Starfleet, Sun, Sand &Safari
Posted on Wed Apr 3rd, 2019 @ 10:36pm by The Narrator & Lieutenant Commander Mara Ricci & Staff Warrant Officer Blaise Birch & Stephen Spires
Mission:
S1E3: Moments Of Consolidation
Location: Carpathia
Timeline: MD6 11.35AM
The runabout Falstaff cut through last of the high altitude turbulence as it shook the last of the reentry buffering. Not that the crew inside the sleek Arrow class runabout had felt anything. The pinnacle of modern Starfleet small ship design, Canopus had a small fleet of the vessels at its disposal. A pair had been thrown into orbit around the gas giant Tangerine Dream, around which Carpathia orbited, to act as a comm's network for the colony.
Below it, flying between the clouds and the sandstone ridges of one of Carpathia's mountain ranges, a second Arrow flew. This one was the Pollonnius, and aboard it, the Carpathia colony delegation of scientists and planetary engineers resided.
"Energising," the crew chief of the Falstaff reported as the two energiser pad's lit up and a matter stream began to materialised within. The first to appear was Lieutenant Madrid, changing his ride from the colony's runabout to the one fresh from Carpathia. And next to him on the pad Sidim Khan blinked his eyes and took a breath of air that hadn't come from Carpathia. The terraforming expert was dressed in loose-fitting work clothes, light colours but thicker at the joints, his caramel coloured skin and neatly trimmed black beard giving him the look of a favoured university professor.
"I will tell you this much, I wish I had had access to one of these vessels back when I was working on the Venus terraforming project. It wouldn't have made the job any less pointless, but the ride would have been smoother," he said good-naturedly. "Now, which of these fine people is your boss so I can begin buttering them up?"
"Not I," Blaise said, his pale hawkish face pulling tight with his black grin. "Dr. Blaise Birch at your service, planetologist if I may declare, but you can call me Blaise."
"Elias Madrid," the Operations officer said with a nod. Then, gesturing to his companion, he added, "Sidim Khan, representing the colony." He would leave it to Sidim to state his own professional qualifications if he so desired. The two men stepped out of the tiny transporter alcove. Just over Blaise's shoulder they could see the flight deck, and the other members of the away team busy at their posts.
"Sidim to my friends and colleagues," he said, extending a hand to Blaise. "A pleasure. Professional terraformer so a little of everything from geophysics to high-level atmospherics. I'm sorry to jump into your workspace Blaise, but I wanted to make sure we weren't scanning for the same data as my team on the Pollonnius. No point making copies of same data, not when we already know there is something damn odd about where we are going."
"No overlap," Birch said with a friendly shrug. "You tackle the how, I figure the why."
While the geeks were talking shop, Stephen Spires slid next to the quiet Arctic beauty occupying a corner of the runabout. "Hey," he said nonchalantly. "Name's Stephen Spires. Whatcha' reading, chère?"
Dania had been reading the latest report on the planet and the Carpathia colony. Not looking up from her reading, "War and Peace, by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, in original russian edition." She said in a flat tone.
Spires had been on her radar in so much as having read up on the reporter just to know how to talk with him should he ever report on her. Not this though.
Nearby, Mara rolled her eyes. "How many women have you said that to today?" she muttered a bit louder than she'd meant to.
Stephen ignored Mara's little jab and kept his eyes transfixed on Dani. "I won't bite," he said with a grin.
Mara also turned her attention to Dani. "Yes, he will," she said simply. "Hard. And not in a good way, either."
So that was why. Ricci's reaction gave her the answer clearly enough. It was almost amusing how much annoyance was spewing.
"Are you upset he's trying to bite ME or because he's not biting you, Ricci?" Dania finally looked up and looked between the two. To Spires she whispered, "whatever you're trying to do, I think it's working, Spires."
Stephen laughed loud and hard at Mara's expense. "So does that mean you're gonna' tell me your name? Or maybe you prefer 'chére'."
Dania glanced sideways at him, "Dania Storm. Chere is a bit cliche, don't you think? So many better words." She decided to play along, seeing how long the two could keep up the pretense before things escalated.
"Au contraire," Stephen said. "Where I come from, chére is what we call a gal fit to bring home to mére. Dania fits you, though. Pretty name for a pretty lady."
"Thank you." Dania couldn't help a smirk, "I'm flattered you think so, Stephen. Can't help but think you don't know me all that well to think I'm fit to be a chere." She looked over at him fully now, mirth dancing in her eyes.
She did feel a tiny bit bad that she was playing along to his egging on of poor Mara. It was just too amusing not to, that's what Dani felt so bad about.
Mara shook her head and sighed. Poor Dania. Spires was going to chew her up and spit her out. She vaguely thought about giving her a more concrete warning, but ruled it out; some people just had to learn the hard way.
"As much as I don't want to break up the comedy act back here, we're about five minutes out from our destination of mysterious intent," the crew chief said as he walked back into the cabin from the rear cargo area. "Please find yourself some seats and get acquainted with the emergency restraint system just in case our pilot has to ditch us in the sand pit."
"Not gonna happen, though I notice we're a little heavy! You stow extra rations back there?" the pilot chimed in from the cockpit.
"Nah, just your mom. In case I got lonely," the crew chief retorted, walking through the cabin and checking on everyone's seat belts. "Canopus Op's stashed something called an Autonomous Mapping Environment & Engagement system back there with all the beakers and Bunsen burners. Thing's got SFMC scrawled on the side of its crate in crayon. And I'm a perfectly fine shape."
"Just saying you could look into doing some cardio, diet maybe, help make the turns in this thing a little more..."
The pilot's voice trailed off, and with good reason. Ahead of them, just cresting the horizon, was a massive swirling wall of sand. It started small, but as they grew closer its true size became apparent. It stretched from one side of the mission zone to the other, encompassing the tower and its verdant surroundings. Flickers of heavy static discharge danced through the swirling sand storm.
"Sensors don't show anything," the pilot reported. "In fact, my sensors report a loss of all intelligible signals the moment they cross the threshold of that thing. Thoughts, suggestions, and religious conversions are welcome."
Dania was on her feet the moment she saw the wall. "Dampening field of some kind? Would account for the loss of telemetry. We'll likely be flying completely blind if we go through. Maybe set down outside and see if we can...walk in?"
“Not a bad idea, actually,” added Mara. “I don’t think we should just walk in right away, of course, but we could test the theory from the ground. Throw rocks or something.”
Dania nodded, "something to that effect, yeah. Have the shuttle on standby, with a timeframe to call for help in case we don't come back, or worse."
"Or I press the button here to spend some of daddy War Buck's money. The Falstaff has all the mod cons, from power windows, air conditioning, and my personal favourite a dedicated in atmosphere drone," the pilot said with a grin. "We send the drone in on an auto path, it pops in at a high altitude, and then it pops back out, plenty of space between it and the ground to pull up if the sand storm throws it around."
"That option would let us get some good atmospheric data from passive sensors. Wind speed, particulate mass," Sidim said from his chair, his hands gripping the restraint harness tightly. He cleared his throat at Dania. "Excuse me, do you think standing is safe?"
"Likely not, but I needed to see the readings." Dania shrugged, her knuckles white from the effort she was putting into standing. "We're assuming a drone would work in there, considering our sensors are being blocked, we don't know what it'll do to a drone. We can try, obviously, but it may not work and the old style approach may be our solution after all."
Blaise pushed himself toward the cockpit so he could assess the sensor readings himself. "Not that it needs saying, but this formation is unnatural. We need to call in a class 4 probe from orbit and have the little drone track that and relay its telemetry to us." His black eyes looked up from the display. "There's enough static discharge in that wall that normal laws of thermodynamics become polite suggestions. If we decide to go in on foot after that, I'd prefer a vertical descent into the eye of the storm myself."
"Word's to fly by," the pilot said and thumbed the comm's on his control console. "This is Falstaff to Canopus Op's. I have the science contingent here requesting a Class Four Atmospheric Probe be pumpkin chucked into the eye of the tempest down here."
"=/\=Read you Falstaff. We don't detect any anomalous weather activity.=/\="
"Well, I'm looking out the viewport at what we called back in the Mariner Valley a class 4 shit storm. Dust, gravel, static discharge like you'd not believe. I'd rather not nose my beautiful ship into it without waxing the hull if you catch my drift," the pilot quipped. "Fire the probe at us, have it level off at five thousand feet and then fly it in towards the centre of the anomaly. Whilst you're doing that I'm gonna get us up and over the top of it."
The Runabout nosed up, the inertial dampeners smoothing out the manoeuvre's gee forces as it began to gain altitude. The dome of the sand storm kept rotating, like a millstone working on smoothing the desert waste into a plane of smooth glass. But there was indeed an eye, an opening in the centre of the storm.
"Doc you should be getting the probe telemetry soon-Ah! There she is!" the pilot pointed out of the canopy, as a bright streak of silver arced down towards the ground and then jerked up into a horizontal flight path towards the storm. "Farewell brave little toaster."
Without fanfare, it dove into the storm wall.
It took but a moment for the readings to populate the screen. "The probe reads all clear," Blaise said in disbelief. "It's almost like..." His black eyes widened. "...a holoprojection." Turning his head to the viewport, he squinted at the roiling wall of sand in thought. "An unnatural formation like that would be one hell of a mirage. We have to assume the phenomenon is man-made."
"Yeah well, I'd have prefered a 'No Trespassers' sign. Beware of Dog, or at the least no solicitations. A massive vortex of death seems a little over the top. Speaking of, we're over the top," the pilot said. Tilting the runabout onto one wing so that the port side viewports got an unobstructed view down into the eye of the storm. The jungle looked green, the centre also save for the bright white shard of the tower at its centre.
"Rollin's, we're gonna try descending to five hundred feet. Keep the comm line open to Canopus. Everyone if things feel hinky I'll be cutting in the main drive and boosting us back to orbit, so if there's turbulence suck it up," the pilot commented as he turned the gentle bank into a spiralling descent.
"Look at that vegetation down there!" Sidim grinned. The terraform leaned close to Madrid, lecture mode engaged. "Chlorophyll, you see, in this environment should be darker if it was a desert-dwelling species. The fact that we're seeing that sort of refraction means there's a source of fresh water near to the surface. Perhaps a subsurface reservoir, or aquifer?"
Elias nodded. "I had a feeling the answers to your questions might be down there."
Rollin's the crew chief opened his mouth to say something, but then with a loud ear piercing whine, every screen on the flight deck fritzed to black. As the whine subsided, the thrum of the thrusters began to cycle down, and soon only the steady rushing sigh of the air outside could be heard. Then the sickening lurch in the stomach of everyone as the inertial dampeners went offline, and the force of their passage began to pile onto them.
"I got nothing but the manual controls," the pilot expressed in a strained calm as the view through the front of the canopy began to dip lower and lower towards the jungle. "Main drive's offline, hydraulics are offline, reactor scrammed a hundred feet above us! Rollin's I need-"
CLACK
With an explosion of sound, the power came back on, the force of it raising hairs on everyone's bodies. The tinny auto voice of the flight computer could be heard repeating over and over again the phrase 'Altitude Low: Pull Up, Pull Up'. Mechanical sounds rattled through the fuselage, and then with a roar like a lion in the cargo compartment, the Arrow class runabout came down hard on its landing gear. With a lurch, it bounced into the air, with only the landing trusters steadying it so it didn't try to flip over. There was a crunch of breaking mechanisms as it came down from the final time, rolling a little before the pilot could reach out and flick all of the safety toggles back into place.
And then silence.
"Well...we're not dead. So...five star landing?" the pilot said into the air as minor alarms warbled from the control panel. "Calhoon is the name, by the way. Goes on top of the card."
"Not dead yet," pointed out Mara with an irritated look, checking the spot on her head that she had felt connected with the wall of the shuttle. "Give a minute and somebody might be."
"Would have almost been easier walking in." Dania muttered softly as she went to collect her equipment.
"Any landing you can walk away from," Elias said with a grin, giving Sidim a clap on the shoulder. The mild-mannered terraformer ought to know that better than anybody. He pulled himself up out of his seat and looked for where the equipment was stowed.
"That's the spirit!" Calhoon chuckled, going through a very abbreviated post flight shut down checklist. "Okay so...yeah we're not taking off again. Main power's out, I have battery backups and the solar collectors recharging'em so we're not going to rough it. Reactors throwing up some sort of 'contamination' error, so that's helpful. But for now we have sensors, a humanoid safe atmosphere rating for outside, and...18 degree's Celsius? Isn't this world rated for Sun Factor 1000?"
"Microclimate?" Sidim pondered. "I think Miss Storm was correct, it would have been smart to walk in. Not for the crash landing, but the data we could have collected."
"And if you want to walk through fifteen miles of jungle to get to the centre, be my guest. All of the Colony Crawler's would have suffered the same power problem and rolled to a stop the moment we crossed through the storm," Rollin's said as he walked through the cabin to the access hatch. He peered out through the armoured glass viewport. "I know this was forced landing, but Calhoon you bullseyed the parking lot. We're right outside the base of the tower."
"What can I say, I earn my five stars. So, ya know, feel free to move about the cabin now that the craft has come to a sudden and shuddering halt," the pilot looked over his shoulder. "Hey, Rollins! Med Kit for the engineer. Stop lookin' out the window, you've seen alien weirdness before."
"Yeah..." the crew chief muttered, pulling a medkit from the wall and returning to Mara. "You gonna have your self a bump there."
Blaise struck a solid crash position and so walked away unscathed, but he noticed the intrepid reporter had not gotten to his feet yet.
"Hey, boss," Blaise said, effecting a familiar tone with Spires to hide his mounting concern. "You alright?"
Stephen Spires tried to get to his feet once again, but his coordination was off. He looked up at Blaise long enough to show huge, dilated eyes. "I... I don't feel so good."
And then he vomited all over the floor of the shuttle.
"We need some help over here!" Blaise called out. "And bring that med kit! I think he's suffered a concussion. Somebody help me lay him out!"
Mara glanced around at everyone before letting out a resigned sigh and grabbing the medkit. "How is it," she said, "that we did not bring a doctor with us? Whose idea was this?" Luckily, all engineers were trained in basic emergency medicine- because engineers broke bones and knocked their heads into things most often of all Starfleet officers- and Mara knew how to use a neural stimulator. While the others got Spires settled, she pulled the required equipment from the medkit and checked it to make sure it was functioning. Barely a charge, but enough to do the job. "I hope it's not a terrible concussion," she muttered, frowning at the device in her hands. Oh, well, she would do her best. She placed the stimulator on his forehead and activated it. "Ideally, we would call a doctor at this point," she said as they waited. "I have no idea how to read a tricorder. Hopefully, he'll be able to tell us when he feels normal again."
"Hi! I see you're trying to heal a concussion! Would you like some help?"
A voice best described as 'super enthusiastic' arose from the tricorder, along with a helpful and friendly looking cartoon image of an EMH in the chibi style of Japanese artistry.
"I am your Portable Medical Assistant! I am loaded with several thousand easy to follow medical procedures for when advanced care is not readily available in emergency situations! If you would like to hear these instructions again in Bajoran, Bolian, Trillian, Vulcan, or Andorian please vocalise in your language of choice...now."
“I- no, that’s- that’s actually perfect,” said Mara in an oddly flat tone. “So, yes. Healing a concussion. I know this much, but I can’t read a tricorder. Can you, I don’t know... maybe let me know when it’s healed? Or... teach me how to read a tricorder in a couple of minutes?”
"You have chosen: Federation, Standard. If at any time you wish to change this setting, simply state your change of language or speak a suitable language sample. Commencing diagnostic scan...Commencing diagnostic scan...Commencing Diagnostic Scan. Scan complete. Cranial integrity is intact. Subdermal contusion detected. Adjusting Nueral stimulator to second setting. Link established with tricorder, life signs are stable. Commence constant observation of the patient. Follow standard procedure for concussion treatment, or seek professional medical assistance."
"Huh, so that's a Medic Mary huh? Heard about those," Calhoun said as he unbuckled from the pilot's couch. "Little pocket EMHs without the hologram or the personality programming. Combat grunts in the SFMC called them Ensign Mary Sue's because they seemed to know everything with that syrupy sing-song voice of theirs. HEY!-"
It was too late, Sidim had gotten out of his seat following Spire's collapse, and had gravitated towards the airlock. An airlock that stood open, both it's inner and outer door open to reveal the world outside. The terraformer stood back, hands up.
"I'm a geologist, not a medic-" he began to say.
"And do you know what's out there?!" Rollin's chimed in, his round cheeks a little red. "Air could be full of stuff just ready to turn us inside out!"
"Probe data-" Sidim lowered his hands, reaching for the controls.
"Little late to close the door."
Blaise shuddered from head to toe. Too much excitement, adrenaline dump, which meant... He fumbled through his pockets and swallowed a few capsules he found there. "Breathe," he said to himself. "Just breathe." After a moment, the calming exercise seemed to be working. Blinking away the tension of the past few moments of post-crashing landing recovery, he took up his satchel filled with his tools of the trade.
"All right, folks, looks like we're going to hoof it from here. If I may be so bold, I'd like to limit our full exposure to just the science personnel until we can give an environmental all-clear." Blaise's black features jumped out against his pale skin, giving him a manic clown expression when he smiled. "Just because the door is open doesn't mean there aren't greater environmental hazards to be found." He threw a quick glance to Ross. "That is if you concur, sir."
As tempted as Mara was to just leave Spires behind- what was he doing here, anyway?- she knew she couldn’t. She would have to wait with him. “How are you feeling, Spires?” she asked, keeping her tone carefully neutral.
Stephen's eyes fluttered in efforts to track the the ceiling overhead. "Tits." At first it sounded like delirium, but he soon provided context. "Everything's fuckin' tits right now."
“You’re telling me,” Mara muttered. “I’ll keep an eye on him. You lot go on ahead. Well catch up.”
Dania placed a hand on Mara's shoulder, "give us a buzz when you guys are ready to go. I'll go with the scientists to make sure they don't get in trouble."
Mara grinned. "I will," she said. "Can't let our men get themselves killed, can we?"
Elias raised an eyebrow as he pulled a hand phaser from its cradle in the bulkhead locker and checked the setting. Hearing women talk about men and trouble reminded him of a blues song he had heard in a bar once. He hummed it to himself. The phaser went in its holster. Next he grabbed a tricorder and flipped it open for a second to make sure it had power. It did. He offered it to Sidim, then retrieved another tricorder for himself. "Good to go."
Dania said nothing to Mara's statement. It seemed that both the Ricci's had similar views, which Storm herself didn't necessarily share. So she merely nodded to Mara and went to retrieve her phaser and tricorder. While she was all for empowerment of women, Dania was an equalist, rather than a feminist.
"I'm ready too." She said finally.
With all the prep and banter, Blaise had already ducked out the open door. "All clear," he shouted from several meters away. "At least in the immediate vicinity."
