Cave Terrors (Part 3 of 8)

Posted on 07 Aug 2014 @ 3:31pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Commander Scarlet Blake & Lieutenant Commander Dea Mialin & Commander Norvi Stace & Commander Andreus Kohl & Lieutenant JG Delainey Carlisle & Lieutenant Commander Amynta Markos & Commander Luke Wyatt & Ensign Louis duChampe & Lieutenant Oren Idris Ph.D. & Chief Warrant Officer 3 Alexion Wylde & Chief Petty Officer Lyras Ueda

1,956 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: Lyshan III - Uridium Mine, Central Matrix Station, Section LV881-LV900
Timeline: MD 07 - 0920 hrs

Previously, on Cave Terrors (Part 2)...

"Keep together, keep alert," Scarlet reminded as she started to walk through the tunnel, leading them down the dark, dank length of it towards the computer centre.

"Aye Commander," Dea replied starting to move through the tunnel herself. Cautiously taking in the details around her.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

After trekking through the tunnel for almost half a kilometer, a large entrance door to the central station came into sight at the end of the passage. It was large and fortified, perhaps almost a foot thick, and it's metallic shine had been eroded away over the years by the swaths of uridium dust particles which now coated it. To the right of the door was an equally-grungy access panel with Cardassian controls, but it appeared to be damaged and cracked. A faint pulsing glow of the console revealed it was receiving power, but every few seconds a series of electrical sparks could be heard coming from inside the device.

Kohl stepped forward from the middle of team, and made his way towards the door. Before he made it, he dodged to the left when it sounded like sparks might be coming right at him. Kohl raised his mult-probe sensor package at the door itself, and then confirmed the outcomes on the display of his tricorder. Over the comms, Kohl reported, "We are looking at bonded kelindide crystal, toranium and polyduranium."

"And a panel full of sparks..." Scarlet frowned, shaking her head with concern as she drew nearer. "Can we get it working properly?" she looked around the group, the question open to any of the techy experts amongst them.

"The door's edges are all encased within the bulkhead," Kohl observed allowed. He waved his index finger around, drawing the circular shape of the doorway in the air. "I don't imagine we'll be able to lever it open, not even with mechanical assistance. You're right, Commander, the access panel is the only way."

Stace looked about the group in the dank darkness, peering harshly through the visors with a whip of her head. "It doesn't appear that we're very engineering heavy, does it?" she referenced, pulling out her science kit and also selecting the tricorder to start the scans. She looked at what the device offered her. "It's about a rudimentary as it can get," she mentioned over the comm as she read the results. "Not always the easiest to bypass when it comes to remote hacking, but physically easier to trip and activate through re-wiring."

Kohl nodded at Stace's assessment, as he began flicking the controls to put his bulky sensor package into standby mode. Carefully, carefully, he placed the equipment on the floor to the side. Once his hands were free, he joined Stace at the access panel. Thankful for the insulated gloves of his EV suit, Kohl heedlessly took hold of the edges of the panel, and he pulled off the cracked face of it. Only after he had redirected his comms to Stace only, Kohl asked, "Where do we begin, boss?"

Norvi turned to Andreus through the visor to look at him, although her helmet remained stationary. She inhaled and raised an invisible eyebrow in the darkness. The sparks continued to flicker as she felt her head lurch back a little in a futile attempt to protect her face. She leaned in closer and then scanned the device again. It offered no more information than she already had but a few more sparks tripped and cascaded softly about their feet.

She glanced to Kohl and said, more to herself than to him, "When in doubt," and with her gloved hand she gripped the two connected wired leads that were dangling just below the bottom of the panel. Giving a hard and solid yank, Stace and Kohl staggered backwards a little as the entire unit began to erupt in a fury of sparkles. It quietened for a beat and then exploded two meters outwards again, falling then into total darkness. A soft click could then be heard as the doors hissed their release and jarred awkwardly open. "Sometimes," she offered, walking in front of the door, "our fancy technology fails us. If the panel had been lower, and I were a gymnast, I would have opted to have kicked it first"

"I'll remember that piece of advice," Scarlet assured with a small, half smile, taking a breath as she pulled her rifle from her back to rest in her hands. "Let's see what we have," she nodded, leading the way into the computer processing centre. She looked around the gloom, searching for a way to get some more light in there. She was no expert, but the computers seemed...clunky to her. Not the sleek, shiny ones they were used to on their ships. There was a good layer of dust too, even if the room had to be used, a good deal of it now floating, catching the dim light now and then.

The room itself was rather unremarkable -- a collection of aging interfaces and consoles along with a large central processing matrix which protruded from the left wall. A soft whirr could be heard from inside the matrix's casing which at least signified some sort of functionality and power supply. A few random consoles lining the sides of the room flickered here and there, but it wasn't until the away team's helmet lights illuminated the far corner that two dead bodies could be suddenly seen huddled next to each other on the floor in sitting positions.

"How very odd." Lyras continued onward in the same sort of formation, keeping to the middle with his tricorder out. "I wonder how long the door had been malfunctioning..." As he swept the room with his EV light, he spotted the pair of bodies in the corner. "... Ah... long enough I suppose."

Looking at the equipment, Oren let out a small whistle. "Wow, these things are ancient. It's like someone unloaded all of their old equipment in this mine," he observed, taking a few more steps inside.

Oren followed Lyras' light towards the bodies and frowned. He slowly walked over to them, looking around to make sure he didn't touch anything. He maintained a bit of distance between the bodies and himself before kneeling down on one knee and taking out the medical tricorder from his kit to give them a scan.

"They haven't been dead long," he observed from the scan. "They must've been trapped here for a long time. They died from dehydration." The El Aurian spoke calmly, not in the least bothered by the presence of the dead. It wasn't anything he hadn't seen before and Oren believed that whatever was of worth of the people in front of him left the bodies when they died. Now they needed answers, not sympathy.

Dea was keeping a close eye on things while the bodies were being investigated. Given what they'd found she had a reason to be extra cautious. "Make sure we get some other official record of this if we can. It has me concerned that we found people who were just trapped for reasons we have yet to explain."

Delainey followed Oren's light with her eyes and was embarrassed to have jumped when she saw the bodies. She supposed she had been somewhat conditioned to expect more dust and computers. She was glad Oren confirmed things officially, but it didn't take a tricorder to know there was no hope for the two. Delainey could think of better ways to go.

Luke paced the from observing every little detail trying to gather a mental image of what it looked like in full working order but couldn't believe the rate of decay the machinery and bodies were in. "Do you think they were locked inside or because of a possible power problem?" He asked open to suggestions.

Stace walked over to the bodies too, hanging back a little as not to crowd the scene. One thing caught her eye immediately. "I don't know about you guys, but if I was trapped in a room to the point of starvation, I sure as hell would start tearing this room out piece by piece. Clawing at the door and the panels to get out. But look at their hands..." She paused, allowing everyone to do so. "Nothing fresh or recent. Only callouses that are indicative of a working labourer. Healed, rough. But nothing of the broken skins suggests anything from just before they died."

Dr. Alexion Wylde crouched close to the bodies, watching them for a long moment. He picked up their hands to inspect them, taking in their state. He scanned them thoroughly, trying to find anything else that might help. He tilted his head, resting his forearms on his bent knees were he was crouched by them. "No injuries at all in fact. But it is also possible that they were waiting for a rescue that did not come. Obviously I cannot tell you much without a full autopsy, but they seem to have been otherwise fit, healthy, relatively young. It is cool down here, relatively comfortable, and they were not travelling on foot. It could have taken a good week for them to die...but in half that time they would have been weak, in pain from headaches, confused, probably having hallucinations...."

Delainey frowned. The strong possibility of hallucinations made the relatively ordered state of the room all the more surprising, in line with Stace's comment about what she'd be driven to do under the same circumstances. That aside, Carlisle knew people didn't truly know what they'd do until they were in it.

Blake frowned, but managed to keep her sigh inward rather than physical. They'd barely arrived and had already been confronted by death in this forsaken place. "Let's start going through these computers," she turned away from the bodies to speak to the team. "I want an attempt to access all computers in here. Those that are broken or corrupt, mark as obsolete. Anything we can get into, let's start searching through the information for something useful."

Stace moved her to the terminal closest to her and with her gloved hand wiped away the sediment that encrusted the screen. The flashing lights notified her immediately that the console's power supply was fluctuating but she tried to access it anyway. "I hate Cardassian design," she muttered as she haplessly tapped at the controls. After a few heart sinking beeps, she stepped away from it. "No access to the mainframe network from that one. It's just a local directory of work assignments."

Scarlet moved to look over her shoulder, nodding in agreement at the information she was flicking through. "Take a copy just in case, but then move on to another one," she nodded, moving to look over another shoulder.

"Aye, sir," Stace replied, a little more congenially than she would normally.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CDRE Lirha Saalm
Mission Advisor
USS Galileo

CMDR Scarlet Blake
First Officer
USS Galileo

LCDR Dea Mialin
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Galileo

LT Norvi Stace
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

LT Andreus Kohl
Asst. Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

LT Delainey Carlisle
Counselor
USS Galileo

LT Amynta Markos
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Galileo

LTJG Luke Wyatt
Chief Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

ENS Louis duChampe
Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

Oren Idris Ph.D.
Archaeologist/Anthropologist
USS Galileo

SWO Alexion Wylde
Medical Officer
USS Galileo
[PNPC - Blake]

PO1 Lyras Ueda
Diplomatic Officer
USS Galileo
[PNPC - Kita]

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