Posted by Vice Admiral CockRoach (GM) in Main Sim - Mystery Planet - Columbia Landing Site
[snip]

When the rest would round the aft corner of the Columbia they would see across the open clearing just coming out of the woods there were two humans! One was a male in his mid-40s, black short cropped hair, with tanned skin. He wore some homespun crafted animal hide shirt and pants with similar leather bound shoes. He also had a metal tipped spear over his back in a sling, and a drawn readied handmade longbow with tipped arrow. Next to him was a late 30s-early 40s year old woman of India descent, she had long black hair, and deeper tanned skin, she wore a plant weaved spun shirt and pants with a long metal homemade blade on her belt, and what seemed an improvised crossbow with bolt of some kind.

El moved, joined by Aelef and rounded the bulk of the shuttle. In photos it didn’t look that big, and certainly was no Bonnie, but it was pretty big when one was standing next to it. She stopped short when she saw the spear and bow. Aelef had taken another step and working on a second before he realized the El hadn’t continued.

Seeing the pair of bulky MACO’s crouched by the orbiter under partial cover, both seemed stunned to not reply right away, “..You two best speak up!” Barked the other MACO female private.

Lowering their weapons both slowly held up their hands, then the man spoke up, “..I am United States Air Force Colonel Rick Husband! Commander of STS-107 mission and the orbital Columbia you are around there. Next to me is 1st Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla, are.....are you humans?” He said.

GM CockRoach

El let out a breath and whispered, “Impossible people,” even as Aelef retreated a step and showed her his scanner that had photos of the crew up. A lot more weathered and the dress was different, and the hair but .. impossible.

Ari came around the corner as the Colonel introduced them. Laying a hand on the Sergeant’s shoulder, she stepped just ahead of him. “I’m Captain Arialla Bovar of the Bonaventure.” She smiled and nodded. “And yes, we’re human. We caught your signal and came to investigate.”

”..I can’t believe it!” Said the Indian native Kalpana, “..we knew setting up that signal was a shot in the dark all those years ago, we had no idea where we landed here on this planet. To be honest we had long since given up any hope of ever someone human or not hearing it..” She said.

El could probably figure given the limited devices they had to work with that likely the radio signal they had picked up given it was so primitive had not had much cohesion after a few light years, much less reception to be picked up. So even if some known alien ship had passed by the system and weren’t looking for something they probably got ignored.

Back then the thought was that such waves would travel forever into space, that the first transmissions of television would carry on indefinitely. That was likely the thought with these people too. El recalled from studies that that belief was shredded once they had warp travel and that was simply not true. Solar radiation, ion storms and the like shredded them. Even the more advanced transmissions from the Terra Nova colony took years and was poor in quality. No, this signal would not have gone that far before it was just a mess. The Bonnie was lucky to pick it up and even then knowing the general frequencies that Earth used. Or whatever Earth these impossible people came from.

She didn’t see any harm in giving them the truth. Though exact details could wait for a little while. “We have medical staff. Are any of you hurt?”

Ari CO

This time Rick Husband spoke, “..No, nothing recent. We’ve had some injuries here and there over the long years but thankfully nothing that has been life threatening. The worse was about 30 or so years back, when William got attacked by a group of Spikers when he was out hunting..” he said.

Spikers. Curious. She glanced around as though these creatures would rampage through the clearing. 150 years of living in the rough like this and no serious injury? More impossibility. She frowned, though whether that was from the mention of the ‘Spikers’ or her thoughts that was unknown.

El watched the Captain move up. Where were the others then? she wondered. The scans, the people, all were pointing toward this being the crew, but it was impossible! El was stuck on this, she knew, and part of her was telling her that she needed to be broader of mind with this. Being out in space afforded exposure to impossible things, like their last mission of meeting descendants of future crews. But this was past crews of an old shuttle where they had evidence of it being destroyed and all hands lost. Hurt? she thought. At pushing 200 they looked pretty good to her. How did they live that long? Another thought came to her. Could she?

El, Eng

Naomi tensed when two strangers approached the group. Her eyes lifted to observe them, their weapons ready. She couldn’t stop her heart from leaping up into her throat at the notion KIA during the mission. Relieving her of any obligation to reply, the CO spoke.

As the conversation continued, the scientist removed herself from Black’s side. He was in good hands right now and she would only get in the way.

-ENS Naomi D. Locke, Sci

Blackwell took a step forward, holding his medical scanner at the ready, How could such historic figures still be alive after all this time. He only had a general impression of who they were as the refresher for this mission and some tidbits from his childhoods studies. He waited for the strangers to answer.

Dr. NE Blackwell

As Blackwell approached the pair, both looked curiously at the hand scanner as it beeped, bopped and hummed its way through a scan process. The scanner showed to Blackwell both were indeed human down to their genetic structure, no obviously abnormalities stood out that they could see. Both were perhaps a bit low in certain nutrients but overall were in surprisingly good shape and health given the circumstances, and the fact they had all been here for almost 150 years, plus their normal ages before 2003’s loss. The scans confirmed both in front of them were also an exact match for Rick being 45 years of age that he was in 2003 and now, in turn Kalpana was an exact match for her age in 2003 of 40! Somehow neither of these two, and presumably the rest of the surviving crew had aged a year since 2003!

Seeing the scanner and the rest seeing likely surprised in some form or another at them being alive, Rick spoke again rubbing the back of his head a bit, “..I guess you’re all surprised as we are to see you all? From your stance and looks you weren’t out here looking for us, but just stumbled here right?” he asked.

Once someone would given a confirmation he nodded again, “..Figures, well you’re probably wondering how we’re all still alive and not aged what seems a day since we got here? Well I wish I could tell you how that is, the frank answer is we don’t know. Our flight surgeon Laurel tried to make sense of it after we got here for some time, but given what little we had to work with its all theories and guess work. Finally, we just accepted it and gave up to focus on other things..” he said.

Kalpana gave a wry chuckle, “..We have postulated everything from divine intervention, to the water here being a fountain of eternal life, to aliens, to pretty much anything you can think of I guess..” she added.

”..Anyhow if you want we can take you to what passes for our humble home here, its about a mile or so back through the woods here near a natural cave system..” Rick offered. “..The others are either out hunting, smoking previous catches, or just doing some idle work back home, either way they’ll all be thrilled at this turn of events, when we heard your ship there..” he said gesturing to their nearby shuttlepod, coming roaring in from the sky to say we were surprised was to put it lightly..” he said.

GM CockRoach

El couldn’t hold her question in any further. “How did you get here?” Her tone had a tint of the incredulous, though refrained from her next statement of ‘it’s impossible!’.
- El, Eng