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brilliantly flooded the landscape with a warm ruddiness and creamy vanilla glow.
    Lexis ran a quick scan of the pyramid from the fully cloaked Chameleon as it moved across the Cydonian grasslands. She found a large service tunnel running under the abandoned archaeological site; small dunes blocked its entrance in a frozen state of undulating wind blown waves. The Chameleon slowly hovered over the dunes, and using short powerful bursts from its thrusters, loosely growing grasses ignited into flames. The air danced with orange tipped cinders and black spiraling vortices. Plumes of churned up sand quickly extinguish the fire. Displacing the natural barricade, the Chameleon pushed forward in a spectacle of dust and smoke, gliding into the crumbling concrete passageway.
    Much earlier in the history of Mankind’s discovery of the pyramids, and before any terraforming, archeologists had removed any ancient artifacts that were found. However, they did leave behind small forgotten abandoned underground outposts. Like tiny little ghost towns, Mars was dotted with many such sites.
    Miles of interconnecting service tunnels spanned out from this location, and if needed, Lexis could easily escape. In her planning for the Mars mission, Lexis had previously downloaded nearly every aspect of the planet, including historical maps of all the ancient dig sites. With this information, she could easily hide the Chameleon under the ancient Martian City of Cydonia.
    The underground outpost’s entrance was vault-like in its design, hermetically sealing it for centuries. The forgotten site was even equipped with a first generation Core Displacement Generator. Although inactive, Lexis had great confidence she could get the power source up and running again. Understanding the principles behind Core Technology was unassuming. Thermal energy within the Martian planet was converted to a usable power source by means of generators. The fact that these generators were of an older design only made her task simpler. Mankind really made things to last forever in his early rise to modernization, almost to the point of over engineering.
    Between the Martian Surface, the Chameleon, and the vault’s infinite energy source, Lexis and her unborn child could sustain themselves for as long as needed.
    To enter the forgotten archaeological facility, Lexis had to cut off a thick padlock from the vault-like door, and bypass an antiquated electronic lock. Lexis removed the screws from an outdated keypunch, splaying the faceplate’s microchip board outward, and exposing a gamut of electrical wires. A backup electrical source was needed to open the door but the source was dead long ago. To solve this problem, she ran a small slave cable from the Chameleon, giving electrical juice to the control module hidden inside the door. Directly wired into the keypad now, Lexis quickly deciphered the keypunch combination, unlocking the door’s tumblers with ease. The heavy door still did not open, for it was obvious it would need some physical persuasion. Age had created some corrosion. Lexis’s soft but firm hands gripped the treadles of the vault’s door handle. “BANG.” The internal mechanism broke free, retracting multiple cylindrical bolts inward. She then slowly turned the round but nautical looking handle counter clockwise, filling the air with metallic blends of clanks and clunks. “CLICK,” resonated within the body of the vault door, signifying all bolts were fully retracted. “SCREECH.” Slowly the heavy door budged open.
    Lexis’s internal sensors scanned the interior’s environment, which was void of any breathable air. Before entering, she donned an oxygen respirator; even Synthetics needed some type of atmosphere to breathe. The fact the there was no air was a good thing. No atmosphere, with zero moisture, meant no rust or decay could destroy the underground systems; dust could not even gather.
    Her initial priority was to inspect the Core Displacement