Posted by Vice Admiral CockRoach (GM) in Main Sim - Bridge - Those Who Remain Behind
[snip]

Zooming out a bit more she reran the scans with more fine tooth adjustments, another path got lit up. This one was a bit larger and more decayed, it lead to from the shuttle site, to the trees along the north of the clearing and if the path held true through the thick tree cover ended once more at the far north end of the plateau about a mile and a 1/2 away near the edge. There they could just make out what seemed a series of wooden structures, it was hard to get a clear picture, but at a rough guess the structure or perhaps pair of wooden structures were 20 feet wide by 40 feet long and going off the vague shadow impressions they gave probably around 8-12 feet tall. “..Just found this too, no idea what they could be, the interference causes too much pixelation to render anything clearer from here. Also impossible to say what its used for, though there is some sensor data that indicates possible smoke currently rising from it complete with organic matter..” she said.

“It tells us that there is more than one or two people down there, or at least were. That would be a big undertaking to build. One or two would have built an enclosure around the cave and worked out from there.” He shrugged a large shoulder. “My guess.”

NE Cornbuckle spoke, “..Maybe a cabin? Or maybe a smoke house? The placement of the building or buildings would be useful for that second regard of meat and such with how the sun and such rises here..” he offered.

GM CockRoach

“Some of your ancestors hunters then Cornbuckle?” Green asked. “Mine’s a history of mariners. We don’t know what meat is unless it’s from a salt barrel. But you say there’s some smoke coming from it. Best take those images, detail them as best you can and send them down to E..” he almost had said Elemirre but that wasn’t right. “To the Captain and the MACO’s.”

• NL Green

NE Cornbuckle nodded, “..Working on it sir..” he said turning back to his console to flip some dials and switches.

After a few minutes he put the comm piece to his ear and then flipped another switch entailing in voice and text/pictures what they had found.

GM CockRoach

Green looked at the magnified view of the area tugging on his beard. They had come a long way from the old style telescopes that mariners spied on each other from across the waves. Even pre war satellites took some impressive images from space. Another world. Green was a career sailor. Still he had mostly been in space about Sol. He wasn’t a Boomer like some traveling for months between ports at slow warp, but had often dreamed of that and being out there. Now that he was, here he was looking down on another world. After the transmission had been sent Green said, “Can you set this up to flag anything that moves that is bigger than a dog? Motion sense? There’s so much there for area we could be looking at the shuttle and missing someone moving from that cave to a tree.”

Green, NL Eng

NE Susan turned to adjust the scan readings, “..Maybe sir. But with the local interference it’s going to make tracking animal or people movements from say trees moving much harder.” She said. But a moment later about 30 blips popped up in a scattering around the whole shuttle area and in and around the smoke huts, the caves, and woods surrounding the crash site. “..Ok so we got these 30 signals coming in, some are these big bugs flying around, one second while I filter those out..” She said.

A moment later 6 of the 30 blips went from a red blip to grey blipping, the remaining 24 blips continued to show movement. 3 were near the cave area, another 2 or 3 were near a wooded spot by the huts they had found, another 10 were seemingly at the edge of the woods near the crash site of the shuttle seeming to mill about. The remaining 7 or 8 blips elsewhere seemed indeterminate and the ability to fully lock onto their signals and positions seemed almost impossible. “..There, that’s the best I can do for now. The grey blips are insects flying in the air, the 5-6 blips by the cave and huts could be animals or maybe humans, we’re not sure due to interference, the 10 around the crash site I’m 70ish percent sure are just local wildlife animals. The last 7-8 blips I can’t make sense of. One moment they could be at one spot then the next they’re a half a mile elsewhere, then another they’re in the air, or another below ground. They only explanation I can figure is the local interference is causing scanner reflections, so they may or not be actual target’s we’re picking up..” she said.

GM CockRoach

Green leaned in to peer at the blips as though those few inches would make a difference. “Program an analytic to machine learn what is a person from an animal movement. I think we can assume that those around the edge of the clearing are probably animals. The areas of interest are the building and the cave and if we can learn the movement there we may be able to track them if they move off from there. I have to wonder if they didn’t hear the shuttle going down. That isn’t quiet.”
- Green