The silence shattered when a metal hand punctured it. It clasped at the edge of the muck-filled crevice in the floor and heaved, pulling out a small mouse humanoid trailing bundles of ancient cabling, animal refuse and oily grime onto the steel floor. Mond gasped and looked about into the gaping stillness that immersed her. With precious time fleeting away she was predisposed to assume danger around every corner.
But the fuzzy, green-tinged dark that returned from her low-light gear was eerily still. The off-putting atmosphere was nothing compared to the tight crawl through the myriad of ventilation ducts, cabling channels and abandoned animal tunnels that crisscrossed the abandoned wreckage. This was because the open darkness allowed for a possibility that this, finally, would be the place. That it was the end. These thoughts gave Mond the fortitude to lean back into the hole and pull out a bundle of gear, followed by the mercenaries who crawled out with their own verse in a serenade of foul language for the trek they'd suffered.
Mond took to the charts, trying to still hands that trembled with exertion. As she did the jug-heads lit their head-lights, blinding themselves each in turn with their unaccustomed eyes. While she had no energy to show it, inwardly Mond scoffed at them as each seemed as shocked as the other. When they were done being surprised they made her stand and, knowing they were in a rush and too weary to argue, Mond lead on, silent as a corpse made to walk. All she did was count her steps,
"Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three...."
The party set out, following the conduit they'd traced in the tunnels. In the dark everything looked alike but Mond figured they'd made good headway. The three days in the cabling channels had bypassed all known threats but naturally left them in the void of the map. Still they must be near! Near the end of this foul treck! She thought she could feel the warm, cleansing bath already...unwinding all the stress and washing out all the evil of this...place, she dreaded being aware of it, it was better to count.
"One-seventy-one, One-seventy-two, one-seventy-three, one-seventy-four..."
To lampoon her blissful ignorance the jug-head she'd labelled "Jar" did the curious thing of asking a question; 'Hey Twig! Um, what's this thing we're after anyway?' Mond just managed to hold herself from calling out this idiocy. not that the question had been stupid but that he'd thought to ask.
'What a question to ask, Jar!' She sighed. 'You and I know all tales of it gives different answers! Could be a vast, if boring, power bank, or a molecular welding torch, or a microbial stasis chamber or maybe a control device for the grey nanite deserts out there!' She could tell by the vacant look she was losing him and decided to cut to the chase. 'All we...I know is that whatever it is, the builders thought it was worth building an integrated network of cabelling, nodes and secondary systems to support it. And that it'll get me out of the condos and into business!' As Jar raised a crooked eyebrow she added; 'Oh and....and probably get you lot drunk for a couple nights.'
Jar said nothing but remained as cool towards her as the mercenaries mostly were. She knew they didn't trust her, she wasn't "one of them". Instead of dwelling on them she told herself there was this task to do first. Soon the jug-heads had started to small-talk about some upcoming pit-fight and to escape it Mond hid her attention in the charts as they walked on.
"Three-two-three, Three-two-four, Three-two-five, Three-two-six..."
She couldn't be entirely sure but if her step-counting were decently accurate.... She felt a breeze meeting her whiskers and it stopped her cold. What could cause a wind, however faint, in a sealed space such as this?
She threw her gaze about and it landed on the floor before her. There was a scuffed sigil of unknown meaning and behind it a circular cut in the floor from which cool, damp air seeped out. Seeing it her eyes widened and mind was ablaze with so many thoughts none had time to be expressed in her mental monologue. To her the whole world was gone. There was no longer a silent chamber with an eon's worth of dust and darkness or Jug-heads chatting in nervous tones and unlatching the safety of their arms, she didn't even feel limbs exhausted to the point of pain. Only the mark on the floor existed. While she had no clue of the translation, she knew what it signified. There, at her feet, was the end of the path.
She was no longer tired.
From her pack she summoned the universal key in the form of a crowbar and swung with the steel prosthetic arm. The clang rang out but if the jug-heads reacted she did not notice it any more than the returning cries from the darkness beyond the party. She saw that while the floor looked like metal it chipped rather than bent and piece by piece she hacked at a growing opening until it allowed her arm entrance. Mond put her shoulder to the hole and found the top of something with a slit from which the cool air seeped. Having identified a vent she pushed her steel fingers in and around the top of the device and heaved. She didn't, couldn't think, couldn't notice what happened around her. How could she? The end was there! Here it was! It was over!
The container buckled and tore between the grip of rusted gears and Mond's applied force. She wriggled it and little by little the device ascended the pit, screaming a shrill metallic cry all the way. Momentarily Mond saw something in the periphery of her vision but as the chassis, bending and twisting under her mishandling tore off a blue nova cascaded over the eternal night. She tore off her goggles and what she saw was a crystal, bright as the sky-stained ocean she'd practically forgotten and she mouthed the first coherent thought;
The legends hadn't mentioned it'd be so beautiful!
For a long moment she bathed in the blue glow. Breath wouldn't enter her lungs and her eyes watered. How long had it been since she'd seen the open sea or sky? How many days had they crawled and climbed in this quiet hellhole? How many inane conversations and unkind remarks and hours of mute silence had she suffered? It was all gone, her troubles drowned in the ocean of blue light. She finally breathed in and felt the cool air enter her lungs.
A gargled scream cut into her trance and woke her to the fight that had waged around her. She was no warrior but even she saw that whatever fight there was left would be a mop-up on the part of the enemy. Their time was up.
Even so, Jar's question interjected as she sank down to a crouch, holding the device in her arms. Now that she had it, what was it for? "What a stupid question!" She told herself. All that mattered was that it was crucial enough to warrant a secondary security system and that there was currently a distraction in progress. She figured it'd be a shame to waste a good tragedy.
The gloom swallowed her as she ran.

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Not everyone on the Frontier is a soldier of fortune.
It's not a rare sight to have down-their-luck scholars from the core worlds admist expeditions, using their valuable knowledge to scavenge some rare artifacts to finance their studies/buy a trip back home.

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Scavengers themed commission for , thanks again man :D (blurb of text by him too!)

Time for me to upload some of the stuff I've been working on behind the curtains! I have some few pics for the "Space-clans-salvage-derelicts" setting incoming ;) Hopefully, you guys will like them!

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