing here. All of the moon's ecology was painstakingly introduced, or engineered to suit life here."
The Doctor had finished his perusal of the nearby table and stood next to Rory, attracted to the lecture's new, more interesting direction. He had always hated school.
"But how do you know?" The young man replied. "Do you have any idea how much energy it takes to melt the ice off of a moon this size? There is no way of knowing what lay under the ice, or at what temperature it could have changed forms, been destroyed, or even mutated."
In his head the Doctor was quickly computing the size of reaction one would need to convert the surface ice to gas and create an atmosphere. The idea of blowing things up always got his full attention. He was distracted though, by a young girl in the middle of the class, with her nose in her handheld fixatedly calculating. She abruptly leaned back with a small smile.
That's interesting. She is very young, but had only maybe a year or two fewer than some of the others. But why would she have more interest with inane computations than what was a very significant turn of the lecture? This was an interdiciplined group for sure. They passed a mobile bio lab that was pressurized and full of equipment and technicians, and had seen a console with geological surveys on the display. But hardly the place for a teenager who happens to be a history student AND an amateur mathematician.
He watched her as she got up with the rest of the class to begin their assorted duties. She was athletic and practiced in how she moved. She was fit, and had nice calves. Her green eyes scanned the room without really looking. She was—
"DOCTOR!" Amy finally got his attention. "She can't be older than 17. What is with you today? The first pretty girl who walks by has you off in your own little world apparently. Come back to Earth, please."
The Doctor turned to Amy and laid his hands on her shoulders. "Amy," he said, looking her straight in the eyes, "shut up. And just to remind you-Ganymede, Amy. We're on Ganymede."
"Well in his defense she was kinda hot." Rory interjected, immediately receiving an elbow to the ribs from Amy.
"It's like travelling with children with you two I swear." At that he glanced over her to see a blonde man in blue robes heading toward them. "Look now you both fail to see that we have officially been noticed." He walks between them and ahead out into the sun to meet the man. Reaching into his breast pocket to pull out his psychic paper, he is interrupted.
"No need for that, Doctor. I know who you are. My name is Adrian Sulivan." He offers his hand to the Doctor who takes it and receives a firm handshake. "Welcome to our little investigation. I was hoping you could offer us your assistance."
This wasn't the first time the Doctor had been propositioned. In many things actually. He gave his typical response, preceded by a sigh. "First tell me what you have in mind."