1 Prologue

"What is taking so long?" the scientist Angela Webber called out to the engineer operating the plasma-drill. They had been digging through and under Mons Huygens for two weeks straight, a kilometer of tunnel per day. Until now, that is.

"Don't know, ma'am," the engineer said. "We've hit some kind of rock."

"Rock?" the scientist called out over the roar of the engines. "You must be joking. It is the 28th century. We don't slow down for rocks."

The engineer shrugged. "I am sorry, ma'am. But this is the best I can do. The drill keeps losing cohesion."

Another scientist, Bernard Reinson, patted Angela's shoulder to get her attention.

When Angela turned around, Bernard shouted, barely audible over the drill cutting into the rock. "The signal here is very strong. We are close."

"Have you figured out what it is?" Angela asked.

"Probably some kind of Ancestor Tech. Still, we've never had a signal this strong. So who knows?" Bernard shrugged.

Ancestor Tech. They discovered it on the Moon in the 24th century, when the first colony of Luna was propped up and made available to earthbound scientists. Those same scientists discovered that there once existed a technologically advanced race of humans on the Moon.

"What did Sanya say?" Angela asked.

Sanya was their biologist and archeologist.

"Over the Moon, so to speak. She can't wait for us to break into the tomb," Bernard said, finally lowering his voice as the plasma drill once more sputtered out and died.

"Tomb? Who said it was a tomb?" Angela asked.

"The SIGINT guy from the FOB," Bernard replied.

"Don't trust the army, Bernard. They always fuck things up," Angela said, waving her hand dismissively at the thought.

"He's a scientist too. He's just an army scientist. Don't salute the rank. Salute the man," Bernard said with a devilish grin.

"I think you got that backwards," Angela said with a chuckle.

Speak of the devil, Sanya walked into view, illuminated by the fixed lights on the sides of the tunnel which was curving up and away from the two.

She was holding a tablet in her hand, which brightly illuminated her face.

"You know the tomb theory?" Sanya asked, skipping the greetings entirely.

Bernard nodded.

"I just heard about it, myself," Angela said. "Why?"

"Well, apparently, it might be correct," Sanya said, showing the tablet to Angela and Bernard.

On the tablet was an image of a stone plate, with strange symbols written upon them. Angela and Bernard heard about this script, and it was, apparently, used by the humans who lived on the moon - the idea was still strange and foreign to Angela. Humans? On the Moon? That is outrageous.

"You know I can't read that, Sanya," Angela said.

"Of course you can't! No one can!" Sanya said, excitedly. "But the quantcoms can interpret some of it. It is a mix of all ancient human languages. No one has that kind of knowledge."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. What does it say?" Angela asked.

"Here is enshrined Wrath of God, forsaken by the Limitless," Sanya said.

Bernard crossed his arms at his chest, "Wrath of God?"

Sanya shrugged. "It is a mess, probably an error in the quantcom. His name is Gramiel, and I am guessing he was important."

Angela pondered. "I see. Gram as in the old norse Wrath, and -el as in 'Of God'?"

Sanya nodded, eyes glimmering with joy. "Isn't it amazing how words from two different regions, and thousands of years apart, still share a common root? This is the supreme point of all knowledge, the common root of communication..."

The plasma drill came to life once more, drowning out the rest of what Sanya was saying.

A loud crash quickly followed, and the three scientists were so startled by the sound that they jumped away from the giant machine boring into the mountain.

The drill spun down, releasing a mechanical whine. A cloud of dust bloomed around the machine and Angela had to sweep her hand through the air several times to avoid inhaling the crushed rock. It was ineffective, and she also got the dust into her eyes.

"God damnit," she growled and then coughed.

She remembered the existence of the mask around her neck, and for once was thankful that she had it. In all other situations, the mask was just a nuisance. It was too tight, that's why.

Angela pulled the mask over her face and took a few deep breaths, before heading into the thick cloud of dust.

"Hey, Lars, what happened?" she asked, voice distorted.

"We broke through, ma'am. Still, this is no ordinary rock. It's more like metal," the engineer said as he jumped out of the cabin to take a look at the hole in the ground.

Before the four people was a hole that seemed to lead to a chamber directly underneath Mons Huygens. Literally, not a degree off-center.

In the first place, Angela had no idea how someone could have been buried under the mountain without a single trace of access tunnels. It was more like the mountain was put on top of the burial site.

"Light, please," Sanya called out as she took a gander at the unfathomably dark depths.

Angela was a subspace physicist and Bernard was an astronomer, they knew next to nothing about archeology, but "lights" seemed like a good start.

Lars flashed his torch on several times, testing the battery, before pointing the beam of light into the hole.

The chamber wasn't as large as they expected, and it was smooth - cubical even. It had perfectly smooth edges, clearly metal on the inside, but rock like on the outside. There was nothing in the chamber, no script, no artifacts, except for a pile of what looked like metal spikes, toruses and other geometrical shapes.

"What is that?" Angela asked.

"I don't know, but that is where the signal is coming from," Bernard said, holding his tablet up to his face. "It is very strong and still gaining strength. Maybe it's a beacon?"

"A beacon? For what? Aliens?" Angela asked, sarcastically.

Bernard simply shrugged.

"I think it just moved," Sanya said.

"Really?" Angela sounded excited.

The entire chamber began to hum with sound as the metal shapes began to vibrate against the cold metal.

"I have a bad feeling about this..." Bernard whispered as he watched the display on the tablet. "The subspace in this region is about to..."

"About to what?" Angela asked, also feeling the icy cold fingers of panic wrap around her heart.

"I have no idea..." Bernard said.

"You are an Astronomer! This is your job!" Angela said.

"I can't interpret this data," Bernard said. "The real-space is being folded into subspace"

"Don't be stupid!" Angela growled. "Are you saying this thing is taking us somewhere?"

Bernard shook his head. "No. This thing is eating real-space." He put extra emphasis on "eating".

A loud mechanical noise overpowered all other sound, and the metallic pieces lifted off the ground. They weren't exactly metallic. They were something between a crystal and metal. None of them had ever seen anything like it.

Lars had enough, by this point, and turned around and began to ran. He shouted something in Danish.

The metal pieces arranged themselves into a vaguely humanoid shape right before the trio's eyes. It had two spikes for legs, two spikes for arms, and a head that looked like an octahedron, except it was clearly elongated at the top and bottom. Its torso was also in a similar shape to its head, and the thing looked to be composed of entirely straight contours. It was quite something to behold.

Then, a ring floated up above its geometric head, and hovered like a halo.

"Is that thing... alive?" Angela asked.

"No... it can't be..." Sanya whispered.

The halo around the creature's head suddenly caught fire, becoming a jagged, crown-like, loop of black plasma. Another ring of ethereal, esoteric symbols appeared around the halo, forming a second ring - it turned like a malevolent wheel.

Red strips of cloth phased into existence around the creature, covering its bare metallic surface, hanging loosely.

Then, the entire head seemed to catch on fire - or rather, it looked like the fire was within the metal itself.

The metallic humanoid turned its head upwards, peering through the hole at the three scientists.

"⌆Ξ⊪⌭" it spoke in a voice that seemed to come from everywhere around the three scientists.

"What?" Sanya asked, eyes wide. The embers of joy were gone, now replaced by the shock of meeting something truly alien and inconceivable.

Blades appeared behind the metallic creature and then duplicated, phasing more and more of them until it looked like it had wings made entirely of blades. The blades began to glow with a brilliant blue light.

The creature floated off the ground and into the air, passing through the hole and hovering right in front of the three.

"⍭⊡⑄⑁" it spoke once more.

"I don't understand..." Sanya said.

The wings on the creature spread out, forming a full circle. It pointed at the trio as blue motes began to fall off the wing and the black halo burned with an even more intense plasma fire.

A black beam of energy eradicated the trio instantly, and pierced all twenty kilometers of Moon soil to get to the surface and then blast off into space.

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