Because of the fairly limited time we had to work with I immediately went down to the ship’s probe bays to select something from our stores suitable for this mission. After ruling out the battle probes as too slow, I decided to use a very fast, light-duty one known as the Specter Mark IV. It was the fastest probe we had, and would reach the colony long before the fleet could. In order to keep down its size its sensor array was somewhat limited, but that small size made it fast and hard to pick out on sensor screens. The data we would get from this probe would help us in deciding which, if any, other advance probes should be sent. I expected that we should start to get data from the probe in less than two days.
After personally inspecting the probe to make sure it was fully functional, I put it in sleep mode and launched it. While asleep it would be virtually undetectable, and even if spotted would likely be mistaken for space junk. The only real disadvantage was that since its sensor array was fairly short-range, it would have to reach orbit before it would get any real data. Once in orbit and scanning, it would be highly vulnerable to attack. If it were detected, that would limit the time we would get to scan with it. However, it seemed like a reasonable risk to run in order to get the data as fast as we could.
There was some concern among my men that this might affect our chances of sneaking up on the planet. Unfortunately, there was no realistic way we could move a fleet of this size and not be detected. They probably already knew we were en route.
In one of the preliminary staff meetings that I held to brainstorm about possible explanations for what happened at Arken IV, some of my staff suggested this was a revolution being staged. I did not agree with that theory. This colony was made up entirely of highly-trained, highly-disciplined Imperial officers, scientists and their families. Every one of them was picked for his loyalty. And there had not been a single uprising in seventy-five years. Besides, why would anyone want to rebel against the Emperor?
What annoyed me most was that High Command must have known something more than they were saying. First they sent in a class-three task force, which was a thousand times more powerful than was called for. Now we were being sent “The Jewel of the Fleet,” the Flagship Dragon Claw and her entire support fleet, the most powerful arm of the Imperial Navy.
It was very suspicious that so much power was being sent to a colony with only a few hundred people in it, many of who were just the families of the men stationed there. There were more people than that aboard this ship alone, and that was not counting our support fleet. We had more than enough firepower to conquer several star systems.
The Dragon Claw was too big to even orbit the planet; the shadow from it alone would push whole sections of the planet into night. Our fleet was designed for meeting hostile navies in interstellar space. It was a rare event for us to move into a system, and then it was only for repairs. We had smaller ships and fleets better suited for interplanetary battle. The only reason to send us would be for intimidation, yet this was our colony; intimidation should not have been necessary.
As I watched the probe launch, I began to wonder about the future … specifically my future. I had jumped the ranks so fast into the highest position possible in my career path that I wondered if there was anything left for me. There were only two positions above me in the Intelligence chain of command, and one of those was the Emperor himself. The other was a lifetime appointment to his personal council of advisors and rulers, High Command. Obviously I could not aspire to be Emperor, but I wondered if in some distant day I would serve him on that council.
There was something else, too. As I watched the probe drift away I could not help but wonder what it would find out there. In a sense, I wished I could ride it to the planet and meet this problem face-on. Something was out there, watching us closely. My instincts told me that we were in grave danger.
While waiting for the probe to reach its destination, I spent the next day reviewing some of the information we had on the system. It was a fairly unremarkable system with a few small planets. The colony was on the innermost planet, which was composed mostly of rock.
This system was chosen for two reasons. First, it was almost completely surrounded by a thick, dark gas and debris cloud, probably left over from some massive collision lost to history. In fact, from most of the Empire you could not see the star at all. The other advantage of this location was that the planet was completely void of life. That meant there was nothing to corrupt any biological research.
The lack of any real atmosphere forced the placing of most of the colony underground, with only the spaceport under a small surface dome.
The next morning, I headed to where my team was gathering in anticipation of receiving the preliminary data feed from the probes. If my estimates were correct, we would be receiving data very soon, if not already.
“Sir, we are getting data,” reported one of my team as I entered.
“Excellent,” I said as I moved to the viewing screen. “Well, based on this it looks like the colony is intact.” This surprised me. We knew there was a recent battle there that had wiped out the task force. There should have been some indication of a fight.
“Sir, this does not make sense; preliminary data makes it appear there are around five hundred people there …” a young officer started when all of a sudden all the viewing screens went blank. “Sir, the probe has been destroyed!”
“Bring up the last few seconds of data. I want to see who or what destroyed it,” I ordered.
“Here it is, sir, but nothing was recorded; it was just reporting data then abruptly ends. Whatever took it out must have done it with one hit,” he responded.
He was right; there was not even any indication of anything nearby that could have destroyed the probe, and no indication that anything was fired from the ground. This made no sense. “Ensign, you started to say something before about the population count?”
“Yes, sir, the data shows about five hundred people there. Imperial records indicate the same number. We know that the task force was sent and did combat with somebody, so where are they? All of the probe’s data indicates the population there is as it should be based on Imperial records.”
“That is a very good question, Ensign James.” This ensign impressed me. Normally I would not have put such a new member of my department on a critical team like this, but his instinctive knack for reading data made him an excellent choice. “What else strikes you at first glance about this data?”
“Well, sir, everything else also matches our records. We do not have a lot of details in this limited data, but as far as the overall picture goes, nothing else sticks out … except …well, this is odd.” He paused for a minute looking lost in the data. “Sir, I do not see any sign of a landing site for the task force.
“Okay, so far no change in population, no signs of a fight, and no signs of a landing party. If this was a simulation back at the Academy, I would say we loaded the wrong one,” he continued. “There is one more thing that sticks out too, sir.”
“Go on,” I prompted.
“If you look here, this is the starting transmission time and here is the time we received it. Allowing for travel time, there is almost a full minute’s difference, sir.”
He was right, but I did not like where this was going. “What conclusion do you draw from what we know?”
“Sir, I think this report is a fake.”
“Yes, I agree,” I replied. This was not good at all. Not only did that mean all the data we collected was compromised, it also meant our enemy knew a lot more about us than we knew about them. “What about the encryption keys? Were they valid?”
“Yes, sir, all the keys are perfect. There is no question our probe sent the data.”
“Okay, we need to start digging through what we got and try to see if there is any legit information in it at all.” They might have used real data and just modified it as needed. If so, that might mean we could reconstruct some of it.
We dug through the data for hours and found nothing that we could use. Whoever they were, they were very thorough. It was almost like they had known this probe was coming for weeks in advance and recorded the data ahead of time.