Page 177 - The Chronicles Ser2 (6-10)

room. He popped the rods into a bag and the contents of the Box into a separate container; leaving
the Box and its symbols till later and took the bagged items with him to the bridge.

The scene that Hubris walked into seemed to be one of chaotic fervour. Krysta looked at him
and signalled him to come to her. He handed the bagged items to Trok and T’luha; giving a brief
explanation and joined Krysta at a desk monitor in one corner of the room.

“What’s going on? I get a cryptic summons over the intercom just when I make an interesting
discovery.” Hubris asked

“We’ve made a discovery of our own; as have the team on Shust. Theirs came first ours came
second. The Shust team found the mummified remains of two beings in an underground chamber.
They looked to have been interred in a manner similar to that of the Ancient Egyptian kings and
Pharos. What was more surprising was the fact that they managed to obtain DNA samples. They are
processing them now. They believe these beings to be Kryst. We’ve only just found out because of
the interference clearing” Krysta replied excited.

“That’s amazing news, but what’s our discovery?” Hubris asked in return.

“The object in orbit around the sixth planet appears to be a craft that was manned. A larger version
of the Kryst probe found before. We are leaving a skeleton crew down on She’brakda to continue
the archaeology and we are heading to rendezvous with the craft. Young Michael seems to think
there may be navigation logs that could be accessed”. Krysta responded.

“How soon can we get there?” Hubris replied looking like a child going on an unexpected toy
shopping trip. Krysta gave the order to finalise the personnel list of those staying behind. Jennifer
volunteered to head the teams. She had navigation set a course for the sixth planet and set the crew
about their tasks. All in all; it took just a little under forty minutes and the Veklaar departed as soon
as the landers had been secured in the Hangar bays.

The sixth planet in the P’rada system was a strange oddity. Its position from P’rada should
have meant that it would be a Gas planet; however like T’Shon, it was a rocky planet. Unlike T’Shon
though; Keera, as it was named, was geologically stable, had a Methane atmosphere like Titan, and a
very high magnetic field. The crust on this stable globe went down to a quarter of the planets
volume. Deep penetration scans had shown a molten magma sphere about half of the planets
volume and a spinning molten iron core made up the rest. Keera’s dense atmosphere was
impressively violent; storms like the tornados of old Earth were constantly circling the globe. Keera
had seas and oceans of liquid methane. Surprisingly; there was life on Keera, algae and bacteria
extremophiles mostly. The dense clouds and storms created twilight skies, very little light
penetrating to the surface below meant also that these organisms relied mostly on chemistry to
obtain their energy. The Ulahri would most likely have found it tolerable; but probably too remote to
bother with.

The Kryst craft in orbit was indeed similar to the probe found earlier; but of a much larger
size and scale. There were other noticeable
differences; for example just before amidships
there was a large spherical construction and
the rear section had a drive unit attached to a
long section keeping it remote from the rest of
the ship. It was obvious the ship had been
abandoned for some considerable time. Over
some very long period of time the hull had
become pockmarked in places by small meteor
collisions. The main reason for its dereliction