A First Look (part 1)

Posted on Mon Oct 19th, 2015 @ 11:11am by Captain T'mpest Michaels & Lieutenant Commander Orin ch’Valri & Ensign Belle Maryweather & Ensign Kanali Paxton & Chief Petty Officer Jack 'Crow' Addy

872 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: A Civil Act
Location: Planetside

ON:

The team materialized on the outskirts of an abandoned city. The buildings stood like silent sentinels of the former inhabitants. T'mpest looked around slowly. There was a feeling of emptiness that was almost haunting. She shook off the whimsical feeling and pulled out her tricorder. "This way," she said, heading down a broken road.

The first thing Belle did was set up the holo-camera hanging from her neck on passive mode, ensuring it capturing the general surroundings unless overridden by something specific. After that, she grabbed her tricorder, following the captain while looking around. Almost immediately, the tricorder started spewing data, but Belle ignored it mostly, instead looking at her surroundings.

"This is quite extrordinary, captain," She said as she ducked down in order to check out the broken stones of the road, "This is not your average cobblestone road, I think these bricks are specifically made for these roads."

Crow looked down, sliding his boot back and forth on the road with a smirk before looking over to Orin. "At least it isn't yellow or else we would be in real trouble, huh Boss?" He laughed as he looked around before looking back to Orin who just shook his head. "Come on. Yellow Road. Wicked Witch. I'll get you my pretty." Jack than began to cackle and eventually stopped abruptly. "This is going to be a long away mission." He added with a sigh.

Orin walked along side T'mpest, keeping his focus foward at all times. "So? This is what you find interesting? Old rocks?" He shrugged a bit and continue. "I can't say I blame you. It is quiet." He looked over his shoulder to Crow and back toward T'mpest. "For the most part, anyway."

"It will get better," T'mpest promised him.

Kali's tricorder was out as well, but instead of looking around, she was focused entirely on down. "Yes, the bricks are made of a composite of rock that doesn't seem to be naturally occurring, at the very least not in this area. The bedrock beneath the road also shows signs of being modified for the roads. They prepared not just the topsoil, but excavated down to the bedrock, smoothed and leveled it, then built up again from there. That would certainly make the road more durable." She glanced up for just a second. "Which has been born out, considering what good shape it's in now, I suppose."

"Agreed," T'mpest said, pausing to pick up a handful of soil. "The buildings look in better condition than the road. With the care they took to build it, there must have been some force to make it break apart this way. An earthquake would have affected the buildings. Could it have been a flaw or sabotage?" she asked.

"Doesn't look like a flaw. There's no evidence of any major seismic events in recent geologic history- not in the last few millennia at least," Kali said lightly. Thousands of years, in a geological sense, was pretty recent. "I can't speak as to sabotage; I'm not trained in forensic geology."

"Nor am I," T'mpest admitted. "I hope to find answers in the city."

***

It took them an hour of making their way along the broken road until the road improved and the buildings felt less empty. It was still eerily silent, but the buildings had more substance. There were still large enough gaps where windows, doors and the occasional roof used to be, along with tricorder readings, to make the buildings not worth exploring. At least not now. Perhaps if scientists began a thorough investigation these buildings would bear a closer look, but T'mpest wnated to head into hte heart of hte city first to see if she could find a building that would still hold some kind of records.

After another hour the buildings began to show more signs of what they once were. It gave the team hope they would find some sort of information center soon.

"Captain," Belle said as they passed one of the buildings, "There seems to be a particularly large amount of wood-products in this building - Most likely paper."

T'mpest nodded. "Then we shall start here."

The air in the building was dusty -- mostly likely augmented by disintegrating paper. It had once been a library of some size. "Spread out and see what you can find," the Captain said, heading for the back of the building.

Belle started at one of the book-cases at the front. It was particularly dusty, with cobwebs everywhere, and the books itself looked so frail that she barely dared to touch them. She found a particularly big book jammed between the shelves, and as she carefully extracted it she noticed that it was in relative good condition. She carefully opened the book, and her tricorder quickly translated:

"Water. The water is in the well. The well is in the city. The city is in the country. The country is run by the one true lord."

It was a children's book.

(To be continued...)

Captain T'mpest Michaels
Commanding Officer

Lieutenant Commander Orin ch'Valri
Chief Security Officer

Ensign Belle Mayweather
Science Officer

Ensign Kanali Paxton
Geologist

Chief Petty Officer Jack "Crow" Addy
Medic

 

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