Deep Space Endeavor (20 page)

It didn’t take the leaders of Earth long to outfit the cargo ships with Hightower’s FTL drives, and Earth’s colonization of the stars began. Within fifty years, Earth had a population of only seven billion and new resources flowing in from ten colonies and six resource planets. Fifty years later, Earth had only four billion people and had colonized twenty planets. After three hundred years, Earth's Coalition had expanded to thirty-two worlds and eleven resource planets. In three hundred years, Earth had found forty-one lush habitable worlds, and while they all had plant and wildlife, none of them had what could be called a sentient species.

Humanity
thought they were alone in the universe, and maintained that belief until eleven years ago, when the outer colonies were attacked by the Pack. The only reason Earth and her colonies had been able to fight was because a civil war had been brewing between the Coalition's outer colonies and the core. Military ships were built on both sides in anticipation of the first ever interstellar war, which the outer colonies would have lost. Instead, the Pack came, and the very fleet Earth and the Coalition had created to make war with one another saved them from extinction. After five years and countless lives, the war was ended at the battle of Polisia.

______

While Earth’s history played itself out in Jesse’s mind, he was jolted back to the present by SAMMI’s announcement, “We will be exiting light space to orbit the planet Crunaris in four minutes.”

Jesse
went to the bridge to see his crew eagerly anticipating their exit from light space. Light space was beautiful, but one never tired of seeing reality come back into focus. Everyone was on the bridge except Reece and Kora, who had been spending a great deal of time together since the mission began.

As they reentered real space,
Collin announced, “
Endeavor
is cloaked and ready to make planet fall. Where to, Colonel?"

Jesse smiled as he replied, “I’m going to leave that one to Lieutenant Jackson. Lead the way, Josiah.” As Jesse was speaking, he stood up and motioned Josiah to come sit in the
Colonel’s seat. Cassie took the vacated seat at the sensors’ console.

Josiah sat in Jesse’s seat and said in his best imitation of the
Colonel, “Lieutenant Torrensede, please take us to the smaller continent on the far side of the planet.”

Josiah was rewarded for his impersonation by mock outrage from Jesse and laughs from the rest of the bridge.

Collin, played his part perfectly, enthusiastically crying out, “Aye, aye, Sir.”

As
Endeavor
touched down in a field almost a hundred kilometers from the nearest settlement, the crew split into three groups. “Collin, Suzy and Shadow will stay with
Endeavor,
” Jesse began. “Collin, please have the warriorbots on standby in case anyone besides us shows up here.” Collin nodded, and Jesse continued. “Josiah will take Kimi, Cassie and Wennagal in Cassie’s speeder, and I’ll take Reece, Kora and Commando with me.”

“I’ll drive,” Reece interrupted to a couple more chuckles at the
Colonel’s expense.

“Now,” Jesse continued while acting insulted
, “If there are no more interruptions, we can be on our way. Josiah’s team is after the artifact and my team is after the next clue. We will rendezvous back here in ten hours. Keep in touch and call if you need backup. Collin can make it to you with the warriorbots in under five minutes if he needs to.”

When
Jesse finished speaking, everyone grabbed their gear and loaded up. The speeders took off in separate directions, and Suzy closed the landing bay hatch.

______

Josiah hadn’t been this excited since he and Jesse were chosen to begin training for the Space Marines Special Forces. Now, he was in another galaxy, battling space pirates and searching for alien treasure. As they approached the coordinates, they looked up and saw a large ancient structure. It looked as though the structure was thousands of years old, and time had not been kind. It was apparently a palace that predated technological advancement. Two thousand years ago, it was most likely one of the wonders of Crunaris. There were high walls with towers at each corner, although the walls had been broken through in many places. Each wall was made of a different type of stone. The towers were each a different shape and each of the towers was made from one of the stones that made up the palace walls. They rose another fifty meters from the top of the walls. The first tower was triangular, the second tower was octagon-shaped, the third tower was a half-moon and the fourth tower was a perfect square. The roofs of each of the towers had caved in except for the square tower, which, somehow, still looked pristine.

As they entered the courtyard, they saw the palace which had also been heavily damaged. Once again, there were four different types of stone, but this time, they were each present in each wall. The craftsmanship was amazing. Higher up, Josiah cou
ld see what looked like a gold icon of some sort. No, it was four separate icons woven together. The palace had four wings surrounding a very large meeting chamber.

“This wasn’t a palace,” Kimi started. “This was a meeting place
, most likely for the purposes of peace,” she concluded. She was in awe of the structure, and she was recording all of the details on the vid recorder in her visor’s HUD for further study. She was the only one in the group that opted to wear the visor. Her visor kept track of everything from atmospheric conditions and energy readings, to other life signs in the area. It was an extremely useful tool in an unknown place.

“Sort of like an alien United Nations.” Josiah concurred, using a term that was still in use back on Earth, even though it was technically a United Planets now.

Cassie and Wennagal had been silent to this point, their alert eyes searching for any clue as to where the artifact they were looking for might be.

“No one ha
s been here in ages,” Cassie called out as she tried to read an inscription on the rear wall.

“That is of benefit to us.” Wennagal answered as he was cautiously moving about the room, keeping one eye on the door and one hand on his blaster. He knew Kimi would alert them to any other life forms in the area, but he remained ready just in case.

They searched the ruins for several hours, going into every room, looking for secret passageways or tunnels. They were touching every piece of furniture, every sconce and every stone that looked like it might be loose, but they found nothing. They used their equipment to try and seek out any passageways under the complex or find out if anything was made of an unusual material.  They even checked to see if there were any faint energy signatures, but they found nothing. They were beginning to get a little frustrated and worried that the pirates would catch up to them, when suddenly something clicked in Kimi’s mind.

“Why was the square tower still intact?” She asked as her three companions stopped their search to contemplate her question. “I mean, the other three towers, the walls and even this meeting hall are all pretty run down. Why is one tower still in pretty good condition?”

Josiah thought about her question and answered, “I don’t know, but nothing is going on in here, so let’s go have a look.”

T
hey made their way outside, and they quickly approached the tower.

“Let’s have a look inside, shall we,” Josiah
remarked, anticipation rolling off him in waves. They entered the tower and surmised the room to be approximately ten meters square with a narrow staircase along the wall opposite the entrance. Kimi’s equipment detected no chambers below them, so they began to climb the stairs.

Josiah called out the entrance to Cassie and Wennagal. “Hopefull
y we won’t take too long in here.”

While
they climbed the stairs, they couldn’t help but wonder why the square tower had remained in such good condition. They had climbed to the next level which was even with the top of the wall. There was a doorway leading out onto the wall. Kimiko looked out the doorway which had long ago lost its door and noticed how thick the wall was. The wall had a walkway almost three meters wide and stone emplacements on each side almost another meter wide. Without the benefit of advanced weapons, this wall would have been all but impenetrable.

There was nothing of interest in the second chamber, so they continued on up. After another twenty-five meters, they came to the third chamber, and Josiah noticed a window facing the meeting hall. Neither of the other chambers had windows of any kind, so he was immediately drawn to it,
hoping it was significant. He looked through the window directly at the meeting hall and he noticed he was at eye level with the golden icon on the outside of the meeting hall.

“Hey, Kimi, come here and take a look at this,” he remarked.

She walked to the window and looked at the icon on the meeting hall. She set her visor to full magnification and noticed that it wasn’t just one icon with four designs; it was four separate coats of arms with a symbol in the middle. She wouldn’t have noticed it if not for the visor’s very detailed imagery. She may as well have been close enough to touch it.

“Josiah,” she yelled excitedly, “I think that’s it.” She took off her visor, handed it to him, and said, “Look through this and focus on the symbol in the middle.”

When Josiah looked through the visor, what Kimi had been so excited about became clear to him, and he exclaimed, “We’ve found it,” and looked over to see her big smile. As they made their way out of the tower, they called down to let Cassie and Wennagal know what they suspected. When they reached the ground, the four treasure hunters raced over to the front of the meeting hall. The artifact was approximately seventy-five meters off the ground. Cassie and Kimiko both pulled out their grappling guns and fired to each side of the artifact. They clipped the guns to their belts and quickly made their way up the side of the meeting hall. When they reached the artifact, Kimiko lowered her visor to see if she could get any readings. While she was studying the display, Cassie reached out to grab the artifact and an undetected energy build up surged into her, leaving her unconscious. Cassie cried out in pain, and then went limp, dangling from her grappling gun, Wennagal and Josiah looked up and Josiah yelled up to Kimi. “What happened?”

“An energy surge has injured Captain Reed,” she yelled back down.
"I will attempt to lower her to you, and one of you will have to come up and take her place. My readings show this to be a two person undertaking.”

She swung herself to the other side of the icon, grabbed hold of one of the stones and pressed the button on the grappling gun that slowly began letting out Cassie’s rope. She didn’t really like Captain Reed, and almost would have preferred to let her just hang there, but this was a two pers
on job. As Cassie came to shoulder height, Josiah reached up and grabbed her, unhooking the grappling gun and passing it over to Wennagal. Josiah then gently laid Cassie on the ground and checked her vitals. She had a pulse, and she was breathing, but he was concerned because he didn’t know what kind of damage the energy surge had done.

As Wennagal reached the icon, he was very careful not to touch it. Kimiko liked Wennagal; he was a competent warrior. He was also a loyal friend to his Captain, and a nice person in general. These were all characteristics she valued in a friend.

Kimiko had figured out with the help of the HUD in her visor that there were two safe places to touch the icon. Both of them needed to be touched to be able to remove the artifact. Wennagal was big enough to reach both touch points, leaving her free to remove the artifact. She explained the plan to Wennagal, who was naturally a little reluctant after what had happened to Captain Reed. Eventually, he agreed, and she was safely able to remove the artifact. Once the artifact had been removed, the energy was gone. She put the artifact in her bag and began lowering herself down to the ground. Kimi knew she shouldn’t, but she found just a little bit of pleasure in noticing that Captain Reed was still unconscious.

______

Meanwhile, Jesse’s group had arrived at a large underground cave complex. Reece expertly navigated the speeder through kilometers of caves. The navigational control had recorded the entry so they would be able to find their way back out. Once they could go no further by speeder, Jesse had Reece hide the speeder nearby in case any unwanted guests arrived. They didn’t want pirates to destroy their only means of getting out of the massive cave system.

They began walking and
Kora asked, “How much further?” In much the same way a child would ask: “Are we there yet?”

Jesse smiled as Reece replied, “Just a little bit furt
her.” Jesse’s dad had always used the same reply when he asked that question. Reece wasn’t wrong, though. They only needed to walk about a quarter of a kilometer to the area indicated by the map. When they reached the treasure zone, as Josiah had called it, they began to look around. After about an hour, they had found nothing. They were all beginning to grow impatient, except Commando who stood guard, alert for any unwelcome visitors. Jesse looked over the edge of a cliff to a several hundred meter drop. At the bottom, there was a faint glow, and as he took readings, he found out that the glow was actually flowing magma. He looked up, wondering how high the cave was, and that’s when he noticed something hanging from the roof of the cave. None of them had noticed it before, even with visors. Once he was almost underneath it, however, he was able to determine an ever so slight sway.