Arc Dios was on a training mission. I was enthroned on the bridge and monitoring space. When the navigation system warned that this system was off-limits, my personal AI, Ricardo Corleone did something that authorized my ship to enter the system.

“This system has been off-limits for 451 Earth years,” Ricardo told me.

“I detected no beacons.”

“There aren’t any, Thomas. Beacons can attract Sa’arm. They’ll investigate and dismantle beacons—they’ve done so in the past. It’s just not a priority. Don’t ask me how they detect electronic signals, though.”

It took a week to reach orbit. There were debris that could have been space ships—they were obviously artificial objects.

“The Sa’arm didn’t collect everything?” I asked.

“Probably wasn’t worth the time,” Lilith was on the bridge, too. “Recycling isn’t always the most efficient use of resources. Once they have gleaned all the technology they can, chasing down additional space junk wasn’t important. A few probes to make sure that there was no danger to the gestalt and they ignored the trash.”

Obviously these Sa’arm didn’t have replicators—the trash told me that.

During the journey to the main planet I lived in a small cabin adjacent to the bridge and I spent four hour watches in my command throne. All electronic emissions were determined to be of natural origin—no artificial electronic signals. Several orbits detected heat signatures, radiation hot spots, and industrial pollution. Scans of massive underground structures and ruined above-ground buildings seemed lifeless—but there were low-level life signs detected.

“It looks like something is still alive down there,” I commented.

“This is considered a dead planet,” Ricardo said. “It is estimated that the Sa’arm departed half a century ago.”

Drones were able to get up-close visuals as well as audio, chemical and microscopic scans. Bacteria and other microbes were present. Small scavengers—call them insects and rats—scurried around. Some flora was present. Drones entered buildings and underground caverns. The place looked stripped, looted.

“What are those egg-shaped things?” I asked, using my control system to put circles around egg-shaped lumps that were about 3 meters tall and 1.25 meters in diameter. They were laid out in an orderly pattern.

“Sa’arm corpses,” Lilith said.

“Lilith!” Ricardo scolded.

“After we finish checking the place out, our archaeology team will be pawing through the data. We need some samples. The scans of the tunnel walls seem to be identical to the exoskeletons littering the ground. Looks as if there are millions of Sa’arm corpses.” I checked the readouts. “There are some natural nuclear piles on Earth and it looks as if several were around that city. Those things could be smelters.”

I was confined to the ship while Major Williams led a landing party to the surface along with a security team. They remained on the surface only 20 hours because most of the work had already been done. We left the system after close to three weeks.

The after action report to Sir Isaac was anticlimactic.

“Remember—you weren’t there. What’s this about natural atomic piles and exoskeleton crushers?” Sir Isaac asked.

“Sir, our best guess is that the Sa’arm abandoned that world 186 years ago,” I said. “There were millions of discarded Sa’arm units. Three colony ships departed according to the forensic people. Sa’arm exoskeletons were used to line their tunnel networks and may have been used in their star ships. The atomic piles appear to have been partially-refined pitchblende and their heat was used directly for generating steam power. The dead bodies may have been the result of radiation poisoning. Lilith suggests that excess Sa’arm units were simply disconnected from the gestalt and they were discarded to rot.”

My input wasn’t really important. The archaeology team knew more about what they found than I did. I had nothing but questions. Who lived there before the Sa’arm? What happened to them? Obviously the Sa’arm had demolished most of the cities that their victims lived in.