Broken clocks

Despite a desire to take off the instant the discussions with the Lemth were done, Dustin and the crew spent several days working on the planet’s surface. With modern tools and techniques assisting them, the little section of beach was reconfigured into a shuttle port and diplomatic centre; while the tree-line wasn’t touched, pylons sunk into the water off the coast allowed for the rapid construction of a series of chambers including several with attractive underwater windows letting you look out at the rich marine life of the bay.

When the diplomatic envoys from Earth arrived with a Feliax comms officer in tow Dustin was surprised to see Izzy waving at him, his old friend now dressed in a smart EarthGov uniform. “Hello, Ambassador.” She said with a salute as she approached, then shook her head and dragged him into a hug. “Wasn’t expecting you to still be here Dustin. How’s the wife? Oh, one sec… Terri, come over here!” As she spoke, Izzy broke the hug and beckoned to the young Feliax woman who walked over somewhat nervously.

“This is Terri, she’s awesome, Terri, say hi to Dustin, he’s my oldest friend and…” Izzy’s voice was bubbly, and Dustin recognized the signs; he’d just never seen it about a woman that was actually on the same continent as Izzy before. “How long have you two been dating?” He asked, shaking the hand of the slightly awestruck seeming comms officer. “About a month, sir. Izzy mentioned she knew you, but I thought… Felio, where are my manners, my mother is going to kill me. Terriana val Rhalio, at your service my lord patriarch val Smith. I understand from your messages back to Earth that you are eager to get going - rest assured that we’re ready to take over here. Before you go though…” her face flushed and she glanced at the ground.

Dustin took a wild guess at what the woman was about to ask and spoke before she could. “I’m guessing you’d like to talk with Emely. She’s in the conference suite at the moment - why don’t you head along first and Izzy and I will catch you up.” The Feliax woman blinked and glanced up at him. “How did you know…?” she asked, at which Dustin gave a vague gesture to where his childhood friend was busy obviously not paying attention to what he was saying, glancing over her shoulder at them periodically to make sure they were aware just how much she wasn’t paying attention.

“I’ve known Izzy since we were kids. Hell, I knew her before she came out. There is no way on Earth or Feliaxas that she’d date a regular Feliax woman; she’s far too headstrong to be dating someone who expects to be in charge all the time. Run along and enjoy your chat with the Empress’s favourite niece.” The mention of Liselia caused the fox girl in front of him to yelp, before turning and darting off in the direction of the conference rooms. Dustin sighed and glanced over at Izzy. He knew she’d studied xenodiplomacy alongside her main education back home - but he’d never expected her to show up on a first contact mission. This felt like it had Axworth’s influence all over it - still, Izzy was very good at organizing people when she wasn’t pining over girlfriends on the far side of the planet…

Three hours later, Dustin and Emely made the shuttle trip back into orbit. Sola would be staying in the system a little longer, but there was no sense in her taking up space on the planet any more; she’d lifted off as the diplomatic party had dropped out of the weave. Rye was busy unloading the satellite the Lemth had asked them to carry, and Meli was scanning the moon as they left the atmosphere; Dustin was almost back to the ship when the Velca hailed his shuttle. “Husband? I’ve found something.”

Toggling autopilot off, Dustin answered the call. “What is it, love? An impact site?” Meli’s voice was crackly as she replied; the shuttle’s engines distorting the signal as they moved away from the planet. “Yes. And more… it looks like part of a building - or a ship. It’s buried under the debris from the impact which is making it too fuzzy to make out details properly on the scanners; Rye’s going to meet you there with some clearing equipment once the satellite is set up. I’ll pass you the coordinates now.”

To say that whatever they’d found was buried was an understatement. Only a tiny spike of black metal protruded from the regolith; the impact had left a serious crater, the walls of which had caved back in around whatever this thing was. The shuttle Dustin had been on had a shovel and a few other basic tools still in the back from helping to set up the port back on the Lemth homeworld; while waiting for Rye and better machinery he began to dig out what he could.

As the shuttle containing his bunny girl lover came in to land a little while later, Dustin stretched and looked at his handiwork. The spike had been dug down to reveal that it was indeed part of a structure - a segment of starship, if the micro-meteor impacts on the outside were anything to go by. And on the inside… “Meli, you getting this?” he asked, checking to see if his science officer was still getting the feed from his helmet’s camera.

“Yes, Husband. The markings are worn, but they appear to be the same language as those we’ve found on other sites containing hostile creatures. Whatever this is, it’s connected to our enemy.” Meli’s voice was soft but heavy; she too knew the impact of what that discovery meant. Taking it into consideration with everything else… Dustin glanced up at the lush green world floating above him. At some point in the ancient past, that planet had been attacked by the same things that had burned or broken the worlds of his friends. And it was truly the ancient past; for civilization to rebuild from nothing to the industrial age could have taken tens of thousands of years.

Dustin shivered, even as Rye began setting up the heavy digging equipment. They’d unearth what they could here - maybe there would be a clue. This wasn’t proper archaeology, concerned for the history they were unearthing; it just his crew trying to find any information out about the former owners of this bit of a starship’s hull. In particular, Dustin wanted to know why the hull had been jettisoned; certainly nothing about the Lemth indicated they had possessed weapons at any point in their history that could fight the shadows in space.

Grav-scoops whirred away, and piece by piece the site was unearthed from the regolith. As they dug, it became clear that it wasn’t a massive section of hull - little more than corridor holding a handful of rooms, and even describing the spaces as rooms was generous; each was more like a storage closet, with surrounding bulkheads and plating. Interestingly, when Rye ran a scanner over the construction it showed up as regular metals. None of the dissolving particulate that they’d had to contend with on previous encounters with the aliens.

“I reckon it’s early construction, before they started building their ships however they do now.” Rye opined, gesturing at one of the more upright sections. “If they still built them this way, Sola’s point defence would turn them into mesh, let alone her main gun.” Dustin had to agree - which was depressing. If the hull was ancient, it meant it was unlikely that there would be any clues for them to find that could possibly help put them back onto the trail of their foe.

Just as he was about to call a halt to their mining and leave the remainder of the clean-up to yet another team that would inevitably be sent out from EarthGov, Rye called out to him. “Dusty? Ya might want to come look at this.” Turning from where he’d been scanning a wall that had some more of the faded marks on, he crossed the wreck as quickly as he dared. On the far side, Rye was standing by a hatch leading down into the final compartment they’d unearthed. Unlike the other chambers, this one had not been broken open when the debris had struck the lunar surface.

Peering in by the light of Rye’s helmet torch, Dustin realised that he was looking at yet another storage room - although this time it was free of debris; indeed, the room itself was nearly empty. The only thing it contained instantly drew his eye; clearly what Rye had called him over to see. On the floor of the room, sprawled against one wall as if sitting waiting for something was a humanoid looking form. The colour of the void, just like each time he’d encountered their foe - but unmoving, like a puppet with it’s strings cut. There was something odd about it’s appearance too; where before he’d encountered creatures that were precise in form, this looked like it was just the idea of what a humanoid was like - legs, arms and so on - but made up of vague outlines, shapes with smooth surfaces and no definition.

Flipping his own scanner, Dustin turned the gain right up to do a scan from range and waved it at the thing. He feared that somehow this was some kind of a trap. That said, he’d expected to find nothing - anything that had survived the crash but had been buried in the debris would have surely perished centuries ago. What he found however was exciting and terrifying in equal measure. The form was indeed as he’d expected largely inert; dead. Except - at it’s very core, at the place a heart should be, there was the faintest of electromagnetic activity clicking on and off. If it had been human, that would mean… Rye leaned over to look at the scanner and swore as she saw the readings. “Cogs in hell, the fucking thing’s thousands of years old, but it’s got a pulse!?”