Private What Wars Left Buried

[Meri Vale]

Meri leaned in slightly as Novac pointed across the map, her eyes following each corridor he traced with his finger. The more he explained, the easier it became to picture the facility as it had once been. It stopped looking like a collection of disconnected rooms and started resembling a place where people had worked every day, moving from one area to another without ever really thinking about it.

"That actually makes a lot of sense," she admitted. "I was looking at the rooms individually. You're looking at how they all fit together."

She studied the cluster of smaller hallways for another moment before nodding to herself.

"And if people were building droids all day, they'd want the break room close enough that they weren't wasting half their break just walking there and back." A small smile crossed her face. "I never would've thought about that. Archaeology usually teaches you to look at what people left behind. You're looking at how they probably moved while they were still here."

Her flashlight drifted briefly around the dusty room, imagining it full of workers talking over meals, hurrying back to their stations, and complaining about long shifts before returning her attention to Novac.

"It's strange..." she said thoughtfully. "The more we figure out how the station worked, the less abandoned it feels."

Novac Lyrikal

 

[Novac Lyrikal]

Meri Vale

"Knowing how a place worked, how the people who lived there went about their day, things like that can make it feel like that yea. The more you know the more you can imagine what it was like back in the day. Full of people going around doing their thing. Machines working almost nonstop."

Novac started to head out toward the production area. it was a few hallways down but they'd get there soon. Novac thought about what htey might find, perhaps old parts still on the conveyor lines. But for some odd reason, novac couldn't geth the thought of that potential sentient killing droid out of his head.

 

[Meri Vale]

Meri followed alongside Novac, her flashlight wandering over the walls as they made their way toward the production area. His description had already given her imagination far too much material to work with. It was easy now to picture workers passing them in both directions, machinery humming somewhere ahead, and carts carrying parts between different sections of the facility. Even the plain corridors became interesting once she stopped seeing them as empty hallways and started wondering why people had needed them in the first place.

"That's probably my favorite part," she admitted, stepping carefully around a piece of debris. "Not just finding out what something was, but getting enough little details that you can almost picture an ordinary day here. Somebody complaining that their shift is too long, somebody sneaking an extra five minutes in the break room..." A small smile crossed her face. "People doing completely normal things without realizing someone might be trying to figure them out hundreds of years later."

The thought made her glance back the way they had come before directing her light ahead again. The abandoned facility didn't feel quite so empty anymore, although Meri wasn't entirely certain that was comforting given what else they suspected might still be wandering its halls.

"Hopefully the production floor gives us lots of boring, ordinary history," she added with a quiet laugh. "I think we've had enough interesting discoveries for a little while."

Novac Lyrikal

 

[Novac Lyrikal]

Meri Vale

As novac walked, well slithered, along side her, his flashlight infront of him he said "Exactly, sometimes when I'm exploring abandoned places it makes me think, one day will someone find my ship, old and in ruins on some planet long after my death and try to piece together the kind of person who lived there? Same as we are doing. Makes me think of what will be left behind, though with my droids i doubt that will be anytime soon after my death." he said the last with a small chuckle.

Finally making their way to the doors to the room Novac slowly opened one and took a peak inside. All seemed normal so he fully opened the door. Inside was a few rows of conveyor belts, nothing but dust on them. Stools to the side of them, a few nocked over.

As he went further in he noticed just how large the room was, that and how the air in here was more clouded with dust then the rest of the place. But what his eyes where locked onto was what concerned him. The dust on the floor had been disturbed, and recently at that.

Using his natural telepathy he got from his ssither mother he spoke to meri in her mind, "Sorry to speak in your head like this, i know some don't like it when i do but..look here," he said pointing to the ground. They wheren't normal boot or shoe prints, the shaping was odd, weirdly square.

 

[Meri Vale]

Meri smiled at the thought of someone finding Novac's ship centuries from now and trying to reconstruct his life from whatever remained aboard. "They'd probably get half of it wrong," she said with a quiet laugh. "They'd find something you forgot in a corner and decide it had enormous cultural significance." It was amusing until she considered that archaeologists probably did exactly that more often than anyone wanted to admit. "Although your droids could just tell them everything and ruin the mystery. That's cheating."

The production floor quickly claimed her attention once they stepped inside. Meri's flashlight traveled across the silent conveyor belts and abandoned stools, trying to picture the room filled with workers and machinery rather than dust. She had only begun wondering what each line might once have produced when Novac's voice suddenly sounded inside her head. Meri stopped dead. Her eyes widened, and for a heartbeat she actually turned toward him as if expecting to discover that he had somehow moved beside her without her noticing. He hadn't. His mouth hadn't moved either. "That's...really strange," she whispered aloud, not frightened so much as completely caught off guard by the sensation of someone else's voice occupying a place where only her own thoughts had ever been.

Then she noticed where he was pointing, and surprise gave way to concern. Meri lowered her flashlight toward the disturbed dust, crouching for a better look without touching anything. The impressions were too angular to belong to ordinary footwear, and more importantly, they hadn't gathered the same layer of dust as everything surrounding them. Someone, or something, had crossed this room far more recently than the people who once worked here. Can you hear this? The thought came almost naturally as she looked toward Novac, only afterward realizing what she'd done. She blinked, suddenly concentrating much harder on the thought as though sheer effort might somehow make it travel farther. Or does it only work one way?

Whether he'd heard her or not, Meri's attention quickly returned to the tracks. She swept her light along them, trying to see where they had come from and, more importantly, where they went. "Those don't look like anybody's shoes," she murmured, keeping her voice low out of instinct now. A little of her earlier excitement about finding the production floor had vanished. "And they're definitely newer than everything else in here." She glanced toward Novac, then back along the strange square impressions. "Do you think they're droid tracks?"

Novac Lyrikal

 

[Novac Lyrikal]

Meri Vale

I can, it works both ways. I can't think of a species that would have foot or shoe prints this square. I don't want to predict yet again but. novac couldn't even finish the though before a small sound could be heard, metal on metal, something moved, not heavy.

Novac quickly grabbed Meri as he moved down behind the nearest conveyor belt line. My heat pits aren't getting anything, I cant feel anything with the force. What ever is here isn't alive

Then another metallic footstep, another, another. Then a voice. a feminine voice "Hello?" It sounded innocent yet scared.

Don't say anything. Theres no way thats a organic being Novac quickly said in Meri's mind.

Unfortunately Novac was right, as from behind a doorway a tall, humanoid droid came into view.

 

[Meri Vale]

Meri barely had time to process the answer before the sound of metal against metal cut through the production floor. Her head turned toward it instinctively, but Novac moved faster. One moment she was crouched beside the tracks and the next she was being pulled down behind the conveyor line with him. Surprise nearly made her protest before his voice appeared inside her head again, and Meri clamped her mouth shut.

It really does work both ways.

Of all the thoughts that could have crossed her mind while hiding from something apparently mechanical, that probably shouldn't have been the first. Meri pushed the discovery aside and stayed low, listening as another metallic step sounded through the room. Then another. Her earlier guess about a droid suddenly seemed much less exciting now that there might actually be one wandering around nearby.

The frightened hello almost made her answer automatically.

Meri caught herself before making a sound. Her eyes flicked toward Novac instead, widening slightly when his warning followed immediately afterward. She nodded once, then cautiously shifted just enough to peer through a gap beneath the conveyor. When the tall humanoid machine emerged from the doorway, her breath caught. It wasn't anything she immediately recognized, and the contrast between its obviously mechanical form and the frightened voice she'd just heard was unsettling in a way she hadn't expected.

Why does it sound scared? Meri thought toward Novac, still testing this strange new way of communicating almost without meaning to. Do you think it's trying to make someone answer?

She remained tucked behind the conveyor rather than attempting to get a better look, although resisting that temptation took effort. Her attention dropped briefly toward the floor instead. The tracks made sense now, or at least their shape did. The more important question was why the droid had been moving through a facility that otherwise appeared abandoned, and whether it was the only one.

Meri looked toward Novac again. If it made those tracks, it's been moving around here recently. Her brow furrowed as another thought occurred to her. But who was it saying hello to before we got here?

Novac Lyrikal