Starbound: A Space Odyssey

"Good!" Asra stood up from her chair and her stiff face cracked, forming a rare happy smile.

The four people in the room, Clark, Mao, Elana and Knax, stared at Asra as they witnessed such rare event.

"I need to see it personally." Asra walked pass Clark walking directly toward the place Clark came. Elana and Knax swiftly followed her.

"Ah." Clark was awoken by his stunned situation when he felt someone patting his shoulder.

Turning his head around he come face to face with the ever smiling Mao.

"Why are standing here? Asra is going to be mad at you." He said with a gentle and warm tone.

Clark instantly shuddered when faced with that friendly and gentle expression.

He respectfully moved his shoulder to leave from Mao's clutch and swiftly ran away from Mao.

Seeing this scene, Mao just chuckled and left the conference room soon after.

...

Asra, Mao, Elana, Knax and Clark were standing in a service elevator that was slowly descending deep into the Erchius Mine.

Giant purple crystals could be seen all around them, making the need for an light source unnecessary.

Asra silently watched as the elevator descended deep into the enormous, circular hole. She turned around and suddenly spoke with Clark that was behind her together with Mao, Elana and Knax, "Tell me again about the Ancient Vaults that were found by Letheia Corporation in the past."

"Ah! Yes, ma'am." Clark was surprised for a second as he was trying to diminish his presence as he was beside the three highest officers of Occasus Cult and also behind the Great Leader of the organization. He lowered his head and spoke weakly and somewhat fearfully, "This information is only know by a selected number of people inside Letheia. Even politics of the Hylotl government doesn't know about this, the Ocean and Reef Faction made sure to keep it secret. All the miners and people overseeing the excavation of the Vaults were silenced. The miners were executed, some overseers mysteriously disappeared, other travelled far away to never return."

He stopped for moment before continuing, "I became aware of this Vaults because one day I saw some confidential documents left behind by Ferris Laparte when she came to analyze the Lunar Base 12, I think she went there to be certain, whatever or not, there was a Vault there. From the documents I was only able to take glance at, Letheia Corporation found three other Vaults. Each Vault had something very valuable. One of them it was found many, many years ago and it contained the knowledge to develop the FTL Warp System, the technology that we all know very well. This was the knowledge that led Letheia to rise from a simple mining company to the behemoth that is today in a short span of time. The second Vault apparently also contained some kind of knowledge. It appears to be knowledge about development of weapons using Erchius Crystals. As we know, it has always been a desire for every government, weapon company and militaristic organizations to discover a way to turn such powerful crystals into weapons but they never succeed. It appears that Letheia now can create such weapons... I think, I'm not certain."

Asra frowned a little than asked, "What about the third Vault?"

"This..." Clark scratched his head a little before reluctantly saying, "When I glanced at the documents, Letheia had just found the Vault, they were in the process of opening it."

"Should we expect something unfortunate to happen as we open a Vault?"

"Well...in the documents was said that inside each Vault there was always an army of humanoid robots that greatly resemble Glitches, but they are incapable of speaking and apparently have just a single mission, to kill any trespasser. Their weaponry is very heavy and powerful, their armors sturdy and light. In short, very deadly. I recommend using mechs to explore the depths of the Vaults since they also have lots of deadly traps." Clark warned Asra to not go directly into such dangerous place.

Asra silently stared into nothing as she lost in deep thought after hearing what Clark said.

As soon as the elevator reached the deepest part of the mine, Asra and the others were greated with the incredible sight before them.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Clark's were sparking as he looked at the enormous building that was located in the deepest part of the moon that they were currently at.

The Ancient Vault before them was a huge gray structure. There was strange symbols carved in each piece of those gray stones that coupled formed the structure that was more than 20 meters high, and with an unknown number of width since it wasn't completely excavated.

The language and the stone were the same used in the Ancient Gateways, making one to easily connect the dots that these buildings were all made by the people of the same civilization and probably culture.

In the middle of the building there was a huge door that had beautiful blue crystals ornaments all around it.

Asra's eyes brightened as those crystals caught her attention. "What are those?" She asked.

"Believe or not, they are Erchius Crystals, 100% pure Erchius Crystals." Clark answered Asra's question with fevor. He spent most of life working in Erchius mines so he knew the value of such blue crystals. "The purer the crystal is, the bluer. Sometimes we can barely see a few pieces of such blue Erchius Crystal. Seeing this much, I can help but drool over them. A single one of the ornaments in that door cannot be sold in the black market, but rather in a auction house, people in the market won't have enough money to pocket such expensive item."

"Don't Letheia Corporation know how to purify Erchius Crystals? The FTL Engines are made primarily of purified Crystals." Elana frowned in suspicion and glanced at Clark.

"Yes Letheia have a method they keep hidden behind a tight locker. But they can only purify it barely 10% of it. If they try to do more, the crystal will undoubtedly crack and lost it's energy, and losing it's value." Clark answered the question unfazed.

"Knax." Asra called out for the stern middle-aged man behind her.

"Yes, ma'am." Knax walked forward and saluted.

"Prepare your most thrusted 300 soldiers with the best Mechs and weapons we have. I want what is inside that Vault as soon as possible."

"It will be done, ma'am." Knax saluted once more before leaving the place.

Mao stood by side with a casual smile on his face, but when nobody was paying attention at him, his eyes flashed with an unknown and eerie gleam...