Odyssey.
"…without leaving behind a message like this in case a former space expedition somehow made it back to Earth and discovered the planet was devastated and not inform them of the why."
Koenig looked around the Odyssey's bridge, taking stock of the grim expressions on the faces of everyone listening. By now the recording that Simmonds' and his party had returned with had been replayed four times already, and each time the grim reality was driven further and further home. Already the rest of the Alphans had heard this more than once, and morale had plummeted down to the lowest ebb.
Earth was gone, or at least the Earth they had known.
Koenig had known, even during Project Earthbound's remit when it was drawn up, it was doubtful that should they ever return home they would find Earth the same. Having confirmation like this was a nightmare, but at the same time, Koenig was amazed and awed by the lengths everyone who had clung on to life after the wormhole tore the moon away from Earth's orbit had gone to live out another year. Koenig was aware of the reality facing him and his community.
They had no place here.
He had no intention of ordering the Odyssey to land on this barren world and settle down in one of the cities, even if it was ready-made; there was nothing in them that was worth it in the long run since many of them had their greenhouses completely emptied when the humans had more than enough of living on this dead incarnation of Earth.
Koenig lifted his gaze, and saw the look of sorrow and restrained outrage on some of the faces of the bridge crew; he knew several of them had supported Project Earthbound and pinned their hopes on returning to Earth and finding it the same world as the one they had left. He refused to allow them to lash out in their anger, and he knew they would later. It was inevitable they would cause problems later on, and he promised himself that he would keep watch.
"Switch it off," Koenig ordered. "Listening to it over and over is not going to change anything. Not now."
One of the crew who'd gone with Simmonds and knew how the recording device worked switched it off. The miniaturised hologram just cut out.
Koenig folded his arms and walked around the bridge, his mind churning up plans and ideas. Everyone watched him, waiting to hear what he had in mind. Finally, he came to a stop. "We're going to search the Sol system, and see if there are any humans who stayed behind."
"What's the point of that, John?" Paul asked.
"Yeah, it's obvious that everyone left," Alan added in agreement.
Koenig welcomed the arguments and questions to his orders, it helped him focus on his other ideas at the same time. "The Solar system likely has dozens of colonies dotted in moons and asteroids. Some people might have been okay with whatever plan Earth had originally put in place to evacuate everyone en-masse, but some might have grown comfortable over the passing generations."
"That makes some sense, John, and it's also possible at the same time some people might have settled in the Oort Cloud," Victor said.
"Yeah, but it's going to be a long job," Helena pointed out. "We've only got one ship, and none of our other ships have a hyperdrive or the sensor capacity of the ship."
"We're just going to have to take that chance, Helena," Koenig said.
By now Alan had worked out the problems of Koenig's proposition and he'd worked out a few ideas of his own for tackling them. "We could take Odyssey into the Oort Cloud, launch a few of the Eagles and have them explore some of the asteroids," he suggested.
"How would you ensure the gravity from the asteroids won't cause problems? The Eagles might have been designed to withstand gravitational anomalies, but there are limits to what they can take," David asked.
"We have worked on the Eagles since Breakaway, and we've been modifying their engines and systems ever since we got hold of the Odyssey and the UFO," Dashka pointed out to her brother. "The only problem is there are limits to how far we can take such work."
"Speaking of UFOs, it looks like SHADO's work has been revealed. Do you think there are humans all over the galaxy by now if they conquered faster-than-light?" Sandra spoke at last.
"Who can say? That's the reason why I want to explore the solar system. There might be a few people still here, but even if there aren't, and we leave and eventually discover we missed an opportunity to discover what's been happening here over the centuries, we would have wasted the chance to meet other human beings," Koenig said before he turned to Alan. "Choose a few of the Eagles for a search around the Oort cloud. Make sure they're equipped with communicators that will keep us in touch with Odyssey. Paul," Koenig turned to Paul as his mind churned with ideas of how he wanted this mission to go, "I want you to supervise the crew placements of those Eagles. I want the best astronauts, look for rescue personnel and a few security guards."
At Paul's nod when he saw Koenig's ideas made some sense, Koenig turned to Victor, "Victor, go through your staff. I want at least one scientist per ship to act as a scientific advisor. Also, I want a few scientists to go over the place in the city where the holographic recording was left; there might be archives or something, a history record that will tell us exactly about what happened to our world while we were broken away."
Koenig lastly turned to the base's Chief Medical Officer. "Helena, I want you to provide a doctor for each ship as well to keep a watch on their health and if we do find anyone out there, I want medical care to be at the top of their agenda. I want the Eagles and their crews prepared for launch tomorrow morning. We'll take the Odyssey out towards different points in the Oort cloud, launch the Eagles, and then return to the Solar system and begin conducting surveys and sending out hails. With luck, we'll make good progress and each survey will give us more answers to what's been going on here over the years."
"What answers?" Simmonds said curiously.
Koenig was a little surprised, he had largely forgotten the Commissioner was still there. It was a testament that Simmonds, who usually liked the sound of his voice was so shaken by the recent events that he had kept quiet.
"There might be empty colonies built underground or on the surfaces of the planets. Finding them will tell us how everyone survived, what they did, and how they lived after the moon was torn away by that wormhole. And we might even find a few clues about where everyone went. Sandra, I want you to check the Odyssey's star charts for any solar systems that they could have gone to."
"Understood," Sandra nodded, and she was already preparing herself for the task ahead, "what distance should I narrow it down to if they reversed-engineered the UFO technology?"
Koenig mentally kicked himself, he hadn't thought of that. From what they knew, the UFOs were highly advanced spaceships that could jump through space faster than the Odyssey could. If humanity had the technology, there could be millions of places they could likely be. On top of that, they could have settled on a planet closest to Sol centuries ago, and they had moved on since. It was impossible to tell.
"Try 100 light years, Sandra; that's a nice number to start with. Once we've finished here, we'll find a planet to colonise and then we'll mount searches and find out if anyone's been there."
"A planet to colonise?" Helena repeated.
"We can't search the entire galaxy, or galaxies with only one ship, Helena," Koenig explained. "To find everyone who'd left Earth, we will need a whole fleet of ships to check every single solar system. Right," he went on when he saw nobody was going to say anything else, much to his relief, "you all have an hour to prepare the Eagles and get them crewed. Prepare the Odyssey for lift off and chart a course to the asteroids."
Xxx
The Odyssey emerged from the hyperspace conduit close to the edge of the Oort cloud. The moment the ship left the conduit, one of the hanger bay doors opened, and an Eagle emerged. Once the smaller ship was flying out under its power, the Odyssey turned back and re-entered hyperspace, travelling back to the inner solar system.
Left alone, the Eagle - one of many which had been launched - began its search and exploration of the asteroids.
"Check the transmitter," the pilot of the Eagle - Bill Warren - ordered.
One of the crew checked an alien piece of technology that was not usually fitted to an Eagle. "We've gotten a clear connection to the Odyssey, Bill."
"Good," Warren said. "We have a lot to do, and let's get on with it."
Xxx
Dashka was frustrated and a glance towards her twin brother revealed she was not the only one who was frustrated. They had been searching the Sol system for the last few days, scanning every single body for any sign of the human race. They had found Mercury had become a hollowed-out world, every single scrap of mineral wealth just taken away, which she supposed made a lot of sense, given how Mercury was rich in minerals.
The World Space Commission had long since learnt a landing on Venus was impractical with current technology, or rather the technology they'd had before the wormhole ripped them away and hurled the moon across the galaxy since Venus was a hostile world with a gaseous atmosphere where the pressure was so strong, anything or anybody would be crushed to death.
But theory stated it was possible to assemble some kind of colony with something like an airship hovering over the clouds in the atmosphere.
And it had happened.
When the Odyssey detected the strange airship cities dotting the planet's atmosphere, mining its resources, hope had swept through the crew but it was quickly squashed when they discovered the cities were empty, but they had learnt a great deal about how the cities were designed and built even if they'd been stripped down for the long journey through space.
Mars and several of the moons, like Europa, also showed signs of once being inhabited but the cities and settlements were now empty, and they had not found anything that indicated anyone had stayed behind.
The Alphans had been searching the solar system for the last fortnight, they had come across several settlements and discovered cities and life support systems of very high quality, but they had searched carefully using the Asgard scanners and the sensor technology they had discovered the UFO had, but their searches were in vain. Some of the Alphans had speculated before the search there could be a few people in suspended animation somewhere, but they hadn't discovered anything like that. Their searches had only allowed them to find archives, and they had collected them in bulk.
It was up to the Kano twins to translate them and record them more efficiently, but it was a long tedious job even for the Kano twins and their team, so they had asked the Asgard personalities in their memory bank for some help.
The Kano's had clocked many hours studying the Asgard core, and while they were still a very long way from fully understanding even a fraction of how the aliens' knowledge worked, logically understanding it would likely take thousands of years before they understood Asgard science and technology and put it to use.
But the scraps of knowledge they had found in the archives on Mars, some of the moons…
There was no doubt a lot of the knowledge was advanced, but while it was still primitive by the standards of the Asgard, all three sources of knowledge - the Asgard, the aliens who'd piloted the UFOs to Earth, and the surviving humans from the Sol system - would go a long way to helping the Alphans. Someone of the knowledge from the UFO aliens had already been done over the years, so it was just a matter of going through the information they had already.
But what was making the Kano twins so frustrated, and wore down the patience of everyone else, was there was nothing at all. The Eagles exploring the Oort Cloud had discovered several colonies, but the asteroids were completely hollowed out, presenting a massive hazard for navigation and had posed a challenge even for the most seasoned Eagle pilots. They had found nothing but empty colonies.
Every day the twins were pouring over the knowledge and with the core's help, they catalogued it all and hoped it did some good in the future. At the same time, they knew Commander Koenig would give the order for them to leave soon.