The Shadows of the Damned

[Sprolf]

The Year Before That....


Sublevel 4,
New Berlin Museum of Rheinland


"Samuel, there's someone on the comms for you."

The researcher looked up at the woman who had appeared through the low cement archway. He was an older man, with grey hair and the critically concerned stare of a doctor. He was sitting at a cold metal table in the underlevels of the New Berlin Museum of Rheinland, far beneath the surface within the xenoarchaeology archives. Fossils, preserved xenobiologicals, old mainframes with scan data, and peculiar rocks were the main body of what could be found through these trackless dungeons, but there were other things of more value mixed in - though, perhaps the value was relative to certain people who understood items more thoroughly than others.

"All right." he sighed, pushing his chair away from the table. "I'll be there presently." The chair screeched across the concrete floor.

The woman retreated through the doorway, her steps echoing down the passages lined with crates and boxes. As she went, he turned back to what lay on the table before him - a steel crate, marked

"8/6/732,
Asteroid 43.61.357, Omega 11
Catalogued by Herr Schneider and Dr. Baumann
New Berlin Museum of Rheinland"

Below that, "ARCHIVED 14/6/732" was stamped onto the faded label.


What was in this box was simple - an urn-like object, made from stone that could be found in some artifacts, a peculiar greyish crystalline material. The top of the urn - if it was indeed a top, and it wasn't all just one solid piece - was clamped on by the handles themselves. It was built to stay together, and the outside was covered in some of the glyphs that had been recorded from the same find - a cavern in a sizeable asteroid in Omega 11. There had been other significant finds there as well, and he was probably the first person to look through them since they'd been catalogued. Artifacts, a bit more of this strange sort of pottery, odd pillars that had been disassembled and archived here, bits and pieces of rubble, scan data, and even some parchments, oddly enough.

He glanced at the mysterious urn, placing his magnifier on the table beside it and the ultrasound machine he'd been examining the interior with. There appeared to be low-density stone of some sort inside - or something, it was a mystery.

A mystery he had all the time in the world to sort through, because it was his job. The examination of all the materials from the Omega 11 Findings, in fact, was his job at the moment. It was a nice sabbatical from the hectic work that had to be done on Stuttgart, what with everything being brought in from Pygar.

And it could wait.



He pushed the chair back in - quietly - and walked down the hall.
He hoped that he wasn't being called back from this research so soon.

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