Only Dust Remains

"Well, Let's go.", Captain Hrox said as he swung his axe upon the tree. With a good arch the axe hit the tree with tremendous force. The mechs were powerful machines. Although they were designed for war and not for cutting down trees, The could still perform the swinging action good enough to chop down a tree. The Heavy axe carried a huge amount of momentum and force. When it came into contact with the body of the tree, There was a huge thunk noise.

As Captain Horx and the researchers aboard the Yuki looked at the tree for any signs of damage, they were astonished at how little amount of damage had occurred. The Xenon Composite that the trees were made up of were exceedingly strong. Stronger than the materials the mechs were made up of.

Usually Captain Hrox's swing would leave a really big gash on the body of an enemy mech. But that was hardly the case with the tree. The tree was still standing strong with just a bit of chip on it's body.

"This is fascinating. The Xenon Composite could be a good replacement for our current best composite.", Dr. Helen's eye's lit up. She spoke through the terminal.

"Captain Hrox, Keep chopping. I want to test the strength of this Xenon composite."

"Copy that Ma'am."

Captain Hrox and 3 other mechs picked up their axes high, and then swung at the tree's simultaneously. This produced a bit more result as the force of 4 mechs hit the tree at once. But it wasn't as great as they hoped. It'd still take some time to chop down the tree. As the Mechs keep swinging their huge axes at the tree, Dr. Helen directed a couple of operators and sensors to gather the impact data of the tree and axe. This would help them understand the true strength of the Xenon Alloy.

"Tell Captain Hrox to move the trees into a storage location. We'll take these trees back to the shore. These will act as good specimen of the Xenon Alloy. Maybe we can find uses for it on our mission."

After about 80 Swings from each of the mechs, the first tree had finally fell. It took quite a bit of power to fell just one tree, And they needed to chop down about 16 of them before there was enough space. But one peculiar thing happened as soon as the trees hit ground. The whole tree disintegrated into dust. The whole tree began to crumble away like the bond between it's atom lost it's cohesion. It was a reletively quick process.

Soon the whole tree had turned to dust leaving behind only a Glowing Orange Cuboid in the middle of the dust.

This alarmed Dr. Helen and the rest of the researchers aboard the Yuki. This wasn't an expected outcome of chopping down the trees. The trees were valuable specimen of an important investigation of the planet. And having it just disintegrating was a problem. The needed them intact to bring them back to the Shore.

This was an unforeseen problem. So, Dr. Helen turned towards the operator who was busy capturing the data of the tree and the axe.

"Tell me what's going on.", She asked with a stern voice.

"Ah… I'm not sure. The tree was fine. But as soon as it touched the ground it started the turn to dust."

"So the impact of the fall might have triggered it to turn to dust?"

"That's possible."

So, Dr. Helen decided to make sure the next tree wouldn't fall to the ground. Rows of bots came down from the Yuki and began setting up gravity projectors around the vicinity of the next tree. As soon as the tree was cut, The gravity projectors would keep it standing until the mechs were able to transport it back to a safe location.

Soon, The mech got to work and began chopping through the next tree. As soon as they were done, And the tree fully detached from the stem, Gravity projectors got to work. They hummed with activity as they used a lot of power from the Yuki to project a stable gravity field around the tree. It kept the tree held perfectly in place.

"Good, Now move the tree to a secure location till we land Yuki, Then we'll move it back to the shuttle.", Dr. Helen was saying when suddenly, One of the operators called out.

"Dr. Helen the tree is disintegrating again!"

"What." Helen said as she looked at the screen. It showed the tree disintegrating to dust again. The gravity sensors still held the dust in place, but it was visibly turning into dust.

This posed a major issue for them. But no one had any idea how to solve this issue. Dr. Helen looked around the room and then asked.

"Does anyone have any idea on how to solve this issue?"

Everyone looked around them. Confusion visible in their eyes. One could tell from their expressions that they didn't have any idea to stop the tree from disintegrating. Everyone was looking at their co-worker for answers. But no one had any.

So, Dr. Helen decided to put this off for later. This wasn't their their agenda to visit this location in the first place. So she gave the order to go ahead and chop down the rest of of the marked trees.

As trees upon trees fell, They disintegrated into dust. Leaving behind only Carbon and a small glowing cuboid. As soon as the clearing was big enough for Yuki to land, The researchers poured out of the shuttle and began to take samples of the tree remains and picked up all the cuboids off the ground. They were picked up with special gravity projectors that didn't need to touch the cuboid, it just used gravity to pick the cuboid's up and then store them inside of special containers. The containers were taken back to the Yuki and will be sent back to the Shore for further analysis.

"These Cuboids should provide some answers.", Dr. Helen said as she looked at the huge containers.