As Vivian looked out of the vehicle, watching the horizon get set alight with the morning sun, she was deep in her own thoughts. Pondering the greater meaning of life once more as one of her friends usually calls it.
She usually calls it being BORED OUT OF HER MIND.
“How long have we been out here again? In this same bloody cramped aircraft?”
“Hovercraft”, Samuel said from the driving chair below her, somehow staying focused on that murderously boring task of driving in a endless desert. “An aircraft would just be prime targets for the local Rok’s and Desert strider.”
Rolling her eyes, and being continuously surprised at his insistence for using the right words all the time, or 'Vocabulary' as he would correct her. “Fine. How long have we been in this bloody box? My feet are becoming stale as a corpse here up here.”
An unusually calm man answered her vital question. “This should be day number... fifteen? If we don’t find the big space rock in 5 days then I’m afraid we have to declare it impossible to find.” Looking up from the hybrid energy scanner Tarmal with the same bored energy as Vivian had, he glanced upwards her in the lookout seat. “Don’t worry, you will soon have something to occupy your time with.”
Groaning Vivian asked the question she already knew the answer to, “It was my turn to drive wasn’t it? If survival wasn’t on the line I would have seen how much air time we could get of these endless dunes. Not that Jhon would ever design a vehicle that would be any kind of joy to drive”
“Such is life in the desert. And the fate of any whom travels with any of his vehicles.” Responded Tarmal, shifting his eyes back to the scanner to keep and eye out for any of the three problems in this desert. “Do keep scanning the horizon please, I rather not get surprised by a desert strider swatting the hovercraft transforming it into a scrapheap and having to walk back.” Shivering he corrected his pose from slumping to a proper sitting pose. “And suffer through the subsequent remedial training by the captain.”
A momentary shiver ran along Vivian’s spine she swiftly returned her gaze back outwards. “Right, Right. No need for any remedial training here. But on that note, how are we going to find the rock? It has been over two months, closing in on three now. Any impact crater is surly covered in sand now.”
“The scanner has been calibrated to pick up most alien signatures in this environment”, Samuel chimed in. ‘Surprising!’ though Vivian. ‘Is he finally coming out of his shell? Nha, probably as bored as we are.’ Uncaring and unknowing of Vivian’s thoughts he continued, “It was specifically modified to detect anything possibly valuable that could be in the meteorite and the three threats of the desert. With deep worms being the most prioritized.”
“Why deep worms?”, Tharmal questioned. “Isn’t the birds way worse? We have had to chase them off four times in just 15 days. And giants are not exactly harmless, considering how many shipwrecks they cause.”
“A Rok can be spotted beforehand and are cowards on their own. Only a flock would cause issues and those are simple to spot and prepare for. Dune striders aren’t a issue if you keep close to the ground and have some distance from them. The only warning worms gives is a impact on the hull, or it going through the hull, if it’s old and large enough”, Samuel droned onwards. Taking a moment to look directly at Tharmal he reminded them “We did go over this in the briefing and training.” Returning his gaze back to the desert he queried in his official yet lighthearted tone. “Maybe you do need some remedial training when we are done.”
Groaning, Tharmal argued “Nope, no need to do that now. I remember the whole thing. Still don’t agree with the prioritization. Giant smashing vehicles are the number one expense in the desert, and birds in turn have the most kills.“ Loosing more and more of his lethargic boredom he looked towards Samuel and proceeded to demonstrate his so called ‘brilliance’. ”If the birds actually are cowards then we can put a scarecrow on top of the car with a– Ah, ah, ah. Stop that half glare in the mirror. Fine, fine, I will use the right words just don’t start showing your pedantic streak. Anyway we put a scarecrow on the HOVERCRAFT and then the individual Rok's won’t attack us due to fear. Then we can both skip the bird- Rok missiles and install some movies, or at minimum some sort of music to not go insane in this box. Oh and regarding the striders we could–“
Both of his crew-mates reacted as usual to his prattling, with a resigned sigh from one and a amused smile from the other. ‘Well, boredom is at-least not a issue anymore’, Vivian shifted her smile and gaze back outwards to attempt to fulfill her role again. Scanning the horizon he suddenly saw something. Something other than the endless dunes of sand.
“Contact.” Vivian called clearly and seriously. Tharmal’s jaw snapped shut with a loud clack and his head dove right back to the scanner, flicking a switch to get it to rapidly update. Samuel shifted both his posture and his hands on the driving wheel to be ready to speed off at a moments notice.
“Evasive?” Samuel asked in a commanding tone.
Having focused completely on the thing just above a sand dune, she stated after a while. “Negative. Not a strider, completely still.” Dragging her gaze over the horizon and sky for anything bird shape, she then took up a pair of binoculars to get a closer peek. “It looks like some sort of black pillar. I think it is metallic, it has a dull shimmer to it. Best guess would be a wreak or a rival scout. A base out here would...”, taking a moment to halt her saying ‘silly’ in this situation, she continued onwards “...unlikely. Even smugglers and bandits are not bold or demented enough to try setting a base up this deep.”
“Tharmal?”
“Got nothing, either to far away or completely energy dead.”
A moment of quiet occurred in the vehicle, only broken up by the sound of the hovercrafts engine. Vivian and Tharmal awaiting Samuel's orders.
“Scout and run.” He called eventually. “Vivian, keep an eye out for additional sightings, I will get us to a higher position on a dune to give you a better sight-lines with the binoculars. Understood?”
“Understood!”
Tapping a finger on a metal bit of his steering wheel, he then gave a second order. ”Tharmal, tell me if or when you get any energy signature at all. Also, turn off the rapid response on the scanner, we aren’t in combat yet and it dismisses to many signals when it's active.”
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“Yes sir!”
Keeping distance from the metallic object and the dune covering it he drove around till he found a large sand dune. While going up to the top of the dune Vivian and Tharmal kept the reports coming.
“Spotted multiple contacts past the dune, similar shape to the first one, over a dozen. No sightings of any of the three threats. Continuing to monitor for other sightings.”
“Unusual signal picked up. Stationary and underground. Not one of the three threats. Scanner database says possible treasure but without a proper scan we won’t–”
“Log global position and disregard it for now.” Samuel cut him off. “Focus on threats and movement.”
“Roger.”
After getting to the top of the dune he spun the vehicle to face the sighted objects. From a mere glance he concluded that it was no wreak or rival scouting ship. There were far more than just a dozen, this would probably over a hundred of the pillars, evenly spaced and all standing straight up.
Taking a moment to simply gaze over the strange sight, both hands still gripping the wheel with no small force just waiting for a danger call from either team-mate. When both were silent he clipped out, “High alert, commands only, I shall use the binocular to get a better sight on the pillars. Call incoming direction and possible safe direction, in that order as we have trained.”
““Yes sir.””
After hearing both of them he slowly loosened his right hand and slowly moved it towards a small bag on the side of his seat, not taking his eyes of the pillars. After carefully rummaging around the bag he found and grabbed his binoculars. Just as slowly pulling his hand and the binoculars back toward him and ready to drop them to accelerate at max speed at any wordings from either crew, he finally got the binoculars to his face to take a better look at the pillars.
Observing them he could confidently say that the pillars were not any sort of scrap or wreak of any sort. They looked as if they were newly made, with no imperfections or any chipping as far as he could see, only multiple smooth holes in the structure. The holes were horizontal, and seem to go in a pattern, with each row of holes stacked above next one.
After carefully inspecting the pillars he put down the binoculars. “Release high alert, go onto low alert. Free talk.”
“What did your see?!” Vivian immediately asked, head snapping to Samuel.
“Low alert.” Was the response accompanied with a short glare at Vivian. She flinched and only after she swiftly started looking for threats on the horizon did he answer.
“I don’t know. Seems to be pillars with holes in them. As in the pillars were designed with holes in them, not due to damage.”
“So what will we do?” Tharmal started and while vibrating with curiosity swiftly continued with an avalanche of questions. ”Do we go there to investigate? What if they are bombs? Do we pick apart one to see what it is? Do we–”
“First,” Samuel cut off the onslaught of words, “we do a full scan towards the pillars from here. Then we go back to the location we got the unusual signal from underground to investigate whatever gave of that signal.”
“Oh.” Scratching his head while he started preparing a full scan, he asked “So we won’t be doing anything else than doing a quick–”
“–Full, not quick.” came the snide remark from above.
”YES, YES, Vivian you know what I’m trying to say. We won’t be doing any on hands investigation?”
“Depends on what the results of the scans are. Both of them that is.” Keeping eyes to the front he simply continued onwards calmly. “If the signal underground is our objective and this scan doesn’t show any major energy signals then we can do a short personal investigation. All of us, we will leave the hovercraft on safe mode. Maximum 2 hours.”
“Why does this scan need to have no major energy signals?” Tharmal asked, while doing the final checkup on the scanning procedure. “I mean, I understand if we get a unstable energy signal, don’t want it to go boom when we look around. But any major energy signal? Hell, our hovercraft would be one, and the worst danger this metal heap could cause is tipping over onto someone."
Vivian cut in before Samuel could form a response, “Well, you vacuous headed chatterbox, if we find a major signal that would mean something either was here recently or that whatever was here managed to survive for a long time in the middle of nowhere.” Taking a moment to look back down onto Tharmal with a smile and fake astonishment she continued “Could it be that you forgotten about the hellion giant? I could tell you all about–”
“Yes, yes you made your point. And you know that I was on that expedition when the giant came charging out of the mountain!” With a expression of suffering on his face while he remembered the disaster that was the hellion giant, he finished the final steps to start the scan. Taking a breath, he said in a formal tone with a serious face, “Preparations complete. Requesting radio silence and vigilance protocol.”
“Request granted and protocol enforced.” Samuel responded and activated local short ranged scanners while he set the hovercraft to rapid reaction.
Vivian simply smiled while having returned keeping an eye out.
After a near dozen minutes of listening to the interface updating and the engine humming, the scanner finally gave out a tone of completion. But after near half a minute Tharmal still hadn’t said anything, Vivian got impatient.
“Well what’s it–”
“Radio silence.” Samuel cut her off in a sever and harsh tone.
Vivian flinched at the tone and swiftly returned to keeping an eye out.
“...well then.” Tharmal muttered in a low tone, before proceeding according to protocol. “Scan complete, releasing all requests.”
“Vigilance protocol disengaged, radio silence released.” Then in a less formal and almost a kind voice he said to Vivian “You can ask now.”
“So what took so long?” Taking a peek towards the scanner in her fellow crews hand she asked in a low and worried tone of voice. “Usually you simply respond instantly. Is something wrong?”
“No, well yes. It’s–” Cutting himself off with a groan, Tharmal then started explaining, “So, nothing major was picked up. Neither energy signals of anything magical or anything living. The problem are twofold.” Scrolling over to a certain section of the scanners output, he said “First, the life scan did pick up many unique signals. Most were of the critter intensity, but we do have some medium signals, but on the low end. No match in the system for the medium so likely a monster, while the critter signals are too weak to give anything. Not enough energy in any of the critters, both of the magical and normal variety."
“The larger problem is that we have a pervasive low intensity signal alongside that, and it extends deep. Out of range of the scanner too but it was increasing the further down it went.” With a bitter smile, he then said something that made the two other surprised, “According to the scanner it is a dungeon.”
“What?” Vivian exclaimed, looking straight at Tharmal due to his ridiculous statement. “How the hell did a dungeon survive out here? There is nothing here at all! It should have starved to death long ago with no delvers coming to it.”
“Tried matching the signal to anything else but nothing fit it. To big to be a dying worm, not strong enough to be a well, to spread out to be a crashed ship." Shrugging, Tharmal said with a crocked smile. "Only thing that that would fit would be a dungeon, and a weak one at that due to the long energy it has."
Samuel simply kept his eyes on the pillars as he pondered this information, while the two other kept arguing in the background.
After thinking about it, he decided on a course of action and interrupted them.
“The plan still stands.” He informed the other two, cutting off any further arguing from them. “We go back to the unidentified signal to scan it. If we think that is our objective, then we go to the the pillars and after that confirm if there is a dungeon there or not. Then we go home. If the next signal isn’t the meteorite then we mark this place with a beacon and global position for someone else to investigate.”
Cutting off Vivian’s incoming protest, Samuel explained “Remember, we are here to find that meteorite, everything else is a side objective until we have found that. Besides if this is actually a dungeon then we are woefully under-prepared and equipped to explore it properly. I rather not take unnecessary risks while we still haven’t done our original mission. The only reason I will even allow the dungeon confirmation is the weak signal. If it were any stronger we would stop at the pillars and be gone afterwards.”
Gripping the wheel and maneuvering the vehicle back towards the direction that the direction that they came from to find the signal once more he said one last thing. “Besides, whatever managed to get those pillars here is something new. Rather not take any chances, we have taken enough of them with the captain.”
Neither of the other two gave any argument. They much preferred Samuel's careful approach over the captains risk taking, 'Let's see what this does!', approach. Even if the captain was a survivalist savant.