Earth's First Colonies

“Dear Lord, . . . I think they're human.”
The captain walked over to the helmsman's console to see what he was talking about.
“What else would they be?”
“But sir they're, . . . well, they're living like animals.”
The captain leaned over the helmsman's shoulder and considered the image on his view screen. What the captain saw could have been a scene from earth during the dark ages. Men carrying swords, others tending fields, building made stone and thatch.
“Its not possible for humans to survive like that anymore is it? I mean how would they cope with the extended life spans and elevated birth rates? How would they maintain their implants?”
The helmsman looked around the bridge after putting the image up on all the screens around the room.
“Obviously its possible or we wouldn't be seeing it,” the captain said walking back to his own console.
One of the xeno-agriculturalists offered, “They wouldn't have implants if they were born on a world like this, but they would still live hundreds of years even without modern medical science”
“You think the whole planet is like this?” The helmsman's voice rose in pitch as he spoke
“Alright,” the captain interrupted, “We're a colony ship not a science vessel. I want all applicable departments to start working on an alternate destination and begin harvesting any resources we can from this system without touching this planet or any others we find that are inhabited. Xeno-agriculture and any other department not involved in those tasks I want you to study this planet's inhabitants the best you can without interfering with our primary mission, and prepare a report to send to Earth with our updated mission status. No one goes to the surface without my express consent, and I won't be giving consent unless its a life or death issue so don't ask. That's it get to work.”
The command center instantly began to buzz with activity and noise. The captain leaned in close to the colony governor's ear, “I sure would love to go down there.”
“Me too,” she whispered back, “but that'll be somebody else's mess to clean up.”
“To bad.”
“Do you think this means the stories are true?”
“They must be, why else would there supposedly be no sightings of the original hundred colony ships after so many hundreds of years? It would be a hard thing to keep quite, but then again we all have heard the stories.”
“It seems unbelievable.”
“Which is probably the how they've been able to keep as much a secret as they have.”
They both watched the captain's screen as a scene played itself out on the planet below. A man holding a sword striking a pile of hay while speaking to a child. The boy nodding and imitating with a stick as his weapon.
“If they are keeping it quite that means nobody's coming to clean this up.”
The captain began cycling through different places on the planet which had human activity as they were talking.
He responded, “but why change it? These people have obviously overcome whatever problems living like this with modern altered DNA would cause.”
Just then the image fell to a scene of massive battle. At least a million lay dead as hundreds of thousands more continued to battle. A castle of monumental proportions stands with multiple breaches in its walls. From the piles of dead it is obvious the invaders had been held outside the walls be sheer force of numbers, but now seem to be falling back little by little back to their own walls. The invaders now having even greater numbers than they.