[dumbluck]

2401.0.5
Miliol Votrom broke through the corroded door into a room that had not seen the light of day in countless millennium. She and her team spread out, examining the bare room. Like the rest of the ruins complex, it was all but bereft of any archaeological evidence. No pictorial displays adorned the walls, on writing demonstrated itself. It was as if the former inhabitants had intentionally sanitized the vast complex before departing for parts unknown. So far she had been highly disappointed, but she had hoped that this room would be different. Unlike most of the rest of the complex, it was not open to the elements. In fact, it appeared to have been intentionally sealed shut. She had hoped that there would be something worthwhile here. Anything at all would have been nice! But it seems that her Archaeological opus would come to naught...

"Ma'am! Over here!" Meloka Sentia motioned to her. She considered him mediocre as an archaeologist, at best. He just didn't have that creative spark that allowed him to see things as they once were. Instead he looked at a site as just a bunch of artifacts, to be cataloged and pieced together. He didn't really see the big picture. As she strode over to where he knelt by the entrance to the chamber, she wondered if she should demote him down to a supervisory position in order to get him out of the way of a few of the associate archaeologist that were showing promise.

"What have you got, Meloka?"

He pointed down to a oddly rectangular stone jutting out of the floor It wasn't square with the walls. They would have to remove the almost 1/2 inch of dust from the room to see if it lined up with the other.... "I'm reading a small energy signature here" he said, and her breath caught in her throat. Gently, she used her whisk brush to remove the dust from the shape on the floor. It was not a stone at all. It appeared to be some sort of device!

"Good Job, Meloka! Everyone out of this chamber! This is now our prime artifact site. No," she grabbed Meloka by the arm, "You stay. Get out the stasis box. I don't want this damaged while we take it to camp." Carefully, they began the process of collecting and tagging the only artifact of any significance they would find at the site.

2401.0.9

Miliol Votrom sighed as she sent her report in to the Institute. One little artifact. Nothing else of note. Granted, it was an intriguing piece, but still just one piece. There were no real clues as to who or what had lived in this place. The device that Meloka found had turned out to be some sort of data storage device. It had been highly degraded, but there were two datasets that had survived intact. One was a list of star systems known to this ancient race. She now knew that this strange, brilliant orange star had once been called "Sophenis", and that this planet would therefore have been Sophenis IX. Roughly translated, Xtreme was known as Caveat, or possibly Cavern. Unfortunately, it was only a list of the systems and their coordinates in the galaxy. If there was a map of the Warp Point connections attached to the list, it had not survived the millennium.

The other dataset was a complex set of blueprints. They were too complex for her to interpret, so she would leave it to the Engineers at the Design Administrator's office to dissect. All in all, it was a disappointing excavation. What she thought would take her up to 2 years to sift though had turned out to be nothing but an empty shell. She hoped that her next expedition, when one became available, would be more interesting.