Con-Red: Recourse Read Free Page A

the steam coming from the top of the cup before taking a sip of the strong coffee.  The man was above average in height with a strong lean build and to Laria, a handsome face.  His short cut hair could have caused him to get mistaken for a military man, but that was not the case at this junction in his life.  At one time he had been a Colonel in the Federation Marine Corp, but he had left that life behind him and instead decided to pursue a career of making peace instead of war.  Only a series of wrinkles around his eyes and forehead betrayed his otherwise youthful appearance.
    Laria smiled a little at the man as she calmed down from the surprise and turned back towards the front the Communications and Control room.  The ComCon was a relatively small room with a number of monitoring stations crammed together.  With completion of the facility having been on such a short timetable there were multiple compromises and design flaws in the layout with the ComCon being one of them.  There was nothing anyone could do about the problem and complaining wouldn’t help so they all lived and worked in the confined conditions, usually taking shifts.
    “Same as before, Boss.  My gut says it’s not just an anomaly, it just can’t be, but I can’t prove it.”  She ran her hand through her long blonde hair and leaned back in her chair slightly, while looking at the rotating holographic image of the SS-824 star system.
    At the center of the projection was a glowing round mass, representing the system’s white dwarf.  Around this small star rotated two planets, both rocky and barren, with an asteroid belt spread out between them.  Unlike many other asteroid belts, however, this one was fairly miniscule with only a few dozen large planetary chucks and a few hundred small asteroids spread thinly around the star.  One of these larger rocks, technically a planetoid, was marked with blue.  This was the Hand-in-Friendship Consulate built within what was anticipated to be a neutral star system in the hope of establishing contact with an extraterrestrial civilization.  The consulate facility, constructed on the planetoid in the event that any of the planets were previously claimed, was a completely unarmed civilian project that broadcast a message of peace without pause.  It also invited these alien beings to come out and establish diplomatic relations with the United Planets Federation.
    There were a great number of Federation citizens that didn’t think diplomatic measures should have been pursued and they weren’t shy about expressing those feelings.  After the events that took place at the Odyssia Dig Site, where almost every individual of the expedition disappeared.  Search and rescue teams had found only the collapsed and buried remains of the Odyssia facility and a handful of dead.  Those recovered bodies were determined to have perished before the destruction of the site and complete disappearance of the rest could not the explained.  Suspicions of alien involvement were on the table from that point and finding of trace amounts of foreign particles in the vicinity of the incident only confirmed the hypothesis.
    The military had strained at the leash from that point on.  Odyssia, while mostly a civilian site, had been under overall control by a military entity and the military didn’t take kindly to an unprovoked attack against their people.  They had started to prepare for war before the civilian government came to the decision of taking a more diplomatic approach in the resolution of the crisis.  It didn’t go over too well with the Federation military forces, but they had to follow orders and kept as backup should diplomacy fail.  Such was the reason why Hand-in-Friendship was built.
    “Could it be some sort of language?”  The Boss, RJ Deckler, responded as he slowly walked into the room and moved towards the small kitchenette area built into the wall.
    “Anything is possible.  Maybe if it’s some sort