Outsider

[Laowai]

He guided the ship down towards the location displayed on his navigation screen. As it decended it became progressivly more dwarfed by the immensity of the structure around him.
Suddenly the ship shook slightly and a turbulance alarm went off on the side console - momentarily startled Laowai checked his readings. Of course it has an atmosphere! he thought to himself, looking ahead he saw whisps of cloud approaching him rapidly and he steered the ship gracefully around them, compensating for the pockets of turbulance now by letting the computer calculate an atmospheric flight.

Lower and lower he flew. The structures on the ground - those that had appeared as blurs from orbit - begand to coalesce into harder shapes, squares, circles... long expanses that might have been streets, boulevades... if that is, whoever constructed this place had any such human similes.
The signal he had locked onto from the Vanganza's sensors now displayed as being directly below him and he aimed at what appeared from this altitude to be a series of massive monolithic buildings; not that they stood out... from what he could see, everything on the surface of this place was massive and monolithic.
Locating a suitable place to land he thrusted the Gladiator gently down and brought her to land a few hundred meters from there the signal seemed to be originating.
It was darker here than he had expected - the light from the dimming suns of this system cast long shadows from the buildings and structures that now towered above him. He paused for a moment.... awed by the sight about him.
Vast block shaped buildings stretched up into the sky, grey, blue and blueish purple, reaching up it seemed to the clouds themselves. The sky from down here, surprisingly clear and showing no sign of the space beyond it, only the dull hint of the suns in this system broke through the atmospheric veil. Where does a species that can do this go to? he wondered aloud.
Shutting the engines down he scanned the surrounding area - the atmosphere was light, rare.. but breathable and so disconnecting himself from the ships oxygen supply and computer system he popped the canopy. It slid open and he stood in his seat and looked around him.
It was cold, almost bitterly so and he shook the moment the air hit his face. Reaching into his supply kit at the side of his cockpit he retrieved his survival thermals and kit that he had prepared onboard the Venganza. Putting on the coat and leggings he slid the remaining kit over his shoulder and then retrieved his Blaster rifle and combat belt. Finally, he carefully lifted the small metal travel container that held his crystal and tucked it into his combat jacket.

He lept down from the ship and surveyed the scene around him. It was quiet and nothing moved - as far as he knew he was the first Human to ever set foot here, and there was no evidence that anything else living had visted this place in millenia. He stood in the dark shadow of one of the massive buildings that towered about him, he had no idea when or if night fell in this place and he assumed that it never did - a fact he was glad of judging from how cold it was already.
He retrieved his portable scanner and checked his readings. The structure was about a kilometre away, and down. He set off in the direction that it indicated, heading towards one of the towering block buildings a short distance away.

There was an entrance to it in front of him, something he was glad of as he had not really considered what he would do if he encountered doors of the size this kind of entrance would need. This was a massive open square chasm of an entrace that was showing signs of its age, cracks as wide as a man split upwards and out from its massive stone lintels and for a moment he wondered how stable all this stuff was, after all no one had any real idea how old it actually was.
He continued inside, igniting his shoulder lights as he did so. The interior was dark but by the light his kit cast out he could see that it was built on the same monumental scale as everything else here seemed to be. Huge interlocked blocks formed the base for walls that stretched up so high he was not able to see if there was a ceiling - the walls themselves were seamless and showed no sign of join, construction or decoration.
Save one.

In the distance he saw another relatively smaller entrance above which was carved a series of strange symbols. As he drew closer he recognised none of them specifically but their patterns and shape were vaguely reminiscant of the shapes he had seen on hundreds and thousands of... artifacts.... "Hello" he said, out loud in possibly the first human voice to ever cast sound in this place "I think we have met before".
This entrance was sealed, however age had also had its effect and the door, if the massive block of stone that played this part could be called that was split down its centre with a large crack that if he turned sideways and dragged his pack behind him, he could fit through relatively easily.
He squeezed through and the moment he reached the other side there he heard a faint humming sound. The darkness of the space around him was broken by a hundred blocks of light as the walls suddenly reacted to his presence and illuminated.
It was the same mysterious technology that he had first seen on Tangier all those years ago, somehow the building itself reacted to his presence and became active.
He looked about him. He stood in another massive space of a room, empty save for a single pillar of crystal which stood in the centre of the room. He had seen something like this before as well. It was similar in appearance to the crystal column that stood in the chamber on Tangier. Except this one dwarfed the earlier model he had seen and seemed to pulse with an energy that was so tangible he could almost reach out and touch it.
For the first time since he had landed, he hesitated - he had no idea what he was walking into.

He checked his scanner and sure enough, he was only a few hundred meters from the location of the chamber that he had scanned from Orbit, he switched channels on the scanner quickly, reassuring himself that he could still see his ship somewhere out there, sure enough, the Venganza showed as being in orbit, its locating beacon transmitting reassuringly down to its captain.
He walked towards the crystal pylon, slowly and carefully he scanned it. It was active and the energy he had sensed when he entered the room was showing all too clearly on his scanners. Its wavelength pattern was all too familiar - This was it, he was in the right place.
It was stunning to look at, blue, purple but transluscent at the same time, humming and throbbling with power and energy. Not sure what to do, he reached out carefully and touched it.

Instantly there was piercing high pitched wail and the ground around him seemed to vanish. He leapt back but to no avail, a large area of floor around the pillar had seemed to vanish and suddenly he found himseld going down at an insane speed. Suddenly, almost before he had had time to register what had happened the floor below him became solid once more and he found himself standing inside a vast open crystal chamber.
He stared... wide eyed and in shock and he realised he was holding something in his hand. His blaster. Instinctivley he must have reached for it and realising the futility of this he carefully placed it back into its holster.
This was the place, it had to be.
In appearance it was remarkably similar to the chamber on Tangier, only many many times larger. A crystal pylon stood in the centre of the room though it too was on a much larger scale and towered above the room.
One thing however was the same, thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of small niches in the crystal walls that he could tell immediatly were designed to hold the the same kind of crystal pieces he now had cradled within his jacket. However, he noticed immediatly, most of these niches were empty.

Not sure how to proceed he moved towards the pylon. It too seemed to glow with energy and he knew better this time than to touch it. No, what he sought was not in the physical realm, and there was only one way to access it.
He took out the metal container that held his crystal and placed it on the floor. Crouching down he opened his pack and retrieved the small interface device he had been constructing all these years, this was his insurance policy, his way out - and it was a gamble.
He put on his flight gloves and opened the crystal container, carefully he took the crystal from within it and placed it within the interface. Gently, he took off his gloves and placed his hand on the crystal.

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