The shuttle’s VTOL engines kicked in hard as it approached the landing zone, sending sand and dust flying in every direction across the arid planet’s surface. As Dr. Henry Andrews awaited the passengers, he couldn’t help but marvel at the new engine’s behaviour. A fine addition to the shuttle’s atmospheric capabilities, he thought, undisguised pride in this particular creation filling him. 

From the shuttle emerged Jonas Faber, captain of the military carrier Hellstorm, along with Dr. Álvaro Benforte and Dr. Julia Kasper, both colleagues of Dr. Andrews aboard the science vessel LaGrange. Their pristine, beige desert kits starkly contrasted with Andrews’ sweat-stained, dust-covered clothing, betraying his prolonged stay on Adebas II.

“Captain, Doctors—glad you could make it down so quickly,” Andrews said, ushering them toward a nearby shelter.

“You said it was important, Doctor. Though I am curious why you wanted someone from the military branch down here. Usually, it’s the opposite,” the captain remarked as he advanced.

“You’ll see, Captain, you’ll see.” Andrews led the way before Faber could retort.

The shelter was spacious, housing holo-tables displaying topographic maps, screens showing sandstorm patterns, locations of vehicles and away teams. At its center was an obtrusively large hole, fitted with stairs, conveyors, and winch points for heavy equipment.

“That’s quite the dig, Doctor,” the captain observed, approaching the opening.

“Indeed. It’s our entry point.”

“Entry point Doctor?”

”Yes, to the undercity. At least, that’s what the dig team called it — the undercity.”

“If I’m not mistaken, Henry, your reports mentioned a large preserved colony,” Dr. Kasper interjected. “Is this the one?”

“Can we go down there? I’ve never seen one myself!” Benforte eagerly moved toward the stairs.

“Of course! We must, since what I want to show you is down there.” Andrews took the lead down the steps.

Initially, they traversed a disappointing cave system equipped with lights, communication relays, and metal walkways, descending deeper underground. Benforte mused aloud about the ship’s scanners that could locate a buried city on a storm-ridden planet.

Then, suddenly they emerged onto a plateau overlooking a breathtaking cityscape beneath an immense, vaulted cavern. Though weathered, the city was mostly intact, its impossibly high dome-like ceiling unsettlingly perfect. Some sections had collapsed over city blocks, especially closer to the walls, where the land just swooped in. The fact that the ceiling presented an almost perfect orbicular shape quickly became a point of contention.

“How…?” Kasper pointed upward, speechless.

“The ceiling?” Andrews asked.

“Yes!” Kasper gripped Andrews’ shoulders excitedly.

”Ah! Current theory suggests the city had a massive energy shield running for thousands of years, holding back rock and sand as nature tried to bury it.”— his gaze scanned across a very captive audience, even Captain Faber was awestruck — “Eventually, the shield failed, causing partial collapse, forming this natural dome.”

”Sounds far-fetched, Doctor. Do you have proof of this…shield…device?” Faber’s skepticism broke the spell.

”Well, actually, we have! The device itself was found in that spire.” Andrews pointed to a slender, antenna-like structure that dominated the city.  “It is a fascinating device! Our technicians noted similarities to the shield generators aboard ships like the Hellstorm. It could almost be an advanced version of our technology.” He indicated another staircase. “But even that’s not the main reason you’re here.”

Faber scowled ominously, while Benforte and Kasper exchanged uneasy glances.

At street level, the city’s architecture strangely mirrored human design, recalling structures on Earth, Mars, Alpha Centauri II—familiar yet unsettling. There were artistic and functional details that remitted to traditional human architecture and urban design, things that mankind did for thousands of years, like the height of sidewalks, the placement of drains, street lights, and what seemed to be doorbells or garbage bins. These similarities were not lost on anyone in the group, except for Andrews, who seemed oblivious to his guests’ growing unease, overly eager to show off his discovery.

“We’ve arrived! Behold!” Andrews pointed triumphantly at a sign reading Colonial Museum. Faber’s scowl deepened.

Inside, they hurried past display cases—some smashed, some intact— still housing their artifacts in place. Some display screens were damaged, but others still rendered facts and figures about whatever was exhibited.  

Eventually, they reached a room labeled Our History, dominated by a perfectly preserved Colony Ship-Class Simulation Engine. Its control panel glowed softly in standby mode. It seemed to have been removed as one, single module from the ship and placed at that location.

”Wow! Is that…? Oh my!” – Benforte approached reverently. “The controls are so… familiar…” He expertly keyed commands. Instantly, holographic projections sprang to life, narrating the colony’s history, starting familiar, then evolving into an unrecognizably alien future.

The powerful projectors weaved a new reality, telling the tale of how the colony was initially planned on Earth, of the first, hard, and ruthless years after landfall, and then its evolution over time. The unfolding simulated reality hits everyone in the room except Andrews— who had already seen it— like a hammer to the face. They see civilization as they know it unfolding, they recognize colony-building patterns, vehicles, space suit models, until they don’t. The simulation advances well beyond their knowledge of the world, suddenly the clothes, the technology, the vehicles, the buildings, and even the music stops making sense and becomes, for lack of a better word, alien. 

”What is the meaning of this??” Faber demanded, confused and increasingly irate. Benforte quickly disabled the simulation.

”An excellent question Captain!” Andrews began pacing the room theatrically, as if giving a lecture at the University. “My team has two theories. One group believes that it’s merely a speculative vision, artistic fiction of a potential future, a fictionalized vision if you may…”

“But the city, shields, the tech—it’s clearly ours but ancient!” Kasper interrupted.
“Humanity’s been in space 500 years, not 10,000! How do you explain all this?” — she gestured, encompassing the room.  

“That brings us to the second theory,” Andrews continued. —Benforte and Faber are now paying close attention to Andrew’s next words— “That this simulation is genuine history. Thousands of years passed while we traveled through Jump transit, rather than hours as our instruments indicate. Thus, we’d be temporal anomalies—outliers from another time entirely!”

“So this…”  he points at the simulator – “…is not a fabrication, but recorded history! In reality, this Calamity we keep talking about, is nothing more than Humanity’s natural evolution and extinction process as a species. In essence we are not meant to be here at all! ” he ends the tirade with a smug expression of triumph, clearly proud of his clever theory. 

“What proof do you have?” Faber examined the simulator skeptically.

“Well, there’s star chart data recovered here, matching sectors we believed unexplored—”

“A system glitch?” Faber interrupted.

“Possible, but unlikely. One ship’s charts outdated? Perhaps. But all ships? And timestamps show discoveries nearly 3,000 years after our departure, made by nations or entities, clearly human and yet totally unknown to us,—”

Faber raised a hand sharply, silencing Andrews. Activating his comm, he commanded, “Hellstorm, deploy fusiliers to the surface immediately. Secure the scientists and artifacts quietly.” 

“Captain, belay that order immediately!” Andrews protested, fumbling for his comm.

Faber drew his sidearm and very casually fired. The shot hit Andrews in the forehead, and he tumbled backwards, inert like a log. The doctors froze in shock. Before they could react, the Captain turned and addressed them, his right arm swinging casually, the hand still holding the smoking pistol.

“Listen carefully,” Faber stated. “First, Andrews died accidentally—a rockslide. Clear?” Both doctors nodded numbly. “Second, no more discussion of these theories. It’s fiction. Third, the city’s condition is natural erosion, nothing more. Understand?” Another nod. He holstered his weapon.

-” Understand this, Doctors, we are on the cusp of survival. Having crazy theories like this destabilizes the people and the fleet’s morale.” He slowly paces the room, hands behind his back, going around Kasper and Benforte like a predator measuring its prey.

“Right now, hope—of reuniting with loved ones, of going back home—is what is keeping everyone in the fleet together! We take away that hope, and we will face the abyss soon enough.” he stopped and gazed at the void, as if collecting his thoughts.

“Dr. Andrews was too proud and too vain to let this go, he would not rest until he rubbed in everyone’s face how right he was about this. That is not what we need right now.”

“Yes, Captain,” they murmured.

“What about the data?” Benforte asked weakly.

“We’ll collect everything secretly, study it quietly aboard the Hellstorm. Clearly, they were more advanced than us, we must try to adapt their technologies to the fleet as fast as possible. Can I count on your discretion?”

“Yes, Captain,” they answered firmly.

“Good. Dismissed.”

Shortly after, Andrews was quietly cremated. Official records cited an accidental landslide death during a failed, obscure mission to Triton-Primaris. All records of the Adebas II expedition were either outright expunged from public access or re-addressed to past missions.

Dozens upon dozens of Crates and cases were collected planetside and stored in an unregistered location inside the Hellstorm by Faber’s newly established Sci-Command, a military unit responsible for securing and investigating all human artifacts found.

Doctors Benforte and Kasper, alongside some key-staff from the Adebas II expedition, spent their remaining careers aboard the Hellstorm, quietly reverse-engineering thousand-year-old technology. Each discovery became a painful reminder of a truth hidden beneath lies.

END