Prologue
Date: 23rd April 2572
Planet: Salvon 4
The man walked across the ground. He stood upright, akin to a bean pole. One would assume his posture was military, but his clothing said otherwise: a long brown coat, a loose-fitting shirt, a pair of oval-lens sunglasses on his face.
The sun. Oh, the sun.
It bore down on the man something foul.
It was nothing the man wasn't used to. His skin was dark, darker than anyone who was born on Earth.
He was taller too. Not by any grotesque amount, but by enough to look out of place.
But that didn't matter. It didn't make him tougher than the sun. He flicked the collar of his coat up against the back of his neck.
The whole place felt wrong.
Gale force winds, no wildlife, no clouds, and yet the planet had abundant water.
A weather system that didn't make sense.
It disturbed the man. A place that shouldn't be.
It was not natural.
He knew it. He could feel it.
The man was looking for something. He didn't know what it would look like, but he knew that he'd know it the moment he saw it.
The man passed by an entrance to an old cave, possibly an old mine, now filled to its very brim with sand, which stood out from the hard gritstone that made up the cave entrance.
The tall man crouched, pulled out a single tight glove and fit it to his right hand. He felt the granules as they fell between his long, bony gloved fingers.
The man swallowed, looked around, then stood up.
The sun was large. Unbearably so. The wind strong, powerful, and howling. This planet must have hardly been habitable at the best of times.
And it certainly wasn't the best of times.
The tall man looked up and focused back on his aims. A settlement stood some way in front of him, the former buildings now looked more like giant skeletal fingers protruding from the ground. Shadows of what they once were.
The man grimaced.
He had his heading, but it certainly wasn't somewhere he wanted to go.
Right into the middle of the disaster that the human race had tried its hardest to forget.
Chapter A1
Date: 6th September 3658
Location: Salvon 4
Taylor Cortes slammed the hammer down on the bench. It was almost time to break for lunch. The faint thud of some ancient band came over his mobile device. He took a breath of the large pack-oxygen to his left. The track was almost built. One day it would transport Goliaths—towering, advanced robots, about five meters tall, designed to tunnel, mine, and categorize minerals and other materials found in a planet's outer crust. The Goliaths had a thick torso, with lean, powerful arms and legs. Their faces consisted of one huge eye to see with, which doubled as a powerful torch once they were down the mines. Taylor found them intimidating but beautiful machines to work alongside.
Taylor had always wanted to see into the depths of a planet, but only mining officers and technicians got to travel down with the Goliaths into the planet's depths. A mere track builder like Taylor would not be bestowed such luxury viewing.
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The Persolus Race
Science FictionA collaborative project co-ordinated by me over Facebook, based on an original idea by me. The shared universe centres around the idea that in a future where the human race has expanded out into the universe, they find no signs of intelligent alien...
