First Step - Sci-fi short story by WitherBloom

-First Step-

It had been 13 days by our own solar tuning since we entered the orbit of Aexirius, an unexplored planet on the outskirts of the Pallian XI super cluster.

Our scientists grew eager, several months and a year spent waiting on board in the strange unearthly throws of near light speed and a constant state of bottled excitement... the hope that they might discover something, perhaps gain some kind of honorable reputation.. or at the least get away from their desk jobs back home.
In the light of the second dawn a shadow appeared. Our curiosity would never match what we found....

The temple was unlike anything we had ever seen...

The captain assembled a team...
Two scientists lead by the reputable Doctor Kristov who, though he was the smartest of all the passengers aboard spent most of his time with his lips glued to a bottle of whisky, two bio engineers, a squadron of soldiers boasting a homesick young general, Gustav and myself... a Xeno-philologist that might as well be a bard, given my lack of alien experience and my love for long winded story telling...

Above us towered the temple... its walls told stories i could not stop to fathom... my skills were clearly unmatched, i began to study the markings but before i could make sense of a single thread... the temple doors opened

Through corridors and halls we roamed, days were spent exploring the ruins before we came across the centre door... above it hung a symbol, though i had studied for years on all things astral, ancient and alien the symbol told me nothing..

After a whole week i began making sense from the tablet we found in front of the door.. we all knew it held secrets..

and then suddenly it clicked, the words formed in front of my eyes and i spoke them aloud... the door to the center chamber opened...
This was a burial site...

Doctor Kristov ordered several of the bodies back to our temporal research station which had been set up in the second hall of the temple while the rest of us searched...
The specimen was incredible... its bone structure seemed crystalline... its head was large enough for a brain twice the size of a human... its rib cage extended over the neck and shoulders and seemed to act like an armour of sorts.

It was soon then after that the captain pulled the plug, to our disappointment... some excuse about resources and the amount of time we had taken.. the main argument was that we had got enough data to work on and that we should return home and organize an interplanetary relocation mission, begin with the settlement... He had decided on his own accord that the planet had long been deserted and that it was time for us to colonize...

We set off on the eve of the 75th day....

From the forest they watched.... hungry and waiting.... giggling to each other about how foolish we were...

knowing that we would return soon enough they began to prepare for the hunt!

An alien expedition written by WitherBloom
Artwork created using midjourney