Chapter 9 - The discovery

Life on this planet was getting to be...almost normal, which is hard to say that when we arrived on this barren land a few weeks ago. Buildings were bursting with new life, gardens were in full bloom, and our days consisted of doing the usual routine of working our butts off and keeping security in check.

However, it didn't have the fine silver lining...good supplies were coming short, backup items became full-time, and reserves for extra metals were drying up fast. Pretty soon Thunder ordered us to go with a group of experienced miners that were doing some prospecting of the land areas to the north and doing test that showed there might be some minerals in the ground. Great, nothing like babysitting other people while they have all the fun...

BOOM!
Dirt and debris shoot thirty feet in the air as a charge detonates the place where it was. The guy I was with, Gary, took out his mining tool and flipped up the lid. "Come on, turn green..." He whispered. A small yellow light was flashing on the top of the tool. Kept flashing for a few seconds more, then turned red. "Dam, nothing." he growled. I looked on.
"Now what?" I had already been out of a half hour or so beforehand waiting for this guy to get ready. It was about 88 degrees out, so the sun wasn't helping the temp go lower any faster. Sucks when there’s a sun shining every minute of every day.
"We go 100 footsteps to thz north, and try again." So we did, about half way through we spotted a young (but still ugly) snablenot creature just grazing on some grass. "Can I see one of those charges?" I asked, hoping he would give me one. Gary gave a puzzled look. "What for?" I looked at the snable, then he looked at the snable. Then we both looked at the snable again. He grinned. "Are ye thinking what ye is thinkin!" I grabbed one from his bag, then going against the wind I took a charge and planted it right beneath the beastie. What it couldn't smell, it couldn't find, love that. I half tip-toed half ran back to where Gary was, then as soon as it was set we detonated the charge. Needless to say, we never had this kind of entertainment back at home. As soon as the charge went the snable let out a sort of loud whistle before being put inside out and a mist of green goo fell around the ground. I high fived Gary for the cool trick and sat for a few seconds staring at the mess. We had completely forgotten that the charge also was searching for minerals, so we both jumped up when the ore finder lit up and vibrated a bit, as if it was happy itself. Quickly opening it up the green light was on and we had found a nice size one too. So I stood watching out for anything out of the ordinary while Gary went to work constructing a mini drill tower to extract the ore from the ground. Quite loud it was, as gary picked up the stones that were coming out of the tower, until there was a louder *THUNK* as the drill bit snapped in half and the machine came to a halt. "Now what" I told him. The last thing I needed was to report back with a broken drill bit, which were hard to replace at the time. Would have my head for dinner for this, I dreaded.
"Come look at this, and see for yeself" Gary said. As I stepped toward where the drill bit was a large metal container with lights and computer monitors displaying characters that I couldn't begin to figure out what they were saying. There were also wires sort of hanging out of it, as if it was damaged in someway. "What is it?"
"I dunno...but I'm going to call it in." I radioed to base that we had found some metal, as well as a large 'metal sphere' that would be an interesting find.
Later on that day the scientist who studied it said it was a sort of beacon that was used in the colonization process, but nothing like we used...where we alone?