Where on Earth is Xacio 555?

[tachyon]

"Well I don't much care for comics nowdays, besides I was more of a tabletop wargamer in my youth but this is getting off subject."
Doc switches off the holoprojector then hands the remote to Labrat, whom Kei had released, and proceeded to put it in a drawer.
"I'm afraid I can't help you with finding him. The last I saw of him was 10 years ago at the research facility, after that I did my best to avoid him, and I can't think of any way to possible find him-"
"But I can."
Kei walked across to a computer, sat down and began accessing the station's networks.
"There's a way to find him. He's good at covering his tracks but if you know what to look for... Doc you still haven't told them much about Zeke's weak points, just so you know."
"Oh yes, quite right, quite right. Labrat, the remote please." Doc motioned to the little robot with his hand. Producing a sound that sounded like an annoyed groan Labrat complied, dropping the remote into Doc's hand.
"Well, I suppose the most glaringly obvious thing about Xacio is the respirator he wears." A click of the remote control activated the holoprojecter again, showing a diagram of a humanoid skull overlayed with muscles, tendons, veins, arteries and other things of a biological nature.
"His native atmosphere was almost identical to the Milky Way's status quo, mainly oxygen-nitrogen. However, it was not the composition of the air but the microscopic organisms which live in it that were a threat to him. So he was keep in specially sanitized rooms within the base and given this respirator," on the holoimage the device appeared over the face, "during outdoor exercises. Heh, it's ironic that in our efforts to protect him we instilled upon Xacio his greatest weakness. His immune system was never given a chance to slowly build up a resistance to the bacteria of this galaxy."
"Hang on a tick," said Gordon "you said this galaxy. As in he'd not from around these parts?"
"Did I not mention that? Well, yes, from what we could tell from the spacecraft that is the most likely explanation for the incredible age of the components we were able to test."

[Ash]

"Yeah,we heard about this respirator being a possible weak-point.
The problem will be to get close enough to him.Nah.I shouldn't worry about that.
I still know a few tricks...Maybe I should sneeze at him."

Ash walks over to Kei and looks over her shoulder.

"Found anything yet?",he asks her.

[tachyon]

Kei, working through some firewalls, answers without turning around.
"Not yet, just give me one more minute...I should have access by then."
Gordon continues his line of questions, resuming his usual chatty mantra.
"What? How old was this ship?"
"In excess of 50 million years." says Doc nonchalantly, "Now back to the respirator conundrum, and I'm afraid that Ash is quite right. Even if you were able to get close enough to him removing the mask by force is almost impossible; it's surgically anchored to his skull. You'd have to rip his jaw off to remove it. Now, there are other weaknessess you can exploit-"
"Whoa, hang on a tick," interupts Gordon, "50 million years? Y'mean he was driftin' round out there longer than humans 'ave even existed?"
"Most likely, yes. Perhaps longer"
"Crikey."

[Machaeus]

Urufu raises an eyebrow. "Two things. One: drifting for that long? I assume he was frozen cryogenically or something. Two: Crikey? You're ripping off the Crocodile Hunter."
"The who what now?" Gordon asks.
"Never mind."

[tachyon]

"No. Something beyond what cryogenics could ever hope to match kept him alive for that time. Xacio's parent race were extremely technologically advanced, the starship was evidence of this."
The image in the center of the room changed to a rotating 3-D model of a sleek, crescent-winged spacecraft.
"When we examined Xacio's pod we found that the sensor were telling us that it did not exist, which was impossible as we were looking at and touching it. More advance scanners showed that while the pod is active it becomes a Non Event Mass with a quantum probability of zero, thus while it exists in physical space the pod and its occupant have been removed from time."
"So, instead of literally freezing the body inside, it just freezes time?" asks Kei, still typing away at the computer.
"That explanation is a gross over-simplification, but a good analogy. This race must have been a Type III Kardashev civilization, at least. The spacecraft we retrieved showed this. While it has no weapons it is, for all intents and purposes, indestructible. Only the crushing gravity of a star or black hole could destroy it. It enjoys almost perfect invisibility on all scanners, even gravaticly it doesn't leave trace. The ship itself is more than capable of exceeding light speed in both realspace and hyperdimentional travel, but testing was never carried out since it would only respond to Xacio. This ship...is like a part of him. He's connected to it telepathically, it even changes colour with his mood. Thats where it got it's name, the ship I mean. When it was first retrieved it had an almost relaxing hue about it, blue and white and always shifting. Then its colour scheme became, well, violent. It flashed in red and orange tones, jagged and uneven before one day it just faded into black."
All through this the 3-D image showed the changes in colour as Doc described.
"We named it Nightfall."

[Machaeus]

Urufu hums the "Twilight Zone" theme.

[Ash]

"Nightfall...That fits.But that it freezes time instead of the body inside?Hard to believe.Really,really hard to believe.These Kardashev...if they're so advanced,why
aren't there more of them around?Or if there are more...where are they?",Ash asks,still looking at the computer screen.

[tachyon]

Doc waved his hands in front of his face.
"No, no, no, you've got it backwards. I meant the Kardashev Scale; a system used to tell how advanced a civilization is, invented by Nikolai Kardashev back in 1963. For example, Humankind became a Type I civilization last century when we began to colonize our solar system. Most aliens in the galaxy are also Type I's. Type II's are less common, only races like the Hssketh or the Zeta Reticulans have so far achieved that status. But a Type III... there are no races in the Milky Way that are that highly evolved, not even close. We don't know what the name of Xacio's species is or what became of them."
"They were called the Vailen." said Kei, still typing away.
Doc looked a little perplexed. "If you don't mind me asking,how do you know that Keiralena?"
She shrugged. "Zeke told me. Ha! I'm in!"
The computer screen showed a main menu for some sort of webpage.

[Machaeus]

"Vailen, huh?" Machaeus says. "Interesting name. Do you know anything else about them? And what do you have up there?"

[Ash]

"Ah.1963?Waaaaaay before my time.That...and I never liked history.But I think I got it now.", Ash says,followed by a short laugh.

He looks at the Menu at the computer screen and bows his head.
"Huh.looks like an ordinary web-page.And you can find him through that?"

[tachyon]

"Don't know about Xacio's race." said Kei "Whenever I asked him he'd just they were dead. Now this may seem like any other webpage, but if I do this..."
Kei hit a few more keys, and the bland webpage gave way to another, but this one was filled with message boards and search engines. A crosshair logo was in the upper left corner, under which was the sites name and a brief foreword.
_{BULLSEYE; THE BOUNTY HUNTER'S NETWORK, ANY JOB, ANY WHERE, ANY WAY.}
"Bullseye is where anyone with a job that needs doing that's of the not-entirely-legal-throughout-most-of-the-galaxy type can post it." Kei explained, opening up a sub-menu titled _{RECENTLY ACCEPTED MISSIONS LOG}. A small message appeared at the top of the list.
_{*SHOWING 1-50 OF 25,002 ENTRIES*}
"We might not be able to find out exactly where he is but we can narrow down our choices a bit. Now, the missions are rated by a 5-star danger system with 1 star being the safest and 5 stars being very difficult. So... we can cut out everything except the 5 stars missions." The page reloaded and showed a much shorter list.
_{*SHOWING 1-39 OF 39 ENTRIES*}
"Bugger, 39s still a lot. Can we get it down even further y'reckon?" asked Gordon.
"Maybe... Zeke usually get them done within a few days, maybe if I put a timeframe into the next search. Three days should be enough"
_{*SHOWING 1-19 OF 19 ENTRIES*}
"Still could be better." Kei swiveled round to face the others. "Got any clues we could use to refine the search?"

[Ash]

"Hm.Can you search the Entries for specific areas?", Ash asks,looking at the screen.
"If you can,please look for something like a junkyard,waste disposal facility or a nuclear power plant.
Maybe we can him that way.", he suggests,remembering what he has been told on earth.
"Its worth a try."

[tachyon]

"I'll search for 'hazardous environments', that should do it." said Kei as she re-loaded the page. The result were promising.
_{*SHOWING 1-3 OF 3 ENTRIES*}
"Ha, thats done it. Now the three choices are... an assassination in Tau Ceti IX's terraforming plant, another hit job on a mining asteroid in the Deneb system, and... now thats interesting."
"What's interesting? Where? I can't see, swing me round." asks Gordon, trying to use the momentum of his camera to swing himself around on Urufu's belt. Kei unhooked him and held him up to the screen.
"A recovery mission on Earth. A place called Vozrozhdeniya in the Aral Desert. I'll bring up the mission brief..."

*Mission Brief*
*Vozrozhdeniya Recovery*
*Level 5 Rating*
*Overview: Upon approved selection the contractor is to travel to the abandoned biowarfare facility known as Vozrozhdeniya in the S.E.C., Earth, retrieve a Cluster MkIX Wardroid located within in as good a condition as possible and return it to the rendezvous point.
Mission history: in the Earth year 1971AD the robotic empire known as the Cluster sent one of their MkIX Wardroids to Earth in an attempt to subdue it's population, as at this time in their history the humans could not possibly match the power of even a single unit. However, due to an incorrect angle of entry into the Earth's atmosphere the robot passed over the planet's North Pole and encountered heavy EM interference from Aurore and crashed landed in what was then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). It was quickly recovered and transported to the bioweapons facility of Vozrozhdeniya in what was then the Aral Sea. But the humans lacked the understanding to successfully reverse-engineer any technology from the droid. It was sealed up with the base in 1991AD. During the mid 21^st century, when the Cluster once again began to raid Earth, the Russian Federation tried to re-open the program. However by this time the MkIXs were almost 100 years out-of-date and many of the human's own weapons were useful enough against the Cluster forces. Once again it was sealed up and forgotten.
*WARNING: POTENTIAL EXTREME BIOHAZARD!*
*The Vozrozhdeniya facility was the USSR's primary producer of the Earth-borne infectious bacterium Anthrax. When the facility was closed it was buried nearby; close to 200 metric tons of spores are located around the site. Anthrax has the ability to lie dormant in the ground for decades. Similar amounts of another Earth-borne bacterium, Yersinia pestis, know to humans simply as "The Plague", also exist on site. Take all necessary precautions.*
*WARNING: EXTREME WEATHER CONDITIONS!*
*Vozrozhdeniya is located in a saltflat known as the Aral Desert. Once a vast inland sea, it dried up due to planetary climate change in the mid 21^st century. The area experiences strong winds at near freezing temperatures while simultaneously being scorched by the sun. The winds also pick up clouds of salt-laden dirt along with other irritants which can cause breathing difficulty. Take all necessary precautions.*
*ADITIONAL WARNING: Though it is most likely that the MkIX has long since expired there remains the chance that it's power core is still functioning. Though horribly obsolete it should not be taken lightly.*
*Reward for sucessful completion: 1,200,000 credits*

[Ash]

"Earth!?!Oh man.This whole trip just to find out that he is probably already on earth?Or on his way to Earth.Whatever...", Ash says,apparently irritated.After a few seconds,his mood seems to change again.

"Sweet Earth...Im coming back to you.Even if I can think of some nicer places on earth than this bio-ware facility.", he says,sounding almost happy.

"Well?Shall we go then?"

[Machaeus]

"Thanks for the info," Machaeus says, "But do we really want to go THERE?"
"Yeah, werewolf regeneration doesn't exactly help against biotoxins," Urufu nods.