Dust And Glass

Posted on Tue Jan 8th, 2019 @ 12:32am by The Narrator & Lieutenant Commander Meilin Jiang & Lieutenant Francesca Ricci

Mission: S1E2: A Temple To New Gods
Location: Planet Surface, Temple Interior
Timeline: MD3 11.10AM

Kitcher, Samson and Delilah lead the way into the temple. The light from their carbines played across the onyx coloured blocks that made up the walls. Here and there odd swirls could be seen on their flat surfaces, like ripples or ridges froze on midnight ice.

As the trio lead the way, their feet kicked up gentle clouds of dust that coated the floor. In places the dust rose to a few inches in depth, rising in little drifts towards the corners where floor and wall met.

"E-suit's reading breathable air in here, heavy particulate count though with all the dust," Kitcher said, turning to look at the arched doorway that led back to the toxic wasteland outside. "Must be some sort of atmosphere curtain keeping the crud out. Would have thought a civilisation using FM radio like its the Info Age would have used a clunky airlock or something."

"After the Hobus Incident destroyed the subspace communications systems on some Romulan colonies, radio technology was used to coordinate short-range relief efforts," Bahat recalled from her time as a humanitarian aid worker. "Sometimes it makes sense to return to 'old' technology or procedures."

"Often times the enemy overlooks the old style comms, hence the success of many insurgent factions in all of our histories too." Dania added as she scanned the area as they went.

"If the crater lined in glass shards and ruins is this planet's high bar for success, I ain't building a summer home here," Samson commented from up front.

Francie simply grinned, amused. While far from an introvert, she also saw no point in speaking when there was really nothing to say.

"Up here, everyone," Meilin called out. As the first one to enter before everyone else, she had already covered ground. "I think I found something."

Further in the corridor took a right turn, then a left, doglegging back into a straight line into the heart of the place. All the while the dust grew thicker along the sides of the floor until they reached the hollow interior of the temple. Here the floor was not the smooth black flagstones, but a metal grate rimmed in dust that had yet to fall through it. The room was huge, taking up nearly all of the internal volume of the temple like an indoor arena. Its sole occupant though was a raised plinth in the centre of the chamber.

On which a glass skeleton lay in state.

All kinds of wrong this was. Dania checked her scans again. Did he die of old age or was the plinth set as a trap for anyone else who comes up there?

Either way they would need to get closer to see. She'd leave the actual determination to the others, she needed to see if there were any traps around or working tech they could try to plug into and determine what happened. So she readjusted her scanner for power or mechanism readings in the room.

"Watch your step, everyone."

The tricorder in Storm's hand merrily beeped and squealed in the delight of data acquisition. Slowly data on the temple's architecture came into view and on the scanner's screen, an intestinal scrawl of copper-based metal coils could be seen embedded in the walls and ceiling just beneath the surface of the black stonework.

The skeleton, on the other hand, was an oddity. There were traces of organic matter throughout the glass silica that now made up its structure, as though the bones had been the wax die the glass had been poured into. It was shorter than an average human, with long arms and short legs that ended in dexterous fingers and stubby toes. Two large ocular cavities rested above a flat nose and a mouth full of broad teeth.

And every single square inch of the glass bones was inscribed with runes and glyphs of an alien language.

"Wow," Bahat said, the awe in her voice audible even through the suit's comm system. Then she seemed to come to, and addressed Storm. "We should leave. Er, that is, Commander, we should think about leaving this being in peace. Whatever happened here, we're disturbing the remains." She looked back at the glass bones, entranced. "Whoever this was must be very important."

Meilin stood mesmerized. Such a discovery was along the lines of discovery the tomb of Tutankhamen in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings. There was a wealth of cultural and historical knowledge, a veritable treasure trove, where she could drown herself in study and never truly plumb its depths. "Negative," she said. "Establish a perimeter. Bring in more technicians and science officers. Bring everyone." Her eyes fell upon the glazed skeleton and the mysteries etched into its bones. "This is better than anything else we could have found."

Most people preferred a database to decipher, but to an anthropologist like Meilin, they had discovered precisely that. There was, of course, the mission. She blinked her overwhelming excitement into control. They still had to discover the source of the FM signal, as well as locate any survivors. The likelihood of those objectives being one and the same had increased exponentially.

As Meilin gazed upon the bones with the rapture of new found discovery, a flicker of light danced within them. At first, it might have been mistaken for a reflection from one of the torch beams, but it grew with a sudden ferocity until a cone of bright icy blue light shone up into the dust clouded air of the temple's roof.

The hologram that appeared within the cone of light was clearly old fashion, akin to comparing an EMH to a black and white film reel. Projectors in the temple's high ceiling could be seen pushing light into the projection field, creating the 3D model with a layered rendering that left artefacts hanging in the dusty air.

The projection had the same proportions as the skeleton, but now clothed in the flesh and clothes it had worn in life. The projector's colour was poor, making everything blue and grey, but the details were there. Big eyes, flat nose, but covered in a soft down of fur or hair that gave them a sloth-like appearance. The projection held up its long-fingered hands, curling them into a gesture before itself.

"Blessed are those who follow the voice of Concordance," it said in a deep melodic voice that was oddly beautiful. Even the poor quality of the projection couldn't hide the emotion of joy in its eyes, as it looked over the away team and beyond them to the rest of the chamber. "You have all travelled far to come here. Drawn as all chosen by the single voice that guides all towards the righteous path. Some of you, no doubt, hold fear in your hands. This is alright, it is without a doubt the strongest sign that you have chosen the right path."

The temple gave a quick 'clunk' sound, a snowfall of dust fell from the ceiling as the whole room gently rung like a bell.

"I too knew fear once upon a time. Before I knew the truth and glory of Concordance. Where once there was doubt, now rests resolve. Where once there was aimlessness, there is now direction and faith," the being continued on. It held out its hands. "One voice. One people. One faith. Concordance. You are the chosen few of your race who have received the precious gift of the faith. You were our vanguard, our holy warriors in the war to liberate your world from its heretic ways. When your leaders refused our emissaries kind overtures of surrender, it was you who made them see the error of their ways. Let not one holy warrior of the Concordance fall without the blood of a thousand heretic's anoint your path towards glorious unification! Let not one city of the faithless remain standing before it is smote with the light of our beliefs!"

Dania happened to agree with Bahat on this one, despite being a scientist herself. "Commander Jiang, negative. Think as a security officer for a moment, Commander. We are standing in a trap, despite how scientifically amazing it is. We are standing in a trap and we need to leave not bring more people in. We have enough scans to make what we can of it later."

Storm pointed around the room, "there is a mechanism around us, moving. There is tubing literally surrounding the room, copper tubing. There is also a vast temperature difference between the outside and the inside. It was 10C on the surface, it's 18C in here and rising. And I'm willing to bet this dust, is not dust...." Dania trailed off to let the possibility of what it was sink in. "We need to leave this room now, not when we put more people in danger, Commander."

Then there was the whole fanatical talk that stank of the locals being turned against themselves by an outside force. Dania shuddered to think on who the said force might be. But there would be time for that. Analyses could wait. Lives couldn't.

"Yes, I can see that," Meilin said evenly. The megalomania within the projection denoted a classical form of religious extremism not uncommon in developing cultures. Unfortunately that did suggest anything artifacts and relics had a higher potential of being booby-trapped. "Though I am loathe to leave this behind without a proper study, I agree that a swift egress is best."

As she began to turn back the way they'd come, the entrance slammed shut as tightly as any tomb.

"Lieutenant Kitcher, would you please get the door?" Meilin's pseudo-calm covered over a mounting sense of alarm.

"Aye, aye!" Kitcher's team returned to the entrance corridor, which was slowly beginning to glow as the heating elements built into the black cut stone began to warm up. Around the two corners they went and...

"Well...fuck."

The door way had sealed behind them.

"Åh for tulles skyld!" Dania cursed inwardly, "well that settles that," stony sarcasm dripped from her tone as she recalibrated her scanner quickly to look for possible exit points and localized power junctures they might be able to disable.

“Wait,” said Francie incredulously. “Do you mean to tell me that we didn’t leave anybody on the outside?! How could we not leave guards?!”

"Complain later!" Kitcher snapped. The air was rapidly going from warm to hot summer's day. The trio of security guards shouldered their rifles, and all aiming at the same centre point of the stone slab fired. The orange phaser blast's heated the stonework, adding a new ripple here and there. "Maybe we could overload one of the rifles? Jam it into a corner and blow a hole in it?"

"On it." Meilin snatched a phaser rifle away from the nearest ExSec officer and stood it up on its bullpup stock. Kneeling down, she unsnapped the firing mechanism, removed the safety panel over the nadion reaction chamber, and crossed the contact leads. Being of special conscience meant she would struggle with firing on a living creature, but it didn't hinder her from overloading a weapon into improvise explosive ordnance.

"Everybody stand back." Though her tone was low, her voice was still commanding. The explosive range would be hard to predict, but at least the shrapnel would be vaporized. She wedged the trembling phaser rifle in a 45 degree angle between the floor and the exit.

BOOM!

A third of the door's mass was consumed in the explosion, and as the smoke cleared a haze of the outside atmosphere began to leak in like a ruptured gas line. What was left was a crawl space big enough for a person to crawl through, with the door's ragged remains providing a number of coppery prongs that sparked with electrical discharge.

"Okay everyone out now!" Kitcher shouted in a voice laced with command. He moved aside, ushering the expedition team through the hole. Like any good leader, he was the last one out through the hole. And so he emerged into the caramel coloured twilight with smoke rising from his E-suit as its wrist computer wailed of damage.

So he could be forgiven for not seeing the tank first.

There were six figures spread out before the entrance of the temple, backed up by the six balloon wheels of an all-terrain crawler. Its sides were heavily armoured, and a small turret on its roof was turned towards the landing party with a pair of barrel's staring at them. The six figures were equally armoured, looking bulky slow moving in thick power assisted ceramic armour. Their faces were covered by armoured panels, their vision possibly augmented by the insectile optical sensors built into them.

Beyond them, a second armoured ATV and soldier's surrounded the shuttle.

One of the armoured figures, notably not carrying a large slug throwing rifle, stepped closer to the landing party.

"Ul'ta seki tu?" Came the halting vocalisation, and a five-fingered hand gesturing to the temple. One of the soldiers said something in an unknown language but was shouted down by the unarmed suit wearer. It was enough for the UT to begin parsing what was being said into Federation Standard. "-they look like the Concordance? This is still a Civilian Mandate operation, so keep your mouth shut!"

The figure turned back to the landing party, reached up and undid a latch on its helmet. The armoured cover was pushed up, revealing dark jet black skin and gold eyes looking back at them from behind a pair of glasses.

"Were any of you exposed to the air in there?" the speaker asked. There was a note of regret in his voice, and the way he had his feet placed made it obvious he wanted to run out of the line of fire. But he stayed his ground and asked the question.

"Not directly," Francie offered. "We've got these suits. Why? Is there something in there?" Her voice wasn't quite as alarmed as it should be with all the weapons pointed at them. She supposed she must be relieved to be out of that oven and away from the dust- whatever it was.

Dania put her phaser away first. "I'm Commander Dania Storm of the USS Resolute, we are explorers from very far away. We picked up a signal from this place and came to see if we could help. We were a little surprised to find that someone actually survived the devastation outside. Were you the ones trying to answer our communication?"

"We were coming out here to see why our monitor's of this abomination was set off. When we got here the burners were in full swing, so no point looking for survivors. I assumed the facility was malfunctioning, given how long it been out here in the wastes. As we were returning to base, we saw your 'vert break through the cloud layer heading this way," the figure gestured from the shuttle, and back to the temple. "To come back to this place and find it firing up for a second time, after nearly four years of inactivity..oh! Where are my manners? I'm Philosopher Ranked Prime Kisbek, director of the Cradle Facility."

"Commander Meiling Jiang," Dania pointed to the scientist," Lieutenant Francesca Ricci, Ensign Kyril-Ma, Ms Bahat Riya and Lieutenant Kitcher and that's Samson and Delilah." Dania motioned toward each in turn. "A second time? Oh crap..." Dania turned in the direction they'd come from. "...That definitely wasn't dust." Then she turned back to Kisbek, "what is this place?"

"Ash, and spores," Kisbeck daid, reaching up to lower the armoured face plate once more. "That temple is identical to hundreds scattered across the province, each of them designed to channel the infected inside. Some of them were only to help localise the infected to transported star side via shuttles. Most, like this one...merely incinerated those inside."

A low, distant drum roll of thunder filled the air and Kisbeck turned to look down the valley to the cloud filled sky. One of the soldier types with the heavy slug thrower made a arm gesture, and the other armoured troops began to return to the ATV's.

"There's a storm front rolling in. It'll be disturbing the fallout dust and chemical wash in its path, and you do not want to be caught out in the rain," Kisbeck gestured to the armoured trucks. "You're all welcome to come back with us? I can help answer your questions...and..."

His voice trailed off.

"...and...er...you came here on a ship larger than the one you landed in yes?"

Bahat turned to look back at the pyramid so that her face wouldn't be visible to Kisbeck or his troops. Switching to a private Starfleet channel, she transmitted, "Should we try to make contact with the Resolute? I don't know if I trust this... Philosopher Ranked Prime."

"We didn't come all the way out here to go back now," Meilin sad. "However, let us see what information we can gather before making hasty decisions."

Meilin switched her suit's communicator back to the loudspeaker. "You mentioned an activation before now. A recent one. Could you tell us more about that?"

"Two days ago's the monitors on this thing went off. We set them up back during The Fall Back before the rocks fell. We didn't know why they were being built, only that those who showed adverse reactions to the infection seemed drawn to them. See, its what the infection does. It's fungal, you see. That's how it gets past the blood/brain barrier, but it's what the fungus leaves behind as a by-product that is the key: self-organising carbon molecules. At least that's common thinking. Well, at least before we lost contact with the other Cradles on the north and south coasts," Kibek explained animatedly, the voice of a scholar ringing in his words. "Either way, we'd long since assumed that the monitors had all melted in the acid and chemical rains. But when this one went off, I convinced the Civilian Mandate to allow me a surface sortie. We got here just in time to...er...see armoured figures vanish in pillars of light? Is...is that normal? It seemed they'd gotten out of the temple just after activating it. Before the door shut."

Another drum roll from the clouds.

"We waited a day in case anything returned or changed. But when it was clear it wasn't, we left and began to return to the Cradle before our consumables ran out. It was only as we passed the mouth of the canyon we saw your 'vert, and we turned. We tried to get here before you entered the temple, to warn you away but...we were too late," Kisbeck lowered his arms. "I've never been more grateful to know I was wrong. Someone could walk out of one of those death traps. Having watched millions of my people walk into them, at the behest of The Concordance...well. You are here, now. That's the important thing."

"The holographic recording mentioned a Concordance as well." Meilin inclined her head to study Kisbeck. "Is that the entity which created this structure?" If so, she was prepared to conclude, they also destroyed this world, either through orbital bombardment or more subversive means which led to the populace destroying its own world. And it would suggest two things -- either these surviving natives were compromised... or the previous Starfleet team was.

"No. Well, yes and no at the same time. The Concordance arrived a decade ago, one ship with half a dozen crew on board. First Contact was a joyous affair, a statement that we weren't alone in the universe any longer! The first infections seemed innoxious enough, traced back to the Concordance crew. New alien life forms, new alien bacteria. No one was dying, no adverse effects. We didn't know to look for the carbon lattice structures rewiring the brains. Not until more of their ships arrived. Ten, twenty...massive things, and more slowly dragging comet fragments and planetesimals from the out system. 'To help bolster our fledgeling world' they said, and we believed them. They'd come with open hands, and in returns for helping us reach the stars, they only asked that we listen. That's when the first temples went up, places for people to go and listen to the word of Concordance if they so choose. Many did, and if we'd known what was to come we'd have screened every new inductee for the carbon lacework," Kisbeck shook his head. "Sufficed to say by the time we knew what was wrong the faithful, the infected were in every stratum of society. Civilian Mandate, Military Cadre...thank the Maker's Wheel we had the Cradles. Old geothermal shelters built during the Caldera Crisis, the nightmare of my group fathers time. Screenings and some of the hardest fighting anyone alive has ever seen during the Fall Back meant we got some underground into shelters built to survive a supervolcanic eruption. Turns out, they were just as good for multi-megaton fission devices and kinetic impacts."

He looked back to the temple.

"Those who survived the events of the world's 'cleansing' who weren't in a Cradle either died from the radiation, cold or gas...or willingly, and gleefully, walked into a temple like that one to 'be saved'," Kisbeck's armoured figure grew still. "My husband and wife walked in there. I'd like to think their ghosts convinced me to hang around here for a day, just to make sure I was able to meet all of you."

"Mhm." That was one story. Meilin's thoughts raced as she continued her inquiry. "The others whom you saw beam up from this location. The armored figures. What did they look like?"

"We only saw them for a moment. They exited the temple, saw our Crawler's. There was a flash of light from one of them, some sort of laser based weapon I believe, and then they vanished in a pillar of blue light," Kisbeck said, and gesturing them to follow walked back towards the armoured vehicle. With a stubby gloved finger, he pointed to a long scar of melted and cracked ceramic plates along the flank of the ATV.

"I've seen enough phased energy hits in the firing range to know one when I see it," Kitcher as he rested a hand on the sidearm on his hip. "Given they were just coming up on them, so nose on, and the blast pattern...Marine phaser rifle. Matches the constant burn rate along the scar see? Fleet model would have all the power at the primary impact point, but the Marine's got better toys for putting holes in things."

He looked at Meilin, and subtly tapped his wrist comp to make a team only comm circuit.

"If they'd parked that thing side on for a Marine fire team, that hit would have gone in one side and out the other," he nodded at the scar. "That there is a reaction shot, off the hip. They were panicked, and that should be frightening."

"Oh..."

"Permission to speak freely?" Ensign Kyril-Ma let out a squawk through the private comm before continuing anyway. "I'm ready to go back to the Resolute any time now."

Meilin understood the Aurelian's anxiety, especially after Kitcher's insinuations.

"We'd do best not to panic," she said to both of them. "If Kisbeck did not approach us with hostility, it's unlikely that he did so to a squad of heavily armed Marines either. The question now is to determine where they beamed to and why they haven't established communication with us." She gave Dania a glance to curry support. "Having a local asset would help with both objectives, would it not?"

Dania had been listening to provided opinions quietly, assessing the data in her mind as it was presented. "We need all the information we can get. It is painfully clear that the Marines, if it was indeed them had encountered something or someone else in this place that has caused them to...lose it for the lack of a better world. Hel, they could even be infected but considering differing physiologies...it could have a different effect on them than it did on the locals."

"Or they escaped a creepy trap pyramid, saw an armed group of complete strangers approaching at high speed, and fired defensively until they could beam out," Bahat muttered, irritation creeping into her voice. Starfleet types were far too trusting, both of aliens and of each other. She switched over to a public broadcast and waved to get the leader's attention. "Hey, Philosopher. You said you were part of the... what, Civilian Mandate? You've all got a lot of firepower for civilians."

"I wonder that a former Bajoran Militia fighter would fault a civilian group for taking up arms on their devastated homeworld," Meilin quipped with brow raised. It was an interesting observation, indeed. "Kisbeck's group possessses significantly inferior technology, which gives us the clear advantage. If the Marines fell prey to fear and broke protocol by initiating hostilities with non-hostile natives, let not the same be said of us."

Turning to Kisbeck, Meilin said, "Prime Philosopher, we would like to compare notes in more secure environs. Would you be amenable to escorting myself and as many guests as permitted back to your Cradle?"

Dania bit back a reply to Bahat. For someone who was a former Marine and a former Starfleet officer, she still seemed to rely more on instinct than consideration. Storm found it hard to believe that even Marines would blindly fire at approaching figures, creeped out or not, without a damn good reason. Creeped out didn't seem to fit that reason in Dania's book. Rules of engagement existed for a reason, and it was hammered into Marines and Security Officers from the get go.

Storm then glanced at her tricorder readings again, in case they missed anything...again.

"Of course," Kisbeck said, waving a thickly armoured arm towards one of the crawlers. "And I'd be glad to answer your questions as we travel. It's the long trip back to the Cradle."