The World of The Gunny

This is the rough version!

Laman d'Madrick wiped his sweaty brow with his shirt sleave and
looked around him with pride. The Mancuso dig encompassed eleven square miles and employed thousands of staff. It was but one of the mid-sized ones.

The archeological excavations had been ongoing for more then forty years. They were spread out all over the homeworld of Numeria and even to the unpopulated sister world on the far side of the sun. The Numerian government had even created a ministry to coordinate and fund the miriad of projects that were slowly bringing the past back to life.

In this case, the dig had first been thought to be a vast spread out school of some sort with extensive dormatories and classrooms. Last year that had changed with the discovery of what looked like an armory full of damaged energy weapons and even swords and staves made of some black metal-ceramic alloy that they still were having trouble analysing. At that point, the Yank archeologists that had been scheduled to arrive in two months suddenly were found to be urgently needed elsewhere. Laman's funding had doubled and a whole battlion of infantry had arrived and set up shop.

Inspite of all that, the daily routine had not really changed very
much. Each of the department was always asking for more people, more equipment, and more time. His response was pretty much the same. No, No and "We'll see." It was far easier for him to move the schedules back then to get either people cleared through intense security checks or more funding from a ministry that was already stretched past the breaking point.

The ministry was doing all it could to train and locate
archeologists from most of the nearby allied races. Not surprisingly,
most of the availbale archeologists were from the alien races. the
nearby human polities simply had not had the time to create ruins on their planets as they had been colonized for less then 400 years in most cases. There had been simply no need for anyone with an archeologist background. Most of the recruited staff had been trained as historians and had only read about archeology. It was frustrating to have to train tens of newbies a month in the exacting methodologies of the various fields that they had volunteered for. Even with the ministry offering a signup reward of a 150,000 creds and an additional 50,000 a year with all expenses paid, the flow of remotely qualified staff had nearly dried up. He smiled. He bet that the next three years of college graduates had been snapped up already.

The evidence pointed to a mid-sized population of around a billion or so people on the planet when the Destruction happened. Several dozen kinetic impacts on the planet had erased most of the population in massive explosions that had caused a severe nuclear winter. Who ever had survived had had to deal with disease and evintual starvation. It was a wonder anybody had survived. thoug he was quite thankfull that they had survivied. Had they not, he would not be here today, he thought.