The Blind Eye of God

Chapter One.

The UNSC Frigate Faithful had been coasting on it's intercept course for two weeks now, which was about how long it was taking for the crew to overcome the ill effects of the jump from the Sol System. Something about penetrating a fold in space to exit one point in space to enter another millions of miles away was not kind to the human body. Despite being drugged into unconsciousness and pumped full of anti-nausea medicine, it took forever to overcome the disorientation the effect produced. Without computer automation and carefully plotted trajectories thru the jump effect, a ship would smack into something while it's crew puked it's collective guts out.
The Captain of Faithful was finally feeling up to getting on his uniform and taking to the bridge. The officer of the deck and his Exec was already running a post jump status check when he strolled into the cabin with a hot mug of coffee. If the Bridge had been fully manned, a hastily shouted "Captain on the Bridge!" might have been in order, but the two men were to focused on more important duties than protocol. If some sort of shit was about to hit the fan, now was the time to find it and fix it before it killed them all. "Well, Bob, anything fall off yet?" Captain Carlson asked his second, Commander Robert Stark. "No, Sir, everything seems green across the board, not even an blown fuse. We seem to be blessed this time out."
The Faithful had four jumps under her belt, and the third had been a challenge. She had passed thru a small, thin dust cloud right after the jump, and the shield generator had blown under the pressure of pushing thru so much solid matter in such a short time. Only the fact that it had happened just as they cleared the cloud had kept them from sustaining more punctures and the associated havoc that came with it. Only the professionalism of a well trained damage control team saved the ship, but not without the loss of systems crucial to the mission. It took two years of refit to return faithful to duty.
Carlson called up the system map on his console and was pleased to see they were close enough to their destination for a long range scan. He called up the surveillance module and saw that the mappers were 85% manned and were already collecting data, so he headed back to his stateroom to review his mission orders and get ready for the evening meal, which would be the first time he was confident he'd be able to keep down a decent meal.
Most of the ship's officers were seated when the Captain entered the Wardroom, and as Carlson took his customary seat at the head of the table, he noted the absence of the Chaplain. "So", he observed, "I take it someone's prayers haven't been answered.......as usual." This elicited some chuckles from around the table, as the Chaplain had become a source of scorn and amusement amongst the "real" officers of Faithful. "No Sir, Cap, he's still praying to the porcelain deity to return him his stomach!" quipped the Communications Officer, Lieutenant Commander Randy "Buzz-word" Macky. Laughter erupted as they all dug into their meals. Carlson smiled, trusting them to keep their disdain to themselves once the Chaplain started moving around the ship and getting into everybody's business, which he was quite good at doing.
He had finished up his meal and was making his way back to his stateroom when his com-link pinged and the Cartography Chief came on the line. "Captain, I think you should get down here, we seem to be having some problems with the mapping returns.....we're getting readings that we shouldn't." "Be right there, Chief", Carlson replied, and turned into a drop tube to head down towards the forward keel section where the sensors section was quartered.
The guy who looked far to young to be a Chief Petty Officer was glancing back and forth between the monitors and a notepad computer he held in his hands, and frowning. Carlson waved down the techs before they could all rise to attention and sauntered over to his best sensor man. "OK, Chief, what's going on?" Stanley Mabotu handed him the tablet and waved towards the rows of monitors that only a geek could hope to understand. "Sir, this survey said we have a primo planet down there, no life forms more advanced than a lemur, no sentient beings at all, but everything I'm getting from sensors says otherwise. Nothing flat out obvious concerning industrialization, but there are trace elements, there are roads, we are even getting some faint radio transmissions. Sir, we haven't gotten close enough for high rez yet, but I can tell you right now with some certainty that we are going to find people down there, probably a lot of them, so either we took a wrong turn somewhere or somebody lied to us!"
Carlson had learned alot about sensors simply thru osmosis, and could make some sense of some of the monitors and their lines of code and jagged lines, and he could plainly see what was upsetting his Chief. Half of the readings they were displaying had to be impossible if the survey had even been done by a crew of monkeys. All he could do for now was call a meeting of the staff and try and find out what was happening. "Carry on, Chief, make sure you record and archive everything you get and keep my apprised." He turned around and headed back to his stateroom to retrieve his own copy of the initial survey report, and called his officers back to the wardroom via com-link, instructing them to keep their departments on their toes while he grilled them all for some sort of explanation. He hoped like hell his Maneuvering Officer didn't just commit one of the worst jump miscalculations ever to have been survived.......this mission and alot of officers careers, including his own, was beginning to look bleak.