"Mister Marks," the captain called as he entered the Security office.

"Yes Captain," Marcus looked up from his computer and stood, saluting him crisply.

Jacks returned the salute, "A word, please."

With a curt nod, Marks dismissed the two security officers that were in the office. They left immediately, closing the hatch behind them. "Yes Captain?"

"Any progress on finding out saboteur?"

"None yet sir," he looked troubled, "but I'm not a detective. I've checked all of the personnel files and nothing stood out. I would check their financials and phone records, but out here we don't have access to any of that."

"That's not good enough," Jacks' brow furrowed with anger, "What if next time they overload the reactor? Or maybe whoever they are just resorts to outright murder?"

The anger in his voice seemed not to affect the Security Chief, "Well I can tell you that direct action like a murder would be a lot easier to investigate. At least then I'd have clues to follow."

With a frustrated sigh the captain rubbed his forehead, "Have you been able to eliminate anyone as a suspect, at least?"

"Not with solid evidence, no. But we can eliminate several people using simple logic."

"Explain."

"Well, the Chief Engineer can be eliminated. If Mr. Schmitt wanted to sabotage the ship, he would have done a better job. In fact, all of the Engineering staff could have done so."

Jacks nodded in agreement, "Who else?"

"The XO and the First Officer would probably have done a more thorough job of it, had it been them. But that's just a guess. My Security team can be eliminated as suspects, at least initially. They all have military backgrounds, and would most likely have used explosives rather than sabotage."

"If you think Schmitt can be cleared, I'll get him to track down the sabotage. He's the most likely person to be able to find it."

"My thoughts exactly, sir."

"I have to get to a debrief. Keep looking." He returned the Chief's salute and left him to his job.

"We have radios for a reason," Captain Jacks sternly admonished the group seated around the conference table. They mostly looked suitably chastised except for the Lead Scientist, who met the captain's stare defiantly.

"Mister Boorman," he turned to the pilot, "why didn't you radio back to us when your shuttle was damaged?"

"Well shoot," he said, "the radio was damaged in the crash. The whole darned electric system was shot."

"But you had a backup," Jacks pointed out, "You should have used it. If you had then we wouldn't have had to send another shuttlecraft down to find out what happened to you."

Billy-Bob looked like he was going to argue, but instead looked down and said, "Yessir."

"Doctor Slavinski, you are the lead scientist on this ship, and you were in charge of that mission. What possessed you to neglect communicating with the ship?"

"Communicating?" the doctor scoffed incredulously, "I was gathering data on the most amazing discovery in Human history! The information we collect here could catapult our race a thousand years ahead of our current technological level!"

"I understand that," the captain said patiently, "But did that prevent you from taking two minutes to let us know what was going on?"

"I, uh," Slavinski faltered, but only for a moment, "I would have expected my assistant to take care of that," he finally countered.

Jacks sighed his disappointment, but decided to move on, "Now, what did we learn on this misadventure?"

"We learned so much," Baxter piped in, barely able to contain himself now that the subject of science had come up, "I could spend the rest of my life here and never uncover all of the secrets to what we found!"

"You might just get that chance if we can't get the Wandering Star operational again. Now what specifically did you find?"

"First of all," Slavinski took the lead once again, "this structure still has power. So either it hasn't been abandoned for very long, which I doubt, or it has an extremely efficient and automated power source, such as geothermal."

"That's impressive," the captain said, somewhat stunned by the revelation.

"The translation device worked," Baxter spoke up again, "the one that came from that alien wreck on Titan? It successfully translated the alien text we came across."

"Good to know. What else?"

The two scientists and their research assistants were virtually talking over each other in a contest to see who could throw out the most fascinating discovery or interesting fact that had come to light during their stay on "Old Dusty," as they had nicknamed the planet. The two security men sat back and silently observed, feeling that they had nothing relevant to add.

"Mister Wolfe," the captain interrupted the jumble of scientific facts flying from the others, "What was your impression?" The scientists looked at him with surprised expressions.

"Yes sir," Alex sat up straighter in his chair, "I don't have any scientific training, sir."

"I didn't ask you about scientific findings," he glanced meaningfully at the others, "what was your impression of this alien structure?

"Yes sir," as a security officer he wasn't used to being asked about anything other than tactical assessments. "well sir, the building didn't seem to be set up for military purposes."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, um," he looked to Andy Redburn, the other security officer that was there, for support, but the other man just shrugged as if to say, 'It's all on you, buddy!' Taking a deep breath, Alex dove in, "First of all, there were no apparent gun emplacements, either outside or inside."

Jacks nodded, "Go on."

"Secondly, we didn't find anything that looked to be an armory; no weapons stores."

"Anything else?"

"There weren't even any locked doors. It just didn't feel like a military operation."

"Very well." The captain turned back to Slavinski, "What do we know about the people that built this place?"

The lead scientist cleared his throat and stood up, "They were called the Kree. It seems that they were a centaur-like race twice our height and just as long. Chitinous plates and spikes covered their bodies making them extremely resilient. Their six eyes and four ears made them incredibly perceptive. And they had seven fingers on each hand that were more like tentacles than fingers."

Doctor Vasami, the ship's Biologist, added, "All in all they seem like they were an incredibly formidable and fearsome race, sir. They were superior to Humans in almost every respect, including intelligence."

"Where?" the captain asked, "I know there's nobody home here, but aren't they still out there?"

Vasami hesitated, "I don't think so, sir. There were references in their records to something called Inanis Dolorum, some kind of condition that may have wiped out their entire civilization."

"Is that something that we should be worried about? Can we be infected?" Jacks, though calm to all appearances, was near to panic on the inside. A deadly alien disease?

"We don't know," Indira said uncertainly, "they never seem to have figured out exactly what caused this condition."

"So there's a disease of some kind out there," the captain was ticking off points, "and this highly advanced and super intelligent race couldn't figure out what caused it. So we have no way of knowing what it is or if we are in danger from it."

"Yes sir," the biologist nodded soberly.

"There is a significant amount of data regarding this disease that we haven't translated yet," Slavinski said, "There may yet be some information that will shed some light on it."

Jacks said decisively, "Make that your primary task. I want to know more about this before someone onboard gets sick. And from now on we use full hazmat gear on planet."

"Yes sir," everyone in the briefing room said almost at the some time.

Captain Jacks entered the Engineering bay casually, looking around to see what was going on. Some of the access panels to the equipment had been removed, some with wires or components hanging out of them. The two Engineering Techs and Bryan Reed, the Mechanical Engineer, were working diligently to get everything back in working order.

"Captain," Hermann Schmitt greeted him, "What can we do for you?"

The captain continued to watch the technicians work. He couldn't help himself but wonder what exactly they were doing. Was one of them setting up another malfunction? In life support maybe? Or maybe planting a bomb that would permanently cripple the ship?

"Captain?" Schmitt was looking at him worriedly.

"Sorry. I was just checking on the repairs. How are they going?"

"Proceeding apace, Captain. We should be back up and running in a day or two."

"Good," he made sure nobody was close enough to overhear, "I need you to find the source of the sabotage, Hermann."

With a nod, the Chief Engineer said, "I think I can help you with that. Come with me."

He led the captain towards the hatchway at the back of the Engineering Bay. The label on the door read, 'Mainframe Access'. Schmitt entered a code on the number pad beside the door. With a beep, the door opened for them.

The computer room was hotter than the rest of the ship by several degrees. There were racks of equipment covering all of the walls except where the entry hatch was located. Banks of lights flashed green and yellow, with some flashing red. There were several actual computer terminals around the room, three of which were occupied. One man had a screwdriver in his hand and was working on one of the computer banks.

"Megan!" Schmitt called loudly to be heard over the hum of the computers.

At the terminal on the right hand wall a woman with thick red hair raised an arm with one finger up, indicating that she would be a minute. Her other hand kept typing on the terminal until she brought both hands back to typing. Lines of code scrolled down the screen as she typed furiously, her fingers a blur on the keyboard.

"Yes Chief?" she finally said, getting up from the terminal and coming to join the two men.

"Tell the captain what you told me."

"It was a trojan horse,"' she said as if would mean something to him.

"A what?"

Rolling her eyes just slightly she clarified, "A virus, Captain. Someone planted a virus in the computers controlling the drive system."

"I know what a virus is," he snapped, "What I don't understand is how it could get into the mainframe without anyone knowing about it. Our network was never connected to the internet or any other outside network."

"Well..." she hedged, "that's not entirely true."

"What do you mean?"

"The ship's network had to be connected to the Blackstar network. The Blackstar network is connected to the internet, as well as some other sister networks. Granted, it's protected by some heavy firewalls and fucktons of encryption, but nothing is truly unhackable."

"So it wasn't an inside job?" Jacks asked, somewhat relieved.

"I didn't say that," she pointed out, "I was merely saying that our network was connected to the outside, even though it was indirectly."

"Well is there any way to tell for certain?" his tension was returning.

"Possibly. I've got Jackson working on it now."

"And what if Jackson is the one who planted the virus?"

"Then he'll probably lie to us," Megan said matter-of-factly, "Look, I can't really even spare him for this. We're up to our asses in malfunctions and repairs, and I need every available resource to fix them. But the Chief said that this was important, so I put him on it."

Jacks frowned as he looked back and forth between them, "Alright. Keep on it, and let me know as soon as he finds anything."

"Of course," Megan assured him.

"Yes sir," Schmitt said

Captain Jacks sat in his quarters pouring over the information that the team had brought back from the surface. The discovery of the crashed ship on Titan had catapulted human technology forward in leaps and bounds, but this was something completely different. These Kree were so advanced that they seemed to be magicians.

But then again, it was Arthur C. Clarke who said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Apparently these people were sufficiently advanced. Was it coincidence that this was the first place that the ship stopped? Or was there some divine providence involved? But then again, these Kree might be so advanced as to be considered gods themselves.

Setting aside the Kree, he returned to his train of thought. Who had sabotaged the Wandering Star, and why? Anybody already on board would be setting themselves up for death, or at the very least being lost in space for the rest of their life. So why do it at all?

There were the usual suspects, of course. Money, religion, and love or hatred were responsible for nearly every act of Human aggression or destruction. He doubted that love or hate had anything to do with this, so he decided to discard that for now. Money wouldn't matter if the person being paid were dead. Unless the money was for someone else; a loved one or family member. Self-sacrifice wasn't unheard of, especially in families tied to organized crime and terrorism.

There were more than enough 'religious' groups in the world that were centered around hatred and war. Islam, the Taliban; the Munqidhu Al'ard was one of the newer anti-technology sects. But the very nature of their being against technology precludes them from having the ability or knowledge to perform sabotage like this.

But they could always hire someone who could. That went back to money.

The captain shook his head. All of this circular speculation was giving him a headache. He decided firmly that he would put any such theorization on the back burner until he had more information to work with. Until then it was all pointless anyway.