Chapter Ten

Mila woke in the middle of the night. She didn't know why, or how, but she slipped out of her tent and went to stand in front of the coverstone. The full moon illuminated the girl, dressed in long, flowing robes that were turned a blinding white by the moon's rays. Mila's blonde hair blew behind her, and her blue eyes were open, staring at the slab.

Hawking's tent flap stirred, and he emerged. "Mila?" She didn't turn or acknowledge his presence. She held her hand out above the slab. "Mila, what are you doing?" He touched her shoulder, and pulled his hand back sharply. A shock had zapped him as soon as he touched Mila.

Mila lowered her hand. Hawking saw that the engraving of the handprint was just below her hand. She placed her hand on the indention. Her eyes lit up, turning the irises white. Hawking backed away. As he watched, the handprint on the coverstone began to glow with the same light. The runes around Mila's hand glowed as well, and this spread throughout the entire slab, like blood through a person's veins. She took her hand away.

Hawking gasped. The heavy, large coverstone rose a few feet into the air, than slid away from her. Underneath it, dark, dusty steps led down into the interior of the Egyptian desert. "Well, that solves our problem," Hawking muttered. Mila said nothing. "Mila? Mila?" There was no reply. The light slowly faded out of her eyes. Mila jerked and twitched, and seemed to wake up. "What the heck was that?" she asked. "How did the coverstone open? What happened? Why am I out here?"

Hawking explained about the light on her eyes and the coverstone hovering and sliding away. "That sounds like what happened back on LuCA..." Mila said, half to herself. "What?" Hawking asked. Mila peered down the steps. "Back on LuCA, my friend Jakk and I found a ULO. It was a black slab, about the size of a computer. We brought it back to the lab, and when I touched it with my bare hands, it did sort of the same thing. It opened up, but there was nothing inside. And then it just--disappeared." Mila decided not to tell Hawking about the voice. She had learned her lesson the first time with Jakk.

Hawking was listening very intently. "Did this box have anything inside it?"

"No," Mila lied. "It was empty." Except for a creepy voice telling me that I was going to die.

"And was your friend with you when the box opened?"

"No, but I told him about it." The disappointment in Mila's voice was obvious.

"He didn't believe you, did he?"

"Nope." Mila shrugged her shoulders. "So, who's gonna go down the stairs first?"

Chapter Nine

The sand blew into Mila's eyes. She shielded her hand against the blinding sun and surveyed the scene in front of her. The remnants of a few tents, now just scraps of cloth and broken poles, stood next to a slab of rock lying on it's side. The rock was just a few feet high, but the side facing Mila was roughly 5 feet long. She walked around the great object.

It was a sandy yellow-orange, and was inscribed with runes and symbols all over it's surface. Mila recognized a handprint, a cat, a river, and something that looked like it could be either the sun or the moon. The slab itself was approximately 2 feet high, 5 feet wide, and 15 feet long. Mila recognized the slab from Thellas' journal. He had drawn the slab with extreme detail, and despite the weathering of the years, the object had remained relatively untouched.

Mila stepped back from the object. It had a quality to it that was enchanting and haunting, and she shook her head to get rid of it. What had Thellas said? She opened her messenger bag. She had dressed in the protective clothes of a camel rider: long, light colored robes and sturdy shoes. She had even gone so far as to pick up a headdress to shield her face from the sand and the sun, though it wasn't doing such a good job.

Mila pulled out her tablet, carried all the way from LuCA. It's sleek, professional surface looked odd against the sand and grit of Egypt. She pulled up Thellas' journal and found the section on the slab.

This object appears to be the coverstone for the tomb. We will work on removing it tomorrow. But for now, I will sleep.

There was nothing else. Thellas' journal hadn't been recovered in it's entirety. The next page that remained detailed the burial chamber. There was nothing about how Thellas had removed the coverstone.

Mila tucked her tablet back into her bag and crossed to her camel, an ornery male named Gamelru. The camel tossed his head and snorted. Mila ducked to avoid the wave of snot that passed overhead. "Yeah, yeah," she said. "We get it. You need food. But aren't you supposed to live off your own fat, or something?"

Gamelru tossed his head again in response. "Ok, ok," Mila said. "Just don't spray snot all over me, okay?" She patted Gamelru's neck and reached for her pack.

☯☯☯☯

Mila placed her hands on her hips and looked at her tent. "Clearly, I need practice," she said to Gamelru. He snorted in reply. The tent was lopsided, but it would have to do. It was made of a few poles, with a brown cloth stretched over all of it. Mila had placed it next to the ruins of the other tents. It had freaked her out to be so close to them, but the location had the best view of both the coverstone and the direction from which she had come.

Mila reached for Gamelru's reins. He flicked away, and she lunged after him. "Come back here, you filthy--" she tripped and landed facedown in the sand. The camel whinnied, the sound reminding Mila of laughter. She rolled over.

"It's better when you approach them from head on," a voice said from no where. A hand clasped Mila's and pulled her up. She cleared the sand from her eyes and gasped in delight. "Hawking?"

Hawking bowed slightly. He was dressed similarly to her, and he had even opted for a turban. He was holding the reins of Gamelru, who looked slightly ashamed, along with a dark chestnut horse. "Mila Arwyr. We meet again."

"But--how? Why? What about your business?"

"They postponed the meeting until September. Some of the interns got a little excited about their findings and didn't cite them right, so they'll need a few months to get everything in order. I decided to come and see you."

"But how did you get here so fast?"

Hawking smiled. "Camels may be more efficient, but horses are faster." He patted his horse's neck. "Now, let's fix your tent."

Chapter Eight

"Re-entry sucks. I don't care what the government says about having new and improved inertal dampeners on all their ships. They're lying."

"At least it's better than it was. you should have tried re-entry 40 years ago."

"No, I shouldn't have."

Mila and Hawking were standing in an elevator shaft, waiting to be lowered down onto Earth. They had touched down about an hour ago, in a town called Houston 2 (the first Houston having been destroyed by a backfiring rocket twenty years or so ago.) Mila was excited and nervous. This would be her first time on Earth soil. She had been born and raised a Lucian: she had never set foot on the globe from which her parents came.

The elevator started to descend with a whoosh. Hawking was fixing the zipper on his suit. Mila looked at the elevator doors, as if expecting them to jump open the moment the elevator stopped."So," Mila said, more to break the silence than anything else, "where are you going from here?"

Hawking looked up. "Oh, about and around," he replied vaguely. "I'm doing some work abroad."

"Ah, I see," said Mila, though she did not see at all. Before she could open her mouth to ask Hawking what 'abroad' meant, the elevator came to an abrupt halt, knocking Mila off balance. She stumbled into the wall, then righted herself with a sheepish look to Hawking. He smiled. "It does that all the time. Why, my first time back--" He was interrupted by the elevator's voice, issuing from who-knows-where.

-Welcome to Earth. Please make your way down the landing platform and across to the main building. Our workers are standing by to help. Your luggage can be picked up in the main building's atrium. Have a nice day.-

The doors hissed open. Mila looked around, hardly able to breathe. Everything was so bright, and colorful, and full of life. On LuCA, everything had had gray tones, but here, the grass was green and thick, and the red uniforms of the workers glowed. And the sky--it was blue! Blue with a large, blinding circle in it that Mila knew was the sun. She looked around in awe.

"Well, are you coming or not?" Mila looked over at Hawking, who had descended the white landing platform steps and was now sitting in a little cart. Mila laughed. "Is that the Earth version of a rover?" she asked.

"This? No. Cars are much bigger."

"Caaaars." Mila played with the word. It sounded weird coming out of her own mouth. The C and the long A just didn't go together. "Caaaaaaaaaaarrrrssss."

"Mila, get in the golf cart."

Mila hopped in the other side. "Now there's a funny word. Golf. Golf. Gooolffff."

☯☯☯☯

"Snack baaaaarr."

"I knew we shouldn't have stopped for a smoothie."

"Smooothieeee?"

"Mila!"

☯☯☯☯

Mila was airborne again. She had taken the 2:00 PM flight out of the Houston airport. She was told that she would arrive in Cairo at 4:15 AM the next day. And then it was on to Nyklos. Hawking had said goodbye at the airport. He had been hurrying off "abroad" as well.

Mila looked down at the lights below her. She always felt safer, somehow, when she was in the air. It felt natural to be looking down at the world below her, as she had done on her journey to Earth. She rolled over in her hoverbed. Time to get some sleep.

And so Mila Arwyr slept, as the world passed below and the stars above.

Chapter Seven

Outside the windows, the moon was receding in the distance. Mila watched it go, squinting to find out if she could see even a trace of LuCA. But she had left the Moon around 12 hours ago, and now the Moon had rotated so that she could not see her home anymore. Mila sighed. She had heard stories and reports about Earth, had watched it's blue, green, and white swirled globe rise over the horizon every 24 hours, but she had never gone.

She was wearing the standard-issue Luna-Terra (travelers whose home was on LuCA) travel clothes: a silver jumpsuit, with the crest of LuCA embroidered on the breast. Terra-Luna (people whose home was on Earth) voyagers wore a silvery-blue jumpsuit with the crest of Earth on it, sometimes along with their country's flag underneath the emblem. Mila was also wearing LT (Lunar-Terra) shoes: silver boots with black soles and a zipper up the side.

She carried a backpack that had her essentials in it: for her, a tablet on which she had downloaded the location of the Nyklos burial site in Egypt, along with as much information as she could find on Thellas, the Llachar, Cori Ashrak, ancient forms of Latin, and the Nyklae mummies. She had stuffed a few Powerbars in the backpack as well, along with two hologram photos: one of her and Jakk as children, the other of her mother and father. The latter she pulled from her backpack.

She pressed her thumb to the printlock on the back, and the hologram sprang into life. Her mother's smiling blue eyes looked out at her. Her father's arms were around her mother, and he was smiling as well, his chin on her shoulder. Mila suppressed tears as she looked at her parents. When Mila was barely a year old, both of her parents had died in a rover malfunction, along with the two others that made up the rest of their team. Mila had been brought up by the community of LuCA since then.

"If you don't mind me asking, are those your parents?" Mila jumped, and turned around to see a man wearing the TL (Terra-Luna) uniform behind her. His gray hair was combed neatly and pushed behind his ears. He was leaning forward on his hands, and Mila could see that he wore a gold ring set with a black stone on the middle finger of his right hand. She vaguely recognized the flag on his uniform as the UK one.

"Um, yes." Mila said, clicking the hologram shut.

"Ah," The man said, and this time Mila picked up on the accent in his voice. On LuCA, the colonies' inhabitants spoke a variety of languages, but the main one was English. The accents definitely differed, as many families came from different parts of Terra. The younger LuCA generations had developed a dialect that was a bit of everything. Mila had only heard a few people, mostly Elite, speak with accents.

After a short, semi-awkward pause, the man spoke again. "Where are my manners?" he asked, throwing his hands in the air. "Aster Hawking, History Head of the LuCA improvement company." He offered a firm hand for Mila to shake. She took it, saying, "Mila Arwyr, LuCA resident. Labor class. Engineer." He smiled deeply. "Ah, Mila Arwyr."

Oh no, don't let him say anything about the lab incident, Mila prayed silently. Please.

"You're the one that trashed a few labs a couple of months ago."

And, here we go. Mila forced a smile. "Yes sir, that's me." He waved his hand. "No need to call me sir. Hawking will do fine."

"Yes, Hawking, the lab incident was my fault."

"Oh, I'm not here to punish you, Mila," he laughed, and she couldn't resist smiling as well. "I recognized you because I knew your parents, the ones in that hologram." He nodded to the small cube in Mila's hand. "You did?"

"Well, I only knew them for a couple months, but we grew close. I was on LuCA when the...uh, accident happened. It was horrible."

"I know."

"You look like them." Mila had never been told that she looked like anyone. "Thank you, sir--er, Hawking."

Hawking smiled. "So, what brings you to Earth?"

"Research," Mila said, not technically lying. "I started to take an interest in Egyptian burial sites." She decided to take a risk. "Especially the Nyklos case." Hawking nodded his head. "Yes. I heard about it on the news when I was just a kid. Even though it happened almost 50 years ago, it's amazing that no one understands what happened there."

"Yeah. You'd think with all our technology, someone would know about it."

Hawking laughed softly. "What?" asked Mila, suspicious. "Nothing," he responded. "It's just that one of the last memories I have of your mother is talking about this very thing, and she said exactly what you did."

The two of them sat in silence for a while, thinking their own thoughts, each not wanting to disturb the other for fear of bringing tears to their companion's eyes.

Chapter Six

"Ah, Mila Arwyr," the ULOS official smiled his cold smile at her. "Nice to see you again."

"The pleasure is mine," Mila said, though her words were far from the truth. She hated ULOS, with it's synthetic voices, the manner in which the Elite customers looked at her, and the feeling of inferiority she got every time she walked through it's polished doors.

Mila was sitting in a silver chair in a small office. Across the glass desk, the ULOS official was polishing his glasses. "So, Mila," he began. Mila tried hard not to let her hatred show. "I understand that you took a rover out at approximately," he checked his watch, "0900 Terra hours yesterday. Your companion was Jakk Cynor, and you returned at 2304 Terra hours. Is this correct?"

"It is."

The man sniffed. "Jakk Cynor filed a report saying that you had found evidence of a ULO. Is this true?"

Here comes the hard part, Mila thought. She leaned forward, putting her elbows on the table. She saw the man flinch as she moved closer to him. Idiot. "What you have to understand about my friend," Mila said, trying to make her voice as close to the silky tones of the Elite as possible, "Is that his imagination is, to say the least, wild. What we found was an oddly shaped rock that looked remarkably like a satellite. Jakk was convinced that it was a ULO of some sort, and he insisted on filing a report immediately. I inspected the rock, I even took the liberty of running some tests on it. It is a perfectly normal moon rock, despite what my friend might have said."

The official seemed to be buying her story, though you could never tell with ULOS. After a few awkward minutes of silence, he answered. "Very well, Mila. I shall cancel the report. Have a nice day."

Mila rose. "Thank you," she said graciously, dipping her head for effect, before turning and gliding out of the room.

And hold for the applause.

☯☯☯☯

Back in her room, Mila pulled the book she had found in the library out of a compartment under her bed. She flipped carefully to the page that mentioned the Llachar. "Scan," She ordered her interface. A green light clicked on and ran over the page in Mila's hands.

-Scan complete-

"Send it."

-To where?-

"Jakk Cynor."

-Message sent-

Mila sighed. "Thanks, interface." She carefully wrapped the book in white cloth and placed it in her pack. She zipped up the bag and grabbed her dark blue jacket. She hastily put the jacket on, grabbed her bag, and headed for the transporter. "Interface, lock my room," she called over her shoulder. "I won't be coming back for a while."

☯☯☯☯

Mila pressed the red button in the booth. "State your name and business," came the cool voice. Mila took a deep breath.

"Mila Arwyr. I'm going to Earth."

Chapter Five

"So you're saying that after this little rectangle opened itself, spewed death threats at you, and told you that you had the 'blood of the Llachar', it self-destructed, leaving nothing behind."

"Well, when you put it that way, it does sound a little fantastic."

"Just a little, Mila?!"

Jakk and Mila were sitting in Mila's quarters. She was perched on her bed, swinging her legs back and forth as she told her story. He had taken one of Mila's kitchen chairs and dragged it into the small space that was her bedroom.

"What are we going to tell ULOS?" Jakk ran his hands through his dark hair and muffled his face in them.

"You mean, you told ULOS about the rectangle?" Mila was furious now. "Jakk! You know I wanted more time to examine it!"

"Yeah, and you handled that so well," Jakk retorted. "You blew the thing up!"

"It self-destructed," Mila snapped, thinking to herself how much her remark sounded like a line from a ridiculous science fiction story. [[haha, I love making fun of myself :P]]

"Whatever," Jakk said, standing up. "I'm going to go back to my quarters. Have fun telling your little lie to ULOS." He stormed out of the bedroom, stomped over to the transporter, and started tapping in his address on the transporter controls. Still sitting on the bed, Mila listened to the transporter's whoosh and Jakk's angry footsteps.

When the noise had subsided, she arose from her seat and despondently dragged the chair back into the kitchen. She grabbed a Powerbar* from her cabinet and headed for the transporter.

☯☯☯☯

The library on LuCA was the only place that didn't fit in. Most of the colony was constructed of a silvery white metal known as stromn, with matching furnishings. The library had stromn walls, to keep out the relentless nothing that was the moon's atmosphere, but the theme of the room could not have differed more. Oak paneling covered up the walls, and huge bookcases towered up to the vibrantly painted celling that had long since started to fade. Desks made of dark wood were placed around the space, and these were lighted by lambs that looked like glowing orbs floating around the room.

Mila sat at one of the spacious desks, flipping through a leather bound book with yellow, cracked pages. She had scanned what felt like every book in the library for any mention of the Llachar, and so far, nothing. Mila put her head down on the book, placing her cheek on it's withered surface.

Suddenly, a word caught her eye on the page beside her. "Llachar," Mila read quietly aloud. She lifted her head off of the desk and bent over the book.

{In the year 2048, Thellas discovered several preserved mummies on the Nyklos site. These corpses were buried deep underground, in solid gold caskets inscribed with runic symbols. These same symbols appeared on the sides of the tunnel leading down to the burial site.

The mummies, referred to as Nyklae, all had the same piece of papyrus lying on their chest. On this papyrus was what appeared to be a lyric of sorts, written in three different languages, one of which was an archaic form of Latin. Thellas translated as much of the message as he could. It reads as follows:

In this tombe of greate honour lies the kings of the Llachar, continued in their greate legacie by the Chosen of the Llachar, who carrie their Bloode as princes of Terra.

In these bodies were found traces of blood that had been preserved by an unknown rite since the subjects died. These blood traces were set to be brought back to a lab for further examination, but on the night before the shipping, Thellas's camp was ravaged and the samples destroyed. The intruders also killed most of Thellas's expedition, including the scientist himself.

An assistant named Corai Ashrak escaped with his life, and two years later, brought a second expedition back to Nyklos. The tunnels were found sealed, and the bodies, as well as the blood they contained, was lost.}

Mila sat back in her chair in astonishment.

[[*About the Powerbar: I love these snacks (not sure if anyone else does) and I simply HAD to put one in there because I saw them recently on a show I was watching...it's just a personal joke XD]]

Chapter Four

The signal emitter was a silver rectangle, about 3/4 foot by 2 feet. It was a few inches high, and there was no way to open it as far as Mila could see. As she ran her hands over it, she noticed that the surface was unnaturally slippery: she could barely get a grip on it. Jakk had decided to drive while Mila examined the rectangle.

"Anything?" Jakk said over his shoulder.

"Nope," Mila answered. "Is the signal still up?"

Jakk tapped a few buttons on his tablet. "Yep. I think we're going to have to bring it to ULOS for inspection, just to be on the safe side."

Mila groaned. "ULOS takes forever. Do you know how many regulation forms they have to fill out?!" ULOS was the acronym for Unidentified Moon Object Services. They regulated and tested any objects found outside the colony. "And we might not even get it back," Mila added.

"What are we going to do with it then?" Jakk flipped the switch to put RALT on auto-pilot and turned his seat to face Mila. "Smuggle it in?"

Mila smiled one of her signature Cheshire cat grins. "Exactly."

☯☯☯☯

Mila and Jakk stared at the rectangle, their hands beneath their chins. "It's not doing anything," Jakk said in a whisper. "Shut up," Mila snapped. "Maybe if you'll stop talking, then it'll activate, or something..."

Jakk stood up. "We've been here for--" he checked his lunar watch, "almost an hour. I'm going to get some dinner. Want to come?"

"Nah, I'm fine," Mila said, not taking her eyes from the silver object. "You go on ahead."

Jakk sighed, gave the rectangle a last parting glance, then picked his way through the junk in his lab. Mila heard the lab door open and close as he walked out, but she paid no attention. All of her scrutiny was focused on the silver rectangle that lay a few inches from her nose. She could see her warped reflection in it's shiny depths. On an impulse, she reached out her index finger and touched the object's surface.

The silver surface rippled under her touch. Mila pulled her hand away instantly, but the change did not stop. From where her finger had touched, a black stain rippled outward, engulfing the entire rectangle. With a hiss, the top half of the rectangle separated from the bottom. Mila scrambled away from the morphing object in distress, knocking her chair over. She clicked on her headset, but all she heard was static.

"Hello? Hello? Can anyone hear me? Repeat, is anyone there?"

Nothing but feedback.

By now the top rectangle had floated over and laid itself to the side. Mila approached the other half of the object and peered cautiously inside. The inside was completely white, blank. Mila groaned. "All this for nothing?!" Her voice echoed around the empty lab. She didn't expect an answer, but one came. From the rectangle on the table.

-Who has activated my probe? Speak up!-

Mila gaped in astonishment. "I'm....Mila Arwyr," she stammered at last. "Of LuCA."

-What is this "LuCA" you speak of?- [[classic alien line, had to put it in there!]]

"Lunar Colony Alpha. What are you?"

The voice grew cold. -That is of no concern to you. Where is this LuCA?-

Mila crossed her arms. "Tell me what you are first, and then I'll tell you that."

-No matter- the voice sneered. -You have activated my device. The signal should be even stronger now. I should be thanking you.-

"For what?!"

The rectangle ignored her. -Tell me, how did a female carrying the blood of the Llachar come to be on Terra's moon?-

"Blood of the who?"

-Never mind. You have proved yourself useful. Too bad that you must be destroyed.-

In a flash of light, the box and it's contents disappeared, leaving Mila Arwyr with more questions than answers.

Chapter Three

"I hate having breakfast at Geal's in my work clothes." Mila took a bite out of her toast with butter and cinnamon.

"Why?" Jakk asked. He was busy cutting up his scrambled eggs.

"Everyone stares at me," Mila said, casting glances around at the other customers. "I mean, I know I'm only Labor and most of them are Elite, but they could at least be polite."

Jakk looked around. The resturant was made of a shiny, flawless white color. The tables, the chairs, even the workers' uniforms were pure white. The only color in the diner came from the customer's clothes, and most of those were a smooth silver, gray, or black. Only Jakk and Mila stood out: her in bright pants and boots, he in his crocheted green sweater and dark brown pants.

"Well, watch them bow on their knees and thank you when you fix everything in their over-bedazzled quarters." Jakk said, forking scrambled eggs into his mouth. "That'll be a sight to see."

"Yeah, but I hate feeling like I'm inferior to them," Mila complained. She lowered her voice. "Look at how they're staring at us. Like we're something that they scraped off the bottom of their polished shoe."

"What are you going to do about it?" Jakk leaned back in his seat and stared across the table at his friend.

Mila ran her fingers through her sandy blonde hair. "That's just the thing. Ican't do anything about it." She sighed. "Forget it. It's just a stupid pet peeve."

Jakk studied her. "Hmm," he said indifferently. "Well, I'm done." He pushed out his seat and stood up. Mila did the same. Jakk laid down two gold lunarcoins down on the table.

"That breakfast cost me a lot. You eat like a pig," he teased as they walked out of Geal's.

"Hey, you wake me up early, you pay the price," Mila smiled. "Now, let's go hunt some signal."

☯☯☯☯

"You sure it was here?"

"Positive."

Mila and Jakk had been tracking down the signal for over eight hours. It had taken them at least six hours to get to the Other Side, even using RALT (Rover Alpha Lunar Three)'s boosters. They had been actually scanning the three mile radius for about two hours. The readings had gotten stronger the closer they got to the site, but so far they had found nothing.

The moon's blank, gray surface surrounded them. No crashed satellite, no mysteriously glowing rock, no weird looking craters. Nothing.

In RALT, Mila sighed. "Maybe we should just give up."

"Give up?" Jakk asked. "The great Mila Arwyr giving up? Impossible." He handed Mila a hand scanner. "Here. Let's get out on foot."

He pressed a button on RALT's console, and the top hatch slid open with a hiss. Jakk and Mila, dressed in their spacesuits, climbed out and onto the moon's surface. Mila bounced around, enjoying the feeling of being (almost) as light as air. LuCA had artificial gravity, and it had been a long time since Mila had ventured outside of the colony.

Jakk was scanning already. Mila pulled out her own scanner and bounded several yards away.

Blip. Blip. Blip.

The scanner was consistent in it's beeping. Mila walked forward.

Blip blip blip blip blip.

The beeps became more rapid. Mila walked forward another few bounds.

blipblipblipblipblipblipblipblip

The beeping became almost a single sound. "Jakk!" Mila shouted excitedly over her headset. "I think I found it!"

Chapter Two

"I'm in the back," Jakk called. Mila picked her way through the debris. Scattered bits of metal littered the dirty lab floor. The overhead lights were turned off to conserve power: Jakk was slightly paranoid about power failures. A faint light came from the console lights in the back. Mila climbed over what looked like an ancient Class B rover and landed with a thump in front of the wrecked probe. Jakk was bent over the console, tapping it's surface.

"Oh gosh." Mila stared at the fried rover. "You really did it this time, didn't you?"

Jakk gave a snort of protest. "Well, I was trying to re-calibrate the sensors, when suddenly it went all whacko on me!"

Mila leaned over Jakk, examining the console from over his shoulders. "Did you try rebooting it?"

"Yes, yes," sighed Jakk. "I ran it through a few programs. Nothing."

"So you're saying it's manual," Mila reached into her back pocket and pulled out her yellow work gloves.

"That's why I called you in." Jakk explained.

"Then, let's get started." Mila slipped on her gloves and reached for a hoverpad. She laid the body-sized panel down on the floor, where it hovered a few inches above the ground. She laid down on it gently, the pad dipping slightly to compensate for her added weight.

"Mila, before you go in there, I think you should know something first," Jakk peered over at her.

"Make it quick. I can see lots of outward damage," Mila snapped. Her hands were already itching to rewire the rover.

"Well, the whole reason I was trying to recalibrate Ralph's sensors was--"

"Wait a minute. 'Ralph'?" Mila's attention turned back to Jakk.

"Yeah. Ralph." Jakk shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "From it's initials. R. A. L. F. Rover Alpha Lunar Five."

Mila smirked. "Continue."

"I was recalibrating Ralph's sensors because it picked up a reading from the Other Side."

There was dead silence in the room. Mila slowly slid out from under the rover and sat up. "Did you just say, 'from the Other Side'?"

Jakk's hazel eyes were still fixed on the screen, but Mila could see the tightness in his forearms. "Yes." His voice was so soft, Mila could barely hear it. "It was so faint and quick, I barely caught it. At first, I thought I was imagining things. Been stuck in the lab too long. But then, a few minutes later, there it was again."

Mila got up from the hoverpad and walked over next to Jakk. She pulled up a chair from behind her and sat down next to her friend. "What kind of reading was it?"

Jakk massaged his forehead with the bottom of his palms. "From what I can tell, it was a signal."

"Did you get a lock on the coordinates?"

"I have a general locate."

"Then you know what that means." A grin split Mila's face. She stood up, kicking the chair away with her right foot.

"The last time I saw that look, I spent three days filling out rover regulation forms," Jakk sighed.

Mila's smile got even wider. "Grab your tablet Jakk, we're going on a signal hunt!"

"But breakfast first!" Jakk insisted.

Chapter One

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

"Oh shut up..." Mila muttered. Her interface continued beeping. Mila slid her gray heat-generator blanket off of her body and rolled out of bed. She landed with a thump on the floor.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

"Coming, coming!" Mila groaned. She got up from the floor, still sleepy, and rubbed her gray eyes. "Interface, what is it?"

-Message from Jakk Cynor-

"Why didn't you say so in the first place?!" The interface did not respond. Cheeky little thing. Mila thought. Maybe I'll get it replaced.

Interfaces were the way that the inhabitants of LuCA communicated with each other. The lunar colony was expansive, so the development of interfaces allowed colonists to send messages to each other quickly and efficiently.

"Play message," she said aloud. Jakk's voice came through the interface, as clear as if he was standing right next to her. "Hey, Mila. Sorry to disturb you so early, but one of my rovers is fried. I need you to come right over and take a look at it ASAP, k? After you check it out I'll buy you breakfast at Geal's. Bye." The interface clicked off.

Mila rolled her eyes. "Interface, send a reply to Jakk." She waited for a minute, then recorded. "Jakk, that breakfast better be good. Mila out." A ping sounded. -Message sent-

Mila slipped out of her one piece sleepwear and pulled on her dark yellow jumpsuit pants. The pants were DuraCloth, a material that was resistant to tears and burns. The DuraCloth pants had several pockets, which were littered with spare lunarcoins, bits of paper, and tools.

Over that, she put on a dark gray-blue work shirt. This shirt was less high-grade than her pants, but it had stuck with her ever since she had started work at age 13. It also had a sleeve pocket, in which she stored her ID chip.

Mila pulled on her brown DuraCloth socks and bright orange boots, clipped the overall straps on her pants to each other and swung her dark brown pack over her shoulder with a clink of metal. She crossed to her door, pulled it open, and stepped out into the transporter's bright light.

☯☯☯

Mila loved transporter travel, but the thing she liked even better was rover travel. Unfortunately, GOM, the government of LuCA, had suspended her rover license two terra months ago. There had been a little accident involving a couple of broken labs, and even though Mila had fixed everything, she had only just gotten her permit back. She decided that taking the transporter would be a better way to play it safe.

The doors hissed open in front of the door to Jakk's lab. Mila stepped out of it and pressed the blue button by the door. "Jakk? It's Mila." she called. There was a pause, then Jakk's voice came back through the speakers. "Come on in." The silver doors slid open, and Mila walked into the dark lab.

Intro & Info

LuCa is a science fiction story by me, Akire. It chronicles the adventures of Mila Arwyr, a twenty five year old living on LuCa, the first lunar colony. When her friend's rover's sensors pick up a strange energy reading from the Other Side of the Moon, she is plunged into an adventure that will change her life, as well as millions of others' forever.

Info:

LuCA-->The name of the colony is an abbreviation of Lunar Colony Alpha. It was established in the year 2020. LuCa is now on it's 71st year, the date being 2091.

Labor--> The work force of LuCA. They are the poorer of the two ranks, and work in jobs such as Engineer, Construction, or Rover Pilot. The higher of the Labor can also be assistants to the Elite in areas like science or medicine.

Elite--> The Elite are the higher rank of LuCA. They are typically very well groomed and mannered, and they hold jobs that don't require as much effort as those of the Labor. Elites might have jobs like Teacher, Doctor, Scientist, or Researcher.

GOM--> GOM stands for Government Of the Moon. They are in charge of everything on LuCA, and can revoke or grant privileges to anyone.

ULOS--> ULOS stands for Unidentified Lunar Object Services. They deal with new objects discovered on the Moon's surface.

Culture of LuCA--> The Elite typically look down on the Labor, and treat them like servants who cater to their every whim. The accent of LuCA is sort of a mix of everything, though some of the older generations still retain their "home" accent.