Free Ancient Relics (Shadow of the Ancients Book 1) by Ellema Ummia Page B

penetrate surface material down to 1,000 meters.
    Exploration drones will locate a loaded coordinate,
begin scanning down into the ground for natural or unnatural formations, create
a 3- dimensional image for review, and send the data to an operator to review.
    After the data is loaded onto the drones, the ops
sergeant launches the drones for their mission.
    “Drones are out,” the operations sergeant announces
to the Ops Center.
    As the drones make their way to the designated
search area, the team begins initializing and testing the sensor suite on the
drones.
    The process not only tests the drones as they are in
route, but also scans the path the drones take to the programmed coordinates to
create a detailed map of the area while in transit.
    “All sensors operating within normal parameters,”
one of the crew calls out.
    A blip on the radar of one of the three pairs of
drones launched plots a small metallic signature for just a few seconds.
    “Did you see that?” Paige asks aloud to the ops
crew.
    The ops sergeant quickly scans through the readings.
    After searching for a few more seconds, he looks
over to Paige and asks, “See what?”
    Paige pulls-up the radar readings on her DataCom,
finds the signature, and shows the DataCom to the ops sergeant.
    Pointing out the signature, Paige replies, “This
signature here showed up very briefly. Can we identify it?”
    The ops sergeant sends a protocol change to one of
the three pairs drones to investigate the signature while the other two remain
on task.
    The reprogrammed drone circles-back to the radar
signature’s location and begins a more detailed sweep of the area.
    The signature pops back-up on radar and the
intrigued team starts to formulate possible explanations as to what the object
could be.
    “Maybe it’s a natural rock formation or meteorite,”
one of the crew-members suggests.
    “It’s too large and sitting evenly on the surface,”
Paige responds to the suggestion.
    The ops sergeant gestures to the telemetry station
operator to show a visual reading of the object.
    The telemetry operator sends a signal to the drone
to begin manual operation of the camera system and initiates a live feed.
    As the crew looks at the image on the screen, one of
them asks, “Is that a ship?”
    Just as the crew starts into a series of unorganized
speculations as to why a ship is on the surface of a barren and dead planet,
Logan walks into the Ops Center.
    “Did someone say they found a ship?” Logan asks the
team.
    Paige looks towards Logan and quickly walks over to
him with her DataCom pad in-hand, showing him the image and updating him on the
find.
    Logan looks at the image and states, “This is a
modern ship. Someone else is on the planet.”
    The ops sergeant speculates a series of possible
reasons why someone else would be on the planet.
    Assuming the ship’s occupants are hostile, the ops
sergeant sends word back to The Wayfarer requesting permission to send a
security team to investigate.
    Commander Asim responds back quickly with permission
to send one of the team's security patrols.
    The ops sergeant opens a communication channel to
the security pod and gives the order, “Ops to Security, send MilSec-One to zone
Charlie-Two to investigate a possible hostile ship.”
    “Roger Ops, sending MilSec-One to zone Charlie-Two
for possible contact,” the security office responds.
    After the security team prepares to launch onto the
planet’s surface, ops sends them the exact coordinates.
    Just as the security team launches, the other two
sets of drones arrive to zone Charlie-Four and begin scanning the ground for
the possible ruins.
    “Analysis coming in from Charlie-Four,” the drone
operator announces.
    Logan walks over to the drone operator’s station and
looks over her shoulder to the station monitor.
    “Interesting… amazing… exquisite!” Logan randomly
exclaims for each sensor reading retrieved from the drones.
    Paige, in her curiosity, quickly makes