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Chapter 2 - The Dig

Location: Everonth Mountains - 500km North of New Chentrilla Island

The day had not proved particularly fruitful as the perplexed tiger sat at a small wooden desk inside his tent. He had been both confused and annoyed all day as he tried to analyse the technology that had been recovered from the ruins.

Apparently finding the Valkyrie was a lot easier then actually then understanding it however he soldiered, his long stripy tail twitched in annoyance as he tried to work what seemed like a small black junction that he held in his paws.

For FUCKS sake!" he boomed as he lobbed the piece of alien technology at the wall of his tent, allowing it to bounce off the fabric. To be honest, it was not the technology that was the main reason he was so annoyed, it was having to spend his days in a bloody tent.

They had been here at Everonth for almost a week after discovering the location of this mysterious ship. During that time, what had they learnt... nothing. Everything about this ship had to be carefully documented and sent to Phoenix Grace headquarters for analysis. They were not even allowed to enter the wreckage as the company had ordered them not to make an independent research without their explicit permission.

Remmy knew exactly the reason why as well.

Money.

Phoenix Grace was eager to acquire advanced technology for their weapons and transport departments. After all, they had to make a profit however this impeded scientific research.

Remmy sat back in his uncomfortable chair and sighed. His hands clutching on the table as he toyed with the idea of masturbating in order to relieve his stress.

Yeah... like I can do that..." he thought to himself with a chuckle. "PG have got this place so locked up, they'd catch me. I should have stayed at 'ome"

Remmy was not actually part of Phoenix Grace but worked with them as an independent scientist. He was an extremely clever tiger despite the way that he looked and talked. Proof that you could not judge a book by its cover. Remmy was the size of a bus, with arms that looked more like large concrete cylinders used in construction of buildings then actual arms. He had a temper to match his tough appearance.

No luck?" smiled his research assistant timidly as he entered the room. His research assistant was a scientist of Phoenix Grace due to his long white coat and name badge hanging from his scruffy neck. He was a calm looking fox with typical brown fur and short mousy brown hair. Again... nothing remarkable.

Remmy smirked as the fox entered the room nervously, he had always had a slight affection for his assistants way of stating the obvious. "Nah" he said, falling back into the chair, putting his humungous paws up on the table.

"Well I'm certainly bored" said the fox as he smiled at Remmy. Remmy sighed and looked back over at the walls of this tent. What the hell was going on. Why could they not just let them enter the ship. He was getting really tired of waiting.

"Yeah and I don't get what this thing is for..." he said, getting up to pick up the piece of technology he had thrown against the wall of his tent. He towered over the fox that had gone to sit on the bed behind Remmy's desk.

"Maybe..." said the fox, extending his paws to take the piece of technology from the wreckage. He cradled it like a new born baby as he over looked all its individual parts. It looked very much like a dial for a combination safe, black and round with different symbols surrounding the centre like a clock. "Maybe its a locking mechanism...?"

"Its possible..." sighed Remmy as he sat down in his chair again that seemed to miraculously support his weight. "Die should just look over the symbols when he actually decides to get 'ere"

"Yeah... a cryptologist would be handy about now" sighed the fox, still looking over the mysterious artefact. "You called him, right?"

Remmy nodded before looking at the fox, he noticed that his hair was a lot scruffier then it usually was but that was common for somebody who had been helping to dig up a ship that had been lost for years, buried under kilometres of rock. He got up and stretched with his stripy tail stretching out in front of him. "I'm gonna go get some air.." he said, moving back towards the entrance of the tent and pulling back the zip.

The sight before him was magnificent, he was on a fantastic cliff face looking out over the amazing green of the Forest. Viridian forest covered this whole area and was a massive conversational reserve just a few miles from Chentrilla Island and the call of civilisation.

Everonth was always called a mountain range but realistically it was all one mountain that was within the centre of the forest. There was only one road that wound up the mountain, a dirt path onto the high-up shelf that seemed almost unnatural, scientists had been baffled by its nature for years.

Now the truth was known, it was not a natural formation but instead where an alien vessel had crash landed within the mountain.

The shelf itself was quite large, about a kilometre across which had allowed Phoenix Grace to set up a camp near the excavation site and the one road made policing the area very easy. Remmy had no idea why they considered it a matter of internal security to the company that this area be sealed.

There were more soldiers posted here then scientists and it had become commonplace to see armed guards protection the massive wreckage that lay out before Remmy.

He looked directly in front of him, straight into the mountain face which had been dug into by the massive industrial diggers that they had brought up here to excavate the ship. After only a few hours of digging, they had found it. A massive black mass under the rock that was a heavily damaged vessel that had partly broken up. However large chunks of it were still intact.

Remmy stared at the colossal ruins of the starship in front of him, they had only found bits and pieces, the whole ship was not there. He presumed that much of the ship devoted to engineering had broken up on entry to the atmosphere and what was left was the command and social areas.

He had already predicted that the original vessel was much bigger then what they had here. He causally strolled up to the fences that surrounded the vessel, with an armed checkpoint guarding entrance. He looked through the fence and sighed, reading the only visible thing, less then three meters away from him.

"UTS Valkyrie"

He read the name with disdain as he allowed the passing evening breeze to shuffle through his orange and black fur. Remmy was so angry... he was looking at a marvellous and amazing machine that he could not even get inside! Why were Phoenix Grace making it so difficult for him?

Why so many scientists if he was not going to use them?

All he could do was wait around and see if he could eventually enter the ancient vessel to discover its secrets. However not being able to do that sooner, rather then later annoyed the shit out of him.

* * *

Everonth had a cool breeze blowing over it as night rolled in. The beautiful, clear air and cloudless sky showed the full extent of but a small portion of the universe above. This was truly a site to behold and many Terran scientists had spent thousands of years analysing the mysteries of the cosmos.

Some believed that it was created by the tears of the gods that wept in loneliness being the only living things in existence. However more modern scientists were able to discover that Terra was part of a eight plant system that orbited around a star at the centre. A massive ball of burning energy that was wreathed in flames.

It was all very poetic, even science had an artistic charm to it.

Diamond had now arrived at the camp and was sat within a tent that had been allocated to him. He had numerous papers on the desk and books in order help him make heads or tails of Remmy's device.

It puzzled him greatly, the symbols seemed to be very familiar but he could not remember where he had seen them before. His annoyance was shown in the fact that he snapped about three pencils while trying to write. The temperature and insects had not made it easier either. He was constantly using his tail as a fly swatter however he always seemed to get bitten by an annoying Terran mosquito that lived in this part of the country.

Diamond recalled a conversation that he had had with Remmy only a few hours after he arrived. He had stumbled into Remmy's tent looking rather flustered from his journey and had sat down to have a drink and a cigarette with Remmy.

"You think you can fix that... thing? Di?" said Remmy, his eyes fixed on Diamond. Diamond looked back at the strange device that Remmy was working on, it looked like a larger version of a graphics card for a standard computer except that it was encased metal and the internal circuits were unlike anything he had ever seen before.

"Where did you find that?" asked Diamond in a calm voice.

"Well, we sorta found it lying around on a rock when we dug up that.. thing out there... when we confirmed it was from that thing... the "Valkyrie"

"Are you absolutely sure that artefact is the Valkyrie?" asked Diamond, picking up one of the many pieces of scavenged metal which lay inside Remmy's Engineering Tent.

"It matches the files we found at the Ruins!?" shouted Remmy, looking slightly annoyed at the fact that Diamond doubted his word... again. In all the time that they had worked together, Diamond had always had trouble accepting Remmy's appraisal of the situation. He always seemed to be much less intellectually inclined then Diamond was.

They had never really seen completely eye-to-eye, Diamond played it safe and Remmy Scarlet was a known risk taker and was also known to attack certain people that he did not agree with.

"Alright!" said Diamond, raising his voice slightly and giving Remmy a sharp but calm look.

"So what could this be then?"

Remmy also immediately calmed down whilst still looking at Diamond, he sat down in his chair that table with the long oblong "thing" which he picked up in one hand.

"It's an access key to get inside the Valkyrie"

"Oh really? I am not so sure"

"See, Di, you ALWAYS doubt me!" shouted Remmy again, getting up and almost looking like he was going to hit Diamond, he clenched his fists but then relaxed.

So now Diamond was stuck in this tent at nearly nine o'clock in the evening, analysing these artefacts that had been discovered. Well... he called them artefacts... they might as well have just been completely useless pieces of metal however some did have inscriptions.

Pulling his pad over to him, he etched out the symbols onto the paper as he got the strange feeling that he had seen them before somewhere. The only noise in the room came from the slowly flickering gas lamp that seemed to be getting stronger as the world got darker.

"Bingo!" he suddenly thought. He had remembered where he had seen the symbols before. They looked increasingly familiar as he stared at them etched out on the pad.

The Terran Alphabet!

They were not completely the same however they had an incredibly and indisputable similarity. Diamond smirked, taking a sip from his cup of hot chocolate as he laid back, running his fingers through his long mane. Finally... he felt like he had made some progress.

He looked over at the piece that Remmy had been examining earlier. He took to his pad again, drawing out the symbols from the burnt piece of metal. Trying to work out what they would be if they were indeed Terran letters.

K-E-S-T-R-A

He spelled it out and ran it through his head. What could "Kestra" actually mean? It must have been a named, perhaps one of the crew. Diamond then let out a huge sigh of realisation.

He had just spent four hours translating a locker dial! This was the dial to a crew locker on the ship. He had expected it to be somewhat more exciting... He put down his hot chocolate.

"SMASH!"

He nearly jumped four feet in the air as he looked around him. Something had made a huge crashing sound outside and it felt like there was a crane out there lifting something out of the wreckage. At this time of night?

He chucked on a brown jacket and immediately ducked out of the tent into the open. His suspicions were confirmed. A massive crane was busy lifting something large out of the ruins of the Valkyrie.

There were an enormous array of armed guards standing near the crane as it did its work and the science team were standing way back away. Probably through military direction.

Diamond spotted Remmy in amongst the ten scientists that had come out of their tents to see what was going on, most of them not completely dressed suggesting that they might have been going to bed.

Remmy was looking as angry as ever while the crane winched a large sphere noisily from the wreckage. As if a crane at a fairground, it placed the large sphere on the grass just in front of the tents so that Diamond could just make out what it was.

It seemed to be a large, almost crystal-like sphere that held an ominous glowing blue liquid. It was set in a metal holder that was almost like the fitting of a crystal ball on the end of a walking stick. This allowed the crystal to stay up straight despite being spherical.

Diamond could not even guess at what the blue liquid was and what it was for, except it seemed to let off a beautiful mesmerising azure glow. He walked over to Remmy as they stared at the strange ball. It was large enough to easily fit a person inside which explained why it had to be lifted by a crane.

The black suit military were soon all over it, edge the curious science team away from the strange object. It was obvious that the team were not going to get an y answers about what this strange thing was?

As the team disperse, Remmy looked increasingly annoyed from the fact that he had not been informed about this. He had been ensured by Ivan Grace himself that he would have free reign of the ship and its areas and that the military were only their to "protect Phoenix Grace's interests".

However his anger would not solve anything, albeit get himself killed maybe. So he returned back to his tent... Diamond followed him, not ready to give up just yet.

"So are you going to explain what exactly that is?" sneered Diamond as he entered Remmy's tent, preparing for a round two between them. Remmy just stared back at him as he poured out a shot of whisky and downed it in one.

"Nope" he said calmly as he made a strange expression from the whiskey and sat down at his desk.

Diamond was not ready to take no for an answer. "Remmy... come on! You know that the company agreed not to remove anything before we had a chance to safe test the building?"

Remmy smirked and looked back up at him while pouring another shot. "Ah... so this is about a safe test eh? Yeah... right.." he sneered sarcastically.

"Well we don't know what's in there! It could be a virus or something that could kill everyone on this planet. That's what DECON is for!" shouted Diamond, his voice getting more agitated.

Remmy lost it.. he smashed the shot glass off the table before getting up to face Diamond, his face boiling in temper.

"I DON'T NEED YOU TO REMIND ME OF HOW TO DO MY JOB!" he bellowed, making Diamond feel a little queasy. Remmy's face had contorted with anger and had formed a serious frown. "YOU JUST FUCKING KEEP YOUR LONG MUZZLE OUT... K'... I DON'T NEED THIS!"

"Well I THINK that if you were any sort of team leader, you would be out there right now making sure that protocol is observed!"

That was Diamond's last warning. Suddenly Remmy grabbed Diamond and threw him down onto the bed in rage. He felt himself pulse with anger and rage, he honestly felt like killing Diamond.

Remmy let go, getting up from his chair. He had short, shallow breath and a large bulge in-between his legs. Somehow, being this angry had also made him strangely aroused.

Diamond got up and immediately walked towards to door, a little shaken. Maybe he should have not pushed Remmy so far.

"I don't wanna talk about this again!" shouted Remmy, after him as he left. He had honestly feared for his life in there but he also knew that Remmy would never have harmed him. He was a little bit more of gentle giant.

* * *

The next morning, the sun rose, filling the tents with light over the camp-site. The military had seemed to have up and left overnight, leaving a small presence of at least two soldiers, both canines in thick black uniforms standing guard of the camp.

The strange sphere from the night before had also been removed from the grass, probably taken by Phoenix Grace for further independent study.

However there was a large scream from the assistant fox as he entered Remmy's tent in the morning with a customary "good morning cheer". There was blood trickling out from the tent.

Remmy had been murdered.