Jackpot


Captain Tyler Jordan braced the wheel of his buggy as it made a leap over another dune. He was pretty excited, after all, they located a crack on the 150XKW crater, and this meant they could be in for a real treat.

"Who knows what we'll find this time? Hopefully a vault .. servers... or maybe even cryo. Fingers crossed..."

It was always mixed emotions when finding the cryo vaults. Gruesome place, most of the people in there were cremated instantly when the blasts hit thirty years ago, so you went in with your eyes half open and breathing masks on. But the data storage was sometimes partially recoverable, and there was so much information stored there ...

Thirty long years ... Earth had a new face, but it was older than ever.

"Dyson told me to to keep him posted, another one of his silly hunches ...if only he wasn't right all the time ..."

The convoy reached the edge of the crater and plunged in, aiming for the big ravine below. They stopped right at the edge and prepped for descent. Sergeant Johnson whistled looking down...
- Wow ... I'd say about 300 meters deep, no visible targets.
- No sweat, deploy the cables, the two of you take the south-east wall, I'll take north-west.
- Roger roger, captain.


Jordan was the first to take the plunge, lead by example and all.

"A few decades ago, they were diving like this into the abyss of outer space ... and now, we're back digging for knowledge in the dirt. Nothing here ... yet."

The comm came to life:
- Captain Jordan, we found something!
- Well ... what is it Johnson?
- Cryo, sir.
- OK, lucky dog, run an initial sweep. I'll keep scanning this side and join you in 30.

Ten minutes and nothing more than broken rock later the comm came back:
- Tyler, you'd better get here now.
- What is it?
- We found a hidden interface, heavily encrypted. We started the code sweep and got through the first level encryption. There's another cryo hidden somewhere in here, and ...
- Spill it, Johnson!
- I don't know who they put in here, but the shielding on it is crazy. We might have survivors.
- WHAT?? I'll be right there.


Nullifiers on full, Tyler plunged through the canyon and in three giant leaps he was on top of the vault entrance. One more leap and he was looking at the vault manifest and cryo reports which just finished decrypting. As his eyes opened wide, he linked up the central comm channel.

- Get me Dyson.
- He's in the middle of the weekly council, can it wait?
- No, Stacy, get me Dyson right now.

A few seconds later a puzzled voice came from the other end:
- So? Was I right, again?
- We found survivors! We've hit jackpot, Dyson, fucking JACKPOT!!
- Slow down there, survivors, are you kidding me?
- You're not going to believe this, I'm staring at the manifest and  on top of the list it says Jayden Biron! And he's fucking alive!!! They've been under for thirty years so chances of succesful wake up are pretty slim, so you should talk to chief Marty from cryo and tell him to ... Dyson?

Dyson was already storming down the hall towards his buggy and had just finished speaking to Marty on comm. The top cryo personnel was to embark immediately and meet him at the newly marked location.

As he jumped into the driver seat he felt like this might be the best day since this whole mess started ...

"Jayden Biron alive ... FUCKING JACKPOT!!"

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