Origin - Season Two Read Online Free

The Saishans even found fragments of the weapons used.”
    For a long, awkward moment no one spoke.
    “Please don’t say that the warheads were Russian,” Mitch finally said.
    Watkins let out a bark of nervous laughter. “No, they weren’t Russian.”
    “Okay, well that’s a start.”
    “Do they know when it happened? This attack?” Heinz asked.
    “That’s the other thing,” Watkins said. “We’re not talking about something recent. The event predates even the Saishans by several million years.”
    “Several million !” Williams said.
    “Yes. Approximately four and half million years.”
    “Incredible,” Heinz said.
    “I don’t know what it means,” Watkins said. “But I thought everyone should know.”
    “Thank you, Chris,” Richelle said. “I don’t know what it means either. I’m not sure I even want to right now. As fascinating as it is, it doesn’t really change anything. Once we’ve finished translating the logs, perhaps it will all make a bit more sense. Who knows?”
    Watkins picked up his papers and stood. “Well, I’d better get back to work.”
    “You’re doing a great job, Chris,” Richelle said. “Why don’t you grab yourself a cup of coffee and a good night’s sleep. You look a little pale.”
    “I’ll be fine,” Watkins said.
    Richelle watched him leave and let out a long sigh. “Okay, well that wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but I have a feeling that’s probably going to be par for the course around here from now on.”
    “This is serious shit,” Mitch said. “Prehistoric alien civilizations nuking entire planets? How the hell can that not change anything? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I agree, it doesn’t. I’m just saying, how can that be?”
    “Calm down, Mitch,” Richelle said.
    “What about Chris?” Williams said. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for him to be going through all this stuff on his own. Imagine what it must be doing to his head. Did you see him, he looks like he’s—”
    “Like he’s just had a sneak preview of what’s in store for us if we don’t get our own shit together?” Mitch suggested.
    “Alright,” Richelle said. “I can see we’re all freaking out a little. Let’s just think happy thoughts for a moment, shall we?”
    “Yeah,” Mitch said. “Maybe he’ll have better news tomorrow. Maybe he’ll tell us about the great traveling space circus, going from galaxy to galaxy, bringing nothing but joy and happiness to all who welcome them.”
    For a moment nobody said anything, then all four of them burst out laughing at the same time.
    “You see?” Richelle said. “Happy thoughts. Well done, Mitch. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to move on to RP One. Heinz?”
    Heinz shook his head slowly. “Same thing. We can access the log files, but not the mainframe. Mitch and Naoko have been running the sequence for two weeks now without success. We think there may be some kind of DNA-based access protocol. If that’s the case, we’ve got a serious problem.”
    Williams raised a hand. “When we launched RP One from Origin didn’t we access the mainframe then?”
    “We’ve never accessed the mainframe of Origin or RP One,” Heinz said. “And we sure as hell didn’t launch RP One. The beacon located by Siren Call was transmitting on a loop. All we did was decode part of the signal and send Origin what it wanted. The confirmation came from Siren Call, not Origin. Then we just eavesdropped on the exchange between Origin and the beacon to gather the information we needed to set up the Pandora as a landing platform. Once everything was in place, we used Siren Call again to acknowledge the request. The launch sequence was pre-programmed. Does that answer your question?”
    “Not really,” Williams said. “You lost me somewhere around the beginning.”
    “Never mind,” Richelle said. “The point is, we can’t access the mainframe.”
    “Correct,” Heinz said. “I’m not saying we’re giving up.