[snip]

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

NE Cornbuckle took up that assigned task, “..Aye sir, on it now..” He said, a few minutes passed almost ten in fact before he nodded, “..analytic programmed, it’ll probably take the computer a bit to fully analyze and update their status, say maybe a half an hour or so..” he said.

GM CockRoach

“Clever work, Cornbuckle,” Green said. “We’ve got time for this to work and if it does it can be used elsewhere.” This was good work, creating something out of nothing. He’d rather be keelhauled than to so commend Serinde, but in this case credit was given where credit was due.

Finally making his way back to the bridge after seeing the shuttle pod off, Jonathan looked at the screen with all of the dots moving around it.

“What have you found so far? And any luck communicating with the Captain?”

Cmdr. McKnight - XO

Green considered the others answering but figured he was the next ranking person so that fell to him by expectation. Just like going out to a restaurant and the highest rank being expected to pick up the tab. That was hard on this ship, but not so hard to, as some said it, weasel his way into a trip with someone of higher rank. “Sir,” he said, his baritone British accent becoming more pronounced. “NE Cornbuckle and Susan have been working on this algorithm to track motion on the planet to see whether it is local wildlife or people.” He gave a nod to Cornbuckle and then moved over to the screen.

“The dots are either bugs, anomalies or potential targets to identify. Here and here we have a cave and a building and here we think might be trails made by the people.” He pointed to the locations in turn. “We have transmitted the information to the Skipper not long before you arrived, sir.”

Green

On the screen two of the remaining 7-8 blips that made no sense seemed to stabilize for a moment and seemed to be moving somewhere in the woods near the shuttle to a location closer. But their movements soon became ragged again. One moment they both were within 10 feet of the clearing to the shuttle, the next they were both by the cave, then another they were almost 10 miles south of the shuttle and plateau, before returning to their approach to the clearing, all for this randomness to repeat.

GM CockRoach