Astroarchaeology 101

"Score."

Sendero grinned, slowly at first, but soon let the smile spread over her entire face. The buzz of discovery and success never got old; neither adulthood nor university-ingrained professionalism could dull that shining, childlike sense of wonder and pride.

She knelt to the ancient floor, heedless of moss and rust, and placed her hands to either side of the battered panel on the wall. A tilted shaft of wet, grey sunlight speared down from what used to be the ceiling, giving her enough light to work by. She reached into the tool pouch across her chest and found the familiar handle of her multidigger by touch. She read and re-read the flaking, distressed letters on the wall in their ancient script:

MEMORY CORE ACCESS

Behind her, Lev paced back and forth, arms crossed over his chest, but ready to drop to his blaster. He was watching the hole in the wall, beyond which the trees and mist could be hiding anything. Still, there was nothing to indicate to him that they'd been followed, or that anyone knew they were here...

...which was exactly what made him so nervous. 

Lev and Sendero were on the fifteenth floor of what used to be a state-of-the-art high-rise tower, before whatever event occurred to drive its inhabitants away, not just from the city but from the entire moon. "Probably about three, four hundred fifty years ago," Sendero had suggested during their pre-landing recon flight over the ruins of the city. "That's long enough for the rainforest to press back in. See the trees, coming out of the cracks there in that concrete plaza? That takes a while."

"They sure didn't leave me much space to land. I'm gonna have to set down away from the buildings. I hope you're not averse to a hike down in that." He'd gestured out of the cockpit toward the ground below, wild with greenery and cloaked in mist. The viewscreen wipers squeaked and rumbled, wiping away sleet.

Sendero mumbled something, then pointed at a leaning tower. Stacks of white rings, greyed with time and moisture, rose past the treetops. "There," she'd declared, and Lev swore he'd seen her jump in her seat a little. "Put the ship down there!" 

He'd grimaced. "Are you nuts...? Didn't you just hear me say--"

"I heard fine, Zeno! That's where we're going! That's my site!" 

"That's an old building."

"A research facility! It's in the notes that Professor El Madrid gave me! That's the one, the one!"

He'd stifled a sigh, found the closest and clearest spot he could, and set the Red Barchetta down in the middle of what had been some kind of road, now choked with wet grass and vines.

Sendero twisted her digger, and used it to pry the panel away from the wall. "Lovely...!" She set the panel aside and gazed within. Time had been kind to the mechanisms inside; the metal parts were of something rustproof, and the moon's humidity had helped to keep the plastics from getting brittle. And in the heart of the machine sat the memory core -- a ridged cylinder about 45 centimeters tall and 20 in diameter, heavy with the secrets of the long-dead. 

She grinned again, bit her lower lip, and got to work. 

Lev said, "Is that the thing?"

"This is the memory core, yes." He was impatient, this one. "Give me...ten minutes to extract it."

He frowned. "Ten?"

"I've got to be careful. There are leads and clamps and -- stuff that I need to work ar--"

Something arced into the hallway, through the hole in the wall. It was small and round and circumscribed by a ring of blue light.

Lev's eyes shot wide, and almost without thinking, he leapt sideways, grabbed Sendero under the arms, and hurled her down the hallway.

"What the -- ?!" 

He dove down next to her and pressed her face down to the old tiles, just as the stun grenade detonated with a crack and a whine. 

Sendero felt an electric whip snap through her spine into her skull, and her vision filled with sparks for a heartbeat; her body told her she was horizontal, but her brain insisted she was treading water. Half in panic and half in curiosity, she tried telling her body to flip over so she could see what was going on--

She felt herself swing like a pendulum, but she found herself sitting up, looking down the hallway toward the hole. She was vaguely aware of Lev, still face down, inches away from her, motionless.

At the far end of the hallway, a blurry figure -damn, everything was blurry!- hovered into view -- humanoid, dark, faceless, not touching the ground. Its arms were out at its sides, with something in each hand. Blasters...?

"Today's a holiday for you, right?" The figure's voice was amplified, filtered. "Probably. You people have a holiday for everything...anyway."

Her vision sharpened. Yeah...blasters.

"Well today's a holiday for me, too!" The figure -not a figure, a man- glided closer. "I call it...

"...ass-kicking day."

---

In case it wasn't painfully obvious -- unless I specify otherwise, everything you read here is a first draft. I do some editing as I go along, yeah, but for the most part, it's all rough. It sure shows on this one, doesn't it?

In any case, the characters and situations presented here aren't new -- they've been bouncing around in my head, and on my gaming table, for some time now. They need definition, though, so maybe by writing about them on Whoops, Fiction! will help me establish that.