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- Joined
- Jan 8, 2020
Theo hummed to himself as he performed all the checks he needed to, hovering a few hundred feet above the desolate looking ruins on the abandoned planet. He'd done his due diligence first, scanned the entirety of the planet for signs of life and found not a single one despite it being more than capable of sustaining it, at least when it came to the atmosphere. It seemed that some of the valleys he'd seen while flying at low altitude had once been deep rivers, he could see them leading into what had to have been lakes but now were huge pockmarks on the land. It wasn't anything he hadn't seen before...this was what he did, travelled the stars, exploring the vast emptiness of space and finding new planets. Once his sensors picked up on one that could sustain life, or perhaps had in the past, he would drop down onto the planet to find any treasures and secrets they had left behind. All manner of ancient civilizations had been discovered this way, sadly from now extinct species and races. Some called him a treasure hunter, others an archeologist, it depended on the perspective and what he found truth be told, but when it came down to it it didn't really matter. It had been almost a year since he'd had contact with another person anyway. His ship, the Quetzal, was capable of storing 2 years worth of food comfortably and safely, using the advanced preservation technology to keep it as fresh as they day it was produced as well as a year's supply of much less appealing, dehydrated food.
The Quetzal as it was was a huge ship, something that had been passed down and upgraded over the centuries in his family, a wingspan of half a mile across and intimidating looking as it hovered above the ruins. Most of it was ran and maintained by the onboard AI and it was rare that Theo visited a lot of it, spending most of his time in the living quarters. Armed with it's own shields and self defence weaponry it was a ship that you wouldn't normally expect a single man to be piloting, but that was the benefit of being born to the Delacroix family. Generations of wealth had led to them having pretty much anything they wanted, the only thing the family hadn't anticipated was that Theodore, the eldest son, would be less interested in the family businesses and more interested in setting out to explore and hunt treasures across the universe. Still, upon reaching 30 he had been given a portion of the family wealth and like all in his family was able to choose a single piece of property as his own. As a family that owned not just buildings but several moons he had been expected to choose one of those, but instead he had chosen the Quetzal and had used his funds to stock it for travel with all the equipment he would need.
All the checks passed, Theo took a deep breath and stepped out of the open hatch, feeling the ground slip away from him as he fell towards the planet, accelerating by the second. The first time he'd done this his heart had been in his throat, having to overcome a fear of heights that he knew he would have to shake to truly explore but now it was commonplace, this was the 7th planet he'd dropped down onto like this, preferring to keep the Quetzal above the ground in case of earthquakes or other natural disasters. He wore a pair of goggles that helped shield his eyes from the wind as he fell and also showed certain things, his altitude displayed in front of his eyes too and as he reached 500 feet from the ground he pressed the switch on the side of his gloves. The pack on his back sprang to life, cold flames shooting out of the back so as not to burn as it slowed his descent and around 100 feet from the ground he found himself hovering. Using the control gloves he gently lowered himself down to the ruins and shut off the jetpack. As usual his sensors hadn't let him down...the air here was breathable though after flying over the planet towards these ruins he couldn't understand why. No greenery, nothing that he could think of that would provide oxygen which a human could breathe and yet it did, and being just the right distance from this galaxy's sun kept it warm enough to live and not too hot.
The next few hours were spent picking through the ruins. It was clear that there had been a thriving civilization here, albeit not a very advanced one. In fact, after entering some of the dusty, long abandoned buildings he had assumed were their homes he judged their technology to be millennia in the past when compared to the human race, somewhere around the Aztec period he had been so fond of learning about, though there were signs of influence much like the ancient Egyptians had as well. He took a break in one of the homes, setting up the portable cooking station and making himself a simple meal. After eating, he'd resumed his exploration. When he found objects of interest, he had wrapped them up in one of his warp pods and pressed the remote on his wrist to send them back up to his ship, straight into the new acquisitions storage room he used. Anything he found on a drop was sent here using the advanced teleporter to target the pods he used, the only reason he didn't use the teleporter to transport himself down onto the surface of the planet was that it needed something to target as teleporting blind or even with just visual coordinates was incredibly dangerous. People had teleported and found themselves melded with the floor or walls before, or even in minor cases ended up with a stray pebble lodged inside their foot and Theo wasn't going to risk that when using the jetpack to drop was so much fun anyway.
Eventually after even more hours of exploration he found himself at the center of the ruins, walking into a huge temple, with statues of what appeared to be half snake and half human beings flanking the entrance. Inside were even more statues, all of them female and leading down a long hallway towards the center of the temple, each of them looking just a little different and yet somehow the same. The language on the plaques at their bases he couldn't quite understand or read but at a guess they seemed to be ages, like they were rulers of this place, which was absolutely fascinating. Ancient myths back on Earth had creatures like this in them, such as Medusa from Greek mythology, but to find evidence of one on a planet millions of light years away from Earth...it felt incredible. In truth, most civilizations he had discovered seemed to be mostly human-like, bipedal aliens that had looked more or less human with few changes depending on the surrounding area...fins, extra limbs, eyes, different heights, denser skeletons...so finding one that was completely different was a rare discovery but he tempered his expectations all the same. Ancient civilizations on Earth had statues and worshipped Gods and Goddesses that were not human too, but no evidence of them actually existing had ever been found.
Coming to the central chamber he found...he didn't quite know. In the center was a large, egg shaped mass, smooth and shiny and despite not believing in magic he could feel some kind of energy around it like an aura, it even grew warmer as he stepped closer. The colours...it had first appeared pure white, but with even the slightest turn of his head changed the colours that shimmered along the surface, greens and blues and yellows, all colours of the rainbow and he couldn't quite nail down what colour it actually was even as he was just a few feet from it. There was nothing else in the chamber, no furniture, no...anything, not even dust which was even stranger as the entire surface of the planet and every building he had visited so far here had been coated in the stuff. He looked down to check that everything was being recorded as walked around the egg, for want of a better word, even lowering himself to the ground to see what was holding it up...which was nothing. It was hovering perfectly a few inches above the ground, only a strange symbol carved into the floor beneath it like an elaborate Celtic knot.
The strangest part of all was the incredible pull of the object...not a physical one, but a mental one...a desire to reach out and touch it that he'd been fighting ever since he first laid eyes on it. He took off his left glove, not even thinking about what he was doing, so close now that the pull was irresistible, and he reached out, placing his palm on the egg.
A tingle raced through him, excitement, though excitement at what he couldn't quite understand and then...a wave of energy that started from the egg and rushed outwards, knocking him off his feet and onto his ass as he was thrown a few feet backwards onto the floor. He felt himself growing dizzy, felt everything start to fade and managed to roll onto his side and press the button on his wrist that would cover him in a thin, breathable, oxygen filled forcefield shortly before he passed out.
The Quetzal as it was was a huge ship, something that had been passed down and upgraded over the centuries in his family, a wingspan of half a mile across and intimidating looking as it hovered above the ruins. Most of it was ran and maintained by the onboard AI and it was rare that Theo visited a lot of it, spending most of his time in the living quarters. Armed with it's own shields and self defence weaponry it was a ship that you wouldn't normally expect a single man to be piloting, but that was the benefit of being born to the Delacroix family. Generations of wealth had led to them having pretty much anything they wanted, the only thing the family hadn't anticipated was that Theodore, the eldest son, would be less interested in the family businesses and more interested in setting out to explore and hunt treasures across the universe. Still, upon reaching 30 he had been given a portion of the family wealth and like all in his family was able to choose a single piece of property as his own. As a family that owned not just buildings but several moons he had been expected to choose one of those, but instead he had chosen the Quetzal and had used his funds to stock it for travel with all the equipment he would need.
All the checks passed, Theo took a deep breath and stepped out of the open hatch, feeling the ground slip away from him as he fell towards the planet, accelerating by the second. The first time he'd done this his heart had been in his throat, having to overcome a fear of heights that he knew he would have to shake to truly explore but now it was commonplace, this was the 7th planet he'd dropped down onto like this, preferring to keep the Quetzal above the ground in case of earthquakes or other natural disasters. He wore a pair of goggles that helped shield his eyes from the wind as he fell and also showed certain things, his altitude displayed in front of his eyes too and as he reached 500 feet from the ground he pressed the switch on the side of his gloves. The pack on his back sprang to life, cold flames shooting out of the back so as not to burn as it slowed his descent and around 100 feet from the ground he found himself hovering. Using the control gloves he gently lowered himself down to the ruins and shut off the jetpack. As usual his sensors hadn't let him down...the air here was breathable though after flying over the planet towards these ruins he couldn't understand why. No greenery, nothing that he could think of that would provide oxygen which a human could breathe and yet it did, and being just the right distance from this galaxy's sun kept it warm enough to live and not too hot.
The next few hours were spent picking through the ruins. It was clear that there had been a thriving civilization here, albeit not a very advanced one. In fact, after entering some of the dusty, long abandoned buildings he had assumed were their homes he judged their technology to be millennia in the past when compared to the human race, somewhere around the Aztec period he had been so fond of learning about, though there were signs of influence much like the ancient Egyptians had as well. He took a break in one of the homes, setting up the portable cooking station and making himself a simple meal. After eating, he'd resumed his exploration. When he found objects of interest, he had wrapped them up in one of his warp pods and pressed the remote on his wrist to send them back up to his ship, straight into the new acquisitions storage room he used. Anything he found on a drop was sent here using the advanced teleporter to target the pods he used, the only reason he didn't use the teleporter to transport himself down onto the surface of the planet was that it needed something to target as teleporting blind or even with just visual coordinates was incredibly dangerous. People had teleported and found themselves melded with the floor or walls before, or even in minor cases ended up with a stray pebble lodged inside their foot and Theo wasn't going to risk that when using the jetpack to drop was so much fun anyway.
Eventually after even more hours of exploration he found himself at the center of the ruins, walking into a huge temple, with statues of what appeared to be half snake and half human beings flanking the entrance. Inside were even more statues, all of them female and leading down a long hallway towards the center of the temple, each of them looking just a little different and yet somehow the same. The language on the plaques at their bases he couldn't quite understand or read but at a guess they seemed to be ages, like they were rulers of this place, which was absolutely fascinating. Ancient myths back on Earth had creatures like this in them, such as Medusa from Greek mythology, but to find evidence of one on a planet millions of light years away from Earth...it felt incredible. In truth, most civilizations he had discovered seemed to be mostly human-like, bipedal aliens that had looked more or less human with few changes depending on the surrounding area...fins, extra limbs, eyes, different heights, denser skeletons...so finding one that was completely different was a rare discovery but he tempered his expectations all the same. Ancient civilizations on Earth had statues and worshipped Gods and Goddesses that were not human too, but no evidence of them actually existing had ever been found.
Coming to the central chamber he found...he didn't quite know. In the center was a large, egg shaped mass, smooth and shiny and despite not believing in magic he could feel some kind of energy around it like an aura, it even grew warmer as he stepped closer. The colours...it had first appeared pure white, but with even the slightest turn of his head changed the colours that shimmered along the surface, greens and blues and yellows, all colours of the rainbow and he couldn't quite nail down what colour it actually was even as he was just a few feet from it. There was nothing else in the chamber, no furniture, no...anything, not even dust which was even stranger as the entire surface of the planet and every building he had visited so far here had been coated in the stuff. He looked down to check that everything was being recorded as walked around the egg, for want of a better word, even lowering himself to the ground to see what was holding it up...which was nothing. It was hovering perfectly a few inches above the ground, only a strange symbol carved into the floor beneath it like an elaborate Celtic knot.
The strangest part of all was the incredible pull of the object...not a physical one, but a mental one...a desire to reach out and touch it that he'd been fighting ever since he first laid eyes on it. He took off his left glove, not even thinking about what he was doing, so close now that the pull was irresistible, and he reached out, placing his palm on the egg.
A tingle raced through him, excitement, though excitement at what he couldn't quite understand and then...a wave of energy that started from the egg and rushed outwards, knocking him off his feet and onto his ass as he was thrown a few feet backwards onto the floor. He felt himself growing dizzy, felt everything start to fade and managed to roll onto his side and press the button on his wrist that would cover him in a thin, breathable, oxygen filled forcefield shortly before he passed out.
