Free Space Relics (Galactic Archaeology Book 1) by Nathan Duke Page B

vegetables.”
    “I’m not your mother, Richard.” She blinked, confused. She rarely understood sarcasm. “Would you like me to run some medical checks on you? You aren’t making many good choices lately, and you show symptoms of confusion.”
    Rick waved his hand in the air to get rid of her and walked out of the room. She was right, but Rick didn’t have much choice.

Chapter 2
    Excavation sites were dirty, tiring, and went on forever. No matter how hard everyone worked, there was always more work to do, and more time to waste. Lord Baylor had a track record of finding lost relics and civilizations, but this time it wasn’t that clear. Rick and the others hadn’t found anything interesting in the planet, and they wouldn’t find anything unless they went elsewhere. Even the fleas wanted to leave.
    “Careful with that pickaxe!” Lord Baylor shouted at one of the workers. “Hey, you two! Stop chatting and get to work. You won’t get the day’s rations if you don’t get the work done.” He’d spent most of the expedition in other planets, but that day he walked around, observing the excavation and supervising the workers as if he were a king inspecting his troops. He was hulking, with broad arms and a large stomach, the sign of a decent fortune. He didn’t care that they hadn’t found anything useful; he persisted in the expedition as if it were the most important thing in the world.
    Lucas kept jotting everything down about him: how he walked, what he shouted at the workers, and how he treated those below him.
    “You know he doesn’t even know we exist, right?” Rick nudged him in the ribs to try to get him to pull his nose out of his notebook.
    “I can still learn from him. A small step for man…” He felt as though he were documenting one of the most important moments in history, but they weren’t going to find anything unless—
    “Messirah, Messirah!” Overlooker, Overlooker! One of the workers ran towards them, shouting and waving his arms in the air. He spoke in Galesish, one of those modern constructed languages from the outer colonies. “They’ve found it! They’ve found the tomb!”
    Tomb? What tomb?
    Lucas and Rick glanced at each other, but Lord Baylor pressed his hands together and looked at the sky. “At last.” He walked towards the worker and pushed him aside to get to the tomb.
    Everyone gathered around the workers. A group of diggers pulled the rope in an improvised pulley system to lift a flat stone. It wasn’t natural at all; an old civilization had written all over it. If they were like the Egyptians, Rick wasn’t going to need to work ever again in his life. And even if it didn’t go too well, at least he’d be able to auction off his part to pay for his ship’s mortgage.
    Lord Baylor gestured broadly in the air at the men who weren’t helping. “Pull that thing off, men! Stop hanging around and help them, will you?” His deep voice echoed around the excavation site, making the ground tremble with its loudness.
    “Payday at last,” Rick told Lucas. He’d spent far too long working without any form of income whatsoever.
    “Why don’t you wait and see?” Amy’s know-it-all voice said through the intercom. “He’ll probably produce some sort of clause from the contract and leave you without a cent.”
    “Could you stop being so pessimistic for a change?” Rick told her.
    Lucas raised an eyebrow. Rick gestured at the intercom in his ear.
    “And could you stop being such a senseless fool?” she replied. “If you’d let me go back to the Argonaut, I would’ve been much more relaxed. We have a rubbish shuttle that won’t take us anywhere unless we’re lucky. What if he takes the money and runs? Who’ll stop him then, huh?”
    As if one of the most important relic hunters in the world would need to steal Rick’s miserable portion of the loot. And he wasn’t going to leave all his workers there; it was like sentencing them to death. They were getting