No Cats Allowed

The twin pyramids on Saturn's moon, Rhea, had once glistened opalescent white on the ashy outcrop of the Hounal Rift. She had been told that four decades ago, before the solar system's moon spring, they poked out of the surface like snowy cat ears. 

Now, however, due to the incessant acid rain rainstorms from the south from Biting Bay, the pyramids had eroded down to their charcoal grey basalt underlayer, giving them a more bleak impression than the ageing Neptunian archeologist, Pelen Fal had expected.

Pelen activated her sparrow-drone to fly over for reconnaissance footage. Normally she used the drone to pick up heat signatures of any creatures hiding in buildings, but today she switched the feed from infra-red to ultraviolet.

Any other buildings, fortifications or vehicles had been eroded down to mere nubs, and the living reduced to bone and ash either in a grave or dumped next to one.

Armed with only a shoddy machination-pack, a sparrow-drone of Rhea's North East's quadrant, enough rations for five days, her vape pen, and her wave rifle, Pelen double checked distance on her pulse-map.

Five point seven kilometers to the first Pyramid, Chrono's Eye.

Just then, her Sparrow-drone picked up six ultraviolet signatures before suddenly jolting, tipping, and spiraling down to the dusty rocky basin of the Hounal Rift. A scratching message blipped through saying the phrase in blocky, Saturian script “No Cats Allowed” before hitting the sullen surface.

The scraping crash of bio-metal hitting rock and the small fire resulting form the burst fuel pack resounded through the thin atmosphere, but Pelen's cursing rang louder.

“Of all the Tier 5 investigations I had to be assigned to, it had to be the only haunted one.” Pelen took a long pull of her vape.

She had pulled the wrong tarot card 3 of wands.

She had no idea what a 'grape' was, but it was sweet and it comforted her as she trudged out to face down the ultraviolet specters that still haunted the battleground after so many years. She leapt down the lip of a crater with the grace of an earthen feline until she got to the first trench dug by the Rhean resistance fighters.

She caught a scrap of could be carbon fiber armor, and the barrel of an ancient munitions pistol.

Pelen Fal wasn't here to study the fall of the Rhean resistance fighters against their Saturnian oppressors. Moons all over the solar system, save Neptune's own, had rebelled and most, except Titan and Ganymede lost and their histories written by the victors in pens and ink made by their hard-lost minerals. 

Neptunians couldn't comprehend such heated violence, a dispute on Neptune was solved with a mere discussion. sometimes tarot cards or chance dice. However, it was Neptune that was different, not Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Earth or Mars.

Rhea was no different than the countless moons of people slaughtered before them, but Pelen didn't pity them. They had to know the odds before they took up arms.

This dusty moon only had two exceptional aspects about it: the two Pyramids, Chrono's Eye and Chrono's Hand. 

Everyone had thought the pyramids long dormant, spiritless as the crypts left on Earth's own moon.

However, when satellites picked up heightened ultraviolet pulses from the pyramids followed by a radioactive burst deep underground from both Pyramids, they were officially dormant no more.

Many had tried to get to the pyramids, each graverobber or adventurer left either with their flesh singed off their bones by the bombardment of acid rainstorms, or had their spirits siphoned out of them by the spirits awoken by the ultraviolet blasts.

Which is why the archeologists had enlisted her help. Neptunians had a natural resistance toward acids, and everyone knew that out of every race in the solar system, their spirits were the hardest to steal.

Many conjectured it was because they had no souls at all. It's why they always did as they were ordered, and why they didn't resist.