Unity Colony Ruins

The colony's data cores survived - sealed in a subterranean archive beneath vitrified regolith.

Day 9,251: A new burrowing variant has been identified. The outer perimeter walls are not rated for subsurface breach. Engineering support requested from the Chrysanthemum. Request pending.

Day 9,389: Outer ring evacuated. 214,000 colonists accounted for in underground residential blocks. Some sectors uncontacted.

Day 9,441: Communications with sectors 7 through 12 lost. Militia casualties: 892.

Day 9,484: Power to sublevel four is gone. The team has been asked to stop logging. The archivist declines.

Day 9,514: We do not have enough time.

The council chamber was built for two hundred. The final session convened seventeen people. The archivist was still logging.

The session ran for six hours. Twelve votes were cast - six for orbital bombardment, six against. One member abstained. Three were absent; their sectors had fallen three days prior.

The dissenters argued that evacuation was still possible. The Chrysanthemum could extract survivors in cycles before the lower levels were breached.

The majority held otherwise. The organism had already reached the lower access tunnels. Any vessel that docked would carry contamination offworld. The choice was no longer between saving some and saving all, but between losing one world and losing every world that followed.

Chief of Colony Security, Commander Beauclair, cast the deciding vote. The motion carried. The colony's charter said majority rules. They had written that charter themselves, in the first year, when the future looked different.

The bridge logs begin on Day 9,516 - two days after the vote.

Eleven crew remained to confirm surface clearance. Radiation levels. Population estimates revised downward, then revised again. Day 9,519: bombardment authorized. Day 9,521: sector clearance confirmed, 40%. Day 9,558: surface sterile. No life signatures detected. Assessment: unanimous.

The crew spent four more years on astrophysics surveys. Scientists filling the time.

The final log is dated Day 11,204. The officer on watch describes a clear day. She notes that Deneb looks different from this close than it did on approach. The entry ends there.

The final entry is a timestamp, no apology or reflection. Just an observation about starlight.