"How many Terrans," Harbin asked.
"Seems to be at least a unit on every moon, plus whatever is in the stars. I think they have been cleared out, for the most part, but I cannot be sure with the eclipse," Wrathin said.
Harbin nodded. "We should check Sol-2 while we are here. No point in taking us to Sol-3 and then coming back. That's too many trips."
"Execute," Wrathin said.
He, along with Veta, prepared the vehicle, and they lifted off, Harbin and Bianca in the seats behind. Never had Bianca been so happy to leave a place. While she would always think of Harbin in the snow and cold, she didn't want to be in this world anymore.
Harbin reached over to her seat and touched her hand. Their fingers laced together, and she felt a safety being there with him.
He really wouldn't let anything happen to her.
He would not let--
"Hey, Bianca," Veta said.
"Yes?"
"Will you look at this?" Veta gestured to a screen she had displayed. A map of the Sol system, the big gas giant right in the center, and the five moons."
"Do you see this?"
Bianca nodded. "It's a map of this system." The map was easy enough to read. It was covered in dots as though someone had managed to get a scan of the system.
There were some red dots near Sol-1. Two.
Two red dots, moving away from Sol-1.
Bianca blinked. "Is that us?" she asked, pointing at the red dots.
"Maybe," Veta said. "What I want to know is what is all of this?" She pointed to the coding at the top of the map. A series of numbers that did not make any sense. They weren't vectors or codes or any known map markings.
Bianca stared at it. "I'm not sure. I think it might be code."
"Well, of course, it's a code," Veta said.
"No, I mean, it's a known code."
"To who?"
"Caoimhe. That looks like the codes that Freya used to send to Caoimhe all the time."
"Do you know what it says?"
Bianca stared at the numbers and attempted to remember them.
She shook her head. "I cannot remember the correlations. The numbers have letters that match."
Harbin looked at it. Held up his gauntlet. "Scan."
In a moment, they had an answer.
"A Terran invasion."
16
"What in the world are you talking about?" Wrathin said as he piloted the ship up through the atmosphere. "We just landed. There is no Terran Invasion, we would have--"
