Alpha Qudrant, 22,000 lightyears from galactic center, 250 light years form Alpha-Gamma border
Stretching and sighing, Orban waited for the transport to finally set down. After three months of delays, he was finally getting back to the dig site on Danaios, and this time, most of his crew members wouldn't be coming back. Instead, the folks back home had elected to use the unclaimed world, and system as a diplomatic exercise, inviting several foreign "experts" to come onto the dig site. He didn't like it, and he didn't trust him. They hadn't been here for any of the initial dig, and now they were moving in like they belonged here. He didn't have a choice though, this was a government funded dig, which had started to try and find out why the biosphere had such diverse plant life, but it's animals on land was limited. They had uncovered the ruins in the thick jungles, and those had become the focus of the dig, though the planets biological history was still an objective to figure out.
The dig site was just a few miles south of the planets equator, on a jungle peninsula that eventually turned into marshes along the coast. A small clearing had been made about fifteen minutes from the dig site to allow for the transports, and supply runs to come and go without disturbing the main site. The ruins were metal, a dark red alloy that had yet to be identified, but was extremely tough, they had to blow open the doors with plasma charges in order to get inside, and even then it took several attempts before there was enough damage to get them in. Some sort of material with the builders language had been found, while resembling paper, it had lasted hundreds of thousands of years and was still strong enough to be moved, and studied. Samples indicate that it's a carbon-iridium compound, with the marks being burned into the surface by a hot, but thin pen, the writing was elegant, flowing from word to word smoothly. Copies of many of them had already been created for the xenolinguist coming in so maybe he could crack the code. They had named the material Pliahtine
They hadn't had any luck getting further into the structure, doors in their path were made of the same tough material, and couldn't be brute forced the way the entrance could without destroying artifacts that were as of yet, unmovable. Plasma torches had been applied to them, but it was slow going, the metal had obviously been designed for military purposes of an advanced star-faring installation. This was backed up by start charts discovered among the Pliahtine documents, and calculations indicated they had been up-to-date about 100,000 years prior. There was even still power in the building, one of the locked doors had a control panel in the alien language, and an AI had temporarily been diverted from a trade station nearby to try and brute force through the door, it's core programming had been damaged by defenses, and was quickly removed for repair, and compensated for the damage.
Orben had graduated from Heriodon Interstellar as a Paleontologist specializing in ancient civilizations, and had since then been in 24 digs of extinct civilizations, most of them had never reached the stars. This one, however, intrigued him more then any other. Whoever they had been, they had built this installation to protect something, and the fact that it was still powered in areas meant it was supposed to last a long time without supplies. On top of that, they had invented, and used materials unknown to the U.T.S.D, which was one of the reasons the dig was continuing. If they could reproduce the installations metal, they might have a contender for a new armor for ships, and other military assets.
The wind near him picked up as the shuttle finally started to come in for a landing, blowing up dust, and plant life, causing large flying arthropods to take flight, and flee the area. Good, many of them had been bothering the digs site, this would keep them away long enough for everyone to get set up. His foot tapped impatiently, he wanted to get back to the site for dinner, and some of that Blood-Wine he had been sent by his wife to keep him sane in dealing with a bunch of foreigners he had never worked with before.