Saturn’s largest moon, the second largest natural satellite in the solar system.
A celestial body with a dense atmosphere and a liquid ocean, though the surface was primarily composed of ice and rocky materials.
If you looked closely you could see a small facility on its surface, which is a rather strange phenomenon.
After all, the Xeon hadn’t built it and they were more advanced than humanity had ever been.
Or maybe not, for whatever reason ancient facilities like this seemed to crop up on humanity’s homeworld with far more frequency than anywhere else. Old crumbling ruins, ancient decrepit buildings that were usually broken down and buried to the point that the only way to tell them apart from a hill was a soil test for the strange alloys they used.
Had Earth once been dominated by a different species, before humans and before even the Xeon had conquered it all? Or had humans simply set themselves so far back in their ancient wars that it had left them helpless against the Xeon Empire thousands of years later?
A research vessel, simply named Research Vessel 9173 - 7b, sought to answer this question and acquire any anomalous artifacts from the area.
It hung in the sky, its gravity engines giving it the appearance of a giant floating brick in the upper atmosphere. Hundreds of people looked down at the artificial construction, the first intact example they had ever found.
“It stands as if untouched by time. Are you sure this is a precursor artifact?” Captain Frosivald asked, it wasn’t exactly his place to second guess the research crew, but the shock of what they were looking at still hadn’t quite worn off.
The head researcher didn’t seem phased by the fact that his lesser was breaching protocol and simply answered in the distorted monotone voice their helmet’s com-units caused, “I oversaw the lab results myself, that city-sized dot right there… That is Preque-Alloy.”
The captain took a sharp intake of breath, before letting it out. Suddenly realizing his informality he adopted the proper straight-backed stance he was taught in basic training, before resuming his questions, “Forgive me for asking sir, but… What are we still doing in orbit? Should we not be pulling this resource out by the roots?”
“Do not think I would be insulted by questions captain. Learning and sharing knowledge is my passion.” The head researcher paused themselves for a moment to collect their own emotions. “We have never seen an intact display of preque, usually when we find something it has more in common with an ore vein than an actual structure.” But even then it refused to bond to other materials.
You could grind it to dust but it would remain completely pure in its smaller form.
“Do you think the objects here could be more valuable to the empire than the raw materials?” The captain glanced at the city, could they discover how to create this alloy, or at the very least what the material’s raw ingredients were?
He didn’t dare speak the words out loud, if the empire decided they wanted the reason they were here secret it would be better he didn’t know.
“That is most of it, captain. Though, maybe you should return to your duties.”
The captain bowed, “Understood head researcher, by your leave.”
Head researcher Tyvon watched the captain go, likely to wait in the ship’s control room in case of emergency.
Not that emergencies seemed to ever happen, this small research vessel was flanked by two destroyer class ships and they were stationed outside of earth.
It had been a post-apocalyptic wasteland incapable of resistance before they had even started their war of conquest.
Miles of radioactive deserts, predators not native to the planet, mutants created through methods unknown to their empire. There was even evidence that the desert world had once had oceans of all things.
Though Tyvon had once looked through data that proved earth had once been capable of interstellar flight there was nothing to show that they may have been capable of moving between dimensions. This raised questions on what they had been fighting. Each other? The closest solar system was over four lightyears away and it had no evidence of conflict, or even life at all.
But despite how this universe itself seemed incapable of traveling to this point in space the structures under them looked new. Like it had been put up yesterday and afterwards the creators had gone into hiding as if playing a children’s game.
It gave him that little tingling in the back of his mind, the kind of feeling you get when you were standing at the edge of a cliff and realized how easily you could leap off and die.
That cliff was something he would have to jump down, because at the bottom he was sure there was a prize beyond prizes.
He set his com-unit to reach the captain and spoke, “Prepare transport for thirty along with eight all-terrain vehicles planetside.” It was time he stopped stalling, they could get no more information from orbit.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
The head researcher took a direct path back to the level four armory which contained his personal planet side equipment. A modified set of power armor instead of the hazardous environment suit that was used in labs.
While his hazard suit was a stark white meant to make finding contaminants easy for a lab setting, this set of power armor was a bright orange with flashing lights meant to be found if he should ever be caught in a collapsing cavern or end up stranded.
He removed his helmet, leaving a breather in his mouth as was custom for any high rank individual aboard a space vessel, then worked to unfasten the clamps on his side to remove the metal plates from his chest and back.
While the suit he wore around the labs wasn’t power armor it was still a metal suit that required power to operate, similar to mechanized ancient human astronaut attire.
The power armor opened and allowed him to step into it before closing and leaving him in a dark shell for a moment. A few heartbeats passed as the insides lit up to display its status and the camera feeds.
He left the armory two feet taller and much wider, heading straight for the docking bay. A vessel smaller than even the research vessel they had boarded.
While their research vessel was large enough to comfortably house thousands this vessel was a small transitional ship meant to ferry equipment and people between vessels, seating maybe a hundred if they packed in shoulder to shoulder like napkins in a dispenser.
He walked up the slight ramp into the transport cruiser, ignoring the salutes and greetings he received from the pilots and other operational staff. Then he positioned himself against the wall within the cargo hold and pulled a metallic harness down to keep his suit pressed in place should the ship receive damage.
There was no need for formality, they had been ready to deploy for months and the necessary equipment had already been loaded. The captain informed the rest of his research team and those who had been designated trickled into their designated transports.
So they set forth, the loading dock’s doors opened and their transports left the safety of the ship for the inhospitable moon they orbited.
Twenty minutes passed with no out of the ordinary occurrences and the ship came down eight miles from the ruins. Tyvon entered one of the transit vehicles, something which resembled an armored bus with two dozen wheels, and closed the distance until they were just outside of the city’s walls.
“Disembark, we will move on foot beside the vehicles.”
Both to get a better look and to ensure that if something happened everyone wasn’t packed into the same small area.
He finally saw the city with his own two eyes as opposed to flat imagery gathered by drones, or at least what looked like a city.
Thick walls surrounding the ruins lead to a massive gate that was nearly sixty feet tall and almost twenty feet thick. What use a space colony had for stopping ground movements, he did not know but the inner city had nothing preventing you from simply flying into it.
The walls themselves contained more alloys than the rest of his empire combined. He saw enough of that neigh indestructible alloy that they could make an entire battleship whereas they currently only had scant special forces armed with exo-suits.
And he wondered why it was being used to disrupt ground movements into the city. Was this material so cheap to make that you used it for city walls or was there something simply so sinister you needed to keep it out at all costs? That question bothered him possibly more than any question ever had.
The precursors were more advanced than them, so where did they go? What killed them?
The metal shined a rainbow color, reflecting almost one hundred percent of the solar energy that touched it and he eventually tore his sight away. “Advance into the city.”
Moving forward revealed the same awe inspiring discoveries that had been made again and again since day one. The ground was made of that prismatic alloy, the buildings were made of the prismatic alloy, piles of debris that he assumed had once been cars or signs were made of that alloy.
He speculated that maybe they had once used more materials than just this indestructible super metal. After all, it had been sitting here so long the wind had eroded even this material into piles of scrap. Anything else would have had enough time to evolve legs and walk away.
Yet for once buildings stood… Mostly…
What had once been a two story structure had collapsed inwards, across the prismatic street another building stood with almost no signs of damage.
Missing windows for sure, he could see where they would have been slotted in and there were cracks running through the material, but other than that he had never seen precursor ruins you could just walk into.
“Head researcher, permission to investigate the building while the rest of the group moves on.”
He turned to the side and saw a suit of power armor marked with the rank of a lab assistant, someone with the credentials to manage a small research facility of their own if they were elsewhere, standing in a modified attention position.
The research assistant wanted to look inside and gather data about what the building could have been used for, or possibly take exacting measurements to create models of what kind of creatures could live inside this building comfortably.
“Tell me assistant, are you nervous? I believe this is your first deployment with us.” He looked through his own camera feed into his assistant’s yellow eyes.
“No sir, I have trained my life for this moment! With the equipment granted to me I will remain safe even if the building collapses! You can trust me to complete this task and meet with you in the center when finished.” The woman did not seem to show any signs of fear, but she was correct. They should be researching the city instead of staying in one giant protective formation.
“No-” This city had not proven dangerous in any way, they had seen nothing but old structures, this moon didn’t have a breathable atmosphere, yet his instincts were screaming. “-keep two of the vehicles back here and a team of six. Should you find any anomalous objects, report back and do not make physical contact, should something happen to compromise either group’s safety you are to immediately retreat back to the ship with our research.”
He would be sending them a constant stream of any data they captured, this would allow for one group to remain at the city’s limits. A higher chance of survival overall.
The head researcher looked out across the city. Its streets formed right angles in a grid that encompassed everything within the walls. The center held an enormous collapsed dome, the buildings surrounding it were similarly much larger than the buildings towards the edges of the city.
One of the vehicle pilots tapped into their coms channel, “Sir, should we plot a route to the city center?”
“No.” Something else drew his eye, he had been staring at it for quite a moment now.
While the buildings in the center were the largest and everything else got progressively smaller the further out it got there was one exception.
A tower, it was four stories tall instead of three like the buildings around it. But the more you looked at it the more it seemed to stand out.
It was a tower, circular while the other buildings were square. It did not seem to have a roof access point while every other intact building did.
It did not have any cracks running through it, and if you saw the air footage it seemed like there were no scrap piles whatsoever in the streets around it.
He marked the location and the group started making their way, avoiding streets covered in debris or where the buildings had collapsed outwards.
The same prismatic metal covered everything, even the ice and dirt that surrounded this city did not seem to blow over the walls.
They were the only foreign contaminants in this city and Tyvon shivered slightly in his armor while the rest of his team walked oblivious, distracted by the shining metal.
The empire had never lost a war, the empire had never seen something even close to their power and…
Tyvon knew that the precursors had been stronger.
He stood in front of this tower and could only hope that whatever had killed the precursors had died too.