PSYC Ward: Explorer

World 3, Part D: The People of the Land

Callian counted her workers. Twelve in all. Good, none of them were lost. She still found it hard to believe that it took that many people to operate this damn thing, but it'd be worth it. All the riches they could ever want, and then some. In front of her stood the tool that would do it - a gigantic machine, three M1 Abrams tanks long and one wide, with a drill projecting from it made entirely of diamond and no less than 5 meters in size. The thing even ran on all-terrain treads like a tank. The tunnel it dug was big enough for other vehicles to get through, but they had stopped at this cavern they had entered to check the parts. This was just a test run, after all.

Speaking of, the engineer, Ledger, was approaching her. He was a thin, lanky fellow who'd have no place on this machine if he wasn't the only one on Earth who knew how to manage it. His pants were entirely drenched from the muddy slurry the machine left behind, but thankfully he was smart enough to wear boots to wade through it. She still wondered how it got up to his knees though - had he been playing in the stuff?

"M'lady, I finished the report. It's more efficient than we expected." He said.

Edgar was a stout man, only about 5 feet tall - a full foot smaller than Callian herself. He wore rags fitting his station, and that was it. He offered her the clipboard he carried, and she took it, examining the paperwork affixed to it.

1 kilometer. They had gone deeper than she thought.

45 minutes. Quicker too. The eggheads were all predicting this would be one kilometer an hour at tops.

But the important part. She skimmed through the report, looking for damage reports. The average temperature was good, the slurry ejection was good...there was only one thing.

"A screw came loose." She noted, turning her eyes to Ledger.

"Yes, m'lady. According to pilot, it was a screw in the cockpit. We hit a vein of iron and that caused some, uh, unexpected shaking."

She thrust the clipboard into his hands.

"Get Lika to inspect the inner paneling, and see to it that it doesn't happen again. I'd hate to have to tell Ser Hakren about your incompetence being so egregious it might kill our pilot."

He saluted her, trembling, before giving a nod.

"Y-yes, m'lady!"

He scurried off back to his work. She took out a slip of paper from the pack at her side, and began to fill it out with the information she had just received about the dig. As soon as she was finished filling it out, she heard the high pitch screamed of a small girl. Lika. She grumbled and went to the drill, walking up the starboard loading dock and going inside and down the metal hall to the cockpit.

What she saw next she did not believe.

Sure enough, Lika was there, and had unscrewed the panel to the problematic wiring compartment. The small child's black hair was full of oil, as were her rags. Her brown eyes, however, were fixated on the compartment itself, which had a person inside it.

Two people, actually.

"Uh, 'sup my fellow humans?" Said one of the girls.

The girl who spoke had bright red hair and blood red eyes, and was dressed in a leather jacket with a black shirt underneath, and a pair of strapped pants. Hunched back behind her was a girl with blonde hair who looked older, but seemed a bit more shy.

"...yeah you're not going to believe that are you?"

"What are you doing there?"

This was unacceptable. These two were interfering with these important experiments, and there would be no mercy from their overseer when he heard they were interfering with this project. The blonde haired girl suddenly got a feral glint in her eye. She started to squirm like she wanted to get out.