Exploring the Station, part 3

Posted on Sat Oct 1st, 2011 @ 8:23pm by Captain T'mpest Michaels & Lieutenant Cedric Shepherd & Lieutenant Jimmy Cooper & Captain Elsie Halliwell

903 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Unmasked Miners
Location: Aboard the space station

ON

[OLD]

"At least something that drew their attention.." Then Jimmy had an idea. "Can't you have the tricorder create a tone?"

[NEW]

T'mpest nodded and pushed a series of buttons. The tricorder made a shrill beep.

"OWowow, Wrong tone!" Jimmy squirmed as the plants almost squashed him in disgust. "How about 2 or 3 alternating tones?"

She tried again, using thirds in a minor key.

The plants slacked their grip, and the leaves started waving to the rhythm. "That seems to be working." Jimmy carefully tried to move, and found it easier. Eventually, with alternating tones, the plants gently let him go, floating him towards T'mpest. Without gravity, or anything to hang onto, Jimmy floated forward.

She braced herself against the door frame and grabbed Jimmy as she bumped into her. "Is there any reason we need to go back into that room?" she asked, moving aside so he could hold on to the rod.

"Sorry," Jimmy blushed a little as he ricocheted off the woman - eh, his [b]commander[/b] - which he had seen courting with the [i]other[/i] commander on this trip. Anyway, Jimmy found himself floating still now, grabbing the rod she had freed. "Well, not particularly, unless you're interested in gardening." He said, answering her question.

"I prefer digging in the dirt to gardening," T'mpest replied, trying to distract Jimmy from his embarrassment. "Did you collect samples while you were ... wrapped up?"

"Yes, they're in my containers... I think it might've been the whole reason they did it in the first place." He didn't grab the containers, not while he was still in range of the plants.

"Did you find any bodies in there?" T'mpest asked.

"Bodies?" Jimmy hadn't caught up to what the others found, so the notion startled him slightly. "I haven't seen any. What have you found?"

"Two former crew in the command center. Primarily mummified. If there are two, the rest are around here somewhere."

"Speaking of the rest," said Shepherd, "Where's O'Neal?"

"I think she went around to investigate what powers this facility, sir." Jimmy said.

Shepherd hit his combadge. "Shepherd to O'Neal. Where are you?"

"O'Neal here," chirped the voice of the engineer. "I'm in the power center, and I think I've found something."

The three made their way to Engineering. O'Neal was busily data-dumping from an active terminal into a PADD, and motioned the incoming trio over.

"Look here," O'Neal indicated the screen at which she'd been working, apparent from the brushed-away dust piling at the edges. "If the Translator's got the text right, this is the last text communication from the planet to the station. It's pretty plain--the surface couldn't get another orbital vehicle up here to evacuate the crew. They cite 'logistics imperatives' and 'resource priorities', whatever that means. This message is a farewell-and-thank-you-for-your-brave-service order."

"How terrible. Thanks for all your help but we're going to let you die?" T'mpest asked, appalled. "They didn't have an escape pod?"

"It's not uncommon for early spacefaring," Shepherd shook his head sadly. "A station like this would be reliant on support from the surface. Apparently they had self-sufficient air and power, at least."

"Suffocation is quicker than starvation. Even freezing to death there comes a point where you no longer feel cold."

"True. Sad way to go," said Shepherd.

T'mpest tapped her combadge. "Michaels to Halliwell."

"Halliwell here, go ahead."

"The crew never made it off the station. The last message from the planet said they weren't going to allocate resources to getting the astronauts home and thanked them for their service."

Halliwell had, by now, returned to her ready room from her investigation with Blake. Her nerves were wrought after the Romulan spike that had now driven its way into her thoughts. She paused, her head lowering a little out of solemn respect, and then said, “I think we have bigger fish to fry, unfortunately. We’ve noticed an anomaly with the SOS messages sent from the surface. They seem to bear significant Romulan character traits, but this isn’t confirmed. I want you to watch yourself more closely out there, Commander.â€

T'mpest remembered what O'Neal said and went to the nearest computer terminal and found the last message from the planet. She scanned it carefully for a moment. It did bear striking Romulan speech patterns. She mentally translated it into Romulan. "Captain, the message to the crew has the same speech pattern." She transmitted the data to the Captain so she could see for herself.

Reading it briefly, Elsie scanned the page. "Get out of there, Commander. And return to Ranger."

"Aye, ma'am. Michaels out." T'mpest turned to Shepherd and Cooper. "Anything else we need to do here?" She had the data she came for, but she wasn't sure how the others fared.

"I've got most of the engineering databanks copied over," nodded O'Neal.

Jimmy plucked a leaf off his uniform. "I've got all the biological data we need.." he rubbed on his sore arms, "And then some."

"You three are still alive," quipped Shepherd. "My work here is done."

T'mpest grinned at Shepherd, then tapped her combadge. "Michaels to Zhukov, beam us back to the shuttle."

OFF

Captain Elsie Halliwell
Commanding Officer
USS Ranger

Commander T'mpest Michaels
Executive Officer
USS Ranger

Lieutenant Cedric Shepherd
Chief Security/Tactical Officer
USS Ranger

Lieutenant Jimmy Cooper
Chief Security Officer
USS Ranger

Ensign Juliet O'Neal
Computer Systems Specialist
USS Ranger

 

RSS Feed