The scouting mission departure date is Thursday, June 8, 2299. After hours of traveling through space it is now early on Friday, June 9. Those on a standard sleep schedule will need to sleep soon.
After bringing aboard the probe, repairing it a bit, and copying off the data, analysis shows an interesting phenomenon: a glip of light shoots from Dragonstar to the colony three days before the incident.
Ridge was pretty careful about approaching the gravitic wake. However, it could still interfere with the gravitic drive. But the ship has emergency thrusters for use when the gravitic drive malfunctions. Those can be used to clear the event horizon, at which point the gravitic drive can be readjusted to work again.
Meanwhile, space-time is warping, and Noun is intrigued. Strange visual effects accompany the distortion; e.g., every so often, the world shifts around you, and you feel like you are facing the opposite direction, having been spun around.
The satellites brought on board that were orbiting the colony will have captured data on the glip of light from Dragonstar – so minor that it wasn’t even noticed, until they actively look for it (or the ship’s AI could find it for Ridge, if she instructed it to look for her).
The satellite does not see anything spectrally where the light hit, but thermally it does. They can follow the signature as it approaches the arboretum’s giant central tree (two smaller heat signatures move to block it once it gets within 200 feet).
They continue tracking the signature as it moves around the city. Fortunately, it always stays a discernable distance from all other heat signatures (people), such that it is easy to follow (although the temporal resolution means some interpolation is necessary). Hehehe. The hardest thing to follow is when it enters a building, but it easy for the AI to search for when it reemerges, because it is a thermal signature with no corresponding spectral one. After a few days, the signature becomes visible spectrally as a young woman, but her appearance does not match the thermal signature. She is last observed going inside Percepi spaceport, about 45 minutes before the planet disappears.
Back on Laboro they can get the travel manifests for all mystic transports leaving Percepi during that 45 minute interval. There are sixteen: nine to Earth, two to Luna, two to Mars, one to Laboro, one to Lupus, and one to Canis.
Actually, the admiral and the major meet them on the ship, to prevent Divination of the results of their investigation.
Admiral Rossner wants to keep the truth about Dragonstar quiet for now, to avoid further panic (things are already bad enough, with a large increase in Earthbound traffic as people abandon the colonies). The admiral orders Major Bradley, Captain Kilgerren and company not to disclose the details of the incident to anyone until the investigation is complete.
The admiral wants everyone involved to continue assisting in the investigation. Those not currently members of UN Forces are made temporary members until these matters have been cleared up. The admiral wards everyone against Divination (Div 5 or less each; the admiral is a level 10 mystic with a 16 intelligence – 5 Creat, 1 Destr, 3 Dis, 5 Div, 9 Enh, 1 Heal, 1 Ill, 1 Kin, 1 Mind, 2 Pyro, 3 Trans, 47 reserve).
The admiral asks for any information relevant to protecting Laboro and other worlds from Percepi’s fate. From the data presented, he is convinced the rogue planet is responsible. If Mercury is brought up, he claims that the Mercury incident is completely unrelated to the events surrounding the Lalande system. But that gives him an idea…
The admiral wants a way to fight this rogue planet if it shows up again. The nanites that destroyed Mercury are the best planet-killing option available to them. So one mission is to return to Earth and find a man named Harry Bryant. He is a scientist who works for Mercabah Technologies. Bradley is given that task.
The rest of them are supposed to track down the whereabouts of the young woman. Spaceports are all monitored carefully for security reasons, but this information is not mirrored on G-Net. They will have to travel to each colony and search through the video footage of each spaceport, starting with the nine Earth spaceports: Rome, Moscow, Glacialis, Zanadu, New York City, London, Baghdad, Tokyo and Berlin.
Once they find her and report back to the admiral and the major, they are told to meet with Bradley and Bryant in Pax Artificium on Luna for further instructions. Ridge is assigned to visit the site of the Mercury incident. Unfortunately, Bryant cannot go with them, but he has prepared a cargo ship with gravitic shielding, to collect as much of the "substance" as possible. The ship is then to be delivered to the UN Forces military outpost between Earth and Mars.
Mercury is still on Mercury, and he/she/it feels the need to protect the souls there (the other two O.L. recipients abandoned the planet). So the grey goo is resistant to being pulled in! If they finally succeed at it, Mercury goes with them. It will challenge them once they deliver the materials to the military base. They see the goo form into a liquid metal humanoid form…