Flying High, Fly Away!

Posted on Sun Jun 19th, 2022 @ 2:22pm by Lieutenant Akihito Takeshi & Lieutenant Commander Sofia Nikedoros & Lieutenant Alan Harrison & Lieutenant Jai & Rocoa Lotor & Aliereth t'Leiya

4,281 words; about a 21 minute read

Mission: Roll With It
Location: Class D Planetoid, near the Southern Pole
Timeline: MD 01 : 1632 Hrs

"Well ladies, gents, and everyone in between, here we are!"

Coordinating Officer as he might have been, Akihito never turned down the opportunity to leap away from the paperwork. And, while he was sure there were others in the crew who he could have sent out to pilot the shuttle for the team, Aki was insistent on doing it himself. They had only had a few dozen test runs, he had to make sure this team got down to the planet safely. On top of the high-ranking Starfleet officers, there were civilians involved.

And he wasn't about to let any of them befall a horrible fate in the atmosphere.

As the shuttle's hatch opened, Aki sprang up from the pilot's seat, making a grand gesture of waiting for everyone else at the door before waving his hand outside to the jungle-filled ruins. "May I present Planet D-13453-X's anomalous region!"

Aliereth, perhaps in contrast to the seeming eagerness of some of the rest of the group, simply nodded at this pronouncement; drawing a small scanner from one pocket on her equipment belt and studying the preliminary results, waiting for someone else to take the first step out into the new environment.

Rocky also held back, though barely - curiosity definitely drove toward the hatch to survey the unexpected landscape, but he made sure to check his suit and emergency respirator before stepping out. Just in case what they thought was out there was some elaborate illusion.

For her part, Sofia paused only long enough for a brief prayer before stepping out. She also had her emergency kit as precaution, but however much she trusted the engineering that gone into it, that wasn't where her faith was placed. After all, her review of Starfleet records on similar phenomenon suggested that there was a 50/50 chance this had been created by technology or innate ability advanced enough to be classed as belonging to a 'god-like being', which meant whatever had made this anomalous zone could very easily render their equipment useless if it chose. If there was an intelligence behind it, that was. Any number of other things were possible.

"Extraordinary," she remarked, looking around at the lush flora surrounding her. "A veritable garden." Given the forbidding environment elsewhere on the planet, she was half tempted to look for a wall and an angel with a flaming sword somewhere on the horizon.

Alan jumped out of the shuttle with a spring in his step. He was blown away by what he saw - the description he'd heard before didn't do it justice. It was only after he left the shuttle that he checked to make sure he didn't forget anything.

Jai was checking and then re-checking his equipment. To start with, checking that his uniform was put together the way it was supposed to be, owing to the fact that the Only eschewed wearing one for most of the time -- preferring instead to wear medical scrubs that made him virtually indistinguishable from his civilian counterparts. Which, honestly, had been somewhat the point. Second of all, was the medical kit that he carried as the accompanying physician to the away team. This outing offered him a variety of lifeforms he'd have to be prepared to address, including a Procyon.

As the boy emerged from the shuttle, he heard the Counselor make mention of a garden, and he would have had to concur with her assessment. Producing the ubiquitous medical tricorder, the boy flipped the device open and switched it to a more generalized biological area scan. "Oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, with trace elements of argon. I'm also picking up water molecules, but I don't read any trace of nucleogenic particles," he added, as he closed the tricorder and returned it to its place at his side.

That would seem to be in contradiction with itself.

Aki had his hands on his hips as he surveyed the area for himself. "Gotta say," said the otherwise cautious pilot, breathing in the crisp air, "This is a fair change from being attacked by zombies... or maneuvering around Breen ships... or any number of other things that may threaten our existence." He paused, looking back, "I'm not joking about the zombies. I wanna be, but I'm not."

Winking at the group, he hopped up on a nearby rock to see if he could get a better look through the greenery at what they were looking at. He managed to park the shuttle near the remains of a sizeable structure, made of some form of rock, similar to that of whatever he was standing on. "So, what're we looking for again? Signs of life? Technology? Both?"

"You forgot 'assess residual threat potential'." Aliereth said, clearly falling into the 'Both, and more' camp when it came to 'what are we looking for'.

"All of those, and to discover how this verdant piece of M-Class environment exists on an otherwise D-Class planet," Sofia noted gently. Threats were always possible, but she chose to look at this as primarily an opportunity for discovery.

"Let's get to it then," Rocky said, whipping out a tricorder. "Hey, I'm picking up a residual power signature..." he took a few steps forward, then to the side, stopping in front of a recess in the crumbling face of wall covered in vines.

Aliereth took a scan of the setup herself, studied it for a moment, then pulled something else off her equipment belt, something that fit well into her hand like a tailored glove. She moved two fingers and her wrist just-so, and the rest of it extended itself into a sword, then without waiting for anyone else, took the razor-sharp blade and thwacked through a good deal of the vines, revealing more of the wall before a reverse motion retracted the blade again and gesturing at the wall in a seeming 'well; now we can study it better' sort of indication.

"Great!" Aki's big grin turned vacant, before leaving down from the rock to get a closer look at the vines, then the wall, before looking about for a sign of identification for said wall, as if there was going to be a big sign in a readable language he could get all the information from. He reached out with a hand, touching the face of the wall. "Well, it's cold," he surmised unceremoniously, trotting alongside the wall as he tried to follow along with his hand. "You think someone tried terraforming and it just didn't quite work out?"

"Possible, but unlikely," Sofia said, coming over to examine the uncovered wall. She opened her tricorder and began to take a detailed scan - good archaeology depended on methodical examination and documentation at every stage of uncovering relics or investigating a site. "If it failed so long ago that Starfleet surveys knew nothing of it, I doubt it would still be functioning at all." Pausing to study her readings, she nodded toward where the structure seemed to bend around. "I think there may be a door of some kind over that way."

Aliereth bent over and picked up a small-ish rock, taking a few steps in that direction and chucking it hard around towards the indicated area, waiting, as if she expected a trap; then finally seemed satisfied when all that happened was the "thunk!" of the rock hitting something out of sight, and began to take measured steps around the bend.

"Huh, good point." If it were any other (normal) Starfleet team, perhaps Aki would have bounded forward, babbling about adventure as they went off in search of this mysterious door. Well, doors were not-so-mysterious. What the door led to? That was the mysterious part.

But it was between the collective presences of Sofia and Aliereth that slowed Aki's enthusiasm as he followed close behind, taking in the sights all around them.

Perhaps someone should stay up here and stand watch? Alan thought nervously. He decided not to bring up the issue, however, as his curiosity about what was down there made him think he'd get stuck with the job of being lookout.

As the first of the group stepped up to the door's entranceway, the ground beneath them lit up with a soft, green light. In the next moment, the door rippled, and instead of sliding open, panels in the center folded out toward the outer edge of the now opened doorway. A similar green glow lay upon the floor on the other side, revealing interior in the dim light. One small light of a circular console could be seen in the distance.

Despite the light, Alan turned on his flashlight and cautiously peered into the room. Nothing looked out of the ordinary and he trusted that their tricorders would pick up any traps that lay ahead. "Shall we proceed?" he suggested.

"Yes," Rocky agreed, eyes darted around the dim space. Taking one last scan with his tricorder - *something* was definitely further back in there! - he stepped into the room. As soon as his foot hit the floor, the lights came up revealing three snub nosed vessels arrayed along the far wall of the space. Each was mat gray, their short fat bullet shaped bodies flanked by flattened hollow ovaloids that looked that some kind of intake and the rear tapering to a pair of what looked like upswept flukes at the aft dorsal edge.

The Procyor paused a moment, drumming his fingertips together, face alight at the prospect of such potentially exploitable ..er, valuable archaeological finds. "Ships!" he said, making a beeline for them. "I wonder if they still work..."

"Hold on, let me scan them first," Alan said as he opened his tricorder. He didn't really want them to have to explain an easily-preventable away mission injury to the Captain. "Good, no obvious traps detected." He waved Rocky on toward the ships with a smile.

With a nod, Rocky continued his dash toward the discovery.

"Because of course, traps are usually obvious..." Aliereth muttered sarcastically, one eyebrow rising for a moment; but her words were drowned out by Sofia's simultaneous exclamation.

"Stop right there!" Sofia called out in a command tone surprising from the normally soft spoken chaplain. "This is an archaeological site. We are NOT tomb raiders. We are going to examine, record, and proceed in a properly careful manner." She focused a particularly pointed look at Rocky, who dropped his head, shoulders slumping like a kid busted reaching for fresh baked cookies. "Now, someone please run an analysis and get a date of manufacture and, if possible, last use on those craft."

Aliereth crept cautiously closer to one of the ships, a definite contrast to Rockys' exuberance, letting her scans run while she carefully scraped a sample from it, then, seemingly disinclined to trust a single data point, went to not one but two of the others and did the same, the dust of the microscopic samples vanishing into one of the devices on her belt that she linked to her scanner. It wasn't long before the eyebrow from earlier crept back up again, this time with rather more genuine surprise and less weary sarcasm. "...If the data is correct, they very old indeed."

She flashed the screen of her scanner to the rest of the team, holding it where anyone could read; seemed perplexed by the lack of reaction, then realized the issue and reached out a single finger to the side of the device with a sigh, tapping it to toggle the language setting to something the rest of the group could read.

Jai was walking beside the counselor, doing his best to simply keep pace with the... rather exuberant group. Particularly with regard to the discovery of the...

The boy cocked his head to one side. "Are those aeroplanes?" the Tibetan boy uttered softly, as vague memories of centuries before harkened to mind at the sight of the strange vessels.

At the command for someone to take a scan, the boy's hand instinctively brushed against his tricorder. Then, he recalled it was a medical tricorder. Because he was a biologist. Or, at least, his undergrad work had been in biology. One color Jai had never worn was yellow, at least in Starfleet. And he'd only taken the minimum engineering credits to graduate the Academy, so doing any kind of analysis on these... relics... was a task definitely not suited to his specialty.

And Aki, the ever-intrepid flight controller who had a background in flying objects that he could pilot, took four extra seconds before his tricorder did a similar scan. But, as he was doing so...

"Aeroplane? You mean like those really old things preserved at all those museums back on Earth?" he asked Jai curiously. He hadn't thought much of the doctor, only to deflect smarmy commentary some of the Atala crew had made upon sight of Miran lieutenant. But it had not occurred to Aki to make the leap that maybe Jai had more experience in flight history than he did. "You ever been in one of those? Aeroplanes. Not these. Though, if you'd been in one of these, I'm sure we'd wanna hear that too."

"Not in one, no," the Only remarked. "But they were the level of aviation technology on my planet before the viral holocaust."

Aliereth looked up from where she had been intently taking and studying ever-more detailed scans on the ships, and making a physical inspection on the side, and over at the rest of the group. "It should be safe to enter." She brushed her hand over near the side of one of the cockpits, and with the hiss of ancient air re-equalizing itself, the canopy popped open, letting the engineer climb up and in for a better look. "....Bizarre." She remarked as she got her first full glance of the interior; the odd simple orb in absence of any controls or readouts made her consider if the controls and screens had been projected from it, but best as she could tell there had been no indication of such in her scans. They were simply...absent.

"Ooo...interesting," Rocky said after hurrying over. He paused only a moment to shake a coating of dust off his tail - archaeological endeavors were always a bit of a challenge for furbearing species - before climbing in. Overcome with curiosity he placed both hands on the orb, ears lifting expectantly.

There was a brief flicker beneath his palms, then ...nothing. What a let down.

“Why did you do that?!?” Aliereth exclaimed to Rocky, a bit above a scream-whisper but not quite the volume of actual shouting. “That could have done anything!!!” The Romulan engineer was continuing her own methodical scans and inspections, her own hands and the lower half of her pants likewise sporting a fair amount of dust, as were the sides of the upper part of her pants for that matter, where she was occasionally wiping the dust off her hands and equipment as needed.

"But what it did was NOTHING..." Rocky's ears and whiskers drooped in disappointment.

"Perhaps let's not start 'pushing random buttons' as it were," Sofia said, coming over and gently moving the furry contractor from near the ...controls?... "Mr. Harrison, have you ever seen a cockpit like this?"

Alan looked at the controls for a minute, trying to figure out what was going on here, "Well, old Earth airplanes had many more controls on, well, everything. But that... orb or whatnot... in the center reminds me a bit of the main controls on old Earth airplanes. I bet one of our pilots could manage to fly these with a bit of adjustment."

"They are drained of power." Aliereth cocked her head slightly sideways, considering. "It may, however, be possible to recharge them, if we can decipher the main power system. It is also possible unfortunately that given their age, the degradation may be too severe to hold a charge..."

Rocky cracked his knuckles. "Let's hook this baby up to a charge and find out. Who has a space energy cell? You," he opened a hand at Aliereth. "I bet you have an extra cell for your phaser."

Aliereth lifted an eyebrow slightly and just-so at Rocky, but dug inside one of the pockets sewn into the underside of her tunic and vest and came out with one; handing it over but not about to point out the error of Rocky's statement: the word "an"; in truth she had at least three.

"And you got a pilot right here." Aki butt in, finagling himself forward just close enough to examine the controls - but not enough to topple himself into the cockpit. He was excited, not reckless. "I might be able to figure something out. At least get it to do more than turn on. Maybe not get it out the door where-" He looked up toward where their strange vessel was pointed, and found himself staring at something through the vines and branches that had grown over the building. He squinted, and then gave out a yelp at the giant, similarly-colored creature that squinted back at him with big, red eyes.

The yelp startled the creature, and the sound of feet skittering across the floor was followed by a loud, metallic crash. Soon after, a low-pitched croon could be heard from the same direction the creature dashed off in.

One moment Aliereth had engineering equipment in her hand, working with Rocky and Alan on the alien craft. The next moment however it dropped automatically from her hand and was exchanged in a flash for a weapon. Two weapons in fact: A phaser that was decided not the usual civilian-authorized stun-only model but a fully functional array of settings in one hand; and an elegant sharp dagger of dark metal and inlaid stone at the hilt in the other, back angled to the nearest substantive object, one of the ships itself, instinctively cutting off the ability for anyone to get behind her, eyes wildly tracking the creature that had appeared.

Rocky likewise reacted with alarm, though in his case, it was lips pulling back to show pointy teeth, accompanied by sound somewhere between a growl and a hiss.

Having quite the opposite reaction, Sofia headed toward the sound of the yelp and crooning. Upon seeing a small greenish creature tangled in ...some sort of box festooned with cables... she paused and ran her tricorder. "It's an herbivore, so I don't think it's dangerous, but it seems to be hurt," she said, moving slowly forward so as not to spook it. "Someone help me get to it."

Alan cautiously walked forward toward where Sofia indicated the creature was - even if it was an herbivore, he didn't want to get bitten by an unknown creature. He began scan the cables around the box. "There doesn't seem to be any power running through them, but we should be careful not to hit them with any static in case there's anything on the other end," he noted.

Aliereth flicked her eyes to where Sofia and Alan had gone, then around again for anything that might try to take advantage; and finding nothing, so far, opted to take up a decent guard position while the pair worked. That the other member of the party who seemed to have a decent sense of caution now was the ring tailed little invoice cheat she was sure was the one stealing all the caramel coffee syrup from the Bray Foundation breakroom was truly bizarre, though. Maybe his species had some redeeming positive traits, after all.

"Rocky, could you give me a hand with this?" Alan looked over in the Procyor's direction. Despite being, in Alan's opinion, a bit reckless most of the time, Rocky was probably the only one there with small enough hands to untangle the delicate wires.

Rocky frowned. "It's a wild animal and it's hurt and scared. You know that means it'll probably bite?"

"It's an herbivore," Sofia chided, as she knelt to try to help. "Blunt teeth, soft paws."

"Fine, but I'm wearing gloves in case it's poisonous," Rocky grumbled, pulling on his work gloves before coming over. He glared at the critter huddled in the mess of wiring. "We're trying to help, so don't do anything stupid." With that he began deftly untangling the wires. his gloves were thick but tight-fitting, allowing him to use his long dexterous fingers nearly as well as if he were barehanded. Before long there was a large enough gap to reach through.

"Doctor, can you help here?" Sofia asked. "I think I recall you also have training as a vet?"

"Marine biologist originally," the boy noted, bending down as he worked his tricorder for a moment. "After I was finally able to get out of the Tibetan Mountains, I was fascinated by oceans and coasts," he remarked, as he continued to work. "One thing led to another. Marine animals to veterinary science to pharmacology and medicine."

Lowering the tricorder, the boy pointed off toward an outcropping of mossy leaves. "I think that forms part of its diet. Perhaps we could use that as a bit of bait."

As the group began their careful extraction, the creature examined them with it's bright, pupil-less eyes. At first, it struggled to break free and run from the strange bipedal creatures closing in on it, but it stopped to observe. Three of it's long legs were poised to lift itself up and run, but it's last leg was bent in a different direction, and every time it moved, a pained cry was let out. But soon, the group had the creature freed, and it gave them a cautious look before making an attempt to slowly limp itself away.

"Now, where we?" Jai mused aloud.

Propped up on the odd aircraft sat Aki, who made a point of sticking far away. Alien creatures were not his forte, and he instead chose to keep watch. If that was an herbivore, as Sofia suggested, then there was likely going to be something after it. Something bigger and scarier. Sure enough, the sound of ominous footsteps had Aki perking up, and it was only then that he leapt from the aircraft to trot over to where the rest of the team had gone off to.

"Hey uh, guys... we might wanna keep going, or we're either about to meet mom, or something much angrier than mom."

"Of course there is." Aliereth replied with weary, but entirely unsurprised, sarcasm, tightening her grip on the phaser; though she moved Aki up a few rungs in her mental rankings for having the sense to keep watch and notice the threat.

A low sound almost like a hiss issued from the bullet-shaped head that peered through the doorway and was soon followed by a thick reptilian body similar to a komodo dragon.

Here, perhaps, was a demonstration of the effects of maturity vs the rashness of adolescence: Where her daughters had charged a similar threat in the caverns the moment any aggressive move was made, Aliereth did not: Some threats were best handled by a quick strike, but others by letting them pass you by and focus on some other object of attention; sometimes, the smartest way to survive was to attack, and sometimes it was to not; and after roughly a century, it was a lesson the engineer had learned far better than her teenage offspring had yet to. She held perfectly still, weapon at the ready, but watching yet holding her fire. Waiting to see what the creature did next.

Rocky did the sane thing - he swung behind a cabinet and then used his natural abilities to scale the nearest mound of equipment and duck into a hidey hole well above the lizard thing's eye level.

Sofia on the other hand took a more moderate approach. She did draw her phaser, checked that was set on stun, and held it at her hip - not overtly pointing in a threatening manner, but at the ready. "Okay, everyone move slowly to the ships and get inside," she said in a calm low tone, illustrating by backing steadily toward the one behind her, though trying to keep herself between the creature and the rest.

Alan looked up from his tricorder - he'd been too busy scanning the ships some more to notice their new visitor at first. Thankfully, he was right next to the original ship they had explored, which still had its door open. He climbed aboard and began peering out of the door toward the creature, the tricorder that was in his hand now swapped for a phaser.

Sofia's instruction was taken by Aki in slow stride, as to not startle the beast that looked like he was looking for lunch. He? She? Best not to get close and find out if the beast had a gender at all. Man, this was better than those weird zombies on that seabase he ran into a year ago.

But it was also Aki who stumbled on a protruding root (that he would later swear was placed there by the deities worshiped by this creature), falling back and dropping his scanner, which clattered loudly. He froze, as the creature's head snapped toward him, nostrils twitching upon sight of the much smaller creature.

"... Shit." Quick to scramble up before the beast barreled after him, Aki booked it deeper into the building they entered. He'd find a hiding spot somehow, lest he be eaten by... something.

 

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