II
Our first attempts at searching our immediate vicinity yielded poor results. While we hardly expected more artefacts like the one that had set us on our course to be poking out of the sands, I was most disappointed with the singular lack of any evidence of infrastructure or other items that we found; the state of superlative preservation of the relic we had found had suggested an unusual hardiness in the craftsmanship of its nameless makers, and so we believed that any ruins they had left behind would be in a similar state.
Though our initial survey did little to help us, our next step of using the ground-penetrating radar to see if there was anything buried beneath the surface was far more successful. Actually removing the scanner from our shuttle was a feat unto itself, as while the moon's relatively meagre gravity lightened the heavy weight of the equipment, the thin air made our exertions all the more taxing and whilst moving it we had to stop more than once to take some breaths from our supplementary oxygen tanks. Professor Kallos fared the worst of us, his Salarian physiology finding the dry and somewhat rancid air particularly disagreeable. To his credit, he persevered with the task and helped us get the scanner into a position that would allow us the greatest overview of the ground beneath us. I made a mental note to see if I could borrow one of the pallets that I had seen the crew of the Strider use to transport heavy equipment.
We allowed Professor Kallos a few moments to regain his breath before we activated the scanner. Within moments the radar had indicated that not too far from our position, just a few metres below the surface, an object of a metallic composition was buried. Considering that the ground we were working on had been identified by my Salarian colleague to be of a sedimentary nature, naturally occuring metals of any kind were highly unusual and we were quite certain that we had found something of interest.
We marked off the indicated area where we would dig and set to work. We refrained from using explosives to blast our way past the layers of sand and stone that separated ourselves from the item we wished to unearth, and instead used more old-fashioned means to expose it to the open air without causing any harm to the object. While the excavation was tedious work, and particularly tiring thanks to the poor quality of Taria-07.4's air, our excitement at discovering an artefact that might be Prothean in origin, or perhaps even from some older civilisation, spurred us on. By the end of the first day of work, we failed to actually reach it, and instead made a retreat back to the Apien Strider halfway through the moon's night cycle when fatigue proved too much.
The night time that we worked through on Taria-07.4 was of a most curious nature; where on most celestial bodies day is the time a celestial body spends facing towards its system's primary star and night is the time it spends facing away from it, Taria-07.4's close proximity to the brown dwarf, and that planet's distance from the Taria-2045 system's primary star meant that under the dim red illumination of the brown dwarf the moon was far warmer, but when it span away from Taria-07 to face the brighter but far further sun, the planet was lit with more light but was much cooler. Not only this, but as the moon orbited orbited the world, the world too went around its sun, and there were times when we faced both away from the red dwarf and its sun. This resulted in seemingly random alternations between warm periods dimly lit by Taria-07, cold spells with the brightest lighting (though even that was not enough to dispel the permanent gloomy shroud that covered that accursed orb) and occasions of cold, pitch darkness where neither Taria-07 nor its sun provided any light or warmth. While I might have got used to it eventually, we did not have enough time to adjust to any pattern in its movements; I am sure that any reader who has spent time on a conventional garden world will understand what a bizarre and disconcerting orbital situation that can be to find oneself in.
We covered the start of our excavation site with a kinetic barrier in order to protect it from any dust storms and made our retreat back to the Apien Strider. The crew were somewhat puzzled at our elation in discovering a mere lump of metal but were willing to humour our enthusiasm, and once we had rested and recuperated somewhat we returned to the surface as soon as possible. Our progress during the next day was slowed severely when we hit a layer in the sedimentary rock that was of a particularly stubborn disposition, and we departed for the ship due to tiredness with a foot of sandy rock between ourselves and our goal.
It was halfway through the third 'day', if I can even call it that considering the erratic nature of Taria-07.4's day-night cycle, that we finally reached it. With utmost care, we bared to the sky a curved panel of dark metal, its composition similar in nature to that urn-like artefact that set us on our quest to this moon. Much of the uncovering of the artefact was done with brushes used to remove the soft stone without risking any damage to the relic; chisels and drills were used as sparingly as possible, in order to keep the relic in an optimum state of preservation.
As we uncovered it, we found evidence that it had, at some point in its past, sustained severe damage from some unknown antagonist; there was a warping and burnishing on the metal around one edge, suggesting an impact from a focussed-energy weapon like the GARDIAN lasers starships mounted. A sheering along two of its other edges suggested that stress had been exerted to tear it off, possibly caused by the panel's own weight.
Once fully uncovered, we found it to be about two metres in height and of remarkable density; removing it from its place in the ground proved to be slow, even with the moon's low gravity to assist us, but as soon as we were able we set out upon a more thorough examination of the artefact.
Its underside was much the same as its top, and we determined soon enough that it was a block of solid metal; a few taps gave nothing in the way of ringing and thus dashed any suggestions that it might be hollow, and the lack of any kind of folding along the damaged edge further evidenced its solidity. We decided, thanks to the scarring it had gained from some ancient weapon of an unknown civilisation, most likely used to protect a building, bunker or fortification; we quickly dismissed the idea of it being ablative armour on a starship, as its thickness and weight meant that the size of a vessel that would sport it would have to be far too huge to be possible.
As we moved the slab of metal, however, it became apparent that a much more interesting recipient for attention arose. Beneath it was a length of petrified bone, shattered and crushed, no doubt by the plating falling on top of it, and surrounded by a web of circuitry, wiring and machinery that was in a remarkable state of preservation. The fact that the bone had fossilised raised even greater excitement amongst our team than the discovery of our metal artefact; the bone and the technology around it would have been millions of years of age in order to achieve its ossified state, far older than anything of Prothean origin.
The slab of metal, priceless though it was, was quickly abandoned in favour of this new discovery. The next few day stretched into weeks as we brought it to the surface with meticulous care, stopping to rest as little as possible. Once were finished, however, the result was more than worth the effort; we had fossil evidence of a civilisation of sentient beings that existed before the Protheans, something that past archaeological digs had only hinted at.
Its skeleton was in a poor state, many of the bones broken and shattered and its pose contorted, no doubt as a result of that plate of armour falling on top of it, but we managed to take a rough guess to its anatomy. In life, it would have stood approximately five feet in height in a bipedal stance, similar to most sentient beings in the galaxy today. Its legs were double-jointed like those of the Turians, Krogan or Quarians, while its flat, wide skull and large jaw, and its hunched neck was strongly reminiscent of Krogan physiology. What was most notable was that it had two pairs of arms, and after some confusing regarding their overly-twisted pose and state of severe damage, we realised that these were triple-jointed and the longer, lower pair may have been used to aid in locomotion, in a manner similar to the Elcor.
What was of most interest, however, were the cybernetic enhancements that were prevalent throughout its body. We found several circuits that replaced what once had been nervous systems, rubberised synthetic muscles designed to work in concert with now absent musculature, small lenses in the eye sockets that would have enhanced vision and a scan with my omnitool revealed a large amount of circuit boards and computer systems within its brain pan. We surmised that trans-sentientism was most likely a major part of this person's culture, or at least a sub-sect of it, and the incredible state of preservation of his enhancements was a testament to the level of technological advancement they had achieved.
Its discovery sparked a spate of disagreement on what to do. My suggestion of taking the fossil to the Strider, where we could keep it safe from any environmental hazards, were quickly countered by Doctor Halstein, who suggested that the crew of the Strider might depart to sell our find and leave us behind. He was quite vehement that this might be the case, though I found it most unlikely that Captain Tharrix would be the sort of person to simply abandon passengers in the middle of uncharted space for personal profit.
Doctor T'Korey suggested a compromise of sealing the specimen within a container, removing risk of the crew seeing it and making designs on its theft, which we agreed to. Professor Kallos, however, had mostly ignored our disagreement in favour of examining a layer of geological strata that we had bared in our efforts to uncover the fossil. Once our dispute was resolved, he raised the matter of the strata's composition; beneath the stone was what appeared to be a layer of ancient ash, marking the presence of immense fires, underneath that what he thought may have been mineralised soil. In combination with the oxygen present on the planet despite the scarcity of any water or living organisms, he suggested that the moon had once harboured life before some great calamity had scoured it from its surface.
Looking at the technological enhancements still preserved on our fossil, we found the thought a sobering one; all of the staggering achievements of innovation we could see on the body had not prevented its people from making the very mortal act of committing a grand-scale atrocity for the sake of victory.
Our party could have finished then. We could have simply taken our find and left to present it to the university; such a discovery would have been more than worth the effort, and we could have abandoned that dark, wretched moon to its secrets. But the desire to unburden oneself of ignorance is a strong driving force for all of the galaxy's peoples, and fuelled by that same want we resolved to forge ahead into the darkness of and carry with us the torch of discovery and curiosity.
Once our specimen was safely covered and stowed, we found that further surveying of the immediate area gave us disappointing results. However, Professor Kallos found his interest piqued by the curiously regular hill that had been lurking on the eastern horizon, like a predator watching its prey from a distance. He pointed out how the shape of the hill seemed inconsistent with the sedimentary rocks that characterised this region of the moon, its uniform shape suggesting either an igneous formation or, perhaps, a buried structure. As soon as that idea was aired, our minds were made up; our equipment was stowed aboard the shuttle once more, and we moved our dig site from the spot in the desert where the artefact and fossil were found to the foot of the hill.
Up close, we realised how huge it was; nearly two kilometres in length but only a few hundred metres in width, like a long flat barrow that the people of ancient Thessia once buried their dead in. A single scan with our mining scanner revealed what we had all hoped for; a vast deposit of metal, of such density that we could not penetrate its outer layer and so huge that our initial scan was unable to cover either end. We landed on the northern end after that, finding that the outer metallic shell tapered to a sharp point, while on the southern side ended in several metallic 'fingers' that lead deeper into the ground. Once we had an idea of the massive structure's layout, we decided the most plausible theory was that it was a bunker of some kind; it would explain the thick layers of protection that covered it, and Doctor T'Korey hypothesised that the fingers that lead into the ground below it may have once functioned in a similar manner to the roots of a plant, filtering moisture from the soil to provide the inhabitants with drinking water.
We decided that the point in which we entered the bunker was to be through the 'roots', where we thought it would be likely to find a way to enter it. Once we decided on a point of entry, we put our explosives and mining equipment to use and blasted our way through the side of the hill. In just a few days, we managed to excavate a tunnel beneath the armoured shell of the bunker, coming up against a wall of metal of the sort that we had unearthed at the first dig site.
Expanding outwards from that, we managed to dig ourselves a small cave underneath it, and it was on the third day from hitting the outer layer of the structure that we found a bulkhead. It was partially opened, and most likely thanks to its age, relatively easy to force all the way.
We lit flashlights on our omnitools, and stepped into the unknown heart of darkness.
