Back To Reality

Posted on Sun Jan 26th, 2020 @ 12:32am by The Narrator & Lieutenant Commander Mara Ricci & Lieutenant Commander Meilin Jiang & Lieutenant Commander Amie Cerys & Stephen Spires
Edited on on Tue Feb 4th, 2020 @ 3:59pm

Mission: S2:1: Into The Drowning Deeps
Location: Canopus Station Small Craft Bay
Timeline: MD 2 : 14:30

The Reciprocity Of Carcosian Navy did not seem to do things by half.

Unlike the sleek, dagger-like profile of the frigate Dauntless, the longboat that slowly came into the bay was a beast of a machine. Heavily armoured, it looked angry as stubby wing-mounted engines roared gently as it came to rest on its skids. There were no viewports or windows, and the material the hull was made of was hard to look at. The eye kept wanting to look at something else, anything else.

A hatch materialised in the side, and it folded out to form a short ramp to the hanger deck. Engineer Chief Stroma, now in off white armour plate and carrying a helmet under one arm, tromped down the ramp to look over the Starfleeters.

"No EV suits? No weapons?" she asked with a raised eyebrow, the faded spots of her Trill ancestry stretching a little. "Not even a little caution?"

Amie wasn't familiar with anyone who was there, but she had decided to join in the mission anyways. Get her feet wet and such. Besides, it was this or a cargo bay full of work. Her eyes looked to the one coming down the ramp. "I didn't know we needed them. I don't mind getting those...if you think they are necessary."

Dirty green eyes regarded the scene as it unfolded and Murray kept his mouth shut, his senses focused on every detail of this new contingent. Their ship screamed fierce definitive aggression, their armour was unconcerned by such meagre defences as camouflage and the tone of this one was bold, certain and filled with barely veiled contempt.

The response from their mutual hosts was... weakness and indecision.

Interesting.

Murray allowed himself the merest of half smiles and maintained his stance of observant silence.

"Yeah I'd keep my lip's sealed to," said Murray's partner in crime. Or at least in medical malpractice. Chief Puck Henderson had lived an interesting career in Starfleet. First appearing in the annuls of exploration as a cryogenic's tech onboard the USS Traveller before being the one-man medical team sent to watch over the colony of Landersfell when the Traveller gave chase to Abborax. And now here he was, with the newest addition to the Canopus Station Medical fraternity. "Better to let them who get paid the big credit chits decide things."

His tone of voice inspired a more indulgent smile, a private gesture as one man turned just enough to regard the other directly. Murray saw Puck for exactly what he was - a minder - someone to ensure that Starfleet’s new pet didn’t stray too far from his invisible leash. Trust was not on the table for either of them, merely a begrudging acceptance of their temporary aligned fate. An unspoken field-truce of medics everywhere. Injury and death was expected, and lives were in the balance, all of these lives around them.

“Blood for currency,” Murray said, his words a mere whisper on an exhale. “Hopefully, not ours.” He held back, letting the others board first.

"Preaching to the choir buddy, come on. This crate of medical gear ain't gonna hoof itself up the ramp," Puck grumbled.

Murray smiled wryly, nodded and picked up one side so that the two of them could walk said crate into the ship as a team.

Stroma eyed the grey necked Canopus Station officer who'd spoken up.

"Your station runs on AntiMatter, I assumed you were all risk-takers of the highest order," the Carcosain naval engineer said. "But you shouldn't need it. I'm just wearing this laminated case hardened weave because it shows off my tomboy curves. We go down there, deploy our science team to break the Prior device, and then it's back up here for tea and cookies quick as you like."

She made a waving gesture.

"Step up, take a seat and don't touch anything."

Meilin shuffled behind the medical team, observing the interaction of the Carcosian crew with the Starfleet officers. "We have scarce experience with Prior artifacts. What is the optimal method of deactivating them? I would prefer to leave it intact for future study if at all possible."

"I vote chemical bomb," said Mara, half joking as she followed Meilin. "But something tells me that's not how you're gonna do it."

Listening to the others, Amie just joined in and went to find her seat. "I take it I've missed something. Though, it is my first day here. I tried to catch up on everything but there just wasn't enough time."

“Okay so Prior Tech Primer 1-oh-1 for you,” Stroma said as she gestured them into the Carcosian long boat. The interior of the craft was crude to the point of antique. Bear pipe work, fabric jump suits lining the walls. Compared to the optical illusion of its outer hull, it was an anti climax. But given the effect the Campus Of The White Tower had had on Starfleet technology last time they’d ventured near it, perhaps simple was the way to go.

Two bulky armoured troopers were locked into standing harnesses at the back of the compartment, the strange rifles with optical lenses where emitters should have been secured by their sides.

“The Priors passed through this neck of the universe about one million or so years ago, leaving behind a lot of technology that’s still viable now. Very advanced self-repair routines. Usually, it's harmless enough, but some of it is downright civilisation threatening. Anything larger in size than this longboat comes equipped with what we locals call a Censor, an aware presence within the Prior tech that can make determinations about whether or not something might damage it. Sometimes this is as gentle as repulsing the threat away, sometimes it’s altering the local stellar metric so that nuclear fusion is impossible. Other times it just turns a star off. Censors are not sentient, and cannot be treated with. Trust me on that, 200 years of Carcosian’s Esoteric Science speaks volumes,” Stroma said. She then pointed to the two other white armoured soldiers strapped into the far side of the lander.

“That’s how we turn it off,” Stroma said as the soldier tapped a heavily reinforced crate secured to the deck by his feet. “It’s a logic bomb. An advanced computer virus that should hopefully tie up the Censor fo the better part of sixty to fifty thousand years.”

“Definitely has more finesse than a chemical bomb,” agreed Mara. “But not nearly as much fun.”

Meilin shook her head at Mara's suggestion, but otherwise kept her thoughts quiet.

"Right then," Amie stated as she listened. "I picked one hell of a mission to get my feet wet, didn't I?" She gave a small shrug, "Oh well, better to just be thrown in I suppose. Big difference from desk work."

"Yeah we don't do a lot of that," Stroma said as she made sure everyone was strapped in. Once she was assured everyone was inside and secured, the ramp/hatch closed up with a reassuring mechanical sound. She then settled into her own seat, securing the harness as with a rising whine the longboats engines pods spun up to full power and it lifted off the bay's deck. In seconds it had pivoted neatly around and then out of the bay into open space.

"Yellow is engineering, blue is medical...what is grey when it's at home?" Stroma asked, reaching up with a gauntlet clad finger to pull at her collar. She then pointed at Amie. "Your uniform, whats your role here?"

"Grey is intelligence. Just got to the station but figured I'd get my feet wet with a mission. It was that or working in one of the cargo bays." Amie gave a small shrug.

Murray took it all in, the bargain basement look of their ship's interior, the chunky bot-style troopers standing guard over the bomb, and Stroma herself. Since moving up in the station, he'd heard whispers, but very little of any substance with regards this Prior Tech they were apparently en route to break. Likely all he needed to know about in order to do his job was contained in the crate he and Puck had hefted inside, but that didn't sate the Rish's curiosity any.

He listened with acute interest to the catch-up speech and maintained a serious, focused expression as he processed Stroma's kindly offered lesson.

"So, assuming this thing allows you to get close enough to deploy your nasty surprise," Murray said, his tone intrigued rather than implying sarcasm. "And doesn't decide to just switch you...us... all off at the brain stem... we're good?" He looked down at his own uniform and frowned - still felt off to be wearing a singular coloured shirt, but needs must and all that.

Listening, Amie wondered what she got herself into. Was this the best mission to throw herself at? "So, um, where do you want me in all this? I've done some odd missions in the past but this one I think takes the cake."

"Hopefully all you'll have to do is sit back and watch us work. I got the feeling from you CO, that he doesn't like the idea of a foreign power doing dirty work in his back garden," Stroma said. The longboat was taking on a little shudder now, the dulled roar of a thickening atmosphere the only indication the ship was descending towards the desert moon of Carpathia.

Stroma then looked over at Murray.

"And if this doesn't work, and the Prior artefact determines we're a threat, well then things will get very interesting very fast. And then they will be equally very over for all living matter in this solar system," the Carcosian Chief Engineer said.

Murray simply nodded. He got the message.

"Chief, we're in sight of the anomalous terraforming event," came a shout from the pilot in the cockpit. The pitch of the longboat's engines changes, from a steady unbroken hum to a throaty vibrating roar. "We've switched from conventional thrust to jet propulsion. Estimated five minutes until we pass through the Censor field."

A ceiling monitor flickered to life, displaying on a solidly built liquid crystal display an image from the nose camera of the longboat. Ahead was the trackless deserts of Carpathia, broken only by the 30-mile island of the green lifeless jungle with the solitary bone-white needle rising from the centre.

"If any of you have fancy tech on you of a life-saving nature, now is not the time to switch it off," Stroma said. "Its either really simple, or it's really turned off. Any of you want to talk to the Station, now might be the last chance you get."

Double-checking, Amie shook her head, "Got nothing on me, and no one to contact." Her eyes turned to Stroma, "And I hope you're right. But getting to see what happens here will be interesting enough I think."

Reports from the last away team that took a trip to this place flashed through Meilin's mind. The crashed runabout. The mysterious flora. The Reka attack. Were they tempting fate with another pass? Stroma's expertise would soon be put to the test.

"We're ready," Meilin said. "Take us in."

"You heard the lady," Stroma shouted over the roar of the jet engine. There was no dramatic sense of passing through the Censor field into the area of effect of the Prior tower. The only noticeable change was the little muted chirp from the Starfleet Combadges as they reported a loss of contact with the Station's main array. The longboat began to descend, the air pressure inside the crew compartment shifting a little as ears popped and the gut sloshed about without the aid of inertial compensators.

"Beginning terminal descend now. Fuel at 90%. Clockwork is turning at predicted speed," the pilot reported, the pitch of the engines changing as well as the bass rumble beginning to shiver through the space frame. "Deck's clear out to a hundred yards from the aim point. Skid's down...prepare for contact."

The longboat landed with a little bounce, the hydraulics of its landing gear soaking up as much of the landing as it could. Almost the moment they touched down the pilots up front began a rapid exchange of conversation concerning shutting down the engines. In the same instance, the two marines in their bulky armoured suits came free of their support struts. A complex helmet extended up from the collars of their suits, placing a trio of lenses down the centre line of the helmet as they stepped up the hatch.

On an unspoken command, the door opened, and the two soldiers stepped out into the sunlight, the glassy lens of their weapons leading the way as they fanned out to sweep the landing zone. Stroma stood up, opened the armoured crate at her feet, and began to pull out some items. The first was a headband with an attached monocle that went over the right eye. The second looked like an old fashion wristwatch, but its face was missing to reveal an amazingly complicated-looking set of gears and swishing movements.

"Everyone wears these at all times. Don't take off the clockwork, don't take off the eyepiece. The first will warn us if we're affecting the Prior device and it's moving into a high energy state, the gears will jam up. The eyepiece is calibrated to show off spikes in the Censor field. They'll look like little white clouds. If you see one, do not touch it. Bad things will happen to you," Stroma said as she began to hand out the items.

Having held on for landing, Amie stood and watched Stroma before taking the items she was handed. "Okay, very different than I'm used to." She slipped the clockwork onto her arm and then adjusted the eyepiece with the headband, pulling the rest of her hair back with a hair tie she had on her wrist.

"Well, now you know how we all felt when we came across a Starbase using antimatter as a fuel source. I was shocked to find out that the internal combustion engine wasn't the height of technology for you Starfleet folks," Stroma said and picked up the crate by one end. "One of you want to help with the other end of this?"

Without a word, Mara picked up the other end of the crate and helped Stroma carry the crate outside.

Outside in the open area, the usually scorching Carpathian atmosphere was replaced by a moderately cool climate. This would have been the first sign that something was amiss here. The second would have been the tapered ivory tower that rose into the air before them. They had landed on the skirt of it, a five hundred meter radius that rose sharply at its centre to form the broken summit of The White Tower. It had been likened to a wine glass with the goblet snapped off of it.

The third unnatural sign was the leafy green jungle that kept to the perimeter of the tower's base. Heavy leaves and dark rain-soaked trunks could be seen within the tree line. But apart from the ticking of the cooling engines, and the clinking of armour plate as the two Carcosian Marines walked a perimeter around the longboat, not a single sound could be heard. No bird calls, no buzz of insects.

"Incredible," Meilin said, her voice touched by wonder and horror. "Wholly unnatural, but incredible."

"Yeah, that's Prior tech for you. Right now we're okay, but if we stayed here for long enough we'd die of starvation. Not because we didn't pack enough ration bars, but because the bacteria in our guts had stopped breeding. Something about the quantum mesh being too fine for the chaotic nature of complex organic life to propagate," Stroma said as the box was placed down.

She looked around, seeing nothing but The White Tower and the lifeless jungle. She then knelt down, opened the end of the box nearest her, and began to pull out wires with putty-like connectors on their ends. She began to place them on the smooth bone-like plane of the tower's base.

"Now it might take a few tries to get this right. So if you see anything cloudy appear, shout out and let the Marines take care of it," she instructed.

Taking in the surroundings, Amie shook her head. "Any other time, this would be beautiful. But, given what I read up on about here, it really isn't." Her eyes scanned around, checking for anything cloudy, and didn't see anything right away. The thing about the bacteria in them stopping breeding which could cause them to starve did scare her a bit, but, this was a new adventure. Well, somewhat. A bit more dangerous than she had realized it was going to be. "Still just want me to hang back and observe? I don't mind getting my hands dirty."

“That’s reassuring,” Mara muttered, gazing around for any signs of white wispy anything and feeling jumpy. Her prosthetic arm itched and she scratched it before remembering it wasn’t real.

He stood slightly apart from the others, looking at everything through this new piece of eye-tech and running fingertips lightly over the top surface of the 'watch'. No natural sounds, no chattering of bugs or living creatures bar the noise the landing party brought with them. It was eerie to see so much lush vegetation without life to inhabit those verdant depths, yet it raised no obvious threat to life. Nothing beyond the literal ivory tower.

Murray stepped a little closer to Mara as he noticed her arm. "It's normal," the medic said. "To feel that phantom sensation."

“I know,” replied Mara. “I mean, it’s a good prosthetic. I feel the scratch, but it does absolutely nothing to relieve the itch.”

"Is there any way to scan the area?" Meilin said, eyes surveying the terrain. While science was her first love and pacifism her way of life, the tactical training from her former career nonetheless asserted itself.

"That's what these are for," Stroma said and tapped her clockwork armband to her own eyepiece. "You'd be scanning for an effect within the effect, plus anything sensitive enough to pick up what we're looking for wouldn't be able to work within the field. The eyepieces are calibrated to show off photon's that are being affected by Prior Censor's moving into an active state."

She finished placing the putty on the surface of the tower, pushing the wires a little deeper into it as she checked the connections.

"The only reason this will work is that the computer virus is a simple brute force calculation. This box is running on spinning disks of hyper diamond being read by a solid-state laser, powered by a chemical fuel battery that's good for twenty minutes of operation. It's so old school its almost binary. That's why it needs a physical connection to the Tower," she tapped a control on the box's old fashion keyboard. "Okay logic bomb is loading. If somethings going to happen-"

And happen it did.

Between the tower's rising base and where the away team had set up, seven figures appeared. It was an odd sight to behold: through one eye there was nothing, not even a shimmer in the air, and then through the eyepiece, a sharp blacklight outline appeared. At first glance, it looked like frozen lightning or some form of coral that branched out in fractal patterns. The branches rose up from the ground in two heavily rooted clumps, that formed a pair of trunks that rose to an apex and then grew together before branching out on either side to droop down. A complicated knot of branches formed an oval above the...

Shoulders.

Feet. Legs. Hips. Arms. Head. Looking closely medically minded could see where the branches met at certain points, the places in the human nervous system where nerves met and connected. Seven anatomically correct models of a classic humanoid nervous system stood between them and the tower, rooted in the material of the tower and cast in a odd obsidian lined silver.

"Aww shit..." Stroma muttered. "Emulations."

"So, I take it those are what we shouldn't be seeing?" Amie stated as she nodded towards what she was seeing through the eyepiece. "I get why you had us wear these. But, what are we supposed to do now?" Now she felt completely out of place. From an intelligence report view, this would be interesting to look at. But right now? She wasn't sure whether or not to be afraid or...something else.

"Wow," murmured Murray quietly, as he studied the detail in these newly formed creations. He traded eyes - open, close, open, close - a few times, noting the difference in vision and exhaled to cover his concern for this new development. Weapons likely wouldn't be any use, so he tried to pretend he didn't mind not having one. "They're perfect," he said, his own voice soft, steady and utterly fascinated. "This would be bad, though, right?" He asked, gaze shifting from Mara to Stroma.

"No those are a bad sign," Stroma said as she bent over the logic bomb and began to tweak some of the controls. As she did so the two Emulations on either end of the ghostly chorus line seemed to dissolve back into the white floor of the tower. They then arose once more, rapidly growing like a briar bush a few meters closer to the away team. As soon as they stood tall once more, two more from the original line shrivelled away to regrow alongside their closest companions.

The two Carcosian Marines clanked past the away team and took a firing stance, raising the strange rifles they carried to aim at the Emulations. A high pitched whine of charging capacitors filled the air, and one of the closer Emulations vanished in a spray of desiccated shards. The odd thing was the shards could be seen with the naked eye, glowing white like heated charcoal as they scattered on the surface of the tower.

The Marines took aim again, another of the Emulations vanished in a flash of light and a spray of ashy remains. Unlike a phaser there was no beam of light connecting the weapon to its target, only the baleful fish eye lens at the end of each rifle gazing upon a target both seen and unseen. Like a Medusa, or a Gorgon as Forward Commander Larkin had said about the weapons aboard the RCS Dauntless.

“We need some of those,” commented Mara, only her voice betraying the stress she felt. “Is there anything we should be doing or should we just hold still and let you guys handle it and watch for any more wispy things?”

It was all Meilin could do not to flinch with every discharge of the special ordnance. Though it wasn't technically a bloodbath, it was still violence. Was there no better way? Could they have not attempted a peaceful resolution before firing the first shot? Such as it was, Meilin stood stock still and struggled to process the situation through her tactical experience from years past.

Murray moved, slowly, in the direction of the nearest sign of remnant ash, curious as to its consistency versus the ghost-like form it had previously been. That which was visible only through the special lens could yet become corporeal in their 'normal' sensory world?

The Emulation's appeared faster now, shrinking down into the ground and then up in a stutter step that lent them a sense of motion. A jerky asymmetric motion like a puppet being played by an inexperienced hand. The five remaining went down to three as another pair turned into glowing ashes. Closer now the moment the Emulation was forced into visibility there was a sudden scorching wave of heat.

"Battery!" One of the Marines snapped and took his rifle from his shoulder. He began to dislodge a blocky power cell from the underside of the rifle, meanwhile his compatriot took out another. The rifle hummed as a new power block was locked into place, but before the soldier could bring the rifle to bear one of the two remaining Emulations reached out and touched him.

It was the barest touch, a single bundled strand of pseudo nerves stroking against the ceramic armour plate of one shoulder. There was a sudden crackling sound, and in a blink, the armoured shell had broken apart as shards of the same bone-white material as the tower burst forth. The force of the shattering sent the newly charred rifle flying from his hands to land among the others. The Marine's helmet was shattered, falling away to reveal nothing but the bone-white calcification of the Prior tech making the trooper look like a salt crystal.

The Emulation that had touched the Marine stepped into the space the shattered suit of armour stood in, drifting through armour plate and broken shattered crystal like a ghost. And then the suit moved, creaking and crackling as the calcified limbs snapped and moved in jerky slopping steps.

"Ba-ba-battery!" Came a high piercing tone as the Emulation infested corpse staggered closer to the others. "Ba-ba-battery!"

Now she understood. Despite her misgivings, Meilin accepted the grim truth. This was a malignant force that required excision and isolation from the environment. Not termination, but cessation. "How do we stop it?" she calmly asked Stroma.

Amie stood in shock at what she was watching. No longer was she interested in investigating things here. She wanted all of them that were still alive to complete this mission as such: alive. Finally getting some sort of sense about her, and keeping her eye on the Emulation inside the suit, she reached for the thrown weapons. "Will this thing work when its in the suit?!"

The intelligence officer didn't wait for an answer, and took a shot, not that she liked doing this sort of thing. But at this point, what choice did she have? "Do we have time to finish what we came here to do?!"

The Corrupted Suit shot backwards as the invisible beam of the Carcosain rifle struck it. The blast of heat that washed over them from the impact was intense, scalding almost. The white crystal seemed to shatter, fizzing away into nothingness as the armour it had absconded with began to shatter like dropped pottery.

Soft cursing covered his surprise as the Marine appeared to crystallise before their very eyes, and Murray held his position. Just a touch, the merest physical connection, and the man had become salt - or what looked like salt. It was a grimly unpleasant reminder of their mortal fragility, but their group had shot first. He considered moving for the lost rifle, but was too slow, and ended up wincing as the officer in grey fired.

"Didn't work so great the first time..." he muttered under his breath and moved towards the discarded battery to pick that up.

The Emulation farthest away began to turn to flicker step towards them but shattered as the last Marine took it out. He then turned on his booted heel to take aim at the one that had taken out his comrade. But he snarled something foul under his breath as the Emulation stepped between his rifle and the others.

It flickered again, this time rising to one side of Amie and reached out for Mara...and it stopped. The arm was partly formed, the wrist just beginning to sprout a nub of a thumb and forefinger. Four inches more and...

"Got it!" Stroma said, and fell back onto her ass, sweat glazing her brow as the screen on the logic bomb blinked happily to itself. "Logic bomb uploaded and running. Everyone step out of the line of fire of the man with the Medusa rifle. Those things don't take very precise shots and if you're in its line of sight very bad things happen to you."

As if on cue the combadges on the Starfleeter's uniforms began to chirp with the connection requests, and then trilled angrily with the alarm reserved for radiation warnings.

"Don't worry about it," Stroma said with a grin only the extremely lucky get to use. "Medusa rifles work by channelling a compressed quantum calculation into any visible matter. The calculation's base result is to convert 33% of the atoms in view into silicon. The net energy release gives off a lot of thermal and radiation. But damn if its not effective against those fuckers."

Shifting to where she was out of range of the weapon thing, Amie truly just wanted to get out of there. Which really wasn't like her. She loved adventure, hell, she even loved danger sometimes. But this was just a bit too much. "I think in the future I might stay away from these missions." Keeping hold of the weapon, her eyes scanned the area. The..whatever it was...was just too close.

The air suddenly cracked with a high pitched scream. It shook the ground, the air, the tree's of the living but lifeless jungle. The frozen Emulation shattered into dust that flickered in out of visibility. The ringing scream continued to gain in pitch, becoming a physical force that worked into the bones of those hearing it. It was coming from the White Tower.

It started at its broken tip, a fizzing of the distant shard tips before violent spikes of white matter began to shoot out of the sides of the Tower. They came out randomly, growing in fractal jumps and starts until they ran all the way down the side of the tower, and then out in concentric rings around the base of it.

Then the top of the tower unfolded, flattening and breaking into a jagged four-leaf clover-like pattern. And then...light.

It was seen from Canopus Station, from the distant colony of Landersfell on the opposite side of the planet. The beam of light broke apart in high orbit, becoming a superluminal streamer that reached out to touch five locations in the Carpathia System. It did all of this in a moment, the laws of physics yet again thrown aside by the Prior's and their ancient machines.

And then the light turned off, the tower remaining in its unfolded and jagged phase as a terrible stillness fell over the away team.

"That...was not normal," Stroma said, her eyes retaining no aftershock of blindness or spots from the light-that-was-not-light.

Mara has clapped her hands over her ears at the scream and flinched at the light. When both stopped abruptly, she had let out a little involuntary scream of her own. “Maybe... maybe we should get out of here?” she said to Stroma a little more loudly than she had intended, sounding stressed and frantic even to herself.

"I...have to agree with the get out of here statement," Amie said as she still kept hold of the weapon. Her eyes fell upon the tower, feeling uneasy about this whole thing.

That adrenaline spike of fear had worn off swiftly, replaced momentarily by surprise and the sound of the reconnected combadge, tech he was still getting used to wearing. And then... severe aural pain. Fingers jammed in his ears, Murray watched the tower, eyes wide, cynic silenced. It physically hurt, but he kept watching as the light left into the sky and beyond. He'd have asked then if they were all okay, but each officer spoke up in turn so the medic kept his own counsel. Murray did, however, approach the surviving Marine, checked to see if he wanted assistance in carrying what was left of his buddy.

"Okay then, everyone back on the boat!" Stroma said, leaving the logic bomb plugged into the tower. The air seemed markedly warmer now, as though whatever science had controlled the climate had begun to fade away.

The Campus of the White Tower...was closed.

"Don't have to tell me twice," Amie stated as she climbed back in, not daring to look back at that point.

Ever since their standard issue equipment had come back online, Meilin had been scanning furiously with her tricorder to gain as many readings as possible. With so much interference, it was almost impossible to tell anything for certain, yet in the rare gaps in the radiation where something did come through, it created even more questions in her mind. She would have given anything to remain longer. Once the call to retreat was given, however, she closed up her tricorder and returned it to her hip without a word. No use in crying over spilled milk.

Ever the mother, Mara motioned everyone into the ship ahead of her. She gave a quick glance around to make sure they hadn’t missed anybody before ducking inside herself.