NationStates Jolt Archive

Talan-Issaranan the ‘city of kings’ of history. It was even more impressive in the flesh – well, ancient metal and stone – than the few histories that told of the former capital managed to convey. The first ship to arrive there for millions of years was settled on the best of the ancient spaceports. It was a private vessel, perhaps unsurprisingly.

The ancient city was far from the largest city ever built; indeed the current capital dwarfed it. Only three and a half million people had ever lived here, but the massive height to witch the city rose enabled vast space to be made available for each inhabitant. The city had seven tiers, the highest tier reaching a height of almost two kilometres. In its heyday, every tier had been covered with endless verdant gardens, with the industrial parts of the city lowest, above them the corporate sectors, and above those, running to the green surface, the residential areas for the populace.

But that was ancient history, in the long millennia of its decline before its eventual death, the city had borne no plants on its once verdant terraces, and the great residential areas had become sepulchres and tombs of those long dead, the living becoming transitory intruders in the tomb city. But this too was also long past. The desert had taken the city, and its endless vaults and apartments, crèches and mortuaries had all been buried beneath millions of tonnes of sand, and even sandstone in the ages since. Entire kilometres of the mighty structure had caved in, collapsed or simply worn away with age.

But no longer, thought Sharan, the soon to be former governor of the imperial protectorate of Delta Zeta Four, regarding the first stages of the refurbishment, we’re back.

A shorter man stood next to him, “Well,” said Edward Weir, the Office of the Emperor’s director of special projects, “this should be an interesting few years.”

Sharan nodded, “Yes,” he said, “I think it will.” He started off down the sandy slope, cursing the weather – that was something that would be much harder to put right, and something that wasn’t his concern.

“Sirs,” said a technician, with a shouldered device that even Weir didn’t recognise. “We’ve located what we think is an entrance.”

Sharan looked up from the table of other artefacts that had been found on the small sections of the upper terrace that had been uncovered so far. He was holding a heavily damaged device in his hand, clearly originally designed to be worn on the back of one’s hand. They’d found very little in working order so far, but some of these items were nevertheless very interesting. Edward gave the necrontyr a glance, and they headed off with the technician over the seemingly endless drifts of mica dust.

Machines were largely doing industrial cousins of the tomb spiders that guarded and maintained necron installations the excavation of course. But they had come to a halt at this entrance. The sealed door was thick, by all indications, and wide enough for ten monoliths to pass through side by side, stacked ten high. The gauss disintegrator cutting beams that had been used to simply vaporise and consume the sand-drifts burying the city up to this point in the same manner as a bussard ramscoop would consume hydrogen had not even made a mark on this barrier.

“Well,” Weir said, “this is a barrier.”
Sharan nodded, looking at the vast obstruction with more than a little wonder. “I think this is a blast door of some kind,” he said, “or perhaps a radiation shield.”

The technician looked at the pair, “we’ve been unable to find anything that can open it,” he said, “and it’s dissipated any attempt to cut through it.”

“I see,” Sharan said, “I think this is the wrong approach.”

The pair shot him a quizzical look. The white haired necrontyr grinned, and stepped forward. The great door was embossed with the ancient symbol of the necrontyr, extending to the ground. He pressed his hand against it, and the metal felt cold to the touch, despite the warmth of its environment. Ancient mechanisms came slowly to life, shrugging off eons of sleep. Power output, long dormant, a mere few thousand ergs, shot up as the control systems of the ancient seat realised that the time had come for them to do their function once more.

A crack came from above, and rumbles like an earthquake or a massive cave in shook the expedition to the core. The ground beneath the party, and their machines, both tracked and hovering shook. Great torrents of dust fell from above and Weir stumbled back, looking up at the great arch high above them, fearing that it would collapse. “We’ve got to get back!” he snapped, and Sharan took a step back. Then it happened. The grinding noise grew louder, and the unending metal cliff face began to part, down the centre, just where Sharan had pressed his hand. Beyond was a great dark cavern, silver gleaming tantalisingly in the distance.

The miniature earthquake continued, until at last the doors stopped, having spread far enough to permit entrance for the three of them walking abreast Sharan stepped into the breach first, his formerly white clothes now quite discoloured by the coarse dust that managed to get everywhere. A dozen paces, and he was through the doors. Taking a powerful handheld torch from the technician behind him, he shone it about, the wide cone of illumination revealed a massive space, easily big enough to hold many small spacecraft. A ring of light stabbed up from the floor in front of him, and without thinking twice he stepped into it. A hologram appeared in front of him, summoned by the act. It was of a necrontyr. Immediately he noticed some differences. For a start, this necrontyr showed her age far more readily than the current generation. And her body seemed subtly different in its proportions. The eyes however, a vibrant green, were just the same as those he’d seen elsewhere.

It spoke, in necrontyr, “Welcome to Talan-Issaranan,” she said, her voice a statement of authority in itself. “A status report follows.”

She dissolved, and a line of glyphs appeared.

City Status, current date: Unknown – Dating System Has Expired

Structural Survey: Incomplete – Two hours to completion.
Foundation Status: Secure
Life Support Status: Inoperable:
___Eighty Percent of the City flooded/buried
___Internal Atmosphere Processors Destroyed
___Active Radiation Shield Auto-repair Underway
Power Output Status: Partial:
___One of Sixty Generators Online - 1% total power
___Solar Backup System Status: Inoperable
Resident Status: No current residents

Estimated time until full Auto-Repair: Fifty Three Years

“I think,” said Sharan, almost to himself, “that we can do better than that.”