Chapter 3: The Discovery

She sat, her power at minimum, for ages. Her servants repaired the great tears in her body. They restored her passageways, her components, and her systems to pristine condition. The servants burrowed deep down into the Earth. They gathered the resources she so desperately needed. They mined the gold, titanium, platinum, iron, and 'rare earths' that would have cost far too much in precious power to have been replicated.

They brought her back to life, as she slowly rebuilt herself.

In the ship's landing bay, they rebuilt the destroyed two man fighters. Her medical wing and all the other great tears and damaged sections were repaired.

In another section of the cavern, nine hundred forty-two members of her crew were laid to rest. Four thousand three hundred and ten, out of five thousand two hundred fifty two of her prized crew, had been lost to space.

She had nearly lost her soul, and her life. But her captain had laid a mission upon her, with his last words. Her servants built a great tomb for him. It was empty of him and his fellow bridge officers, but it was not built in vain.

Though lost in space between Mars and Earth, tumbling somewhere out there, perhaps one day his body would be found and brought to this tomb.

One day, many hundreds of years later, her remote sensors detected something she had not heard in far too long.

Life! Ever-beautiful life! And it was moving closer towards her, down the passageways inside the Earth.

Gathering her strength, she began awakening more of the systems inside of her hull. She brought more scanners that were more powerful, to life.

Yes! It was four humans! They were in the tunnels, and they were less then a mile from her!

Reaching out to the nearest scanner, she watched as they sat at a pool of water, and ate. They made camp and cleaned up in the pool.

One of them even picked up one of her sensors, thinking it was a beautiful blue crystal.

She listened to their conversation, and watched the two women kiss, and share their love.

She watched as they went to sleep, with the girls cuddled up behind the men who wanted to protect them. Hours later, they awakened and cleaned up their camp. Then they started walking towards the tunnel leading down.

They moved down a small hallway, she silently shouted a warning, but her remotes could not send audio.

"Watch out! The floor! It is very weak, there!"

'No! He is falling! Oh a rope that will save ... Noooo! The rope is cut! He has fallen! He is hurt!'

Scanning his body, she saw massive damage to his legs, back, and head. She sent a silent command to her spiders to go to him, and recover him. He needed help so the spiders were ordered to get him to medical. Hundreds of spider like robots moved towards him. A small hover car left the ship's landing bay. It shot down the passageway made uncounted hundreds of years ago.

Before the car was even halfway to him the spiders had found him. They swarmed over him. They gathered him up off the floor, and gently carried him towards the ship. Within seconds, they were met by the hover car. They lifted him gently up onto the carry platform.

The hovercar did a quick U-turn spin, and headed back down the passageway at over a hundred miles an hour. It shot out into the cavern, and the ship's tractor beams grabbed the car as it flew off the ledge. The beams pulled it into the landing bay. The car was now aboard and was headed down the hall to one of the medical bays.

Once in medical, the spider bots carried him over to the med unit. They lifted him into the chamber. A force field slid down as nanobots flooded into the chamber. They covered his body until all that could be seen was a mass of silver metal moving over the young man. The nanobots began to repair his injuries. They also removed all diseases, and genetic problems. Lou Gehrig's disease was detected in his DNA, and the nanobots quickly obliterated it from his system.

A hologram of a beautiful young lady appeared and looked at the chamber.

"Oh please live, you must live for the Earth. She needs you, the human race needs you! The galaxy needs to be rescued, or what has happened once, will happen again. I need you. I have been alone so long."

The chamber slowly clears and the young man lay there naked as the day he was born. Healthy, breathing and alive, while he sleeps, she scanned his mind and saw that he was nineteen years old, and that he and his family lived in a small town outside of Reno.

His sister and best friends were the other three humans back in the cave. They had to be brought here. The ship needed a crew. Sending a silent order to the spider bots, a holo-projector was replicated, and was attached to the hovercar. The car was sent back to the accident scene.

Jenny looked down the hole and cried, "Ken, can you hear me? Wake up!" Looking at her friends, she asked, "What do we do? We have to get down there," Looking back down the hole she noticed that the glow stick was gone. "Hey his light is gone, it just disappeared."

Ted pulled out a second line and some pitons. Pounding one into the floor, he attached the rope and hurled it over the edge. It fell fifty feet and smacked into the ground. Reaching into a pouch, he pulled out his spare blue jeans, and tied them to the rope at the edge of the lip, so the lip would not cut the rope.

"Okay, Jen you're first, just like we did at the cliff."

Jen walked over to the rope and looped it through her equipment belt. She stepped to the edge and started lowering herself down. She had to be extra careful because there was no wall here to push against.

Lowering herself by her arm muscles, she looked down and she shouted, "Hold on Ken, I'm coming."

Moving as fast as she could, she descended the fifty feet to the floor. Untying herself, she turned to where his body should be, but saw only his broken helmet and a pool of blood. She looked up, and cried out to the others in anguish, "He's gone!"

Turning all the way around she saw another passageway heading north. A bloody trail led off in that direction.

Going to the entrance of the new tunnel she shouted, "KEN, where are you? Answer me, damn it!"

She stood there listening for any response as tears dripped off her chin.

Above, on the hole's edge, Tammy was getting ready to descend. She'd heard Jen's voice on the mic saying that Ken was gone.

"Jenny, I will be right there. Will you please hold the rope?" Looking down, she quickly descended. Her brother was right behind her.

As the three stood there, they hooked each other back up to a rope. Ted reached into his pocket, pulled out four of the glow sticks, and snapped them. He shook them to mix the chemicals. He dropped one, and handed one to his sister and another to Jenny.

"Here put these in your helmets. The others are about done for."

They quickly followed his direction. They started moving down the passageway, following the trail of blood.

After a few feet, the floor became as smooth as glass, though not at all slippery. The wall curved into an eight-foot wide passageway and the ceiling more than twelve feet above them. As they looked at the walls in amazement and pondered who could have done this, it started getting brighter. Turning, they looked down the passageway. A pair of lights appeared. Within seconds, a strange vehicle stopped about six feet in front of them. Suddenly a light shot from what could be the hood, and a beautiful woman appeared before them.

"It's a hologram," Ted said quietly as he looked at the beautiful woman standing there.

She stood there and looked at them, and her scanners detected that the one crying was Jen. She saw the tears flowing down Jen's face, and she spoke.

"Don't cry Jen. Your brother is fine and is almost healed."

Lifting her head, she looked at all of them.

"If you will board the hovercar I will bring you to him."

She watched as they looked at each other. They came to some sort of unspoken agreement, and slowly moved towards the vehicle. She reached out gently and set her ghostly hand on Jen's shoulder.

Jen looked up at the hologram, tears still flooding from her eyes.