UNEARTHED

Indiana Jones and Lara Croft join forces in space!

In the not-too-distant future, NASA discovers the existence of a probe at the outer edges of the solar system heading, in our direction. When the probe—which is decidedly not of human origin—is recovered, it's found to be a portable structure of some sort. When it's reassembled and activated, it becomes a faster-than-light slingshot, a portal that almost instantaneously transports any spacecraft to an unknown point in the galaxy. That destination turns out to be a planet over five hundred light years from Earth, and while it's wholly unsuitable for human life, it does contain something electrifying: ruins of an ancient civilization. Exploring the ruins yields humanity two things: artifacts which hint at a clean, renewable energy source, and coordinates for the next planet. Following the trail leads to a second planet, and more clues, and finally—over six decades from when the first planet was discovered—the third and final piece of the puzzle: a planet very much like Earth, so much so that humans could easily make a colony there. With the discovery still so new that the governments of Earth haven't opened the planet's surface to the public, debate rages back on Earth about the best way to handle divvying up this new territory—called Gaia—for Earth's overcrowded population. Scientists in every field are clamoring for grants and concessions to study the new world before mankind taints it. Corporations are offering billions of dollars for technological advances discovered in the ruins there. And, beating them all in the race to Gaia, are the black market scavengers. Usually they operate in the Earth cities abandoned to disaster and climate change, but bribes and threats have bought them a much greater prize. Thinly disguised as surveyors and government officials, salvage operation kingpins are the ones in charge on the space station orbiting the new planet and they're the ones sending their agents down to its surface.