Paradise (Part 3 of 7)

Posted on 03 Jul 2019 @ 2:56pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Commander Scarlet Blake & Commander Marisa Wyatt & Lieutenant JG Tris Shizn & Lieutenant Aria Rice & Petty Officer 1st Class T'Lin & Petty Officer 3rd Class Peregrine Steele
Edited on on 03 Jul 2019 @ 3:00pm

2,861 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 17 - Crystal of Life
Location: Latari B III - Surface, Shuttlecraft Vincenzo
Timeline: MD 01, 0510 hrs

Previously, on Paradise (Part 2)...

Marisa wanted to get closer. "We have thirty minutes of protection. We can go a short ways across the lava field. If we move quickly, we might get some useful data." If not, she'd grab some samples of the flora nearby to analyze back on the ship.

"Then let's try and get that data," it had been all Blake needed to hear for her to give the risky order. She set timers to remind them every five minutes of their time left before motioning with her hand, starting a careful if tense journey across the burning lake.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

Lt. Shizn began to methodically go through all the power systems. He confirmed that the shields had been taken out by the first missile strike. Some how the energy over rode the shield energy frequency. He found that terribly amazing, but needed to keep his curiosity in check.

Tris then confirmed that the second projectile had struck the ventral hull, blowing a hole in the hull and then damaging impulse engines by destroying the power flow control module. The Andorian was able to confirm that the shut down had occurred automatically to prevent further damage, which had left them only thrusters.

So, Tris believed that, if he could get power from the impulse engines to the replicator, he could replicate another power flow control module. Installing that part would actually be the hard part with all the cross-laced connections to the isolinear computer control panel just inches away. It would take some time, but they could do it. He was just glad that the isolinear panel had not been damaged, or they wouldn’t be able to use the replicator.

After that, they would need to work on the hole in the ceiling out to the upper hull.

Steele just followed along with what the Lieutenant said. He thought it was a good plan and though his shoulder hurt, he really did have the use of both hands though it was uncomfortable at times.

They had talked and while comms were first priority if they could power back might be able to seal the hull with force emitters. The rock could be cut with phasers. Luckily unlike old Earth aircraft the landing gear was only to help support the craft not needed for take off. That was a low priority currently Steele thought, first things first.

"Alright sir," Steele called out hanging by magnetic boots from the ceiling. His legs were in better shape than the Lieutenant's. "Think we are ready to give it a try and see if we can get some power to the replicator."

“Alright then,” Tris began, “I have bypassed that damaged control module. We should be able to power up the backup systems and communications without causing further damage.”

Steele nodded and put an arm over his face in case there were sparks. There most likely would be, but hopefully nothing too much. He could hear the circuits activate and sure enough there was a buzzing and few hot bits flew out of the hole, but then settled. He took his arm away and using his good arm pulled back up so he could use the instrument to check the power flow. He smiled as he let go and again hung upside down.

"Things are looking very good sir!" He almost shouted and with definite glee in his voice. "Give that replicator a go and I will keep an eye on the circuit."

Power had been deactivated, at least in part. There had been some concerns, but Shizn watched Steele and he had seemed to deal with them just fine. Tris then stepped over to the replicator, where he inputted and selected the exact piece he needed for the power module. The replicator activated. The complicated device would take about 2 minutes to complete its cycle. He looked toward Steele and jested, “Would you like some breakfast with this?”

"Sir, yes sir," Steele's sort of echoed from the hole in the roof. "I just want to make sure the circuit is not going to go south on me. So far so good, but we should give it a test as soon as you’re ready."

The circuit held without problems and they had the module to replace the burned out one now. Steele went ahead and installed that, so that the rigged circuit could be put back in place. There was no use frying anymore of the systems then already had been. That meant the replicator was now working on the proper circuit and he had climbed down from the ceiling and sat with his Andorian superior for a quick bite to eat. His shoulder hurt like the devil and he was pretty sure the pilot's leg was not far behind either.


Surface Team

Aria frowned as she stepped carefully, her eyes going to the readings. She kept doing that, looking at the radiation, before her eyes went back to where she was stepping. Gravel. It felt like gravel under her boots. "On the plus side, if we fall we are less heavy," she said aloud, but more to herself than to anyone else. She let the science people find the options, she was only warning about obvious dangers at this point. She grasped her weapon tighter, eyes narrowed.

If they weren't in the middle of a literally hellish mission, Blake would have taken the opportunity to take a jibe at the petite security officer by pointing out that she was always lighter. As it was, she was concentrating on leading the team forward, trying to pick out the most stable path to lead them down whilst still maintaining speed at the head of the group. As she pushed forward step after careful step, it was proving to be a thankless task. "My tricorder is virtually scrambled..."

"Mine as well," T'Lin piped up. "We best proceed as quickly as possible as we will not be able to continue to monitor the radiation levels." She then made a gesture with her chin toward a rise in the landscape. "That would appear to be a wall of a crater. I believe we are just about there."

Marisa was more interested in looking around than worrying about radiation levels. Occasionally she checked her tricorder, but, like the others, hers was useless. She used hte suit's sensors to get what data she could, but that, too, was limited.

“Lieutenant Shizn to Commander Blake,” Shizn’s voice was audible on the communicator.

"Blake here," Scarlet replied tersely as she kept her eyes on the shifting ground beneath her feet. Whatever it was, she hoped it was important; considering the concentration they needed to painstakingly navigate the treacherous ground.

Shizn’s voice continued, “Sir, we have re-established the power systems and of course communications.”

Blake's shoulders relaxed just a notch at the words, her breath escaping with the update despite her previous irritation at the disturbance. "Nice to have some good news at last," she replied with a nod, even if he wouldn't see it. "Do you think we'll be able to leave on schedule?"

Tris knew he needed to be completely honest and hesitated a moment before replying with his voice coming in over the communicator, “The vessel is in fair shape. We’ll be confirming launch and flight capabilities in the next hour, but . . “ Shizn hesitated needing to word this next part carefully. “We will then be patching the hole in the upper hull and run some pressure tests. I really would not like to rely on a forcefield in this situation.”

"Agreed," Blake replied firmly as she lifted an arm slightly to balance herself on some shifting, crackling rubble under her foot. Considering the bad luck...or good luck, whichever way it was looked at....on the way down, she didn't want to test it any further. "Try and get it patched and let us know when you think it's stable."

“Yes Sir. Understood,” was Andorian’s reply.

T'Lin had moved a little ahead to the lip of the presumed crater and turned waiting until the commander had finished. "It is an impact crater commander, and there is a section here that has partially collapsed that we can get a better look at the colony site."

"Is there anything left of the site?" Marisa asked, coming up beside T'Lin to have a closer look. She was also curious to see what caused the impact--and if there was anything of it to take back as a sample.

"My tricorder is not working properly, we may not have much time here." T'Lin replied and looked over what was obviously the edge of a crater. As they had observed there was an eruption going on and the ejecta even on the upwind side made it difficult for visual but maybe a shift in the strength of the wind might help them.

"None of our tricorders are working. We'll have to use old-fashioned methods," Marisa said. "I know we don't have much time, but we have to observe as much as we can. First, we need to verify if the crater is from something that crashed here, or if something erupted from the core. I don't recall high levels of silica or radiation in the initial planetary reports."

The Starfleet away team entered the large crater as they advanced and soon a strange object came into view in the far distance. Visible between the heat shimmers emanating from the surface, a glowing orange obelisk could now be seen protruding from the earth beneath them. Its shape appeared conical in nature, roughly 20 meters high with two-thirds of its shape embedded into the planet's crust. The Galileo team was now within a kilometer of its objective when suddenly the tricorders started to blare.

The demanding beeping noise from the tricorder was enough to pull Blake away from staring in awe at the strangely out of place obelisk looming before them. She'd seen a fair amount in her time, but nothing like the ominous glow of such a large, foreign object. She shook her head, looking down to the tricorder with a frown, scrolling through the surge of information. "The biothermal radiation from this thing is immense..."

Rice frowned at the words and lifted hers, taking a deeper breath inside of her sealed helmet. "I am picking up something strange...it looks like a possible biological signal source. Can anyone confirm?"

T'Lin was surprise the tricorder kicked in. She did a reset on hers and the instrument seemed to come to life again. She started a scan of her own but she was more looking for any survivors though the impact and eruption placed either at vanishingly small probabilities. The readings she got though were odd. "Commander, I am detecting organosilicates and among them various metalloles chief of which is siloles of certain repeating types.”

Marisa also reset her tricorder, pleased that it worked. She began to take readings, focusing on the object in the center of the crater. "It appears that the cone is also the source of the biosilicates. If I'm reading the data correctly, their purpose is to reprogram the genes on a cellular level, replacing nucleic acids with siloles." She turned to Blake and T'Lin. "If we can get a sample of that, we might be able to analyze it and learn what happened to the colonists. If not a sample, a detailed analysis will work."

"Indeed, interesting and it is quite a massive feat of bioengineering to be able to do that. I would urge though extreme caution. We must treat any samples as though they harbour a virulent biological agent. If not for the radiation, I certainly would say full suits before samples, but here we are and there the object is."

"Definitely," Marisa said. "We don't want to become contaminated. At the same time, this is an incredible opportunity to get empirical evidence on what happened to the colony. This can give us so much information not only on the bioweapon, but possibly on who engineered it."

Blake weighed up everything they advised, absorbing the expert opinion on a volatile situation. Her main concern was the safety of taking samples of something that could be so dangerous. It seemed though that the scientists felt it was worth the risk in order to complete their face finding mission, so long as it was treated with extreme caution. They had a mission, in her view, they needed to try. "Let's do it."

Marisa nodded. "As it's my idea, I'll go in first." She pulled out a pair of specially-coated tongs and a shielded sample case and carefully approached the cone. She found an untainted sample of the organosilicate material and carefully put it in the container. It was still in a semi-liquid state, but it was gelatinous enough to suit her purposes. To be extra safe, she left the tongs where they were and sealed the container.

T'Lin nodded and let Marissa collect samples. The tricorder was acting up again but while she could get any readings she was more interested in the technology part at the moment.

"I am not sure commander, but this is not like anything that I have encountered before." She looked over the strange object for a moment more and then to Marissa. "Have you your samples?"

Marisa nodded. "I have three different samples, that should be sufficient. I wish we had time to examine the device itself. Does it have any markings on it?"

T'Lin turned and said, "Indeed it does, but at this point it is nothing known. Thus presumably not an artifact that the Federation has encountered at this point. I would suggest though from the high radiation still present and the uncertainty of the winds that we begin our retreat."

A hard jolt in the earth beneath the hardened crust of lava could suddenly be felt by the entire away team for miles. The hardened black lava formation they were treading on shifted and swayed from side to side by several feet, as if it were an earthquake tremor. All around the obelisk, thin glowing tendrils of orange magma started to appear below the surface then burst above ground and spread outward.

The away team's tricorders shrieked a high-pitched proximity alert indicating a nearby, unknown and massive biological signature.

"Yes, we should retreat before that creature surfaces." Marisa suspected it was what became of the colonists. Based on the siloles and the other evidence, it was the most logical conclusion.

T'Lin handled the shaking by going with the roll of the land. She kept the tricorder focused trying to get the last bit of data of whatever creature was stirring. "The crust is not thick or stable I would suggest running might be in order," she said with that still cool Vulcan expressionless way. The fact that she spun on her heels though betrayed that she really meant what she said.

The ground below the Federation team began to fracture piece by piece and drop down into sub-surface magma chambers. Molten ejecta started to spew from the cracks while the tremors intensified, making it difficult for any bipedal creature to remain balanced.

It was much like an amusement park Marisa went to with her cousins. The ground rolled and heaved, some sections dropping away. She had to maintain her balance while jumping every time the ground began to give way. Twice she had to roll to the side to avoid a burst of molten rock. Hiking and climbing she was used to, but this was both fascinating and terrifying at the same time. She paused to make sure the rest of the away team were making their way back.

Blake kept moving forward, each bucking piece of land spurring her forward to the next treacherous stepping stone. She hated the block of vision the suits gave them, having to twist her head further to see the other team members, trying to keep tabs on each of them in case they got into trouble. Or at least, more trouble than they were all already in. She grabbed Aria's arm as she was forced onto the same jagged, shifting piece of ground as her, breathing hard as she used every muscle in her core to try and keep them both upright. As they rocked forward, she used their shifting weight to help carry them forward to a more solid peninsular of rock, swinging Aria round to shove her back away from the edge, swearing at how close they'd come to the oozing, molten gold.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CAPT Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-A

CMDR Scarlet Blake
First Officer
USS Galileo-A

PO2 T'Lin
Science Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Warraquim]

LT Marisa Sandoval
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Tris Shizn
Conn Officer
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Aria Rice
Security Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Vansen]

PO3 Peregrine Steele
Science Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Warraquim]

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