Probing for the Away Team (part 1)
Posted on Tue Jun 28th, 2016 @ 12:09pm by Lieutenant JG Rami Miral & Lieutenant Commander Dylan Blake & Lieutenant Commander Morai Keen & Lieutenant Commander T'kaarch
933 words; about a 5 minute read
Mission: A Civil Act
ON
A probe; essentially a torpedo without a warhead but a sensory package with some extra boost in the communications array on this one should have enough power to communicate from the planet to lunar orbit easily. While the probe was on the hover cart Lancer decided to put it in the elevator and check the communications before pushing the button to send the probe down.
=^= Lancer to Blake.=^= He called to the ship. =^= This is a test relaying a comm badge through the Probe to the ship, how is the signal strength?=^=
"Receiving loud and clear," Blake replied having already checked the probes status throughout the setup and loading. He glanced up around the bridge nervously feeling the tension simmer through each crew member present as they waited to hear the results of their findings. "Ready to execute on your mark," he confirmed with Lancer.
"Beginning the descent." He pressed the button ready to move adn all but dove out of the Elevator so not to be caught inside it. "Probe descending now."
[Bridge.]
Keen sat in the command chair and still found it not as comfortable as teh hype; he had lost his commanding and executive Officer down a shaft, just as his career might be at this rate.
"T'kaarch, please tap into that probe and keep track of the information and scans as it descends; we keep losing people and it might be to our advantage to find them."
[Surface, Elevator area]
The probe descended several klicks, then it was as if the probe passed through a barrier. Then all signals ceased.
"Ranger to away team, we lost data from the probe. What happened?"
Lancer checked the tricorder to see that the car had gone past the barrier, the probe should have had the power to communicate through and rock.
Lancer used his tricrder and checked the programing. "This is Lancer; the elevator has not returned, I think the probe is still in it and trying to transmit." His Tricorder readings showed no signal. "I can press the button but until the doors close at the bottom I doubt it will return. It does seem to be a one way trip from this entrance." Lancer reported. "always the same depth it loses signal so we can confirm the area under is shielded and nothing we have can penetrate it."
Back on the ship Blake scratched his chin thoughtfully. "I'll try boosting the signal. Lancer; can you read anything locally?"
"Yes, I can read a dead spot at one point five Klicks is where I lost signal." Lancer replied. "The tricorder will confirm the distance and when I try the remote control I get my signal bouncing back like a ball off a wall. We have a dead spot or destruction. Since the elevator returns when called I do not think destruction is the answer, defined interference."
"Try the elevator, we might be able to use some readings already gathered."
"The Elevator is not responding; the call button is signalling operational to call it back but I am reading an empty shaft. If the probe is in it maybe it jammed the system?" Lancer asked.
The Commander blinked at his station trying to understand what he'd heard. "You're saying the shaft is empty? Where did the elevator car go?"
[Upper Floor]
Miral found the office she'd been looking for and was surprised the door was firmly locked. She should not have been, and she made a mental note to not take anything else for granted while she was here. She pulled out a thin metal rod and began to pick the lock. It took a few seconds, but then the lock opened and she slipped inside.
The room held a desk, a wall of metal cabinets with what looked to be drawers, and one window that was too dirty to see anything outside. She went to the farthest bank of metal cabinets and pulled out the drawer. It was full of papers in a precarious state of semi-decay. "Great," she muttered, pulling out her tricorder to see how much she could record.
Not for the first time, Miral wished there were such a thing as a psychic tricorder. Then she could know exactly what information she needed and what the person was thinking when he or she filed it. But, that technology couldn't exist, so she scanned general topics and hoped she'd find something of interest.
After a while, in the back of one of the filing cabinets, she found a report on the success of "Project Underhill." Something about an unwanted faction of the government going underground to avoid radiation poisoning. But the person writing the report was clearly on the surface after the group left, so there couldn't be much radiation, could there? She began to look for other files on this "Project Underhill."
When she'd done all she could, Miral went to join the others.
[Elevator]
Miral's steps slowed as she approached the rest of the team still standing at the elevator. "What happened?" she asked. It was clear that something did as the elevator doors were closed and there was no sign of the probe. And then there was the overall attitude of everyone around the elevator.
She arrived in time to hear the question. "From what I've found, it was a one-way trip. Something called Project Underhill. The elevator was to take people down, but not bring them back."
____
OFF
Lancer
Lieutenant Commander Dylan Blake
Chief Operations Officer
USS Ranger
Lieutenant Commander Morai Keen
Chief Counselor
USS Ranger
Rami Miral
Intelligence Officer
USS Ranger
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