Discovery Gaming Community

A bead of sweat ran down the side of Tal’s forehead, Omicron Delta’s three suns doing their part to make his life miserable. Planet Nauru’s “unique” climate was something that he’d probably never get used to, but alas, here he was again, on another trip to hell in pursuit of ancient riches. However, the prize this time wasn’t a measly paycheck and pat-on-the-back from the Core, no, this time, it was way bigger. Maybe even a little too big.

Tal Ravis was in fact standing before a pyramid, likely constructed years and years ago by an ancient people long since gone. Recent shifts in wind direction had unearthed the sizeable, pearl-colored structure from a sandy prison, and the failure of the Core or Zoners to detect and capitalize on this monumental event meant that he’d have first dibs on just about everything he could pack onto his sandrail. There was only one problem.

The only entrance was a cat door.

It probably wasn’t intended to be a cat door, but from what he could see on the surface, nothing smaller than one of those sniveling, hateful little creatures could fit through the damn thing. As such, he was faced with two entry options: force an opening in the side of the pyramid and risk destroying all kinds of artifacts and perhaps the entire structure itself, or dig further down through layers and layers of sulfur and sand to possibly unearth more door without causing significant damage.

---

Tal stood up from a kneeling position and took a step back, squinting in the sunlight at a large, makeshift oval charge that he’d so vigorously worked on for the last twenty minutes. It was a mess, to be honest, of tangled bundles of detonation cord hooked up to a remote detonator and smothered in duct tape, and he had no clue if it would actually have enough explosive power to blast a hole clean through the wall, but hey, trial-and-error was just part of the experience.

He inspected the breaching charge for a little while longer before deciding, with his infinite wisdom, that this looked just fine, and he took a step forward to press a little button on the charge’s detonator that changed the device’s light from green to red, indicating that the explosive was armed. That done, he executed an about face and quickly waddled through the sand, making his way back to and over a large formation of rocks that were supposed to be his cover from any stray flying debris.

Using the rock as a support, he quickly squatted down, heels planted, and moved his sand-encrusted combat shotgun from behind his back to in front of his stomach, where it nestled comfortably on all sorts of pouches and other mostly useless gear. This tactical pre-positioning was all accomplished before he drew the olive-green detonator from a belt pouch, which he held out tightly in his right hand as he prepared to show the pyramid what he was made of.

"There's no way this is legal, even in the Omicrons." In an instant, the apparent professionalism of the scene was ruined. Komachi knew her partner in crime liked to think of himself as some sort of grizzled veteran, but that hadn't stopped her from raising one eyebrow after another as she'd watched the man struggle with a second-hand explosive charge and loops of entangled wire for the past half an hour. Of course, she felt perfectly justified in allowing him to figure out a way inside on his own - her part of the deal mostly involved her piloting skills, and she'd upheld her end of things by managing to coax an Anki with sand choking every last one of its turbines across the desert. If it weren't for her, there wouldn't be a pyramid within a hundred miles to break into.

That said, she was beginning to doubt Ravis' expertise more and more. The pyramid looked decidedly fragile to her - it could've been centuries, if not millennia, old - and the original builders probably hadn't designed it to withstand plastic explosive. "You might just collapse the whole thing, too. We're not here to bury it again. Couldn't we just chip away at the hole until it's big enough?" By 'we', she meant 'you', but wisely decided to leave that as being implicit.

Truth be told, Komachi would have accepted a pickup off this stupid, sandy, sulphurous world a week ago. There was no happy sweet spot of things to wear on Nauru - either you slowly cooked under the three Delta suns, or you tried to get away with wearing less to beat the heat and found yourself smothered in caustic sand. It was almost insulting - the planet didn't even have the decency to be a properly toxic or dangerous world; instead, it was permanently stuck in the category of 'very annoying'. The only nice things about Nauru were things like the smooth, porcelain-white pyramid in front of her, and the idea of their blowing a hole in the side of it and setting about pillaging it from within was beginning to leave her feeling just a little guilty.

As usual, Tal didn't appear to be listening to her. This was something of a common theme, and one that worked both ways. If she kept pressing him, he'd be grumpy for days - more so than normal, anyway - particularly if she interrupted him playing at soldier. Therefore, with a final roll of her eyes, she slumped back against the rock that was to shield them, crossing her arms in front of her chest and looking thoroughly put out. A strident beeping caught her attention, and after unfastening a patch of Velcro on the sleeve of her jacket she soon located the offending instrument.

"Hurry up," she complained again, hoping she was interrupting some important mental calculation. Needling her partner in crime was one of the few perks of the job. "There's a sandstorm in... about fifteen minutes, by the looks of it. I wanna be inside by then, for once.

"Yeah, yeah, don't worry about it," assured Tal, who shifted his grip on the detonator a few times before tilting his head down and holding his flat-khaki boonie cover to his head, "Just hold onto your teeth!"

He shut his eyes and tightly squeezed the detonator's "explode-y lever", as he so affectionately called it for lack of a better term, and waited for a bang and that damn ringing sound in his ear, but somehow, in a completely anti-climatic manner, neither came. Gradually, he opened his eyes and loosened the death grip he had on the detonator, listening intently for any kind of delayed explosion, but still, none came. Thinking that he didn't press the lever hard enough, he gave the trinket two more clacks, using all his strength to squeeze the life out of the device both times, but yet again, there was no explosion.

Quickly, he looked up and brought the device into view, flipping it around several times in order to visually inspect it. From his observations, it looked like it should've worked, but for some reason, it didn't. Eager to blow the damn thing and loot the temple so he could go home while simultaneously not wanting to go up to fiddle with a live explosive charge that he may or may not have just "set off", he resorted to beating the device with the palm of his gloved hands, the rough, thick fabric of Ageira-brand assault gloves producing an audible thwack with each hit. In the aftermath of each thwack, however, he swore he could hear a resonating jingle of some kind, and he looked at the device again to discover something that he probably should've checked from the get-go.

The safety pin was still in the detonator.

He didn't know how he could've missed it, as angling the detonator in certain ways reflected bright light from Delta's three suns into Tal's eyes and pissed him the hell off. Gritting his teeth, he pinpointed the location of the miniature key ring that acted as a grip for unplugging the pin, and fiddled with it for a few seconds as he continuously failed to get a solid grip on it with his gloves on.

By some grace of God, he was eventually able to skillfully put the little ring between his thumb and index finger, and with a quick flick of his wrist, the pin came out with ease. That done, he flipped the detonator around in his palm and gave it a good, full clack, which was followed up by a loud, sudden bang and a burst of white smoke that blew all the way from the temple to just over their heads, where it lingered for a bit before being swept away in a hot gust of wind.

Tal tensed up, ears ringing from the sound of what must've been at least a pound of det cord going off, and turned round just as the smoke cleared. Dropping a knee to go from a squat to a tactical kneel, he brought his shotgun up to his shoulder and rested the front of the weapon on top of the rock, ready to blast anything that stumbled out of the big cloud of dust and sand that had been kicked up in front of what might hopefully be a human-sized hole in the wall.