CHAPTER 2

After washing again, I checked to make sure the wolf creature had truly left. I wasn’t against killing to defend myself, but I had no idea how the ecosystem worked on this planet. I could inadvertently call a horde of the wolf creatures by killing it. Better to be safe than sorry.

For the time being, I was safe enough. I pulled up the interface for my nanites, and mentally imaged what I wanted to create. The slot on my arm opened and the nanites flooded out as they sought out suitable matter to synthesize. Soon, I had a canteen in my hands. I filled it with water while the nanites made a belt for it. Attaching it and the pistol to the belt, I felt a bit more civilized.

Glancing down at my body, I sighed and had the nanites create some coverings for my privates. I just couldn’t relax knowing that they were open for the world to see. I might have been a scoundrel before, but I was a gentleman that respected a woman’s body. It looked like my mental imagery got the better of me when the nanites created woman’s panties rather than men’s trunks.

“Damn it all,” I said with a groan. I went ahead and wore them as the nanites would have to recharge soon. For my chest, I tore a strip from the cloth Echo made. It had been dragging on the ground anyways.

“I feel a bit more respectable.”

“Lex. You have roughly six hours before night.”

“Thanks Echo. Could you plot a course to those ruins?” I asked taking one more drink from the stream. “There might be nothing there, but it should be a decent place to camp out and possibly scout the area from.”

“Done,” Echo said as the plot appeared in my sight. It had been a pain to adjust to only having one eye. It felt like I was aiming down the sight of a rifle constantly. The ruins were nearly fifty kilometers from the stream, I would need to push my body a little to reach it in only six hours.

Slowly increasing my stride until I was jogging, I found the forest was soon flashing by. I was fast before, but I knew I wasn’t this fast. I slid to a stop, kicking up dirt as I did so. I wasn’t even breathing hard from the exercise.

“Echo, how fast was I going just now?”

“Roughly thirty-two kilometers per hour. Judging from the stress on your body, you likely could have increased that severalfold.”

“Damn.” I shook my head and started moving again. At this rate, I would reach the ruins in just over an hour.

As I moved, I noticed that the forest was getting older the closer I got to the ruins. Normally it would be the other way around since trees and foliage would be removed during the construction. The density of the foliage got to the point that I had to slow down or I would be taking branches to my face.

Two hours after I left the stream, I emerged into the clearing around the tower that Echo had spotted. A few buildings had obviously been around it at one point, but they were long gone from the passage of time with only their foundations remaining. “Guess it’s the tower.”

I moved through the clearing, more amazed that there was a near-perfect circle around the ruins. I would have suspected human intervention for something so perfect, but inside the circle had clearly not been touched by any human hands in a long time.

The tower was on masonry work similar to Earth’s medieval period like Echo had said. While the rest of the buildings in the clear had suffered from the time passed, the tower while looking old, still appeared very much intact. I couldn’t tell if ten years or a thousand years had passed.

“Detect anything Echo?”

“Negative. I have updated my sensors after the attack from earlier, but I am detecting nothing of notable threat.”

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

“Sounds good.”

Making my way over to one of the foundations, I checked for any hidden doors or entrances to basements. Depending on the culture that built them, they may have cellars and were worth investigating. The first building I checked did indeed have a cellar, but it had collapsed a long time ago and was filled with debris and soil.

I shifted a few timbers but didn’t see anything of interest. Climbing back out, I decided just to head over to the tower. At least it looked to still have a roof. I was about two meters from the entrance of the tower when a force smacked me in the face and sent me flying back.

“Son of a…! What the hell was that?!” I shouted cupping my face that felt like I had looked directly at the sun without shielding.

“Unknown. Some form of forcefield.”

I rubbed my nose which had taken the brunt of the blast and stood up. “Well. This planet just got a lot more interesting. If they have the technology to make forcefields, they might be able to leave the planet. Scan the tower and see if you can find the source.”

A few minutes went by as Echo’s drone flew around the tower several dozen times before it came back to hover next to me. “I am detecting no advanced alloys or metals. No circuitry or quantum mechanics. No electricity readings of any kind.”

“Surely something is powering the forcefield. Or are you saying I threw myself through the clearing?”

“Negative. The incident is saved on my databanks. Should I replay it for you?”

“No. That will be quite alright.” I pulled the plasma rifle from my shoulder. I leveled it at the entrance making sure to angle it slightly. I would hate for it to rebound directly at me. Pulling the trigger, the super-heated projectile streaked through the air toward the tower. The forcefield snapped on as the round splatter over it.

“It appears the forcefield is originating from three points around the tower.” Echo highlighted three spots just outside the forcefield that were underground. I moved over to the nearest one and began digging. After nearly a meter of soil, I found a stone that had strange markings on it.

“What do you make of it?”

“There are several hundred correlations to similar languages through the known cultures. Without a key, I will be unable to decipher it. Conjecture. It is what passes as technology on this planet.”

“You mean magic?”

“Negative. A system that uses a different principle than our own.”

“So magic,” I replied flipping the stone over a few times. Echo didn’t say anything more. “How long would it take for the nanites to create a quantum storage?”

“Given current materials available through synthesis. Four hundred and ten years.”

“How about a bag?”

“Thirty minutes.”

I put the stone down and carefully extended my hand. I felt the buzzing as if about to be electrocuted so I pulled it back. I didn’t want to break the stone, but I was interested in what could require a forcefield of this magnitude to protect it. I could understand if people were still around, but this place had clearly been abandoned for centuries.

Putting some space between the stone and myself, I leveled my rifle at it. With a quick pull of the trigger, the plasma tore through the stone like it wasn’t there. A blue dome appeared around the tower that started to crumble before our eyes. With a grin at my success, I moved over to the tower.

Peeking through the entrance, the door had fallen to dust as soon as I touched it, I found a decent-sized room that looked like a place to greet guests. Almost similar to a reception of a business or something along those lines. I carefully made my way inside while making sure there weren’t any traps. If it was me, I would have placed some last line stuff that would take out the invader after the forcefield went down.

Reaching the center of the room, I looked around with a careful eye but saw nothing of note or danger. There appeared to be a few stones that had similar writing to the one outside, but they were faded to the point of almost being gone. Echo’s drone flew in and surveyed the air but still, nothing happened.

“I guess the forcefield thing lasted longer by being shielding from the weather?” I ventured.

“As good a conclusion as any,” Echo replied.

There was a set of stairs that were made from stonework and thus still in working order. I checked each step to make sure it didn’t crumble under me, but whoever had been responsible for building the tower had made some lasting work. If it weren’t for the windows letting in the weather, the stone devices might still be in much better shape.

The second floor appeared to have been a library. Stone bookshelves lined the walls, while ones that had fallen over-covered the floor. Echo moved into the room and used his drone to check for anything that might have survived. After a few minutes, all he turned up was a few coverings that had been made out of some durable material, as well as been hidden under the fallen shelves for added protection.

“I was hoping for something that might detail the planet we were on,” I said with a sigh.

“There were less windows the further up the tower does. More might have survived up there.”

“Thanks Echo.”