For the following few weeks, a team of ten people were working on entering the

  bunker that Eldon had led them to. The area around was cleared so that the power

  and air intakes could be exposed. It seemed like a futile effort. The bunker was built

  to withstand nuclear explosions.

  No drill could go through the walls, and air intake was filtered in a way that nothing would crawl through.

  Repowering the station was pointless as well, since it ran the risk of security systems turning on instead

  of doors opening.

  The bright idea of digging and going underneath led to yet another dead-end,

  since the whole bunker was meant to withstand attacks from Goblins, which are

  masters of digging.

  Finally, Jain came up with a bright idea. “How about we drop

  something heavy on it?” she said.

  “Like what,” said Steve with a smirk, “a mountain?”

  “Actually,” said Jain, “something like it. Can you calculate the force a

  Cerberus would impact with if no parachutes were to open?”

  Steve’s eyes opened wide. “That sounds like something that could work.” He

  could not hide his excitement. “If we drop it right on the joint of the bunker door and

  the walls, it might crack it like an egg.”

  “Wouldn’t that sacrifice the Cerberus?” asked Alex. “I mean, I love the idea of

  seeing something like that, but we would lose one of our most important defense

  units.”

  Jain thought for a second. “Do we care?” she asked. “I mean, we have a few

  more, and we don’t seem to need them anymore.”

  “You’re probably right,” said Alex. “Also, the wonders we might find in there

  far outweigh the cost of a Cerberus. Let’s do it.”

  “I want to add,” said Steve, “that the parts will be salvageable. We might even

  repair it at some point.”

  “What are we waiting for then? Everyone! Begin clearing out your equipment.

  Steve, when can we have it drop?” Alex was just as excited as everyone else to see

  this tremendous crash take place.

  “I can have the calculations ready in one hour, give or take.” Steve checked

  his arm screen for a few seconds and added, “Hera will pass above us in about six

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  hours. We should be ready by then.”

  About six hours later, the Cerberus appeared in the sky as a bright comet falling.

  There were no thrusters on it, so the drop had to be calculated precisely. It crash

  landed on the bunker with incredible accuracy. The impact could be felt as an

  earthquake to the goblin outpost five kilometers away. At a large city a few kilometers

  further, it was heard like loud thunder, accompanied by a mild tremor. Although they

  were informed of the impending event, they could hardly believe that they would feel

  anything from those distances. The event made the species that heard of it afterward

  worry about the powers that the humans had in their control.

  The bunker had finally given way. The right side of the bunker gate, where the

  door was rooted in, broke and left an opening large enough for a human to pass

  through. More importantly, it was a point from which they could work to open the gate

  fully.

  Alex entered first, like a young child exploring something for the first time.

  Jain heard him laughing, and her curiosity piqued. “Treasure!” he yelled with joyful

  laughter. One by one they entered and lit the place up. Weapons, machines of many

  kinds, gadgets and more, the bunker was filled with items, each of which could

  revolutionize human technology. Above all else was the crown jewel of their findings.

  A bus-sized craft that looked like it was meant for outer space travel hid in there. The

  greatest discovery they made would soon bring a new page in everyone’s future.

  Steve was practically dancing, surrounded by a plethora of things waiting for him to

  understand. From Argos, Margaret turned to Helen and told her, “We will finally

  decode the crystals.” It was a joyful moment for all.

  As time went by, the relationships between the other species began to mend. Prana

  from the Naga became something of a friend with Jain, who spent hours talking

  about the cultural differences of their species and how their worlds were destroyed.

  Steve, along with a team of engineers, reverse-engineered the spacecraft and began

  creating their own first prototypes.

  The bunker seemed to be a research base, used

  exclusively for the research of antimatter. The battery for the aircraft was the only

  truly complicated part that required time to understand. It could create antimatter on

  demand out of ordinary matter and then use it to fuel itself and propel the ship,

  annihilating matter with antimatter in the process. The conversion from matter to

  antimatter and then pure energy with 100 percent efficiency was hiding under Gaia

  all this time. Argos would never seek energy anywhere else.

  The construction of it, however, proved hard enough that they would not be able to produce

  more than a couple of engines in the following years. The only one working was the one found in

  the alien ship. It looked like they had built a lot more of them in the past. It is thought

  at this point that they were mass produced and used for the escape spaceships of

  the kings.

  There were even five experimental high-power laser rifles, powered with a

  similar technology, but they were obviously not used and still in testing stage. In

  theory, one of those weapons could fire energy beams, similar to plasma, trillions of

  times before running out and becoming unusable. Those could not be reloaded.