Part II

Many years earlier

After three years in exile, Victor had almost run out of drinkable fluids and had been fortunate enough to find a source of water. The ground scanners had picked up an underground well in the middle of nowhere and he had immediately deployed the geo observation probes for further inspection. They had reported back with findings of an underground lake, several hundred meters below the surface. Strange as that had sounded to Victor, something even stranger would come to reveal itself. The cave lake was not a natural formation, but an artificial water reservoir, designed to hold volumes of water equal to the needs of a major habitat district. He had run it through the onboard archives but no records of any colonisation expeditions out in the deserts had been found and certainly not any of single reservoir constructions. He had spent the next twelve hours contemplating this in one of the dark, empty, cargo chambers, as he always had done when he had discovered something monumental. Planning on how to proceed was of utmost importance, and he wasn’t sure what this finding could mean. Usually he was satisfied with sitting behind a monitor to direct and observe but something pushed him this time. The feeling of that this was something rare, extraordinary intrigued him and it felt like a calling of sorts. He decided to descend himself down the tunnels the probes had dug out of the sand.

As he put on an exo-rigg, and primed its maniple arms and sensors, he felt very comfortable and safe. This was strange because the rigg itself weighed over a quarter ton, but it gave him the strength that was necessary to bear it and to carry out the heavy labour the deeps had in store for him. He thought back on the times when he had commanded vast legions of mine and factory workers, and how they had carried out the dangerous task he was about to perform on a daily basis. Shuttling down a two by four hundred meter long tunnel, with only a thin wall of melted rock as barrier between him and millions of tons of sand wasn’t a thing he was used to but he couldn’t ignore the calling that this unknown archaeological discovery whispered to him. What secrets of knowledge did it have in store, what history lay in its past? His curiousness outstripped his sense of danger and he secured himself in the elevator and descended down underground. After a hundred meters his fears started to leave him and return to the surface and his back-mounted lightcasters, as well as his eyes, stared down the tunnel.

The cage stopped and hanged a few metres down from the breach, in the caverns ceiling, where he was free to look in all directions. The cavity was apparently enormous as the lightcasters wasn’t enough to penetrate the darkness. He shot a few rocket flares and suddenly all was revealed to him.

Unexpected Findings, Ragnor, part I

Sand, how he hated sand. It got in everywhere. Seventy-eight percent of all hardware malfunctions and breakdowns were caused by tiny rocks called sand. Not to mention the other difficulties it brought to his daily work. It was good that he didn’t need much to get by; roaming the dunes didn’t earn him a lot of resources to spend. When he periodically relocated to the Industrial Trade Centre to resupply, he didn’t stay longer than was necessary. He wanted to get back out into the sand. He hated the sand, but he loved his work and unfortunately his work was sand.

‘WARNING. ENGINE BLOCKAGE. VALVE ONE.’

Alert klaxons woke him up. One point six hours, a timer showed in his collar monitor. A good long sleep he thought as he rose from his dark, rusty, sleep alcove.

‘Type of blockage?’ he asked and gasped.

‘UNKNOWN,’ the metallic voice answered flatly.

‘It’s not unknown to me,’ he muttered. ‘I know exactly what it is, and you should too,’ he yelled, not thinking it strange to talk to a machine.

‘HAD A GOOD SLEEP, ESTEEMED TECH LORD VICTOR RAGNOR?’ the machine said. It was not programmed to wait for an answer so it immediately went into standby to conserve power.

‘Very,’ he said mostly to himself and ran a diagnostic on vehicle systems.

The title Tech Lord was one that hadn’t been used in society for four decades and he had programmed the computers to address him as that, only to remind him of what he once had been. He stretched his gleaming arm, took a piece of cloth in the other and dipped it in a bowl containing something liquid and oily. After polishing his arm he stretched it again and it whirred and clicked pleasantly. Satisfied he walked on the grated floor of his inner vault and into access corridor 1-b. As he climbed through the maintenance hatches and access tunnels he thought about the latest chapter of a book he read. Saccarias Absurdum was a testament to, the long dead, scientist and entrepreneur, Jovalt Saccarias part in the economical downfall of the confederation of Atles. Although the entire book dealt in insults both founded and unfounded towards the poor Jovalt, he couldn’t help but admire this genius, this pioneer in colonisation development and bringer of light to a new world. Of course the book was written by a religious zealot and that served only to reverse all insults and criticism to something good in his admiring eyes. Finally down in the main engine bay he grabbed a long metal rod and poked gently at Valve one. As he thought, the valve was blocked from the outside - outside where sand comes from he thought. He drove his bionic arm straight through a discarded heatshield and cursed. Letting his anger fade he grabbed a grey dustcloak and opened a small door in the loading gate and went out, onto the dunes. He trod the nearest hill of sand to get a better overview of his vehicle.

Over 40 metres long and 20 metres tall, the great engine's beauty never disappointed him; of course it would have dissappointed any normal person, but they where not Victor and he admired the blocky Excavator type XIV to no end. It was the one he had commandeered when the Technocracy fell and he was forced to flee torches and pitchforks out into the desert. It had been his personal project, his brainchild and a unique prototype that was yet to be revealed and put into production. Unfortunately it had not been completely functional and it had taken many years until Victor had got it to reach full functionality. Its black, monolithic, hull was the only thing that did not have the white colour of sand for thousand of kilometres and its threads and giant earth moving equipment had left a straight trail behind for anyone to follow. Not that anyone would be foolish enough to do so. The excavator was designed to move alone as a mobile factory for months at a time and search the wastes for the hidden riches they harboured. He saw something shimmering that was stuck under the Valves external flaps and moved in to get a better look at it. Surprised that it wasn’t sand, his anticipation rose because there was only two things out here. Sand - and ancient artefacts.

Rebirth

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