Nico paused as she searched the warehouse's logs to see if the artifact had been accessed recently, but the only thing she found was a log checking it in and placing it in the stasis pod. Nothing after that. So, as far as she could tell, they hadn't done anything with it, but some of the other items that were brought in at about the same time were of great interest.
"Look at this. I don't think they got that fragment from Tennant's world. It came in along with a group of Klem biomass samples and some relics of similar designs as the ones we found but in different materials.
I don't know if that means they were older or newer than what we found, but they appear to have been inspired by the same culture."
Max looked over the data that she sent to him and found that 'interesting' was an understatement. They had a veritable museum of ancient architecture here, enough to nearly recreate the basic living conditions of the species that had produced it if they had managed to recover any of the technology that had created it or might have accompanied it inside the ruins.
"I have their full logs here. They registered them with a link to the items, so the recovery team notes are all in our possession now.
"We will have to see if we can recover some of the relics for our own research on our way out. Can you give me a quick summary of what they've got in here other than relics?" Max asked.
"I see large amounts of silica-based minerals, heavy metals, and some storage units of Klem biomass remaining. If I had to guess, I would say that this was mostly a nuclear weapons lab. The materials here are most commonly used in microchips and nanobot construction, as well as a large amount of highly radioactive isotopes.
They're not materials that you would expect to find in a modern lab, though. These are crude, slow-decaying isotopes, so they might have been found along with the relics and brought back as proof of time stamp.
One of them has a nuclear half-life of a hundred thousand years, and it looks like it has mostly decayed, going by the readings from its containment unit. Do you think I should alert the Alliance in advance to warn them to bring in specialists?"
That was a good point. They already had the data; they didn't need the actual materials.
"Yeah, tell them that they will need a hazardous materials team and an archaeology team that specializes in ancient cultures. We don't have the manpower to do that much research even if we wanted to, so it's best to turn it all over to them from the start, and we can cherry-pick the parts of the data that we want to work with.
Just make sure that you don't use up all your storage before we get to the good parts of the lab." Max reminded her.
"No worries, I'm currently less than two percent capacity on my internal storage, and I've got a whole box of data sticks in my Flat Space that I can transfer data to if we get something good."
Max moved to inspect the shelving units when his sensors detected movement from across the warehouse. No heat signature, so it might be an automated machine or something remotely controlled. He brought his shield up in front of him to protect his armour and moved toward the source of the signal.
The shelves changed directions for the second half of the warehouse, blocking his vision and forcing him to move to the wall in order to make any progress, but he couldn't miss the energy signature of some sort of Ion Rifle or Klem Plasma fire in the distance.
"Contact. There is something shooting over there." He informed Nico, who was finishing up with her data transfers.
They made swift but cautious progress through the rows of stored materials, making sure to check every row for hidden traps and enemies, but the floor appeared to be completely deserted, other than them.
The movement was still ongoing as Max reached the far wall and turned, prepared to eliminate whatever was there. But there was nothing but a cleaning bot sweeping the floor.
"False alarm." He muttered as he began to relax at the very mundane scene.
ƥαṇdαηθνε| "Not so false. Check the residual energy signatures. Something eliminated a Klem Warrior here and burned it to ash. The bot is just cleaning up the mess. I can't find the source of the attack, though. It's possible that it is either shielded in a way that I can't detect, or there is a cloaking field here that isn't registering in the floor's power draw." Nico disagreed.
Great, hidden Plasma Cannons. Because that's just what this nightmare of a science experiment gone wrong needed, right?
"Do you think it's safe to move to the door? If the dust was here, then whatever was hit was likely destroyed trying to enter the floor. The damage from the Rippers showed that they came from the area by the other stairwell, and they didn't take any damage. Perhaps it only stops things trying to come upward?" Max suggested.
"That seems likely. Given the nature of the experiments here, there should have been some sort of security stopping the experiments from escaping the lower floors. They're running amok now, but originally there should have been something stopping alien pathogens and infections from spreading through the station." Nico agreed.
"Then we should be getting to the experimental floors. Shall we proceed?"
Max could sense Nico's smile even before her thoughts turned to tactics to deal with whatever might be on the next floor based on what they had seen so far. The size of the energy signature and the fact that it only took one shot suggested that the target was a Klem Warrior, so that should be the first target that they would face on the next floor, and that meant an aggressive offence was best, as opposed to the cautious approach that they had taken on this floor.
"Alright, let's move."
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