[snip]

“Everyone get ready, we don’t know what we’re getting into, so save the exploring till we know what we’re up against. Fascinating as the place is, we have a mission first.” She smiled then glanced at the others. “THEN we’ll collect specimens and such. Fair enough?” She knew, being a scientist at heart, that exploration probably itched in everyone.

Ari CO

El was getting a bad feeling about this. It was unnatural. Impossible. This was the impossible shuttle. She’d toured the museum. Yes it was the backbone of a dreamy romance novel but nobody said it would feel this creepy. She was getting irritated at the cramped quarters in the overfull shuttle. To keep her mind on task she peered out the small window at the approaching greenery.

”..Aye ma’am..” The NE pilot said, immediately the pod began to maneuver to closer to the ancient orbital shuttle. With a gentle thud the pod touched down and the engines cycled quiet. The pilot soon reported, “..Confirming stable landing site, air is breathable of course, no giant insects waiting outside, nor other life bigger then some kind of ant in the dirt..” He said.

Past thirty feet that is … El thought, eager to get out but not eager to know what they might find.
Aelef leaned over. “What do we do when we get out?” he asked quietly.
“Stay in close. Let’s do as close a scan of the shuttle, uh, that one,” she said, a thumb indicating the Columbia.

Popping the hatch their NE MACO pair guards went out first, cautiously of course with MACO pistols drawn, after a brief look around, the sergeant in the pair replied back, “..No ones around, air is a bit musty and has a tangy air about it, but nothing bad I think..” he said.

El and Aelef clambered out as quickly as they could, grabbing their bags along the way. El stepped aside and stretched, looking down the lines of this impossible shuttle. Aelef started scanning. El eyeballed it at first but, in the end she did the same with her hand scanner. “You take the impossible shuttle,” El said. “I’ll look at the .. contraption and then check data.”

Once everyone was out of the pod, they could get some better readings on hand scanners. The nearby orbital shuttle remains, were indeed confirmed as being genuine to Earth in construction of the late 1990s, and age since landing here in 2003 till now. The water nearby was clean and clear, and seemed to be connected to a few underground rivers and the like, complete with several aquatic species of various size, which if cooked could be edible to any human survivors. Scans of the jury rigged wooden water wheel showed it was connected to the underground current in the lake and underground streams, which turned it regularly. This was tied into a jury rigged battery setup likely from the shuttle which once fully charged tripped a switch to feed into the shuttle which triggered the radio broadcast they picked up every hour. Wooden deposits were confirmed from being nearby and based on the age were roughly between almost 140 or less years of age. The most recent bits of wood were less than 5 years old! This was quite curious showing someone was clearly maintaining the whole setup.

El met up with Aelef not long after. “It’s as identical as it can be. Age. Design.”

“Our impossible shuttle,” El said with a shake of her head. She was feeling warm in the sweats. “The wheel is clever. Powers to a battery that charges then triggers the transmission. But see this piece, and this one. They’re repairs and inside of a decade ago too.”

More scans would slowly come in for the team on their hand units, biological data on the wheel and such showed DNA residue which was a direct match for humans, there was also signs of fingerprints, and the like. Tracks were faded but also picked up, matching at least 5-7 different types of male and female all human. Given their fading the newest print was from a male likely about 5-10 days ago.

If anyone approached the orbital shuttle, they could still clearly more or less see the writing confirming it as the Shuttle Columbia, the shuttle clearly had not landed cleanly as the landing gear had not been deployed so had skidded to this location in a belly flop, but that said based on the scan results the underbelly in the dirt was beaten and battered and rusted but mostly intact. The starboard hatch was rusted shut, but the port hatch door was able to be gotten open with only a little elbow grease.

GM CockRoach

“Let’s do a spin,” El said to Aelef. Walking close to the shuttle she could feel the size of it. And that there were ceramic tiles missing. Others scratched. Her fingers brushed along the hull; Aelef recorded. “Here. Long scratch. This thing skidded to a landing. I don’t think the gear was deployed.”

“Confirmed. They are intact.”

“The ride would have been a rough one but it held together,” she continued, paused at starboard hatch. “We’d need to cut through that.”

“The port side looked better when I did my scan,” Aelef said. When they rounded the impossible shuttle El could see what Aelef meant. “A little work and we could get into that I think,” she commented, then, out of a whim as she was looking up, waved ‘up’ toward the Bonnie. “This isn’t going to fly again with all the age behind it but it’s held together better than a lot of constructions would.”

El & Aelef, Eng

Blackwell walked out of the shuttlepod, stretching slightly before grabbing his medical scanner and doing a general lifeform scan of the area. This was only the second alien world he’d ever visited so the NE was more than a little excited.

NE Dr. Blackwell

OOC: Just a reminder everyone except the XO is involved in the landing party here, so any JOs etc should also be replying here :)

Once El and Aelef got into the port side hatch, there was a ladder right to in front of them. Getting up there they were soon into the main cockpit to their left and to the right a half open hatch door leading back into the payload area. The area was mostly empty a few secured metal boxes, all mostly empty or with stored used up equipment appropriate for the era the shuttle came from for space flight. All in all though the area showed signs of some upkeep here and there.

For the cockpit itself again everything seemed in order, though areas had been repurposed mainly to jury rig the water generator and shuttle battery charging methods to them run the computer systems briefly to then run the radio broadcast more or less every hour. Again like the payload area some upkeep had been done, and a few tools lay about here and there.

Through this search they hit their first stroke of pay dirt so to speak, in that in several places there were indications of various DNS residues, all seemed to be confirming as human, two women and five men. The age range of the samples were all from 2003 up to the present, curiously even those of more recent residue not more then a week or so ago, did not show any genetic deviations or aging signs, more analysis would be needed, probably on the Bonaventure itself in the medical lab, but if the readings were right then all the residue was from the original 7 crew and further none had somehow aged or died, or had children it seemed in all these almost 150 years!

GM CockRoach