Ancient Relics (Shadow of the Ancients Book 1) (2 page)

Throughout the Pandor’I realm, war is a constant.
Purussum of conflict rape resources, plunder wealth, and claim valuable lives.
Conflict has raged for so long that neither fighter nor historian are able to
determine how long they have fought, nor the reasons for their wars.

The journey to the present and the tales of old are
long lost to both time and war.

On the primary planet of the Crete system, a team of
explorers tediously brush away centuries of dust and stone in order to discover
hidden knowledge linking their present to the past.

Located a day's flight from the northern pole, the
team rifles through dust and sand to unearth ancient artifacts when the
stillness of the serene setting is broken.

“Logan!” A cry rings out from a small group of tents
within shouting distance from Logan’s location.

Logan stops what he is doing to see the source of
the commotion.

An adventurer, explorer, and scientist, Dr. Logan
Bailey embodies the reflection of those who have come before him. With short
dark hair cut to the collar and bangs to the brow combed over to one side, he
portrays a rugged and hansom vision with a degree of elegance and charm.

He matches his natural appearance with stylish, yet
utilitarian, dress.

Being slightly taller than the average Tharisian,
standing at 1.8 meters, the Professor of Antiquities often has trouble shopping
for attire in Tharisian stores. He must purchase the more expensive Doran
clothing tailored to fit their tall, lanky bodies.

After years of laborious work excavating ruins, the
middle-aged Logan has a firm body with a toned musculature unusual for his age
group. In some aspects, he appears several years younger than his actual age.

With brush in hand, he freezes in position, slowly
moves his brush back, and starts to look up.

The planet of Crete IV is a dusty, dune-stricken
desert with almost no water on it. The only signs of moister are in the far
north, near the northern pole of the planet, where the only spaceport and
settlement is located.

Just as Logan starts to peel his eyes away from the
plot of dirt he has gingerly been excavating, a drip of sweat drops onto the
parched soil and instantly evaporates.

Logan sighs in contempt for the distraction.

Finally peering towards the camp, he barely sees his
friend and assistant, Paige Wright.

Younger than Logan, Paige is a woman with the youth
of mind and body.

Such youth encourages her in her duties as Logan’s
research aid, but also imperils her in a dangerous attraction towards her older
and rugged leader.

Paige is shorter then Logan by only a head's height,
which attracts her more to the duteous Logan.

The only distraction that forces her to keep her
affection for her superior a secret is her skin color.

Her pigmentation is a perfect Mocha tone. Her skin
is soft and fair in comparison to other dark skinned humanoids.

The origin of her pigmentation lies with her
lineage. Her mother is of Doran descent, while her father is a dark-skinned
Tharisian.

Her father's skin color is still lighter than most
of his brothers and sisters, but darker than Paige’s.

To the Doran, who are a very pale complexioned race
of tall humanoids, Paige is a forbidden attraction. With a taboo of Doran and
Tharisian relationships in play, her parents broke with traditional bonds to
pursue true love.

However, the perfect blend of genes between the two
allowed for a Tharisian woman of darker skin that arouses the imaginations of
young Doran males.

Her ears are similar to that of the normal Dorans,
which rise high on the head and are longer than Tharisian ears, with a point to
the top of the ear.

Longer ears are a sign of intelligence among the
Doran people. Being a race of logically minded people, it is a very attractive
feature to the Dorans.

Although Paige is attracted to tall men like Logan,
her promiscuity does not end with the opposite sex. Her promenades into the
social life of Doga Prime have given her a bit of a stain with the students at
her college.

“Logan!” Paige cries out again, “I think you need to
see this!”

Logan starts to stand when he hears the sound of
weapon-fire off in the distance.

Immediately, he comes to attention and runs to the
shade tents of their encampment to discover the origin of the shots.

As he runs towards the tents, where the excavation
finds are usually stored, the sounds of battle seem to get closer and closer.

Logan makes it to the campsite just in time to see
plasma bolts piercing the air, whizzing past the tents at a deadly close range.

Logan yells to his team, “Get down! Everyone get
down!”

As the bewildered team drops to the ground,
panicking with fear that they may be under attack by pirates, the bolts begin
to strike the ground near where they now lay.

Protected by the mere quarter meter of a low and
wide sand dune, Logan looks to a small stony wall to their rear uncovered just
a day before.

He decides that the wall is their best chance to
defend themselves.

Out on the worlds of the Kishar Expanse, explorers
such as these archaeologists often carry simple weapons for self-defense
against pirate attacks. The Expanse, as most people commonly know it, is a
region of the Trillian galaxy not fully mapped by any known civilization.

Not much is known of the old worlds contained within
this ancient region and no one knows how the expanse came to be.

Riddled with dangerous spatial anomalies such as
black holes and gaseous clouds with intense radiation, the expanse is extremely
dangerous just from the natural formations alone.

Usually pirates attack in space, but when they
attack on the ground, they tend to attack small groups with simple weapons like
pistols and rifles.

Most often, they use melee weapons such as swords
and staves.They attack in small numbers, so small arms are usually adequate
defense against a pirate incursion on an explorer camp.

Logan yells, “Grab your weapons and move to that
wall!”

Pointing to the small wall, he looks to each member
of his party so to ensure they see and understand his demand.

One by one, each of the party members arm themselves
and they start running the short distance to the wall.

The wall is only a meter high at the highest point
and is crumbling from centuries of decay. Nevertheless, it is adequate cover, since
the planet is all but devoid of preferable cover and concealment options and
better than the sand dune.

As the last member of the group makes it to the
wall, Logan peers back at the oncoming attack.

Now closer, he sees that the small force running toward
them are not the attackers, but are actually running from an attack.

Weapon’s fire rains down all around Logan as he
watches helplessly from his perch on the backside of his sandy mound.

Practically pinned down at the location he now
rests, Logan can do nothing but hope and wait for the firefight to end.

“Logan! Hide!” Paige calls out.

“Stay where you are! I’ll be fine!” he yells back,
and then under his breath he whispers to himself, “I hope.”

Now the fight has gotten even closer and the
weapon’s fire is passing very close over his head, landing further back towards
the wall.

Logan looks frantically back and forth between his
comrades and the firefight, hoping that everyone else is safely out of danger.

Logan looks up over the small mound, barely concealing
his position, just as a Drak soldier stumbles up to Logan’s position.

Not noticing him until it was too late, the Drak
warrior falls to the ground startled at the realization of others in the area.

Logan jumps backwards, landing on his butt, in a seemingly
inhuman leap from his prone position along the dune.

Fearing Logan might be apart of a routing force, the
Drak soldier points his weapon at him, stopping short of firing after assessing
that Logan poses no danger.

Logan, looking just as surprised and caught
off-guard as the Drak soldier, displays no attempt at aggression toward the
soldier.

With eyes locked, the surrounding chaos disappears
into an uneventful pause of silence and time seems to crawl to a halt, as if
the universe froze for just a moment.

Then, just as quickly, the world resumes its chaotic
battle.

The reptilian Drak soldier sneers briefly at Logan,
raising a curled fleshy lip in disdain at Logan, and then begins firing back to
the attacking force.

Plopping down in Logan’s former placement on the
backside of the miniature dune, the Drak soldier fires at the pursuing unit.

Logan, slowly recovers from his daze and shock and
takes a deep breath in a sigh of relief. With his lungs feeling like they are
on fire, he coughs into his hand.

“Blood?” he thinks to himself as he sees the deep
red fluid of life soaking his hand.

Logan looks down at his chest to bear shocking
witness to a burn mark and hole where in his chest.

Blackness overwhelms him as he passes out from the
shock.

As Logan regains consciousness, he can barely hear
the muffled voice of the silhouette hovering above him.

Blinded by the light of the desert sun, Logan cannot
yet make out the person attending to him.

Mostly regaining consciousness, he can now make out
words from the voice and realizes the voice he hears is that of a woman.

“Paige?” Logan attempts to inquire to the voice as
he slowly comes to.

“Can you hear me?” the female voice asks him.

“Yeah,” Logan replies with random coughs and
wincing, which echo the pain in his chest.

“What… who… what happened?” Logan asks as he begins
to sit up.

“Just stay down sir,” the female says as she
attempts to get him to stay down on the ground. She explains, “You received a
pretty bad wound. We need to get you MedEvac’d to a hospital ship ASAP.”

Logan looks around and now sees that it is not Paige
speaking to him, but a uniformed young woman wearing the insignia of the
Trillian Alliance.

The dark-haired young woman shows the signs of a
battle-hardened warrior on her face, but her voice displays signs of deep
compassion and reason.

Her uniform bares the markings of the Trillian
Alliance, but she is Tharisian.

The Alliance customarily does not accept just anyone
into the military unless they have some defining character or ability that persuades
the Alliance Military Command to allow them to join.

It remains difficult to this day for Tharisians to
join the military, as most are adequately adapted for a wide variety of
circumstances, but very few have a specialization or character trait defining
them from among the rest.

While she does carry a weapon, her utility pack
bursts at the seams with medical equipment and first aid supplies, giving away
her role in the group.

“What’s going on here?” Logan attempts to get
answers while looking around, both to see if anyone else was hurt and to see if
anyone will answer his questions.

The young woman, a Combat Medic with the Trillian
Alliance Special Forces, attends to his wounds and comforts him saying, “You’ll
be fine for now, and the rest of your group is alright. We really need to get
you out of this environment and on a sterile Hospital Ship.”

Logan reluctantly gives a nod of approval, but at
the last second quickly looks back to the young woman and questions vigorously,
“But my site?!”

“We can pack your things up for you. Your team can
help. I, however, will not rest until I have you in a doctor’s care,” the medic
says with a stern yet caring voice.

Logan looks to his team and says, “Paige, you’re in
charge of pack-up. Get the site broken down and crated. We’ll have to come back
later, so make sure you get a good geo-point saved in the DataCom.”

DataComs are multipurpose computer consoles commonly
used by exploration groups to save exact locations without the use of Planetary
Orbital Satellites.

Explorers also use DataComs to store files data they
have produced during missions.

In primitive times, satellites were required to find
locations on the surface of a planet.

Now, these portable computer mainframes can store a
small library of data and can find location using magnetic fields and stellar
alignments.

Paige acknowledges she understands Logan’s request
and motions to the rest of the team to begin work.

Logan then cracks a smile and looks to the young
medic and asks with a hint of sarcasm, “So, you’re my guardian angel, huh?
What’s your name by the way?”

Continuing to patch him up, she giggles at the
thought of being a guardian angel and kindly answers, “Zoey.”