JHEMM
“Not broken, that’s good…” Keira’s mind raced “Now, bandage, stim and medkit. I’ll be fine…fine!”
Just a few hours ago her ship crash landed on an obscure rocky planet with an oxygen-argon atmosphere. It wasn’t her fault. Really! Strange how her warp drive failed just as she passed through the gravity well of this small, but gravitationally dense planet. She had just enough energy in her capacitors for a last minute burst of afterburner before she touched down with a violent thud.
Stranger still was her proximity to the ruins she found herself in now. The entrance was a mere 150 meters from where she touched down. Running low on oxygen, she had initialized her emergency beacon and made a dash for the ruins. She pondered that for a moment before removing the armor from her left leg and inspecting the wound. Blood poured down from an open gash. That Korach nearly took her life. The small ones weren’t much of the challenge, but the Pack Mother was savage and had nearly ripped her leg off. If it had not been for the armor and her shields, she would most certainly be dead. Careless, stupid!
The glow of her plasma carbine lit the area around her as she applied field dressings and a stim-pack. Better!
She paused for a moment. “What was I thinking about? Right!” The series of events that led up to her current situation. Gravity well, warp drive failure, proximity to ruins. Odd!
Keira took a deep breath and pushed herself to her feet, favoring her left leg. She strapped the armor back on and powered up the implants, feeling the familiar warm tingle across her spine as her personal shields engaged. Now, to get out of here.
The ruins held many secrets. The rumor was these had been here for tens of thousands of years. She had found signs of others who had explored this place. She wasn’t interested in artifacts, though. The oxygen-argon atmosphere of this planet would have taken her life hours ago if she had not entered the ruins. One of the oddities of this ancient civilization was that the builders had also breathed a perfect balance of nitrogen, oxygen and other gasses in quantities similar to humans. The gases poured from vents all over the ruins. No one had ever figured out how this was possible but it had become an accepted fact. Find a ruin and you can breathe! That did not mean you would survive, however.
But Keira was a survivor, and her chances were better than most. Genetically modified, cyber enhanced and trained from birth for war, she had survived a journey across the vastness of space to this new home for humanity. There were few of her kind left, perhaps two or three that she knew of.
She limped over to the odd wall mural. A humanoid like skull etched into the stone. Archaeologists had explored these places in great depth. Little written language had ever been found, and fewer had cracked the ancient runes used on their stone tablets. A guttural language, mostly perverse and violent acts documented in great detail. It was assumed from the writing that these beings had worshiped gods who demanded blood sacrifices. Over the last several hundred years since the Arrival, humans had plumbed the depths of many of these places in search of riches.
She put her hand on the engraving. A low rumbling sound emanated from somewhere below her and the wall slid aside, filling the air with fine dust. Keira coughed and peered through the newly made opening in the wall. Beyond, a amaranthine glow filled a large chamber.
Along the walls, ancient coffer’s sat, cracked and empty. Down the center of the room, a grated causeway lined with pillars, topped with pulsing orbs of purple glowing energy. The orbs cast eerie shadows about the chamber and lit billowing mist from smoky vents in the floor. Keira was struck by the lack of filth found elsewhere in the ruins. It was as though this chamber had never been opened, waiting for her to touch the engraved skull.
She approached the pillars and stopped short, startled. Lining the causeway, here and there, bones and still red piles of dried, aged viscera. A trap?
She edged cautiously forward, inspecting the first grate. Nothing odd here, just solid iron and no trace of anything suspicious. At the far end of the room, a opening leading to…stairs! A feeling rolled over her. She knew that those stairs led to safety. It was as she was dreaming and she happily let herself become the puppet of some benign controlling entity. Always cautious, alarms went off in her head. She had not survived this long just to end her life on this rock. She rolled forward, over the grate, back to her feet, ignoring the pain. Her implants kicked in, stimulating adrenaline, hydrating her muscle tissue and releasing stimulants. She burst across the distance towards the opening, faster than any normal human.
It was then that she was stopped in her tracks. A rumbling, melodic tone erupted from the walls and bright bolts of lightning burst from the orbs. She was pinned. Strange! No pain, no feeling at all. Just a probing, gentle field of energy pressing at her skin through the armor. Then a rush of energy, like an mild electric shock. The sound and bolts were gone and she stood near the center of the room stunned, unharmed.
“What?”, Keira looked up. A large glowing crystalline shape pulsed, twirling with energy and flying sparks.
“More…”
“Who speaks?”, Keira lifted her carbine, ready to take action.
Phoneme…linguistic…humanoid. Please speak.
“Who are you?”
“We are many…we are Jhemm!”
