Earth-like Moon

Unknown System

The sun was now quite low on the horizon, and the desert planet hung in the sky, illuminating the township. It offered more light than a similar clear night on Earth would but was fading fast.

Grace watched as the crew from the ship gathered around the coffin on the grass. The rank insignia inscribed on the coffin was as close as they had to a positive identification on Captain Wellesley and she was quite caught up in the excitement. This was exactly the sort of moment Grace had got into archaeology for, except with the inability to run off and make a quick profit. While she held no one in particular’s attention, she stepped away from the group, slowly at first, to make sure no one paid her any mind.

She had a shovel in hand, in case she needed to pretend that she was, in fact, still digging. It would be a bit odd, seeing as she’d already found what they were looking for, but it would be an explanation. When she was far enough away that she was sure no one was about to turn around and ask where she was going, she dropped the shovel gently and quietly into the grass before breaking out into a sprint.

She headed out of the graveyard and back down the row of makeshift houses. She desperate to know why they had come, and more importantly, she wanted anything here that she could sell to pay off what that idiot Dryden had done with her ship.

There was nothing they’d seen in the homes they had already searched in that gave her reason to think she might find anything in any of them. She might well be wrong, but she wanted to see if there was anything else first.

Grace would have to make this quick. They hadn’t done any sort of extensive scans for what the local wildlife might be, and there could well be something akin to bears or wolves, or worse. The fact it seemed like a planet with the potential for an agricultural community didn’t mean that there were not as-yet-undiscovered fearsome predators—not something Grace wanted to find herself on the wrong end of.

She was shocked at just how quickly it had got this dark. It seemed to be broad daylight when they stepped away from the graveyard; now, it was almost completely nighttime. They were much further north than Grace realised. She was used to a nice colony on the cluster, with an apartment near the equator.

She pulled out a flashlight from her coat and turned off the one street and tried to make out what else there was in this small community—hopefully, something metallic encrusted with gems that would sell for millions back home. Yes, that would do nicely. That wishful thinking didn’t explain why she would find it here. Perhaps one of the crew was from old money and just liked to keep it with him wherever he went. Grace didn’t need a backstory. She realised she could well be out of luck for the one glorious find of a lifetime, but she might find several things that came close or could at least make a dent into what she owed.

Turning off the street, she saw a building on the horizon, or, more accurately, what remained of it. It was a single storey, built from the wood of the trees that grew on this planet and was both remarkably well-preserved but also surprisingly well-constructed considering there was a shortage of architects and labourers. The Trafalgar would have had a lot of crew who no doubt could have built something like this. She wasn’t quite sure who might have designed it, perhaps an ambitious engineer, or maybe the ship’s database just happened to contain such designs.

Grace continued walking past buildings; another was on the horizon, not quite the horizon but there in that direction, and it turned out to be a shop. She walked in; the place did look like a general store in the old West. It was not well-stocked; there was very little in the way of provisions, and it had been ransacked once or twice in its time. The shelves contained cans of long-gone-off food and other basic provisions.

She would have a hard time finding any sort of clue as to the situation.

Something had gone on towards the end. While the crew of the Trafalgar may have had plenty of luck on his moon, their descendants certainly hadn’t. In the short run, maybe a generational or two, but it hadn’t lasted. She was surprised the homes were in such good condition, considering whatever may have left this shop in its ramshackle state, and she continued looking for anything that might explain what had gone down.

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Laying her slate on the counter, she set it on to a deep-level scan, trying to determine if any power sources in the area might explain what was going on here. She admitted to herself that her expectations were low, and she wasn’t anticipating much of a result at all. The user interface showed an imitation of an old-style radar rotating around the screen to illustrate that the scan was running, and she went to the rear of the shop to see if there was anything that might offer more.

A wooden door creaked as she pushed it to one side, following through into the storeroom. Again, it was mainly ransacked with overturned boxes and half-empty containers. Several bags of oats were on the bottom shelf, with large chunks taken out and rotting contents spilling out onto the floor, clearly ravaged by vermin. She continued looking through the various supplies. The name of the moon was New Tahiti, and the system was named Pulsar Sky. Grace was genuinely baffled as to who would send a postcard from this backwater. She shrugged it off and kept looking.

She walked up to the far side and looked at the collections of drinking glasses and cutlery. There were some books with ledgers of the shops buying and selling that she scrolled through. Even in the cluster, a lot of businesses still kept hard copies of such transactions. She realised, of course, that this gave them a firm date of how late the colony had been operating. She pulled the furthest folder down and used her right index finger to move down the page and find the last transaction. It had simply been listed as foodstuffs, and it was dated sixty years earlier. That was something significant.

She reached down to take her slate and capture the image, but her belt clip was empty. She panicked for a moment, thinking she had lost it before remembering it was scanning away on the counter in the front.

She walked back to the shop entrance, where a light was blinking away. She had indeed found a signal she pulled up the information to see exactly where the signal was coming from and what she saw was amazing. It was part of the town, only meters from her to the North.

Grabbing the slate, she dashed out of the shop, not even closing the door behind her, and headed back from the direction she had come towards the pub, its sign blowing in a breeze. As she got closer, she could make out the details on the wooden sign hanging, The pub was named The Admiral’s Rest. Grace figured that tied back to Trafalgar somehow. The castaways had built themselves a bar. Of course they had. If you know you’re stuck on a world never getting back, that’s the one thing that would keep you sane, surely, she thought to herself.

She looked at the outline of the sign as it swayed and noticed a light in one of the bar’s windows. That must have been what her scan had detected. Something was giving off an electrical charge.

Grace entered the old bar. It was completely dark, with the only light from her slate to illuminate the room. Tapping at her controls, she brought the brightness up to maximum to give her a better sense of the room. It was furnished with stools and a wooden bar. The bar itself was typical of the last century, when the faux wood look was all the rage. The layers of dust illustrated that last orders had been called long ago. She walked behind it, gently pulling on one of the large beer taps, but despite a slight gurgling, nothing came out. There were some very dusty glasses there, and many sealed bottles in boxes.

Looking behind the bar, she also found that the colonists had made their own wine. Picking up one bottle, she examined the fine details on the labels, beautifully designed with some hand-drawn artwork of old wooden pirate ships. No, it must be the battle of Trafalgar. Below, the date had been handwritten.