Sinister Mine (Part 2 of 4)

Posted on 27 Jun 2014 @ 4:42pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Commander Norvi Stace & Lieutenant Asahi Kita & Commander Andreus Kohl & Lieutenant JG Delainey Carlisle & Lieutenant Elijah Williams IV, M.Sc. & Command Master Chief Markum Quinn & Chief Warrant Officer 3 Alexion Wylde & Petty Officer 1st Class Gabriel Stark & M'Ressa & Senior Chief Petty Officer Keval zh'Erinov

2,500 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: Lyshan III - Uridium Mine, Section A60-A75
Timeline: MD 05 - 1050 hrs

Previously, on Sinister Mine (Part 1)...

Ignoring the 'ma'am' for the moment, Stace looked towards Asahi. "Just keep your wits about you. We're looking for anything out of the ordinary, which, considering my familiarity with mining facilities, is pretty much everything. But keep a keen eye on every nook and cranny. It's a big facility and we might not be able to cover it all in these cumbersome suits. But try your best."

The Trill then looked to Kohl. "Rendezvous back here in two hours, Lieutenant," and with that she collected her team and then departed.

Keval leaned against the wall, nonchalantly he hoped, waiting for his turn to descend into the dark abyss, or at least what he perceived to be a dark abyss, anyway.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

Alpha Team

The twisting corridors of the depressing facility seemed to wind on for days. No natural light, corrosive atmosphere just beyond her visor, Stace looked around at her crew. "You getting anything, anyone?"

Gabriel Stark shook his head with a frown, walking up close to Stace at the front of his team to keep watch as the team's security, rifle in his hand. "Just a lot of dark and quiet....really, really dark and quiet," he peered around as much as he could. "Really creepy dark and quiet. No wonder people think they hear stuff down here. I keep hearing my own footsteps echoing back at me. That's freaky just by itself."

Asahi quirked a brow at the security officer. "Hey, as long as you don't answer back, all's well, right?" He hissed angrily at the tricorder. "But I'm in the same boat, No-... ma'am... Lieutenant Stace..." He'd get used to this, honest. "Dark, quiet, no life signs or anomalies. Not yet, anyway."

"Damn," Stace muttered. They continued walking but the corridor then seemed to stop just beyond their torch light. Stace sighed and shook her head unnoticeably in her suit. "Turn around," she motioned as she cut through the group and continued back along the corridor. At the first left, she took it. Further down this corridor, the walls that rose above her and her group began to become thickly caked in a green, organic-looking gel. Stace stopped and halted the group as a whole. "Now's about a good a time as any to start collecting samples. Everything you see." She unhooked her back pack and starting handing out sample containers.

Stark moved just a few steps away from the group as they worked, rather than taking a container, he stood guard with the rifle....just in case. Who knew? Maybe the weird alien goo was from a huge alien bug. All he knew was that people had gone missing down here. He looked around with a frown, taking it in. There were miles of tunnels down here...the missing people could be anywhere. Any number of accidents could have been responsible.....far away in the maze of tunnels not to be found. Or perhaps disorientation crept in with the dark and some people who had gotten separated and lost, their instruments and comms down from interference, and they literally just ran out of supplies before they could get back to safety. There were any number of possible scenarios, but all of them were grim.

The last time Asahi saw anything that green oozing out of the wall of any surface, he had to ward people away with a pair of spanners and a loud, booming voice that sounded more alarms than a war-time red alert. Nonetheless, the engineer took one of the containers, fumbling about with it in an attempt to find the best way to scoop the goo up without actually touching it himself.

As a doctor, Delainey was used to seeing and touching all sorts of gross or just plain weird substances. A healer couldn't afford to panic at the sight or feel of blood, bone, brain matter, infection, or those repulsive substances he or she couldn't identify. The task of collecting the strange green goo was actually more soothing to her than staying glued to her tricorder.

While the sample-collecting began to take place, a soft and barely noticeable tremor shook the ground and ceiling of the mine network for several short seconds, then quickly ceased. Subterranean tremors might not have been too uncommon at such an underground depth, but the groaning sound which lingered after the tremors was far more bizarre. A localized noise echoing far from within the depths of the mine, the groan emanated at a low frequency and did not resemble any known biological nor geological sound.

Container in hand, Asahi leaned over to the Trill, eyes transfixed on the direction the noise came in. "... I don't think the rocks like us too much, Norvi."

Gabriel turned quickly, lifting his rifle to aim at the direction and moved in front of the rest of them. "That was not a bloody rock...." he caught his breath, keeping a fixed aim ahead in the tunnel, but the gloom made it too hard to see any real distance ahead. "Anyone pick up what that was on their tricorder?" he asked without shifting his gaze or moving, hoping there might be some nice, geological cause, but not counting on it. He knew better, and so did the hackles that had gone up on the back of his neck.

As the echos of the sound faded away, Keval had to fight back panic. Confined in an EVA suit he probably didn't need, in an narrow, confining twisting corridor was bad enough but now there were tremors. Natural or supernatural he didn't know, nor for the moment did he care. He looked around for Elijah or for that matter any friendly face. His hands were clenched into fist and he looked between Elijah and the ceiling feeling it was about to collapse on top of them all.

Though she wasn't telepathic or empathic, Delainey could still sense the tension and fear in the group as if it were a living, breathing organism. For a split second, she felt herself give into her own fear, before she reminded herself it was her job to keep everyone else from panicking. She consulted her tricorder as much for a distraction as anything else, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary now that it appeared to be over. "I'm not seeing anything now."

Stace confirmed Delainey's reading. "That just makes it all the more ominous." She shot her a look and furrowed her brow with the tension. "We should rendezvous with the others."

Carlisle nodded. "Agreed. I think that's the safest option."


Beta Team

Striding down another of the mine's serpentine tunnels, Andreus Kohl slowed himself to a halt. He shuffled closer to the tunnel's rocky wall, in case any of the away team wanted to continue ahead of him. Kohl took a closer look at the sensor readings on his tricorder, but he was certain that if he paid too much attention to the tricorder, he would trip up over the uneven floor-plating that lined some of the bottom of the tunnel. Or he might walk into one of the vertical pillars that he suspected were the only things holding up the roof of this particular tunnel.

"I'm not seeing any life signs in the vicinity," Kohl reported to the others, "But our own."

"Same," Dr Alexion Wylde had to agree, shaking his head with a soft sigh, tricorder in hand. "You can see where people have been working, but nothing fresh. Nothing else now, just us. It's very....enclosed down here though. Isolated. It is clear to see how people could be uneasy down here."

Quinn looked at his tricorder. "I'm actually picking up dilithium interference. It's running havoc on my tricorder."

Alexion's interest piqued with that and he moved to take a look at Quinn's readouts, frowning at the sight of it. "That can only be a good sign," he said quietly, shaking his head. "For our objectives, I mean."

What registered as dilithium interference on the Starfleet crew members' portable scanning devices soon evolved into a much more precarious situation. Beginning with a buildup of sensor scattering, many of the team's electrical devices began to malfunction. Helmet lights flickered while burning at higher lumens than they were ever designed for; O2 sensors on the EV suits began to spike; and the power cells on all phasers suddenly began to register an overload clearly noticeable by the increasing whine of the device and the bright red glow of their power meters.

The troubling sound of the overloading phaser on his hip was a sound Andreus Kohl had not heard since those simulations at the Academy. It certainly wasn't a sound he had ever wanted to hear again. And despite the sense memory taking him back to the cadet he once was, any practical phaser training fell out of his head as the adrenaline started to do its thing. Given his limited peripheral vision from inside his helmet, Kohl began to spin 360 degrees to consider all directions. "Frag out," he shouted, as he unclipped the phaser from its indenture, and he hurled the thing down a tunnel, away from the away team.

Quinn's tricorder started to overheat. He quickly removed it from its placement on his suits arm and used his cybernetic arm to through it. It was far from spectacular, but a small cloud of acidic smoke leaked out from its base.

Dr. Wylde had no choice but to lose his own tricorder to the same malfunction, chucking it away before it could cause an injury to anyone, but swearing under his breath. Without weapons or equipment to scan the area, they were defenseless and blind.

The phaser which Kohl had tossed briefly simmered as its power cells overloaded and reached critical, then exploded with a deafening sound and bright flash which sent debris flying throughout the nearby vicinity.

Crouching against the rock face of the tunnel wall, Kohl took a headcount of his away team and confirmed they were all still moving. He asked for anyone with pain or blood or injury to call it out, and while he did so, the light in his helmet popped. And then he asked, "What is happening?" And then he remembered that he was the science officer. He looked to the tricorder mounted on the forearm of his suit, and it looked as burned out as the others had been.

The tremor that Norvi's team had felt seemed to ripple through the whole mine, as did the rumbling groan. Crackling through mild interference, Stace's voice could be heard. "Stace to Kohl. Did you hear that too?"

Through the comm-unit in Stace's EV suit, Kohl's voice replied, "I felt it in my back molars, Lieutenant. Plus, we're having some violent equipment failures here."

"Then I want your team to make your way to us immediately. It sounded like it came from further inside down one of our corridors. Let's pool resources. Stace out."

In reply, Kohl chimed back, "Understood." And then he added, "Don't leave without me."

It had taken twenty minutes for the Kohl's team to reach Norvi's and she was glad when the small, weak beacon of light could be seen down one of the corridors behind them. "PO Stark," Stace called out from behind him. Stand down. I think this is them."

"My rifle stays up until I know that it is...." Stark murmured with a frown, letting out a soft breath. He wasn't going to get caught out. Not with the weird crap they'd been dealing with.

Across the way, once Kohl caught sight of Stace's team, he tried really very hard to pick up the pace of his trudging down the rocky tunnel. For all his effort, and the mechanical assistance beneath his EV suit, there was a notable limp in Kohl's gait. Kohl adjusted his communicator to sync with the frequency Stace had been using with her own team. "I can't say I felt anything metaphysical about it in my marrow," Kohl announced, "but some hell of a thing was manifesting its way out of our electrics."

"Or at least, there was a transfer of energy large enough to overload our equipment," Wylde nodded, frowning. His Talent didn't allow him to transfer energy between people and machinery, that had been the Talent of some others, but his own did allow him to transfer from person to person. It was a similar thing though, if overloaded, the receptive person could die. As spectacular and alarming as it had been, it was a simple premise. "One that has resulted in our team no longer having weapons."

"Shit!" Stace exclaimed under breath but loud enough that everyone heard. She pulled out her own phaser and checked it over, swapping hands and then repeating the process with her tricorder. "Everyone. Equipment check. Now. If yours is working then buddy up with someone's who isn't. I want those unarmed to be in the centre of our convoy. Understood?"

Quinn checked his phaser but then set it back. He kept his mouth shut, just trying to look like he knew what he was doing.

Delainey did as directed, but found her equipment useless as well. She shook her head in silent frustration. At least as a doctor treating patients, she never had had to contend with the dark.

"I don't believe in 'metaphysical manifestations' or what humans call the 'supernatural'," Stace began, the whole investigation team now joined together in the confines of one of the shafts and all equipment checked. "So, with that in mind, our best weapon is science and what we have left of testing it. Standard away procedures will still apply as we're heading into the unknown. That means that the muscle and guns will head up the front and bring up the rear as we move deeper into the mines." Stace sighed as she moved to the front of the group. "We don't know what we're heading in to, so keep your phasers to hand and on the outside. Let's move out."

Quinn shook his head slightly, "I have a bad feeling about this. Real bad." he quickly fell into formation and followed.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

WO Alexion Wylde
Doctor
USS Galileo
[PNPC - Blake]

PO1 Gabriel Stark
Security/Tactical
USS Galileo
[PNPC - Blake]

LT Asahi Kita
[Acting] Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

Command Master Chief Markum Quinn
Chief of the Boat
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Norvi Stace
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Andreus Kohl
Assistant Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

M'Ressa
Biotechnologist
USS Galileo
[PNPC - Zhao]

CPO Keval Graysan
Operations Officer
USS Galileo
[PNPC - Nicholas]

LTJG Elijah Williams IV
Geologist
USS Galileo

LT Delainey Carlisle
Counselor
USS Galileo

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