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The Silver Star

It was just a normal evening, the sun had just set and the sky was tinged red and orange, from the window in front of my desk as the apprentice of Master Vali, the most renown archaeologist and professor in the capital city of Soval, i could see the yachts and sailboats crossing in front of the sky and covering it with their darkish tones.We got a call from the Ministry of Xenoarchaeology, they said they needed my master's expertise in a matter, that we should pack our bags, ready for several days away.

When i gave Master Vali the message and the coordinates, he was extremely excited, and i soon learned why.

It was a newly explored world in the Cal-vaiehl system, rumored to have some energy signatures and tier 8 species.

Surely this would be an interesting trip!

A few weeks later three men, if you can call them that, showed up at our door, not quite sure if they could get past it, really, their ears grazed the ceiling easily, we were told to follow and take our bags as previously stated in the call.

In the car we entered was our guide, Mr. Ghaush, i was surprised by the fact he seemed to be about my age, although his eyes seemed much more mature.after the typical pleasantries of the scientific community, to which I've become much to used to, but that seemed to make our three escorts, we had learnt much about the excursion.

Including the fact that none of it could be discussed through communication systems, i thought at this time our guide must be somewhat paranoid.

We arrived at the spaceport, no surprises there, the one thing that did somewhat disturb me, however, was that we did not need to show our identification, nor were we recorded, we were simply guided through a small door leading to a long boarding hall.

When i saw our transport it suddenly made much more sense, a large military Carrier was assigned to take us to our destination.

Even master was surprised and privately discussed with me, there is no reason for such security, the system we are going to is inside the Empire's territory.

I was, of course aware, but i suppose, since this is a government operation and we are simply guests we should not complain and just go, who knows what we might learn, after all.

The voyage took four days and was painfully uneventful.

The food left us craving the dehydrated and precooked meals we could get from the supermarkets back home, simply tasteless, Master assumed it must be mostly coconut milk and some spices to hide the fact that it has no real nutritional value.

During these meals we would be briefed lightly by Mr. Ghaush on where we were going and what it was they needed us for, "simply for translation of an ancient artifact" he would always answer.

We did learn, however, that the world had an indigenous species, as of yet unnamed, and that we were going to the northernmost continent, the ship would land at sea, so as to not disturb the locals, and we would arrive at the artifact aboard a light aerial transport.

With nothing to do, after the second day, i had started sneaking out of my quarters to explore the ship a bit better.

There was a large garden running down the center of it, three fountains ran down the middle, large trees grew on either side and flowers lined the paths, above i could see several dozen floors of rooms and corridors, the pillars lining the garden and keeping the ship upright were red and seemed to be marble, lined around their bases with floral silver patterns, who knew these ships were so luxurious! Bellow that garden i found my favorite room, the observation deck, it was mostly empty at most hours so i could stay there very long.

It was perfectly positioned so as to not catch the glare of the distorted light either from the back or the front of the vessel, and the hum of the engines was dulled.

I sat there for hours at a time watching the stars pass by us slowly. Definitely the best part of the trip, nothing but the silence, the starts, and the smell of the flowers from above.

There i met a man, a recruit, i never did get his name, all i know is that he had joined just a few months prior, and he came there to relax and enjoy the sight.

Indeed i could smell his effort from the training aboard the ship.

He often complained about his superiors and i taught him how to read a bit of ancient Thirillian, if not for our limited stay aboard i would have probably liked to get to know him better, that is, if you get my point.

Sadly, all things must come to an end, and we arrived at our destination.

We were summoned up and escorted to the bridge.

It was a wide, long corridor ending in a curve where the Shipmaster sat, behind him stood the ship's Oracle, he kept his eyes closed and ears pointed firmly and sternly forward through the entire time, although we could definitely feel that he was peering the entire room with his protective gaze, the shipmaster greeted us and showed us a map of the planet, Cal-Vaiehl 4, it truly was marvelous, very similar to Soval, except for the lack of lights lining the dark side of the planet, a small desert lined half of the continent visible around the equator, surrounding that there were small blotches of water, as if someone had sprinkled it with a paintbrush of dark blue ink, lining them and the desert was a wide spread forest of green and red interwoven together.

From there we were pinpointed to the location of our artifact and introduced to the team of four that would accompany us there.

Mr Ghaush, of course, two more large men, most likely marines, and the much smaller and thinner pilot, with the trademark third eye tattoo of a desert dweller from Baab-illi, it's interesting how some people chose to leave behind their culture and their sacred worlds for a chance to see the skies.

Master was seemingly tense at his escort, and demanded to go alone with Mr Ghaush, this seemed to leave the Shipmaster anxious, very anxious, he stared back and forth from us to Mr Ghaush apprehensively, and told us that was out of the question, for our safety.

I helped Master collect his equipment and updating his applications, i set up my sub network visor and we left immediately. The trip down took surprisingly little time., we never felt the waves crash on the hull at all, unlike a commercial vessel.

Before we knew it the Wherebess, as i had later found out was her name, had landed.

They guided us through a maze of metallic corridors to the hangar.

We quickly entered a small Mosquito and left, we never even had a chance to see the hangars, i just saw it was large and square and seemed to go on for far longer than it had the right to, Spatial engineering, i reasoned, we launched from the hangar smoothly and were ejected, so to speak, into the ocean air, the small windows in the aircraft let me see, however although it was open i could not smell a thing, one of the definite precautions was to wear baryonic shielding and oxygen recyclers in our clothing.

It was kind of disappointing tho, it all seemed so fresh, it would almost make the probable alien infection worthwhile.

Once we left the shore we entered a deep pine-like forest of trees several meters tall and deep green, on the left through the cockpit the pilot pointed at a column of smoke. "natives" he yelled out over the deafening sound of the engines.

We were fed dinner still aboard the Mosquito, a simple pre-packaged, self heating meal.

We were given water and we added it to the meal, and soon enough we had a nice pasta meal, surprisingly good, i asked, why don't they feed us this on the mess hall, this remark even stole a chuckle from one of the brutes following us.

We all talked a lot during our meal. The large marines didn't seem to understand what compelled us to investigate "forgotten stones and dead tongues", the short furred one called them, i was amazed by his eloquence, i suppose one must have brains as well as brawn to be successful in his line of work.

Pretty soon Master and Mr.Ghaush were discussing details on a few discoveries elsewhere while me an the short furred Marine traded war poems, the other brute simply smiled but seemed pensive, we all have our problems, i can only imagine how hard it is for these men to be away from their homes for so long.

The pilot seemed to show no such quarrels, silent most of the time, a nod of his head seemed to be all he could manage, probably afraid we would make fun of his thick accent. He ate nothing during the hours of the journey and seemed to not need water, i had always heard these desert dwellers were tough, but i never thought they would be so bad ass, why i jokingly said he could take on both of the marines, surprisingly instead of a chuckle it just made them look towards each other with a tinge of nervousness.

Soon enough a hugely tall deeply grey pinnacle emerged from between the dark green pines of the forest and stretched on into the clouds, the shock was when we came close enough that we could see it was floating several meters above the canopy.

As we came closer to the middle of the tower in relation to it's height, a small landing pad seemingly materialized out of nowhere, still solid and made of stone, the pilot landed, we thanked him, and he said he'd wait for us.

Mr. Ghaush guided us to a strange tall carving on the wall from where the platform had extended, as i approached it it began to glow a deep blueish green color and singing, the others understood it as a humming, while i understood it as a voice edging me on.

Master commanded me to place my hand on the circle in the center of this carving, which i, reluctantly, did. The entire wall seemed to scream for a split second and spirals of deep green and blue flowed from the circle where i had placed my hand, it's as if it knew that we were violating something that our eyes should not see.

The wall simply dissipated in ha haze of small cubes, blueish green, the same color that the carving in its place used to have.

Behind it an enormous hall opened up, taller than we could imagine, stretching several dozen meters left and right and most certainly a hundred above us, the columns that lined it were very geometrical and squared, the deep blueish green glow flowed inside and lined the carvings on the walls, what was said there is beyond my understanding and i turned to Master and Mr.Ghaush who seemed just as stunned as i was, Master investigated the first few carvings on the walls and said that it would probably be a text describing the life of one creature designated "Hannap" on that side of the wall, translating all this would take too long. Fortunately for us one of our marines, the one with the longer fur, the quiet one, hadn't come into this life as we had and was able to access and reveal to us the underlining digital structure of the hall inside.As we forced ourselves to see this digital overlapping realm we were rewarded by intricately designed and detailed projections on both sides of the walls and lining the ceiling, from where a beam of light seemed to pulse and light our path further inside the megalithic structure. A quick look and a nod between us all was all it took, and we ventured further inside the tower.

We must have spent near to forty minutes walking inside of it, it was clearly much larger on the inside, more than any technology we possessed at the time, the inside was absolutely labyrinthine in nature, nothing seemed to make sense to our eyes, however our android marine was quick to guide us through, everything seemed to be made to a scale much larger than ours, we felt like five month old infants playing with an AI construct.

We eventually reached a huge towering room, right at the center of the structure, it was hexagonal with more strange concentric geometric symbols on the ground, and a small pyramid at the center which seemed, both to me and our android companion, to beckon something. Lining the walls there was one cylinder attached to each, completely metallic at first, then, as we got closer and closer, and the lights on the floor that followed us touched the pyramid in the center of the room, a distant whirl began to be heard.

The cylinder in tho opposite side of the room became semi-transparent, Master Vali approached it, tentatively at first, then more sure of himself, i and Mr. Ghaush were not far behind, that is when i begin to see what he saw. I race forward, fall on my knees and bow my head, i am in tears without even realizing it. Master comforts me with his firm older touch on my shoulder and unpacks his equipment. I, an atheist until now, sing a short prayer.

Mr Ghaush grins, he states this is exactly as they had hoped and instructs us on what to scan and search for in this, the tomb of a God.

We measure the energy in the tower, a quantity that is impossible, we can't tell where it could possibly come from unless from not only dark matter, but the fabric of the universe itself, who knows, maybe several of them, the sleeping God keeps calling to my focus, however. I have to know, what is he?

Master shares my curiosity, we run several deep scans on him and his pod without Ghaush's knowledge.

As we run the scans, the entire rooms seems to shift for a split second, as if everything had changed, Mr. Ghaush looked, realized what we were doing and did not appreciate this.

There was..something, with us in that room, in the dark corners in the room, it beeped and seemed to shift in and out of sight, a voice of a female was heard from all sides.

She was stuck, the same unintelligible words repeating over and over.

Suddenly silence, nothing but the calm slight hum of the sky around us.

That is until we heard a clanking of machinery, it came from all sides loud, deafening we covered our ears and looked around, confused, then..silence once more.

The room seemed to shift around for a fraction of a second and, she was there, impossibly tall, in plain sight, her eyes covered, her fur disheveled, she was naked and blood flowed from her fur, a mechanical screeching was heard from all around the room. Six of her stood in each corner of the room, all the same, slowly walking towards us and shifting in and out of reality before our eyes. They were in front of us, we were pushed one against the other, they stared into our eyes, and we saw theirs, deep golden and deep, deeper than any eye, as if i was staring into a galaxy far away through a golden star-lit nebula, burning with anger, then, just as they had appeared, they disappeared in a shifting multicolored wisp.

Mr Ghaush was not pleased to say the least. We saw a side of him we had not seen yet, now i understood why the Shipmaster had sent us with an escort, he barked at the marines to seize us and ordered us to give him every bit of data we had collected, Master refused, he protested, he fought the marine's grip. Ghaush grinned at him from ear to ear, maliciously, with a cold but satisfied stare in his deep blue eyes.

He took a gun, he had a gun, where did he have a gun?

I fought and snarled at him, Master did too, with a thunderous blast, it was over. Ghaush leaned down over Master and took his soul-stone.

The right side of my face was warm. Why was it warm? And wet, why was Master so quiet? Why did Mr. Ghaush take his soul-stone?

I needed my Master's guidance, but he just stood there, red and half of his face was missing.

They took me out, pulled me, i couldn't think anymore and just followed, the hallway seemed to end much sooner, i was on the Mosquito before exiting the hall, at least i don't remember exiting.

All i remember after this is Waking in a hospital back in Soval.

When i told the neurologist what had happened, he didn't believe me, no one did, so i kept quiet.

For the time being at least.