mojo
05-02-2008, 06:15 PM
Life exists, in one form only, you are either alive or not alive.
Death on the other hand wears many different clothes, how many
ways can you die?
Hundreds? Thousands?
I think i have discovered a new way to die.
This planet makes Earth pale into insignificance. Beauty abounds everywhere, snow capped peaks, lush grasslands and verdant forests, breathtakingly stark deserts and ferocious white capped seas.
The drop ship skimmed over each landscape, startling animals of every shape and form, creatures of the air and of the earth. But no where was there any evidence of advanced life forms. The probes had found minerals in abundance, the large continent in the northern hemisphere contained enough uranium to fuel Earths power stations for thousands of years.
I punched in some new coordinates and within minutes the ship was landing in a secluded clearing at the base of a large mountain range.
The drones had a base camp set up within an hour, not luxurious, but luxury makes you soft, i can’t afford to be soft.
I’d found this planet out on the fringes of space known as the dead zone, the border between human and the Valkyries territories. Valkyries is our name for the creatures that mankind had run headlong into during the massive expansion into space after the discovery and mass production of the N – Space drive.
The Valkyries name for themselves translates to the Elder Souls.
We call them Valkyries because from the limited biological data we had been able to gather on them it seemed that they are a purely feminine, extremely aggressive warlike race of beings.
They resemble a stick insect roughly a metre and a half long with an elongated skull and massive jaws. They have four main legs for movement and two smaller arm like limbs halfway down their main carapace, with seven long digits at the end of those limbs.
Their technological state was roughly equivalent to our own, though they were advanced more in the biological sciences whereas we had the upper hand with our space based technologies.
From the moment mankind and the Valkyries clashed we had been at constant war, with only short periods of suspicious enmity in between for the past three hundred years.
Anyway, i am not supposed to be out this way, it’s been declared off limits by both sides, a buffer zone if you like.
But i need to make a living, i run a solo mineral exploration company, just me and my five drones and Albert, a quadrapedal AI in the form of a large mechanical dog. Albert would also get me in all sorts of shit if the GGE found out about the illegal enhancements i’d had made to his AI unit.
So once camp had been set up i left four of the drones on guard and set off up the nearest slope with the remaining drone carrying my kit and Albert darting ahead looking for the best way forward.
The Geo Imager hummed and beeped as we climbed up the side of the mountain, storing information on the minerals it discovered as we went. It had a radius of about five hundred yards and was a fucking god send for someone in my line of work, no more drilling for samples. The Geo Imager was another of the side benefits of the N – Space technology, able to view and sample through matter transference deep into the earth, the whole set up is about the size of a large suitcase and weighing about two hundred pounds. It fitted snugly onto the drones back.
As we came up over a small rise i saw Albert standing stationary before a large wall of stone. Not a natural formation, it had obviously been built by some type of intelligence.
It was roughly two metres tall and seemed to run in both directions as far as i could see, though there did seem to be an arched opening not far from where Albert was standing, lights flickering across his muzzle as he stored video of the structure.
It didn’t look like a Valkyrie construction, their buildings tended to be either underground or water, they could survive easily in both environments, one of the many difficulties we faced in our constant battle against them.
I wasn’t completely surprised to find something like this, many of the planets we had inhabited had stone structures and buildings, what was surprising was that we had never found any intelligent life forms inhabiting any of those worlds.
The fact that all of the structures discovered were made of stone was also curious, they all seemed similar but if they belonged to the same race of beings how had they inhabited so many different planets, some of which were thousands of light years apart, without apparently using any kind of metals.
Anyway that was a dilemma for the Exo-archaeologists, i just wanted to make some credit.
Once Albert was done, i could always sell the video to some research centre, we headed for the archway.
I had to crouch slightly to get through and we came out into a massive walled in canyon. The opening was bathed in sunlight but further in where the light couldn’t reach the canyon narrowed and was dark.
Upon the sides of the canyon walls were hundreds of small openings, probably about two feet in diameter, there were hand holds leading up from the ground and from each opening to the next.
I slipped my pulse rifle from my shoulder, nothing like this had been found before.
To Be Continued...........at some stage.
Death on the other hand wears many different clothes, how many
ways can you die?
Hundreds? Thousands?
I think i have discovered a new way to die.
This planet makes Earth pale into insignificance. Beauty abounds everywhere, snow capped peaks, lush grasslands and verdant forests, breathtakingly stark deserts and ferocious white capped seas.
The drop ship skimmed over each landscape, startling animals of every shape and form, creatures of the air and of the earth. But no where was there any evidence of advanced life forms. The probes had found minerals in abundance, the large continent in the northern hemisphere contained enough uranium to fuel Earths power stations for thousands of years.
I punched in some new coordinates and within minutes the ship was landing in a secluded clearing at the base of a large mountain range.
The drones had a base camp set up within an hour, not luxurious, but luxury makes you soft, i can’t afford to be soft.
I’d found this planet out on the fringes of space known as the dead zone, the border between human and the Valkyries territories. Valkyries is our name for the creatures that mankind had run headlong into during the massive expansion into space after the discovery and mass production of the N – Space drive.
The Valkyries name for themselves translates to the Elder Souls.
We call them Valkyries because from the limited biological data we had been able to gather on them it seemed that they are a purely feminine, extremely aggressive warlike race of beings.
They resemble a stick insect roughly a metre and a half long with an elongated skull and massive jaws. They have four main legs for movement and two smaller arm like limbs halfway down their main carapace, with seven long digits at the end of those limbs.
Their technological state was roughly equivalent to our own, though they were advanced more in the biological sciences whereas we had the upper hand with our space based technologies.
From the moment mankind and the Valkyries clashed we had been at constant war, with only short periods of suspicious enmity in between for the past three hundred years.
Anyway, i am not supposed to be out this way, it’s been declared off limits by both sides, a buffer zone if you like.
But i need to make a living, i run a solo mineral exploration company, just me and my five drones and Albert, a quadrapedal AI in the form of a large mechanical dog. Albert would also get me in all sorts of shit if the GGE found out about the illegal enhancements i’d had made to his AI unit.
So once camp had been set up i left four of the drones on guard and set off up the nearest slope with the remaining drone carrying my kit and Albert darting ahead looking for the best way forward.
The Geo Imager hummed and beeped as we climbed up the side of the mountain, storing information on the minerals it discovered as we went. It had a radius of about five hundred yards and was a fucking god send for someone in my line of work, no more drilling for samples. The Geo Imager was another of the side benefits of the N – Space technology, able to view and sample through matter transference deep into the earth, the whole set up is about the size of a large suitcase and weighing about two hundred pounds. It fitted snugly onto the drones back.
As we came up over a small rise i saw Albert standing stationary before a large wall of stone. Not a natural formation, it had obviously been built by some type of intelligence.
It was roughly two metres tall and seemed to run in both directions as far as i could see, though there did seem to be an arched opening not far from where Albert was standing, lights flickering across his muzzle as he stored video of the structure.
It didn’t look like a Valkyrie construction, their buildings tended to be either underground or water, they could survive easily in both environments, one of the many difficulties we faced in our constant battle against them.
I wasn’t completely surprised to find something like this, many of the planets we had inhabited had stone structures and buildings, what was surprising was that we had never found any intelligent life forms inhabiting any of those worlds.
The fact that all of the structures discovered were made of stone was also curious, they all seemed similar but if they belonged to the same race of beings how had they inhabited so many different planets, some of which were thousands of light years apart, without apparently using any kind of metals.
Anyway that was a dilemma for the Exo-archaeologists, i just wanted to make some credit.
Once Albert was done, i could always sell the video to some research centre, we headed for the archway.
I had to crouch slightly to get through and we came out into a massive walled in canyon. The opening was bathed in sunlight but further in where the light couldn’t reach the canyon narrowed and was dark.
Upon the sides of the canyon walls were hundreds of small openings, probably about two feet in diameter, there were hand holds leading up from the ground and from each opening to the next.
I slipped my pulse rifle from my shoulder, nothing like this had been found before.
To Be Continued...........at some stage.